janus," said Tiberius, "and has quite re- have indulged, and lose interest in the con moved all suspicion that I am practicing against Agrippina and my nephews." According to Ben Jonson, he was anxious promptly to strike down Agrippina's other allies. But Sejanus advised delay, saying, "Time shall mature and bring to perfect crown that which we have begun with such good vultures" (i. e., auguries). The wily minister's present purpose was to avail himself of the monarch's gratification, and press his own suit for marriage with Drusus' widow, Livia. "I have heard that Augustus," he began, "thought of bestowing his daughter as a wife upon a mere Roman gentleman. I know not how to hope so great a favor, but if a husband should be sought for Livia, and I were thought of, as being Cæsar's friend, such an honor would not make me less watchful for your state, than now. But it might strengthen my house against Agrippina; and my chief desire in it is for my dear children's sake. I myself have no ambition but to end my days in service to so dear a master." He had already, however, divorced his wife Apicata, in order to become the husband of Livia and the emperor's son-in-law. His eagerness excited the ruler's caution. Tiberius, without absolutely refusing the suit for Livia's hand, said he would take time to think, and pointed out the difficulties and dangers in the way; among them, a likelihood that the senate and people would object. "Men murmur at thy greatness, as it is," he explained; "and dare accuse me, from their hate to thee." Those words secretly stung Sejanus, who, professing to drop the scheme of marriage, proceeded artfully to urge upon Tiberius a proposition which he had broached some time before, viz., that the latter should withdraw from Rome into Campania and finally to the island of Capreæ (or, as it is now called, Capri). The ostensible object of this absence from the capital was, escape from the petty cares and distractions of affairs at Rome, the clamor of innumerable suitors, and the envies and reproaches of hostile persons. "A quiet and retired life, larded with ease and pleasures," he argued, would give the needed relief, and yet would be favorable to sound counsels in "any weighty and great affair." But the minister's private theory was that Tiberius, in seclusion, would give himself up to those gross vices which he is supposed to duct of the state. In this way, Sejanus would have charge of everything, receive the emperor's dispatches, know his plans, and yet pursue his own designs; build strength for himself by conferring dignities and offices; and become "arbiter of all." Tiberius declared that he was resolved to make the journey, as planned. Nevertheless, though unwilling to betray doubt or fear, he began to dread the ambitious pride of Sejanus as being his worst danger. "All whom I have injured may have the desire to strike me," was his reflection; "but only the favorite has the power." And, as aconite is used to overcome the venom of a scorpion's bite, so he decided to use against Sejanus, whom he began to regard as a sort of poison, one Macro, a prætorian captain, who was to serve as a poisonous antidote. Summoning Macro, he gave him secret commands to watch everything and everybody, during his (the emperor's) absence; to spy, inform, chastize-explore, plot, practice as he pleased-not even excepting the great Sejanus from his observation; and assured him that he would be supported in so doing, as much as if the senate and the laws had given him privilege. Macro was a willing and servile agent ; for, he said, "I will not ask why Cæsar bids do this, But joy that he bids me. It is the bliss Of courts to be employ'd, no matter how." He cheerfully prepared to sacrifice truth, right, virtue, and conscience, in his new mission. But his expectations soon received a startling check, in the circumstance that Sejanus, who had accompanied the emperor on his journey, suddenly returned to Rome crowned with Cæsar's praise and fresh power to work his own will. It was an accident that thus restored the minister to his monarch's confidence. The two were sitting one day at meat in a natural cave adjoining a farm-house called Spelunca, among the Fundane hills, when part of the grotto-roof fell, crushing some of the attendants, and so frightened the rest that they fled. Only Sejanus remained steadfast and, at the risk of his life, by great exertion propping up the ruinous arch of the cave's entrance with his own body, saved Tiberius. Surely, the emperor may have thought, a man who was willing to protect him at such danger to himself could not be conspiring against him. So Sejanus, installed once more at Rome, and alone, went on to carry out his designs against the household of Agrippina. He worked on the ambition of her son Nero, persuading him that the people and army desired him to supplant the emperor; and thus brought Nero under Tiberius' displeasure. At the same time he took apart another son, Drusus junior, and inflamed him with similar ambition and with jealousy of Nero, in order to divide Agrippina's house. Corrupting one of Agrippina's seeming adherents, Latiaris, he managed through him to ensnare Titius Sabinus into treasonable words which were overheard by two lurking spies, Opsius and Rufus; and having thus got rid of Sabinus-the last considerable supporter of Agrippina's interesthe caused that noble lady, with her son Nero, to be cited to the senate and banished, while Drusus junior was imprisoned in an underground room of the palace. Caligula, the third son, escaped the toils of Sejanus only by taking the advice of Macro, which was that he should fly at once to Capri, there give himself up to his uncle, Tiberius, and tell him that he chose no longer to live in peril of Sejanus' plots, which were also full of grave menace to the emperor himself; an assertion which Macro promised to corroborate. For Macro, seeing Sejanus once more in the ascendant, was