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They will remember not only how he caused his nephew Germanicus to be poisoned by the governor of Syria, but how he ordered a fisherman to be torn in pieces by the claws of a crab, simply because he met him, in one of his suspicious moods, when strolling in a sequestered garden of Capreæ. Sue. Tib. c. lx.
And at last it is borne in upon us, as we read, that, if we put aside rumours and uncertain gossip, whatever Tiberius does and says is unusually fine: but that Tacitus is not satisfied with recording words and actions; that he supplies motives to them, and then passes judgment upon his own assumptions: that the evidence for the murder of Germanicus, for instance, would hardly be accepted in a court of law; and that if Piso were there found guilty, the Emperor could not be touched.
After the death of Drusus, therefore, a reconciliation became possible in the family of the Caesars. The latent rivalry between the families of Tiberius and Germanicus was extinguished.
Upon the death of Drusus, Sejanus openly avowed a desire of marrying the widowed princess; but Tiberius opposing this measure, and at the same time recommending Germanicus to the senate as his successor in the empire, the mind of Sejanus was more than ever inflamed by the united, and now furious, passions of love and ambition.
When Julius Cesar carried the Roman arms into Britain, and Germanicus over-run the forests of Germany, did they not find the silvestres of those countries little, if at all, more civilized than the brown natives of America? If the Indians were offended at the encroachments made by strangers on lands which they had possessed unmolested for time immemorial, that is nothing wonderful or uncommon.
The veneration and affection which the armies had once felt for the Roman nobility were now centered about the family of Augustus. In this difficulty, therefore, the senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a part of the testament of Tiberius, elected Caligula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor.
In the height of this public sorrow, Livia, sister to Germanicus, and married to Drusus, was delivered of male twins: an event even in middling families, rare and acceptable, and to Tiberius such mighty matter of joy, that he could not refrain boasting to the fathers, "that to no Roman of the same eminence, before him, were never two children born at a birth:" for to his own glory he turned all things, even things fortuitous.
The progress of poison was thought too slow; Piso was impatient, and urging with eagerness to command alone the legions, to possess alone the province: but Germanicus was not sunk to such lowness and impotence, that the price of his murder should remain with the murderer: and by a letter to Piso, he renounced his friendship: some add, that he commanded him to depart the province.
So the airships passed one after the other along the American column as it sought to keep up its fight with the Furst Bismarck, the Hermann, and the Germanicus, and each airship added to the destruction and confusion its predecessor had made.
Two of the elder brothers, Nero and Drusus Germanicus, were proclaimed public enemies: Nero was banished to the island Pontia, and there put to death; Drusus was kept a close prisoner in a secret prison of the palace.
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