(19 A.D.)
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 praetorian 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.