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9The next year, Marcus Julianus and Publius Nonius of those previously designated became consuls. The regular oaths to support the acts of Tiberius were not taken and for this reason are not in use nowadays, either; for no one reckons Tiberius among the emperors in connexion with this custom of the oaths. 2But as regarded the acts of Augustus and of Gaius, they took all the oaths as usual, as well as others to the effect that they would hold Gaius and his sisters in greater respect than themselves and their children; and they offered prayers for them all alike. 3On the very first day of the new year one Machaon, a slave, climbed upon the couch of Jupiter Capitolinus, and after uttering from there many dire prophecies, killed a little dog which he had brought in with him and then slew himself.
4The following good and praiseworthy acts were performed by Gaius. He published, as Augustus had done, all the accounts of the public funds, which had not been made public during the time that Tiberius was away from the city. He helped the soldiers to extinguish a conflagration and rendered assistance to those who suffered loss by it. 5As the equestrian order was becoming reduced in numbers, he summoned the foremost men in point of family and wealth from the whole empire, even from outside of Italy, and enrolled them in the order. Some of them he even permitted to wear the senatorial dress before they had held any office through which we gain admission to the senate, on the strength of their prospects of becoming members later, whereas previously only those, it appears, who had been born into the senatorial order were allowed to do this. 6These measures gave satisfaction to everybody; but when he put the elections once more in the hands of the people and the plebs, thereby rescinding the arrangements that Tiberius had made regarding them, and abolished the tax of one per cent., and when, furthermore, he scattered tickets at a gymnastic contest that he arranged and distributed a great number of gifts to those who had secured them, these actions, 7though delighting the rabble, grieved the sensible, who stopped to reflect, that if the offices should fall once more into the hands of the many, and the funds on hand should be exhausted and private sources of income fail, many disasters would result.
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