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fondly hoped to have fouud iu him au Agrippa, and he was prepared to 

 follow the example of Augustus, and to secure the attachment and 

 fidelity of his servant by allying him to the imperial family. He 

 accoi'dingly betrothed a daughter of Sejanus to a prince of his house, 

 a son of Claudius, the brother of Geruianicus. But he was grievously 

 mistaken if he thought that this distinction was sufficient to satisfy 

 the ambition of Sejanus. That bold and bad man contemplated from 

 the very beginning not less than the extermination of the whole house 

 of the Csesars, and the assumption of the imperial purple. How he 

 succeeded in totally deceiving the watchful Tiberius, and in carrying 

 out his sanguinary schemes to within a very short distance of their 

 realization, is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of that extra- 

 ordinary time. Tiberius seems to have been supernaturally infatuated 

 with him. He who confided iu no one else, had unbounded confidence 

 in this prince of hypocrites and traitors. We should not be surprised 

 if this hallucination was the result of the emperor's superstition, and if 

 he thought that his favourite astrology revealed to him in Sejanus his 

 truest friend. He might indeed be pardoned, if he fancied to see this 

 conviction supernaturally confirmed by an event that tooli place on one 

 of his excursions into Campania, when a grotto, in which the imperial 

 party happened to be at supper, fell in, and Tiberius was protected 

 from the falling rocks by the presence of mintl and the devotion of 

 Sejanus, who shielded and saved him with his own body. 



The first crime of Sejanus exposes to our view such a sink of cor- 

 ruption, profligacy, and turpitude, that it is not easy to familiarize our- 

 selves with the idea of its mere possibility. Drusus, the emperor's 

 son, was the first and chief impediment which Sejanus had to en- 

 counter in his tortuous way to the throne. He had, therefore, to be 

 removed. He was married to Livilla, a sister of Germanicus. This 

 abject woman, an imperial princess, the consort of the heir apparent, 

 and mother of several children, stooped to the infamy of an adulterous 

 intercourse with Sejanus, and with lier paramour plotted the murder 

 of her unsuspecting husband. So secretly and skilfully did the con- 

 spirators execute this deed of blood that not the shadow of a suspicion 

 was roused, and that it was not revealed to the disgust and horror of 

 the world tiU eight years afterwards, by the dying confession of Apicata, 

 the injured wife, whom Sejanus had divorced to gratify the profligate 

 Livilla, and to be able to marry her after the murder of Drusus. I'or 

 this last step, however, he required the sanction of Tiberius. Sejanus 

 had the hardihood to apply to the Emperor for the lumd of the widow 

 of his victim. He ^^as refused this mark of favour, but the refusal 

 was couclied iu such gracious tcriijs that it was evident tlie Emperor 