stricken with deadly alarm for himself, seeing that he had been commissioned as a spy upon that high functionary, whose plots were 'laid to his peculiar ends," and could not, consistently with common safety, be allowed to run on. He therefore departed with Caligula, to seek Tiberius, whom free-spoken old Arruntius called "our monster, forfeited to vice so far that no racked virtue can redeem him." Arruntius asserted, as some historians have done-perhaps with truth, and perhaps in part with the calumny of repeating exaggerated rumors—that the emperor had lost all regard for his own fame or Rome's; that he studied murder as an art, devising new tortures; and spent his time "in the unkind abuse of grave astrology," by casting the horoscope of men's nativity, and, if he found good fortune predicted for them, putting them to death in order to show his power to frustrate fate; or in acting upon the stage, or immersing himself in licentious amusements. However this may have been, Tiberius found time to send to various persons at Romesuch as Laco, Minutius, and Pomponiusletters which greatly puzzled them and threw every one into a state of uncertainty. Minu tius found that, one day, Tiberius wrote that he was well and expected to return to Rome; the next, he would send word he was sick and did not know when he could come. In like manner, as Laco observed, to-day he honored some friend of Sejanus by a special writ, yet on the morrow would suddenly send punishment on some other friend of the minister. To one senator he would write in praise of Sejanus, to another he would say little about him; writing to a third, he made no mention of his favorite; and to a fourth correspondent he broke out in sharp rebukes of the great man. Meanwhile, Sejanus himself was made the colleague of Tiberius in the fifth consulship; yet Regulus, who was known to be Sejanus' enemy, was appointed to another consulship, by precise command of Tiberius. And, although altars to Sejanus were permitted to be multiplied, the emperor suddenly forbade all sacrifices to a man still living. The result of all this confusion and apparent contradiction was, that no one knew what to believe as to the intentions of Tiberius, nor as to his real feeling about Sejanus. This was no doubt what Tiberius wanted. It tended to break up plots that might be forming against him, by making every one insecure, and also helped him to draw out the opinions of different men regarding Sejanus. The fawning adulators of the latter were so misled that they declared him to be the real emperor, and Tiberius only the ruler of an island. Sejanus himself believed that he stood near the apex of his ambition, and began to long for something even higher than to be Cæsar. But, all at once, a strange portent occurred. The statue of Sejanus, in Pompey's theater, was seen to send forth clouds of black and dreadful smoke; and, the head being removed, a monstrous serpent leaped out. Sejanus scoffed at the sign, and asked, with regard to the serpent: 'Had it a tongue as forked as flattery, or did it look of the hue like to such as live in great men's bosoms? Was the spirit of it Macro's ?" His friends, nevertheless, induced him to offer a propitiatory sacrifice to Fortune, so as to ward off whatever harm might threaten. But when this was done, and the image of the goddess turned away from him in disfavor, he overthrew both her statue and her altar, exclaiming that she might keep her face averted till he bade her turn again; which would be never. I," he added, 46 'who have been entitled and "That adored as a god, sacrificed unto as no less than Jove, should have been brought to do rites to this peevish wanton-perhaps it was the shame at the thought of my doing so, that made Fortune turn her face, knowing herself the lesser deity!" But close upon this incident came the news of Macro's return to Rome, and Sejanus, learning that he was in conference with the hostile consul Regulus, began to realize his danger, and to gather and arm his friends for the worst. "These things, now, begin to look like dangers worthy of my fates," he mused. "I, who helped to fell the lofty cedar of the world, Germanicus-if, Destinies, you will that, after all, I faint now before I touch my goal, yet I have already done things great enough! All Rome hath been my slave. All the fathers have sat ready to give me empire, temples, or their throats, when I should ask 'em ; and—what crowns the top-Rome, senate, people, all the world have seen Jove but my equal, Cæsar but my second." it went on to allay suspicion and discounte- But it was not dependence on popular will, that ruined Sejanus. It was the execrable system which prevailed, that of governing without regard to the popular will. Sejanus had for years counseled Tiberius to seek safety in plots, suspicions, slaughter, and the aid of spies and informers. When he himself turned traitor to his mighty patron, these same weapons were brought to bear against him; and with them he was crushed in a day. Macro, knowing the danger of the secret task with which the emperor, now fully warned of Sejanus' plots, had entrusted him, and guessing how fiercely Sejanus might struggle against fate, sought an audience, and disarmed the fears of the minister by assuring him he had been sent by Tiberius privately, to tell only the consuls his purpose of immediately raising Sejanus to the great office of tribune. The secrecy of the proceeding, he said, was to make the surprise of this high honor all the more agreeable. Sejanus, in great feather again, readily and unsuspectingly attended the early session of the senate, convened for this object in the temple of founded by King Ancus Martius and enlarged by Servius Apollo. There he was received by the senators, among whom the rumor had been spread, with cries of "Hail, great Sejanus! Noble Sejanus! Honored and worthy Sejanus!" But Macro, in obedience to the emperor's commands, bought off the