During this, in the beginning of the year, Drusus one of the sons of Germanicus, put on the manly robe; and upon him the Senate conferred the same honours decreed before to his brother Nero. A speech was added by Tiberius with a large encomium upon his son, "that with the tenderness of a father he used the children of his brother." For, Drusus, however rare it be for power and unanimity to subsist together, was esteemed benevolent, certainly not ill-disposed, towards these youths. Now again was revived by Tiberius the proposal of a progress into the Provinces; a stale proposal, always hollow, but often feigned. He pretended "the multitude of veterans discharged, and thence the necessity of recruiting the armies; that volunteers were wanting, or if already such there were, they were chiefly the necessitous and vagabonds, and destitute of the like modesty and courage." He likewise cursorily recounted the number of the legions, and what countries they defended: a detail which I think it behoves me also to repeat; that thence may appear what was then the complement of the Roman forces, what kings their confederates, and how much more narrow the limits of the Empire.
Italy was on each side guarded by two fleets; one at Misenum, one at Ravenna; and the coast joining to Gaul, by the galleys taken by Augustus at the battle of Actium, and sent powerfully manned to Forojulium. {Footnote: Fréjus.} But the chief strength lay upon the Rhine; they were eight legions, a common guard upon the Germans and the Gauls. The reduction of Spain, lately completed, was maintained by three. Mauritania was possessed by King Juba; a realm which he held as a gift from the Roman People: the rest of Africa by two legions; and Egypt by the like number. Four legions kept in subjection all the mighty range of country, extending from the next limits of Syria, as far as the Euphrates, and bordering upon the Iberians, Albanians, and other Principalities, who by our might are protected against Foreign Powers. Thrace was held by Rhoemetalces, and the sons of Cotys; and both banks of the Danube by four legions; two in Pannonia, two in Moesia. In Dalmatia likewise were placed two; who, by the situation of the country, were at hand to support the former, and had not far to march into Italy, were any sudden succours required there: though Rome too had her peculiar soldiery; three city cohorts, and nine Praetorian, enlisted chiefly out of Etruria and Umbria, or from the ancient Latium and the old Roman colonies. In the several Provinces, besides, were disposed, according to their situation and necessity, the fleets of the several confederates, with their squadrons and battalions; a number of forces not much different from all the rest: but the particular detail would be uncertain; since, according to the exigency of times, they often shifted stations, with numbers sometimes enlarged, sometimes reduced.
It will, I believe, fall in properly here to review also the other parts of the Administration, and by what measures it was hitherto conducted, till with the beginning of this year the Government of Tiberius began to wax worse. First then, all public, and every private business of moment, was determined by the Senate: to the great men he allowed liberty of debate: those who in their debates lapsed into flattery, he checked: in conferring preferments, he was guided by merit, by ancient nobility, renown in war abroad, by civil accomplishments at home; insomuch that it was manifest, his choice could not have been better. There remained to the Consuls, there remained to the Praetors the useful marks of their dignities; to inferior magistrates the independent exercise of their charges; and the laws, where the power of the Prince was not concerned, were in proper force. The tributes, duties, and all public receipts, were directed by companies of Roman knights: the management of his own revenue he committed only to those of the most noted qualifications; mostly known by himself, and to some known by reputation alone: and when once taken, they were continued, without all restriction of term; since most grew old in the same employments. The populace were indeed aggrieved by the dearth of provisions; but without any fault of the Prince: nay, he spared no possible expense nor pains to remedy the effects of barrenness in the earth, and of wrecks at sea. He provided that the Provinces should not be oppressed with new impositions; and that no extortion, or violence should be committed by the magistrates in raising the old: there were no infamous corporal punishments, no confiscations of goods.
