The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes). Henry Cabot Lodge

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Agrippina,[107] continuing her course without the least intermission through all the perils and rigors of a sea-voyage in the winter, arrived at the island Corcyra, situated over against the shores of Calabria. Unable to moderate her grief, and impatient from inexperience of affliction, she spent a few days there to tranquillize her troubled spirit; when, on hearing of her arrival, all the intimate friends of her family, and most of the officers who had served under Germanicus, with a number of strangers from the neighboring municipal towns, some thinking it due as a mark of respect to the prince, but the greater part carried along with the current, rushed 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 parts of the sea, but the walls and roofs, and wherever the most distant prospect could be obtained, with a sorrowing multitude, earnestly asking each other "whether they should receive her on landing in silence, or with some expression of feeling?" Nor was it clearly determined what course would be most suitable to the occasion, when the fleet came slowly in, not as usual in sprightly trim, but all wearing the impress of sadness. When she descended from the ship, accompanied by her two infants,[108] and bearing in her hand the funeral urn, her eyes fixt stedfastly upon the earth, one simultaneous groan burst from the whole assemblage; nor could you distinguish relations from strangers, nor the wailings of men from those of women; nor could any difference be discerned, except that those who came to meet her, in the vehemence of recent grief, surpassed the attendants of Agrippina, who were exhausted with continued mourning.

Tiberius had dispatched two prætorian cohorts, with directions that the magistrates of Calabria, with Apulians and Campanians, should pay their last offices of respect to the memory of his son; upon the shoulders, therefore, of the tribunes and centurions his ashes were borne; before them were carried the ensigns unadorned, and the fasces reversed. As they passed through the colonies, the populace in black, the knights in their purple robes, burned precious raiment, perfumes, and whatever else is used in funeral solemnities, according to the ability of the place; even they whose cities lay remote from the route, came forth, offered victims, and erected altars to the gods of the departed, and with tears and ejaculations testified their sorrow. Drusus came as far as Terracina, with Claudius the brother of Germanicus, and those of his children who had been left at Rome.[109] The Consuls, Marcus Valerius and Marcus Aurelius[110] (for they had now entered upon their office), the senate, and great part of the people, filled the road—a scattered procession, each walking and expressing his grief as inclination led him; in sooth, flattery was an utter stranger here, for all knew how real was the joy, how hollow the grief, of Tiberius for the death of Germanicus.

Tiberius and Livia[111] avoided appearing abroad—public lamentation they thought below their dignity—or perhaps they apprehended that if their countenances were examined by all eyes their hypocrisy would be detected. That Antonia, mother to the deceased, bore any part in the funeral, I do not find either in the historians or in the journals, tho, 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 to go through the representation of such an over-powering calamity. I would rather believe her constrained by Tiberius and Livia, who left not the palace, that they might seem to grieve alike and that the grandmother and uncle might appear to have followed her example in staying at home.

      The day on which his remains were deposited in the tomb of Augustus, at one time exhibited the silence of perfect desolation; at another, the uproar of vociferous lamentation; the streets of the city were crowded, one general blaze of torches glared throughout the Campus Martius; there the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without the insignia of office, and the people ranged according to their tribes, passionately exclaimed, "that the commonwealth was utterly lost, that henceforth there remained no hope," so openly and so boldly that you would have believed they had forgotten those who ruled over them. But nothing pierced Tiberius more deeply than the warm interest excited in favor of Agrippina, while they gave her such titles as "the ornament of her country, the only blood of Augustus, an unparalleled example of primitive virtue"; and, looking up to heaven and the gods, they implored "the preservation of her issue, and that they might outlive their oppressors."

      There were those who missed the pomp of a public funeral, and compared with this the superior honors and magnificence displayed by Augustus in that of Drusus, the father of Germanicus; observing, "that he himself had traveled, in the depth of winter, as far as Ticinus, and, continuing by the corpse, had with it entered the city; around his bier were crowded the images of the Claudii and Julii; he was mourned in the forum; his encomium pronounced on the rostra; all the honors invented by our ancestors, or added by their posterity, were heaped upon him. But to Germanicus were denied the ordinary solemnities, and such as were due to every distinguished Roman. Certainly his corpse was burned in a foreign country because of the long journey, in such a manner as it was, but afterward it was but just to have compensated the scantiness of the first ceremony by the increased solemnity of the last; his brother met him but one day's journey, his uncle not, even at the gate. Where were those observances of the ancients, the effigies of the dead laid in state on a bed, hymns composed in memory of departed virtue, with encomiums and tears? Where at least the ceremonial of sorrow?"

All this was known to Tiberius, and to suppress the reflections of the populace, he admonished them in an edict, "that many illustrious Romans had died for the commonwealth, but none so universally and vehemently regretted; and that it was to the honor of himself and all others, if bounds were observed. The same things which became private families and small states, became not princes and an imperial people; that it was not unseemly to lament in the first transport of sorrow, nay, relief was afforded by weeping, but it was now time to recover and compose their minds. Thus the deified Julius, upon the loss of an only daughter;[112] thus the deified Augustus, upon the premature death of his grandsons, had both concealed their sorrow. More ancient examples were unnecessary; how often had the Roman people sustained with equanimity the slaughter of their armies, the death of their generals, and entire destruction of illustrious families—princes were mortal, the commonwealth was eternal—they should therefore resume their customary vocations." And because the spectacle of the Megalesian games was at hand, he added, "that they should even lay aside their grief for amusements."

      The vacation ended, public affairs were resumed; Drusus departed for the army in Illyricum, the minds of all men impatiently looking for vengeance upon Piso; and amidst many complaints, that while he was roaming at large through the delightful regions of Asia and Greece, he was undermining by contemptuous and artful delay the evidences of his crimes; for it was generally known that Martina, that notorious trafficker in sorceries, and sent, as I have above related, by Cneius Sentius to Rome, had died suddenly at Brundusium; that poison lay concealed in a knot of her hair.