§ 6. The miserable ends of Agrippina and Drusus.
To such like ends came also Agrippina and Drusus, the Wife and Son of Germanicus, and Mother and Brother of Caius, the next Emperour that should succeed. These two, the Daughter in law, and Grandchild of Tiberius himself, had about four years ago been brought into question by his unkind and inhuman accusation, and into hold and custody, until this time. It was the common opinion that the cursed instigation of Sejanus, whom the Emperour had raised purposely for the ruine of Germanicus his house had set such an accusation on foot; and made the man to be so cruel towards his own family; but when the two accursed ones had miserably survived the wicked Sejanus, and yet nothing was remitted of their prosecution, then opinion learned to lay the fault where it deserved, even on the cruelty and spite of Tiberius himself. Drusus is adjudged by him to die by famine, and miserable and woeful wretch that he was, he sustaineth his life for nine days together, by eating the flocks out of his bed, being brought to that lamentable and unheard of dyet, through extremity of hunger. Here at last was an end of Drusus his misery, but so was there not of Tiberius his cruelty towards him; for he denyed the dead body burial in a fitting place; he reviled and disgraced the memory of him with hideous and feigned scandals and criminations, and shamed not to pub∣lish in the open Senate, what words had passed from the pining man against Tiberius himself; when in agony through hunger he craved meat, and was denyed it. Oh what a sight and hearing was this to the eyes and ears of the Roman people, to behold him that was a child of their darling and delight Germanicus, to be thus barbarously and in∣humanely brought to his end, and to hear his own Grandfather confess the action and and not dissemble it!
Agrippina the woeful Mother, might dolefully conjecture what would become of her self, by this fatal and terrible end of the poor Prince her Son. And it was not long, but she tasted of the very same cup, both of the same kind of death, and of the same kind of disgracing after. For being pined after the same manner, that it might be co∣loured that she did it of her self (a death very unfitting the greatest Princess then alive,) she was afterward slandered by Tiberius for adultery with Gallus that died so lately, and that she caused her own death for grief of his. She and her Son were deny∣ed burial befitting their degree, but hid in some obscure place where no one knew, which was no little distast and discontentment to the people. The Tyrant thought it a special cause of boasting and extolling his own goodness, that she had not been strangled, nor dyed the death of common base offenders: And since it was her fortune to die on the very same day that Sejanus had done two years before, viz. Octob. 17. it must be recor∣ded as of special observation, and great thanks given for the matter, and an annual sa∣crifice instituted to Jupiter on that day.
Caius her Son, and Brother to poor Drusus took all this very well, or at least seemed so to do, partly glad to be shut of any one that was likely to have any colour or likelyhood of corrivality with him in his future reign; and partly being brought up in such a School of dissimulation, and grown so perfect a Scholar there, that he wanted