The Emperor's possessions through Italy, were thin; the behaviour of his slaves modest; the freedmen who managed his house, few; and in his disputes with particulars, the courts were open and the law equal. All which restraints he observed, not, in truth, in the ways of complaisance and popularity; but always stern, and for the most part terrible; yet still he retained them, till by the death of Drusus they were abandoned: for, while he lived they continued; because Sejanus, while he was but laying the foundations of his power, studied to recommend himself by good counsels. He then had besides, an avenger to dread, one who disguised not his enmity, but was frequent in his complaints; "that when the son was in his prime, another was called, as coadjutor, to the Government; nay, how little was wanting to his being declared colleague in the Empire? That the first advances to sovereignty are steep and perilous; but, once you are entered, parties and instruments are ready to espouse you. Already a camp for the guards was formed, by the pleasure and authority of the captain: into whose hands the soldiers were delivered: in the theatre of Pompey his statue was beheld: in his grandchildren would be mixed the blood of the Drusi with that of Sejanus. After all this what remained but to supplicate his modesty to rest contented." Nor was it rarely that he uttered these disgusts, nor to a few; besides, his wife being debauched, all his secrets were betrayed.
Sejanus therefore judging it time to despatch, chose such a poison as by operating gradually, might preserve the appearances of a casual disease. This was administered to Drusus by Lygdus the eunuch, as, eight years after, was learnt. Now during all the days of his illness, Tiberius disclosed no symptoms of anguish (perhaps from ostentation of a firmness of spirit) nay, when he had expired, and while he was yet unburied, he entered the Senate; and finding the Consuls placed upon a common seat, as a testimony of their grief; he admonished them of their dignity and station: and as the Senators burst into tears, he smothered his rising sighs, and, by a speech uttered without hesitation, animated them. "He, in truth, was not ignorant," he said, "that he might be censured, for having thus in the first throbs of sorrow, beheld the face of the Senate; when most of those who feel the fresh pangs of mourning, can scarce endure the soothings of their kindred, scarce behold the day: neither were such to be condemned of weakness: but for himself, he had more powerful consolations; such as arose from embracing the Commonwealth, and pursuing her welfare." He then lamented "the extreme age of his mother, the tender years of his grandsons, his own days in declension;" and desired that, "as the only alleviation of the present evils, the children of Germanicus might be introduced." The Consuls therefore went for them, and having with kind words fortified their young minds, presented them to the Emperor. He took them by the hand and said, "Conscript Fathers, these infants, bereft of their father, I committed to their uncle; and besought him that, though he had issue of his own, he would rear and nourish them no otherwise than as the immediate offspring of his blood; that he would appropriate them as stays to himself and posterity. Drusus being snatched from us, to you I address the same prayers; and in the presence of the Gods, in the face of your country, I adjure you, receive into your protection, take under your tuition the great-grandchildren of Augustus; children, descended from ancestors the most glorious in the State: towards them fulfil your own, fulfil my duty. To you, Nero; to you, Drusus, these Senators are in the stead of a father; and such is the situation of your birth, that on the Commonwealth must light all the good and evil which befalls you."
All this was heard with much weeping, and followed with propitious prayers and vows: and had he only gone thus far, and in his speech observed a medium, he had left the souls of his hearers full of sympathy and applause. But, by renewing an old project, always chimerical and so often ridiculed, about "restoring the Republic, reinstating it again in the Consuls, or whoever else would undertake the administration;" he forfeited his faith even in assertions which were commendable and sincere. To the memory of Drusus were decreed the same solemnities as to that of Germanicus; with many super-added; agreeably to the genius of flattery, which delights in variety and improvements. Most signal was the lustre of the funeral in a conspicuous procession of images; when at it appeared in a pompous train, Aeneas, father of the Julian race; all the kings of Alba, and Romulus founder of Rome; next the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and his descendants of the Claudian family.
In relating the death of Drusus, I have followed the greatest part of our historians, and the most faithful: I would not however omit a rumour which in those times was so prevailing that it is not extinguished in ours; "that Sejanus having by adultery gained Livia to the murder, had likewise engaged by constupration the affections and concurrence of Lygdus the eunuch; because Lygdus was, for his youth and loveliness, dear to his master, and one of his chief attendants: that when the time and place of poisoning, were by the conspirators concerted; the eunuch carried his boldness so high, as to charge upon Drusus a design of poisoning Tiberius; and secretly warning the Emperor of this, advised him to shun the first draught offered him in the next entertainment at his son's: that the old man possessed with this fictitious treason, after he had sate down to table, having received the cup delivered it to Drusus, who ignorantly and gaily drank it off: that this heightened the jealousy and apprehensions of Tiberius, as if through fear and shame his son had swallowed the same death, which for his father he had contrived."
