ee them declared princes of the
Roman youth, and even designed to the consulship; while he affected to
decline the honors for them. Upon the decease of Agrippa, they were
cut off, either by a death premature but natural, or by the arts of
their stepmother Livia; Lucius on his journey to the armies in Spain,
Caius on his return from Armenia, ill of a wound: and as Drusus had
been long since dead, Tiberius Nero was the only survivor of his
stepsons. On him every honor was accumulated (to that quarter all
things inclined); he was by Augustus adopted for his son, assumed
colleague in the empire, partner in the tribunitian authority, and
presented to the several armies; not from the secret machinations of
his mother, as heretofore, but at her open suit For over Augustus, now
very aged, she had obtained such absolute sway, that he banished into
the isle of Planasia his only surviving grandson, Agrippa Posthumus; a
person destitute indeed of liberal accomplishments, and a man of
clownish brutality with great bodily strength, but convicted of no
heinous offense. The emperor, strange to say, set Germanicus, the son
of Drusus, over eight legions quartered upon the Rhine, and ordered
that he should be engrafted into his family by Tiberius by adoption,
tho Tiberius had then a son of his own on the verge of manhood; but
the object was that he might stand firm by having many to support and
protect him. War at that time there remained none, except that in
Germany, kept on foot rather to blot out the disgrace sustained by the
loss of Quintilius Varus, with his army, than from any ambition to
enlarge the empire, or for any advantage worth contending for. In
profound tranquillity were affairs at Rome. The magistrates retained
their wonted names; of the Romans, the younger sort had been born
since the battle of Actium, and even most of the old during the civil
wars: how few were then living who had seen the ancient free state!

The character of the government thus totally changed; no traces were
to be found of the spirit of ancient institutions. The system by which
every citizen shared in the government being thrown aside, all men
regarded the orders of the prince as the only rule of conduct and
obedience; nor felt they any anxiety for the present, while Augustus,
yet in the vigor of life, maintained the credit of himself and house,
and the peace of the state. But when old age had crept over him, and
he was sinking under bodily infirmitie