fairs. Tiberius was the
first general of his time and knew Germany and the Germans better than
any other Roman.

The passage from Suetonius, just quoted, indicates that Tiberius was
not altogether popular, yet it was the accepted opinion that Rome
and Italy might well be content to rely upon so capable a general and
diplomat, if Augustus failed. This attitude, however, changed when
the death of Drusus entirely removed the alternative of choice between
himself and Tiberius, and the latter, up to that time universally
admired, began to be met, even among the nobility, by a strong
opposition. How can this apparently inexplicable fact be made clear?
The theory of corruption so dear to the ancients, which I have already
explained, gives us the key to the mystery. Those who have been
disposed to see in that theory merely a plaything of poets, orators,
philosophers, will now realise that it had power enough to kill the
person and destroy the family of the first citizen of the Empire. That
kind of continuous fear of luxury, of amusements, of prodigality, on
account of which the ancients called corruption so many things that
we define as progress, was not a sentiment always equally alive in the
mind of the multitude. The Romans, like ourselves, loved to live and
to enjoy; this is so true that philosophers and legislators constantly
took pains to remind them of the danger of allowing too much liberty
to the appetites; but more effective than the counsels of philosophers
and the threats of the law, great public calamities inspired in the
masses, at least temporarily, a spirit of puritanism and austerity.
Of this the consequences of the battle of Actium afforded noteworthy
proof.

Those who have read the fourth volume of _The Greatness and Decline of
Rome_ may perhaps remember how I have described the conservative
and traditionalist movement of the first decade of the government
of Augustus. Frightened by the revolution, men's minds had reverted
precipitously to the past. A new party, which one might call the
traditionalist, had sought to re-establish the old-time order, in the
state, in customs, in ideas; to combat the corruption of customs; and
of this party Augustus had been the right arm. Indeed, to so great
an extent had this party stirred up public spirit and prevailed upon
those in power that in 18 B.C. it succeeded in passing some great
social laws on luxury, on matrimony, on dress. With these laws, Rome
proposed to rema