[101] "If by eloquence is meant the ability to persuade, then Tacitus," according to Cruttwell, "is the most eloquent historian that ever existed." His portraits, especially those of Tiberius and Nero, have been severely criticized by French and English writers, but while his verdicts have been shaken, they have not been reversed. The world still fails to doubt their substantial reality. Tacitus, adds Cruttwell, has probably exercised upon readers a greater power than any other writer of prose whom Rome produced.
[102] From Book I of the "Annals." The Oxford translation revised.
[103] Marcellus was the son of Octavia by her husband C. Claudius Marcellus. He married Julia, a daughter of Augustus.
[104] Agrippa was the leading administrative mind under Augustus, with whom he had served in the Civil War and in the battle Actium. The Pantheon, the only complete building of Imperial Rome that still survives, was finished and dedicated by him. He married as his third wife Julia, the widow of Marcellus.
[105] Nola lay sixteen miles northeast of Naples. The reference is to Drusus, son of Tiberius, and to Germanicus, at that time commanding on the Rhine.
[106] From Book III of the "Annals." The Oxford translation revised.
[107] This Agrippina was the daughter of Agrippa and Julia. She married Germanicus, became the mother of Caligula, and was a woman of lofty character, who died by voluntary starvation after having been exiled by Tiberius.
[108] It has been conjectured that the two children of Germanicus here referred to were Caligula, who had gone to the East with his father, and Julia, who was born in Lesbos.
[109] These children were Nero, Drusus, Agrippina and Drusilla.
[110] Not the Emperor of that name, who was not born until 121 a.d.