Tacitus, for example, had begun his narrative of the transfer of power at the death of Augustus by showing the failure of independence in those whom Tiberius looked for counsel: the words, "ruere in seruitium consules patres eques" introduced a constant theme in the* Annals*, the failure of integrity and courage among those who could have preserved an acceptable measure of liberty under the principate. Instead of liberty, so Tacitus showed, Tiberius found adulatio, instead of honest counselors, he found slaves: "o homines ad servitutem paratos!," he was said to have uttered repeatedly in Greek.