84 



was gone. The mercenary spirit of a mutinous soldiery henceforth 

 arrogated to the camp the functions of the Council Hall and the Forum. 

 The momentum of the scale had shifted from the civil to the military 

 side, and the sad deterioration of the motives and sentiments in the 

 new military organisation must have filled the heart of a true patriot 

 with despondency. The legions of Pannonia and the Rhine broke out 

 into open mutiny at the news of the death of Augustus. But their 

 object was not the restoration of libferty, or of the glorious commonwealth 

 of the Scipios and Catos ; they seized the opportunity for claiming 

 higher pay and shorter service, and when they had obtained their 

 selfish demands for the moment from the perplexity of Tiberius, they 

 were ready to serve him in his task of completing the organisation of 

 the Imperial despotism. 



The Pihenish legions at that time formed the most formidable army 

 of the empire. They were eight in number, a body of not less than 

 100,000 men, provided with all the necessaries of war, ready at any 

 time to take the field and to protect the Roman provinces from the 

 dreaded attacks of the German nations. They were commanded by 

 Germanicus, the son of Drusus and nephew of Tiberius, a man of 

 considerable ability and greater promise, the favourite of the army 

 and of the Roman people ; one of those men whose fame has gained 

 by an untimely death, and by the contrast which the imaginary purity 

 of his hoped-for- reign was expected to present to the rigor and 

 unpalatable severity or the misfortunes of that which preceded. The 

 fond hopes of the oppressed always discover somewhere a deliverer from 

 present evils, and are ready to invest him with all the qualities they 

 desire. Should death intercept him before he has a chance of realising 

 these expectations, he reaps the additional harvest of praise which is 

 generously bestowed on the departed. 



We have no wish to depreciate whatever merits Germanicus may 

 have possessed. Our chief task is to show the futility of the charge or 

 insinuation that Tiberius caused his death ; but historical justice 

 demands equal measure for all, and we cannot but come to the conclu- 

 sion that hitherto Germanicus has received as much his overdue of 

 praise as Tiberius has been ungenerously curtailed of his just claims. 



Germanicus was the son of Nero Claudius Drusus, the younger 

 brother of Tiberius, who died from the effects of a fall from his horse, 

 whilst commanding an army in Germany. Thus placed by birth in 

 the immeJiate neighbourhood of the throne, he was selected by Augustus 

 as one of the supporters of the new dynasty and of the new order of 

 things. By his desire Tiberius adopted his nephew, although he had a 

 son of his own, little younger than Germanicus. 