These bruitings of the populace, besides that they are supported by no certain author, may be easily refuted. For, who of common prudence (much less Tiberius so long practised in great affairs) would to his own son, without hearing him, present the mortal bane; with his own hands too, and cutting off for ever all possibility of retraction? Why would he not rather have tortured the minister of the poison? Why not inquired into the author of the poison? Why not observed towards his only son, a son hitherto convicted of no iniquity, that slowness and hesitation, which, even in his proceedings against strangers, was inherent in him? But as Sejanus was reckoned the framer of every wickedness, therefore, from the excessive fondness of Tiberius towards him, and from the hatred of all others towards both, things the most fabulous and direful were believed of them; besides that common fame is ever most fraught with tales of horror upon the departure of Princes: in truth, the plan and process of the murder were first discovered by Apicata, wife of Sejanus, and laid open upon the rack by Eudemus and Lygdus. Nor has any writer appeared so outrageous to charge it upon Tiberius; though in other instances they have sedulously collected and inflamed every action of his. My own purpose in recounting and censuring this rumour, was to blast, by so glaring an example, the credit of groundless tales; and to request of those into whose hands our present undertaking shall come, that they would not prefer hearsays, void of credibility and rashly swallowed, to the narrations of truth not adulterated with romance.
To proceed; whilst Tiberius was pronouncing in public the panegyric of his son, the Senate and People assumed the port and accent of mourners, rather in appearance than cordially; and in their hearts exulted to see the house of Germanicus begin to revive. But this dawn of fortune, and the conduct of Agrippina, ill disguising her hopes, quickened the overthrow of that house. For Sejanus, when he saw the death of Drusus pass unrevenged upon his murderers, and no public lamentation following it; undaunted as he was in villainy since his first efforts had succeeded; cast about in himself, how he might destroy the sons of Germanicus, whose succession to the Empire was now unquestionable. They were three; and, from the distinguished fidelity of their governors, and incorruptible chastity of Agrippina, could not be all circumvented by poison. He therefore chose to attack her another way; to raise alarms from the haughtiness and contumacy of her spirit; to rouse the old hatred of Livia the elder, and the guilty mind of his late accomplice, Livia the younger; that to the Emperor they might represent her "as elated with the credit and renown of her fruitfulness; and that confiding in it, and in the zeal of the populace, she grasped with open arms at the Empire." The young Livia acted in this engagement by crafty calumniators; amongst whom she had particularly chosen Julius Posthumus, a man every way qualified for her purposes; as he was the adulterer of Mutilia Prisca, and thence a confidant of her grandmother's; (for over the mind of the Empress, Prisca had powerful influence) and by their means the old woman, in her own nature tender and anxious of power, was rendered utterly irreconcilable to the widow of her grandson. Such too as were nearest the person of Agrippina, were promoted to be continually enraging her tempestuous heart by perverse representations.
This year also brought deputations from the Grecian cities; one from the people of Samos; one from those of Coös; the former to request that the ancient right of Sanctuary in the Temple of Juno might be confirmed; the latter to solicit the same confirmation for that of Aesculapius. The Samians claimed upon a decree of the Council of Amphictyons, the supreme Judicature of Greece, at the time when the Greeks by their cities founded in Asia, possessed the maritime coasts. Nor had they of Coös a weaker title to antiquity; to which likewise accrued the pretensions of the place to the friendship of Rome: for they had lodged in the Temple of Aesculapius all the Roman citizens there, when by the order of King Mithridates, such were universally butchered throughout all the cities of Asia and the Isles. And now after many complaints from the Praetors, for the most part ineffectual, the Emperor at last made a representation to the Senate, concerning the licentiousness of the players; "that in many instances they raised seditious tumults, and violated the public peace; and, in many, promoted debauchery in private families: that the Oscan Farce, formerly only the contemptible delight of the vulgar, was risen to such a prevailing pitch of credit and enormity, that it required the authority of the Senate to check it." The players therefore were driven out of Italy.