HKB
Livia, who left not the palace; and affecting equal affliction with her, would have it seem that, by the example of the mother, the grandmother too and uncle were detained.
The day his remains were reposited in the tomb of Augustus, various were the symptoms of public grief; now the vastness of silence; now the uproar of lamentation; the city in every quarter full of processions; the field of Mars on a blaze of torches: here the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without the insignia, the people by their tribes, all cried in concert that "the Commonwealth was fallen, and henceforth there was no remain of hope;" so openly and boldly that you would have believed they had forgot, who bore sway. But nothing pierced Tiberius more than the ardent affections of the people towards Agrippina, while such titles they gave her as "the ornament of her country, the only blood of Augustus, the single instance of ancient virtue;" and, while applying to heaven, they implored "the continuance of her issue, that they might survive the persecuting and malignant."
There were those who missed the pomp of a public funeral, and compared with this the superior honours and magnificence bestowed by Augustus on that of Drusus the father of Germanicus; "that he himself had travelled, in the sharpness of winter, as far as Pavia, and thence, continuing by the corpse, had with it entered the city; round his head were placed the images of the Claudii and Julii; he was mourned in the Forum; his encomium pronounced in the Rostras; all sorts of honours, such as were the inventions of our ancestors, or the improvements of their posterity, were heaped upon him. But to Germanicus were denied the ordinary solemnities, and such as were due to every distinguished Roman. In a foreign country indeed, his corpse because of the long journey, was burnt without pomp; but afterwards, it was but just to have supplied the scantiness of the first ceremony by the solemnity of the last: his brother met him but one day's journey; his uncle not even at the gate. Where were those generous observations of the ancients; the effigies of the dead borne on a bed, hymns composed in memory of their virtue, with the oblations of praise and tears? Where at least were the ceremonies and even outside of sorrow?"
All this was known to Tiberius; and, to suppress the discourses of the populace, he published an edict, "that many illustrious Romans had died for the Commonwealth, but none so vehemently lamented: this however was to the glory of himself and of all men, if a measure were observed. The same things which became private families and small states, became not Princes and an Imperial People: fresh grief indeed required vent and ease by lamentation; but it was now time to recover and fortify their minds. Thus the deified Julius, upon the loss of an only daughter; thus the deified Augustus, upon the hasty death of his grandsons, had both vanquished their sorrow. More ancient examples were unnecessary; how often the Roman People sustained with constancy the slaughter of their armies, the death of their generals, and entire destruction of their noblest families: Princes were mortal; the Commonwealth was eternal: they should therefore resume their several vocations." And because the Megalesian games were at hand, he added, "that they should even apply to the usual festivities."