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Now at Rome, Consuls, Senators, and Roman Knights, were all rushing with
emulation into bondage, and the higher the quality of each the more false
and forward the men; all careful so to frame their faces, as to reconcile
false joy for the accession of Tiberius, with feigned sadness for the loss
of Augustus: hence they intermingled fears with gladness, wailings with
gratulations, and all with servile flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus
Apuleius, at that time Consuls, took first the oath of fidelity to
Tiberius; then administered it to Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius; the
former Captain of the Praetorian Guards, the other Intendant of the Public
Stores. The oath was next given to the Senate, to the people, and to the
soldiery: all by the same Consuls; for Tiberius affected to derive all
public transactions from the legal ministry of the Consuls, as if the
ancient Republic still subsisted, and he were yet unresolved about
embracing the sovereign rule: he even owned in his edict for summoning the
Senate, that he issued it by virtue of the Tribunitial power, granted him
under Augustus. The edict, too, was short and unexceptionably modest.
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