The best of his contemporaries judged otherwise.

When the catastrophe was announced to Scipio Aemilianus, he uttered the words of Homer: "-- Os apoloito kai allos, otis toiauta ge pezoi--" and when the younger brother of Tiberius seemed disposed to come forward in the same career, his own mother wrote to him: "Shall then our house have no end of madness?
Where shall be the limit?
Have we not yet enough to be ashamed of, in having confused and disorganized the state ?" So spoke not the anxious mother, but the daughter of the conqueror of Carthage, who knew and experienced a misfortune yet greater than the death of her children..