HKB
adopted a partner in the toils of government, precipitately; but after eight years' experience made of his qualifications; after seditions suppressed, wars concluded, the honour of triumph, and two Consulships."
The Senators had foreseen this address; hence they received it with the more elaborate adulation. However, they could devise nothing to decree, but "statues to the two Princes, altars to the Gods, arches," and other usual honours: only that Marcus Silanus strove to honour the Princes by the disgrace of the Consulship: he proposed "that all records public and private should, for their date, be inscribed no more with the names of the Consuls, but of those who exercised the Tribunitial power." But Haterius Agrippa, by moving to have "the decrees of that day engraved in letters of gold, and hung up in the Senate," became an object of derision; for that, as he was an ancient man, he could reap from his most abominable flattery no other fruit but that of infamy.
Tiberius, while he fortified the vitals of his own domination, afforded the Senate a shadow of their ancient jurisdiction; by referring to their examination petitions and claims from the provinces. For there had now prevailed amongst the Greek cities a latitude of instituting sanctuaries at pleasure. Hence the temples were filled with the most profligate fugitive slaves: here debtors found protection against their creditors; and hither were admitted such as were pursued for capital crimes. Nor was any force of Magistracy or laws sufficient to bridle the mad zeal of the people, who confounding the sacred villainies of men with the worship peculiar to the Gods, seditiously defended these profane sanctuaries. It was therefore ordered that these cities should send deputies to represent their claims. Some of the cities voluntarily relinquished the nominal privileges, which they had arbitrarily assumed: many confided in their rights; a confidence grounded on the antiquity of their superstitions, or on the merits of their kind offices to the Roman People. Glorious to the Senate was the appearance of that day, when the grants from our ancestors, the engagements of our confederates, the ordinances of kings, such kings who had reigned as yet independent of the Roman power; and when even the sacred worship of the Gods were now all subjected to their inspection, and their judgment free, as of old, to ratify or abolish with absolute power.
First of all the Ephesians applied. They alleged, that "Diana and Apollo were not, according to the credulity of the vulgar, born at Delos: in their territory flowed the river Cenchris; where also stood the Ortygian Grove: there the big-bellied Latona, leaning upon an olive tree, which even then remained, was delivered of these deities; and thence by their appointment the Grove became sacred. Thither Apollo himself, after his slaughter of the Cyclops, retired for a sanctuary from the wrath of Jupiter: soon after, the victorious Bacchus pardoned the suppliant Amazons, who sought refuge at the altar of Diana: by the concession of Hercules, when he reigned in Lydia, her temple was dignified with an augmentation of immunities; nor during the Persian monarchy were they abridged: they were next maintained by the Macedonians, and then by us."