144 WIVES OF THE C.ESARS. 



immodesty and vice appeared elsewhere inseparable from the charac- 

 ter of wealth and grandeur ; her reputation was beyond the breath of 

 censure, and was triumphantly compared by her admirers with the 

 fame of Livia, which evidently suffered by the contrast. Agrippina, 

 too, possessing an inherent pride, disdained to mingle with the crowd 

 of Livia's parasites, who rendered homage little short of adoration to 

 a woman of imperious temper and wielding a despotic power, ac- 

 quired with infamy and bloodshed. Germanicus was now at Antioch: 

 the very distance of the place from Rome was favourable to the tran- 

 quil execution of the plan by which he was to perish. The secret 

 ministers of death were Piso and his wife Plancina. Their treacherous 

 iniquity was discovered but too late j and the unfortunate Germani- 

 cus, bewailing on his death-bed his untimely fate, besought his friends 

 to publish and avenge his murder. When the intelligence was 

 brought to Rome, Tiberius, to avert suspicion, affected an inconsola- 

 ble grief j but his hypocrisy was unavailing, for his order to destroy 

 Germanicus by poison had been seen in Syria in the hands of Piso. 

 His guilt was placed beyond a doubt, when Agrippina seeking ven- 

 geance from the senate, was openly discountenanced by his indif- 

 ference, while Livia, spurning the opinion of the people, publicly 

 bestowed her favour on Plancina, and employed the strength of her 

 authority to shield a known and infamous delinquent. 



Germanicus being thus disposed of, the fears of Livia were dis- 

 pelled ; and as her jealousy had now no further sacrifice to seek, she 

 confined herself entirely to the active exercise of power ; for notwith- 

 standing the repugnance of Tiberius to the increase of her influence, 

 he knew that he could no where delegate authority more safely, or 

 intrust it to more resolute or skilful hands. Besides, he counterpoised 

 it by the presence of his minister, on whom again his mother was a 

 vigilant and firm restraint. Tiberius despised the pageantry and 

 forms as much as he affected the reality of power ; and eagerly 

 availed himself of such secure tranquillity at Rome, to wallow in the 

 sensual obscenities of his retreat. A female paragon of crime, united 

 with a pampered minion of authority, the instruments of an unnatu- 

 ral, a cruel, and an absent tyrant, dispensed a reckless despotism 

 in the city of the Catos, the Gracchi, and the Scipios. The prosti- 

 tuted senate deified the persons and eulogized the guilt of a con- 

 temptuous oppression. Such was the condition of the Roman capital 

 in the latter days of Livia Drusilla, by odious adulation termed "the 

 mother of her country." The latest flattery of the unblushing senate 

 assigned the female who was privy to, or directly instrumental in the 

 murder of Marcellus, of Cains, Lucius perhaps Augustus Caesar 

 of Posthumus Agrippa, and the glorious Germanicus a seat among 

 the Vestals in the theatre. The audacity of Livia was equalled by her 

 hypocrisy ; she was lavish of magnificient donations to the temples 

 of the gods ; and Jerusalem was distinguished from all other cities 

 by the superior splendour of her gifts. The remnant of her life was 

 passed in the administration of affairs ; her health and faculties were 

 vigorous till the last. She attributed the long continuance of both to 

 the habitual use of Pucine wine and a preserve, on which she latterly 



