Tiberius

Of his sons, he loved neither his natural son Drusus nor his adoptive son Germanicus with a father’s affection, being incensed by the vices of the former. For Drusus lived a rather loose and careless life. Therefore, even when he died, Tiberius was not particularly affected, but returned to his usual business almost immediately after the funeral, having forbidden a longer public mourning. Indeed, when the envoys of the Ilians offered their condolences a little too late, as if the memory of his grief were already wiped out, he mockingly replied that he also felt sorry for their lot, because they had lost so eminent a citizen as Hector. He disparaged Germanicus to such an extent that he belittled his magnificent deeds as superfluous and censured his most glorious victories as damaging to the state. Furthermore, he complained in the senate because Germanicus had gone to Alexandria without consulting him on account of an immense and sudden famine. He is even believed to have been the cause of his death through Cnaeus Piso, the governor of Syria, who, being soon after accused of this crime, is thought by some to have been about to produce his instructions, had they not secretly shown those things which were written in many places and shouted very frequently during the nights: ‘Give back Germanicus!’ This suspicion he himself afterward confirmed by afflicting even the wife and children of Germanicus in a cruel manner.

When his daughter-in-law Agrippina spoke rather too freely in complaint after her husband’s death, he took her by the hand and said to her in a Greek verse: ‘If you do not rule, my little girl, do you think you are receiving an injury?’ and from that time on he did not deign to hold any conversation with her. Indeed, when on one occasion during dinner she did not dare to taste some fruit offered by him, he even ceased to invite her, pretending that he was being accused of the crime of poisoning; whereas both things had been deliberately arranged beforehand, so that he himself should offer it to test her, and she should avoid it as certain destruction. At last, falsely accusing her of wishing to flee now to the statue of Augustus and now to the armies, he banished her to Pandataria, and when she cursed him, he had her eye struck out by a centurion with blows. Again, when she resolved to die of starvation, he ordered food to be forced into her mouth by prying it open. But even when she persisted and thus perished, he persecuted her most slanderously, and having advised that her birthday also should be placed among the unlucky days, he even claimed credit because he had not strangled her with a rope and thrown her onto the Gemonian stairs; and for such clemency he allowed a decree to be passed, by which thanks were returned to him and a golden gift was consecrated to Capitoline Jupiter.

Although he had three grandsons from Germanicus, Nero, Drusus, and Gaius, and one from Drusus, Tiberius, being left destitute by the death of his children, he commended the eldest of Germanicus’s sons, Nero and Drusus, to the conscript fathers and celebrated the day of the coming of age of both by giving a bounty to the common people. But when he found out that at the beginning of the year public vows had been undertaken for their safety as well, he argued with the senate that such rewards ought not to be granted except to those of tried experience and advanced age. And from that time, the inner mark of his mind being revealed, he exposed them to the accusations of everyone, and having induced them by various deceits to be provoked to insolent language and, when provoked, to be betrayed, he accused them by letters with most bitterly amassed reproaches and starved them to death after they were judged public enemies, Nero on the island of Pontia, Drusus in the lowest part of the Palatium. It is believed that Nero was forced to a voluntary death, when an executioner sent to him, as if by the authority of the senate, showed him ropes and hooks, while Drusus was so deprived of food that he attempted to chew the stuffing of his mattress; the remains of both were so scattered that they could scarcely ever be collected.

In addition to his old friends and intimates, he had demanded twenty from the number of the leading citizens of the state as counselors in public affairs. Of all these, he preserved scarcely two or three in safety; the rest he ruined, some for one reason, some for another, among whom, with the destruction of very many others, was Aelius Sejanus; whom he had raised to the highest power not so much out of goodwill, but so that he might have someone by whose assistance and frauds he might circumvent the children of Germanicus, and confirm his own natural grandson by his son Drusus in the succession to the empire.