15. This unexpected account
filled the whole court with terror and alarm; every one who had before
been earnestly testifying his joy, now reassumed his pretended sorrow,
and forsook the new emperor, through a feigned solicitude for the fate
of the old. 16, Calig'ula seemed thunderstruck; he preserved a gloomy
silence, expecting nothing but death, instead of the empire at which
he aspired. 17. Marco, however, who was hardened in crimes, ordered
that the dying emperor should be despatched, by smothering him with
pillows; or, as some will have it, by poison. Thus died Tibe'rius in
the seventy-eighth year of his age, after reigning twenty-two
years.
[Sidenote: U.C. 780 A.D. 37.]
18. It was in the eighteenth year of this emperor's reign that Christ,
(after having spent two years in the public ministry, instructing the
multitude in the way of salvation,) was crucified; as if the universal
depravity of mankind wanted no less a sacrifice than this to reclaim
them. Pi'late sent to Tibe'rius an account of Christ's passion,
resurrection, and miracles, and the emperor made a report of the whole
to the senate, desiring that Christ might be accounted a god by the
Romans.
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