prætorians with a largess, surrounded the temple with the nightwatch, and gave orders that no one should be allowed to come out. Regulus then announced a letter from Tiberius, which was read aloud. It was long, and artfully worded. After throwing out hints adverse to Sejanus, *One of the oldest of Roman prisons, said to have been Tullius. It was built under the capital and consisted of two subterranean chambers, one underneath the other. It was also called the Tullianum or Tulliarium after Tullius, though the latter name was often applied only to the dungeon proper, or the lower prison, which was either so deep as to have the floor covered with water or else had a well dug in it. Jugurtha the Numidian King is said to have exclaimed when thrown into this prison to starve, as are thy baths!" Ancient traditions say that both St. Peter and St. Paul were confined in it, and led from it to their he touched the water on the bottom, "Hercules ! how cold death. + Often written Gemoniae Scalae, "Bridge of Sighs." The steps on the Aventine Hill leading to the Tiber, down which criminals were often flung and then dragged with hooks to the river into which they were thrown. MAP QUIZ. 2. What was the limit of Roman territory at the 3. What was the extent of Carthaginian terri- 4. Locate the scene of the first action in this 5. What were Rome's first two foreign prov- 6. What state was formed by Carthage to take 7. Where was the home of the Illyrian pirates? 9. Mark Ticinus, Trebia, Trasimenus, Cannæ, 10. What were the theaters of action in the Second Punic War, exclusive of Italy? THE CHAUTAUQUAN MAP SERIES-No. II. 14. What enlargement of Roman dependencies 15. When was Roman dominion declared over Illyricum, Macedonia, and Greece? 16. When was the province of Africa formed? 18. Locate the battle-field which resulted in 19. What was the distance in miles between the 20. What was the distance between the north and SUNDAY READINGS. SELECTED BY BISHOP VINCENT. [November 3.] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.EPH. iv. 31, 32. W HAT a strange change it had been for St. Paul's converts, as they passed out of the old into the newthe old so rough, so angry, so violent and venomous, so loud and so brutal-that life woven out of such bitter threads and melancholy hues "debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults"-that life of the flesh, "hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, envyings, murders." That is what has been banished and crucified by those who had found themselves, amid the heat and tumult of that loud quarrelling, suddenly mastered by the vision of Him who won them by His meekness and His gentleness-the Man of human kindness, the Priest of compassion, the King of Peace, the Lamb of God, Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again." This was the message that had reached and held and possessed them, the message of the preacher who besought them "by the meekness and the gentleness of Jesus." Who can measure the sweetness with which such words would fall upon a world hot with angry feuds and bitter revenges—“the meekness and the gentleness of Jesus"? As cool water to fevered lips, so the kind words stole in as a blessing upon those who crept out of the tumult to hide their wounds and weariness within the comfortable fold of that Good Shepherd who led them into such rich pastures and by such quiet waters. And yet we all of us are subject to a suspicion which suggests that possibly something, after all, may have been lost in the passage from the old state to the new. Very rough, very uncomfortable that old condition of things may have been; but was there not a vigor in its vivacities and a robustness in its violence that we miss in the kindly new? Is there no loss of manliness in passing to this new temper? and is it fitted for the actual world? For rough work needs rough methods; and our work here is rough, and cannot be pushed through without a good deal of energetic emphasis. And, again, there is a hearty and muscular naturalness in that boisterous scramble of man against man, which we like in books and in plays, even though in real life it is rather oppressive and unpleasant. And this humility, this gentleness, they disturb us as something unnatural, artificial, labored. Are they quite real? Are they not apt to be very full of provoking mannerisms and insincerities? So every one, I suppose, has said to himself again and again; and with this suspicion at work within him he easily accepts the more formal and public criticism which is familiar in our ears, pronouncing that these Christian graces, beautiful as ideals, charming us as spiritual excellencies with their choice flavor of exquisite piety, do nevertheless represent an unearthly and unsocial type of virtue ; that we lose as citizens what we gain as saints; that by walking in the Spirit we cease to be equally effective forces for economic purposes. Now, this suspicion and this criticism are familiar and strong because they have a great deal of plausible evidence behind them. There is much in our religious habit and temper which would tend to confirm what they suggest; and certainly our religious thought has failed to give us any logic which would displace the suspicion or expose the criticism; and through this we are easily led into three great disasters. First, there have been bred up among us a public mind and tone which have so deeply accepted these assumptions of which I speak that it has been found easy for science to persuade us that wherever the root-instincts of men are allowed free play they are necessarily selfish; that from this primal and calculable motive all the vigorous and positive qualities of industrious production issue; that the degree of vigor so displayed will be in proportion to the amount of selfishness in action; and that, however much this natural impulse may and ought, for ethical reasons, to be checked and limited, yet such checks and |