After this Tiberius represented that, to supply the place of Occia, who had presided seven and fifty years with the highest sanctimony over the Vestals, another virgin was to be chosen; and thanked Fonteius Agrippa and Asinius Pollio, that by offering their daughters, they contended in good offices towards the Commonwealth. Pollio's daughter was preferred; for nothing else but that her mother had ever continued in the same wedlock: for Agrippa, by a divorce, had impaired the credit of his house: upon her who was postponed, Tiberius, in consolation, bestowed for her fortune a thousand great sestertia. {Footnote: £8300.}
As the people murmured at the severe dearth of corn, he settled grain at a price certain to the buyer, and undertook to pay fourteenpence a measure to the seller: neither yet would he accept the name of Father of his Country, a title offered him before, and for these bounties, now again; nay, he sharply rebuked such as styled these provisions of his, divine occupations, and him, Lord: hence freedom of speech became cramped and insecure, under such a Prince; one who dreaded liberty, and abhorred flattery.
I find in the writers of those times, some of them Senators, that in the Senate were read letters from Adgandestrius, prince of the Cattans, undertaking to despatch Arminius, if in order to it poison were sent him; and an answer returned, "that not by frauds and blows in the dark, but armed and in the face of the sun, the Roman People took vengeance on their foes." In this Tiberius gained equal glory with our ancient captains, who rejected and disclosed a plot to poison King Pyrrhus. Arminius however, who upon the departure of the Romans and expulsion of Maroboduus, aimed at royalty, became thence engaged in a struggle against the liberty of his country; and, in defence of their liberty, his countrymen took arms against him: so that, while with various fortune he contended with them, he fell by the treachery of his own kindred: the deliverer of Germany without doubt he was; one who assailed the Roman power, not like other kings and leaders, in its first elements, but in its highest pride and elevation; one sometimes beaten in battle, but never conquered in war: thirty-seven years he lived; twelve he commanded; and, amongst these barbarous nations, his memory is still celebrated in their songs; but his name unknown in the annals of the Greeks, who only admire their own national exploits and renown; nor even amongst the Romans does this great captain bear much distinction, while, overlooking instances of modern prowess and glory, we only delight to magnify men and feats of old.
BOOK III. — A.D. 20-22.
Agrippina, notwithstanding the roughness of winter, pursuing without intermission her boisterous voyage, put in at the Island Corcyra, {Footnote: Corfu.} situate over against the coasts of Calabria. Here to settle her spirit, she spent a few days, violent in her grief, and a stranger to patience. Her arrival being the while divulged, all the particular friends to her family, mostly men of the sword, many who had served under Germanicus, and even many strangers from the neighbouring towns, some in officiousness towards the Emperor, more for company, crowded to the city of Brundusium, the readiest port in her way and the safest landing. As soon as the fleet appeared in the deep, instantly were filled, not the port alone and adjacent shores, but the walls and roofs, and as far as the eye could go; filled with the sorrowing multitude. They were consulting one from one, how they should receive her landing, "whether with universal silence, or with some note of acclamation." Nor was it manifest which they would do, when the fleet stood slowly in, not as usual with joyful sailors and cheerful oars, but all things impressed with the face of sadness. After she descended from the ship, accompanied with her two infants, carrying in her bosom the melancholy urn, with her eyes cast steadily down; equal and universal were the groans of the beholders: nor could you distinguish relations from strangers, nor the wailings of men from those of women, unless that the new-comers, who were recent in their sallies of grief, exceeded Agrippina's attendants, wearied out with long lamentations.
Tiberius had despatched two Praetorian cohorts, with directions, that the magistrates of Calabria, Apulia and Campania, should pay their last offices to the memory of his son: upon the shoulders therefore of the Tribunes and Centurions his ashes were borne; before went the ensigns rough and unadorned, with the fasces reversed. As they passed through the colonies, the populace were in black, the knights in purple; and each place, according to its wealth, burnt precious raiment, perfumes and whatever else is used in funeral solemnities: even they whose cities lay remote attended: to the Gods of the dead they slew victims, they erected altars, and with tears and united lamentations, testified their common sorrow. Drusus came as far as Terracina, with Claudius the brother of Germanicus, and those of his children who had been left at Rome. The Consuls Marcus Valerius and Marcus Aurelius (just then entered upon their office), the Senate, and great part of the people, filled the road; a scattered procession, each walking and weeping his own way: in this mourning, flattery had no share; for all knew how real was the joy, how hollow the grief, of Tiberius for the death of Germanicus.
Tiberius and Livia avoided appearing abroad: public lamentation they thought below their grandeur; or perhaps they apprehended that their countenances, examined by all eyes, might show deceitful hearts. That Antonia, mother to the deceased, bore any part in the funeral, I do not find either in the historians or in the city journals: though, besides Agrippina, and Drusus, and Claudius, his other relations are likewise there recorded by name: whether by sickness she was prevented; or whether her soul vanquished by sorrow, could not bear the representation of such a mighty calamity. I would rather believe her constrained by Tiberius and Livia, who left not the palace; and affecting equal affliction with her, would have it seem that, by the example of the mother, the grandmother too and uncle were detained.
The day his remains were reposited in the tomb of Augustus, various were the symptoms of public grief; now the vastness of silence; now the uproar of lamentation; the city in every quarter full of processions; the field of Mars on a blaze of torches: here the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without the insignia, the people by their tribes, all cried in concert that "the Commonwealth was fallen, and henceforth there was no remain of hope;" so openly and boldly that you would have believed they had forgot, who bore sway. But nothing pierced Tiberius more than the ardent affections of the people towards Agrippina, while such titles they gave her as "the ornament of her country, the only blood of Augustus, the single instance of ancient virtue;" and, while applying to heaven, they implored "the continuance of her issue, that they might survive the persecuting and malignant."