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by C. Suetonius Tranquillus

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Title: Tiberius Claudius Drusus Caesar (Claudius)
The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Volume 5.

Author: C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Release Date: December 13, 2004 [EBook #6390]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR ***

Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

THE LIVES
OF
THE TWELVE CAESARS

By
C. Suetonius Tranquillus;

To which are added,

HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.

The Translation of
Alexander Thomson, M.D.

revised and corrected by
T.Forester, Esq., A.M.

TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR. [465]

(295)

I. Livia, having married Augustus when she was pregnant, was within
three months afterwards delivered of Drusus, the father of Claudius
Caesar, who had at first the praenomen of Decimus, but afterwards that of
Nero; and it was suspected that he was begotten in adultery by his
father-in-law. The following verse, however, was immediately in every
one's mouth:

Tois eutychousi kai primaena paidia.

Nine months for common births the fates decree;
But, for the great, reduce the term to three.

This Drusus, during the time of his being quaestor and praetor, commanded
in the Rhaetian and German wars, and was the first of all the Roman
generals who navigated the Northern Ocean [466]. He made likewise some
prodigious trenches beyond the Rhine [467], which to this day are called
by his name. He overthrew the enemy in several battles, and drove them
far back into the depths of the desert. Nor did he desist from pursuing
them, until an apparition, in the form of a barbarian woman, of more than
human size, appeared to him, and, in the Latin tongue, forbad him to
proceed any farther. For these achievements he had the