The first meeting of the senate after the funeral of Augustus, so Tacitus tells us, concerned itself not only with the deification of the dead emperor but with the work of his successor. In a scene which carried memories of Augustus' speech to the same body in January 27 BC and which was to be re-enacted on numerous occasions as emperor followed emperor, Tiberius insisted on his incapacity to shoulder the immense burden, and that in a state with so many illustrious men the burden should be shared. Whether Tacitus was right or not in suspecting Tiberius of insincerity (and the subsequent exchanges in the senate suggest that he was correct at least in noting that his speech contained more dignitas than fides), the difference between what was being discussed in AD 14 and in 27 BC is notable. Once Augustus had been persuaded not to hand over the control of the world to the senate, the formal business of the session appears, as I have noted, to have been that of assigning provinciae. There is no sign of this in the reports of Tiberius' address, either in Tacitus or in Dio. Though Tiberius is represented as wishing to share the work of the res publica, this is not a matter of which provinciae he would take and which give up. Tacitus says nothing about what the various partes rei publicae might consist of, but Dio has three: Rome and Italy; the legions; and the remaining subject peoples. Though the language here clearly reflects Dio's own period, this division, or something like it, would make sense of the question posed by C.