On the Virtues and on the Office of Ambassadors. Adressed to Caius (21-25)

for the human mind is apt to be blind towards the perception of what is really expedient and beneficial for it, being influenced rather by conjecture and notions of probability than by real knowledge.

At all events it was not long before Caius-who was [*]

for he put to death his cousin who had been left as the partner of his kingdom, and who was in fact a more natural successor to it than he himself; for he himself was only Tiberius’s grandson by adoption, but the other was so by blood; arguing as a pretext that he had detected him in plotting against him, though his very age was a sufficient refutation of any such accusation; for the unhappy victim was only just emerging from boyhood, and beginning to rank among the youths.

And, as s say, if Tiberius had lived a short time longer, Caius would have been made away with, as he began to be looked upon by him with unalterable suspicion, and the genuine grandson of Tiberius would have been named the future emperor, and the inheritor of his paternal kingdom.

But Tiberius was carried off by fate, before he could bring his designs to their completion; and Caius thought that he should be able to escape all evil report which might arise from his transgressing the principles of justice with respect to his partner by outwitting him.