HKB
through the malignity of the climate, they perished, despicable would be the loss: the rest were doomed to depart Italy, unless by a stated day they renounced their profane rites.
After this Tiberius represented that, to supply the place of Occia, who had presided seven and fifty years with the highest sanctimony over the Vestals, another virgin was to be chosen; and thanked Fonteius Agrippa and Asinius Pollio, that by offering their daughters, they contended in good offices towards the Commonwealth. Pollio's daughter was preferred; for nothing else but that her mother had ever continued in the same wedlock: for Agrippa, by a divorce, had impaired the credit of his house: upon her who was postponed, Tiberius, in consolation, bestowed for her fortune a thousand great sestertia. [Footnote: £8300.]
As the people murmured at the severe dearth of corn, he settled grain at a price certain to the buyer, and undertook to pay fourteenpence a measure to the seller: neither yet would he accept the name of Father of his Country, a title offered him before, and for these bounties, now again; nay, he sharply rebuked such as styled these provisions of his, divine occupations, and him, Lord: hence freedom of speech became cramped and insecure, under such a Prince; one who dreaded liberty, and abhorred flattery.
I find in the writers of those times, some of them Senators, that in the Senate were read letters from Adgandestrius, prince of the Cattans, undertaking to despatch Arminius, if in order to it poison were sent him; and an answer returned, "that not by frauds and blows in the dark, but armed and in the face of the sun, the Roman People took vengeance on their foes." In this Tiberius gained equal glory with our ancient captains, who rejected and disclosed a plot to poison King Pyrrhus. Arminius however, who upon the departure of the Romans and expulsion of Maroboduus, aimed at royalty, became thence engaged in a struggle against the liberty of his country; and, in defence of their liberty, his countrymen took arms against him: so that, while with various fortune he contended with them, he fell by the treachery of his own kindred: the deliverer of Germany without doubt he was; one who assailed the Roman power, not like other kings and leaders, in its first elements, but in its highest pride and elevation; one sometimes beaten in battle, but never conquered in war: thirty-seven years he lived; twelve he commanded; and, amongst these barbarous nations, his memory is still celebrated in their songs; but his name unknown in the annals of the Greeks, who only admire their own national exploits and renown; nor even amongst the Romans does this great captain bear much distinction, while, overlooking instances of modern prowess and glory, we only delight to magnify men and feats of old.