y proved an exception, Germanicus and Agrippina, who were very
sympathetic to the people. But right here began the first serious
difficulties for Tiberius. Germanicus was twenty-nine years old when
Tiberius took over the empire, and about him there began to form a
party which by courting and flattering both him and his wife began to
set him up against Tiberius. In this they were unconsciously aided by
Agrippina. Unlike her sister Julia, she was a lady of blameless life;
faithfully in love with her husband; a true Roman matron, such as
tradition had loved; chaste and fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six
had already borne nine children, of whom, however, six had died. But
Agrippina was to show that in the house of Augustus, in those
tumultuous, strange times, virtue was not less dangerous than vice,
though in another way and for different reasons. She was so proud of
her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at
Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and
increased by her excessive pride in her virtue. And among these
defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and
tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a
dangerous lack of balance and judgment. Agrippina was not evil; she
was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and
therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what
seemed expedient. She had much influence over her husband, whom she
accompanied upon all his journeys; and out of the great love she bore
him, in which her own ambition had its part, she urged him on to
support that hidden movement which was striving to oppose Germanicus to
the emperor.

That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that
Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be
carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to
the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia
was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor. After his
divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of
tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part
by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law. No one exercised so
much influence as Antonia over the diffident and self-centered spirit
of the emperor. Whoever wished to obtain a favor from him could do no
better than to intrust his cause to Anton