HKB
by the solicitations of his wife, he adopted Tiberius; and caused Tiberius to adopt Germanicus. With this grandeur of her own procuring, Livia upbraided her son; and even reclaimed it.
His going was narrowly accompanied; by one Senator, Cocceius Nerva, formerly Consul, and accomplished in the knowledge of the laws; and, besides Sejanus, by one dignified Roman knight, Curtius Atticus. The rest were men of letters, chiefly Greeks; whose conversation pleased and amused him. The skilled in astrology declared, "that he had left Rome in such a conjunction of the planets, as for ever to exclude his return." Hence a source of destruction to many, who conjectured his end to be at hand, and published their conjectures: for, it was an event too incredible to be foreseen, that for eleven years he should of choice be withdrawn from his country. The sequel discovered the short bounds between the art and the falsehood of the art, and what obscurities perplex even the facts it happens to foretell. That he should never return to Rome, proved not to be falsely said: as to everything else about him they were perfectly in the dark; since he still lived, never far distant, sometimes in the adjacent champain, sometimes on the neighbouring shore, often under the very walls of the city; and died at last in the fulness and extremity of age.
There happened to Tiberius, about that time, an accident, which, as it threatened his life, fired the empty prognostics at Rome; but to himself proved matter of more confidence in the friendship and faith of Sejanus. They were eating in a cave at a villa, thence called Spelunca, between the Amyclean Sea and the mountains of Fondi: it was a native cave, and its mouth fell suddenly in, and buried under it some of the attendants: hence dread seized all, and they who were celebrating the entertainment fled: as to Sejanus; he covered the Emperor's body with his own, and stooping upon his knees and hands, exposed himself to the descending ruin; such was the posture he was found in by the soldiers, who came to their relief. He grew mightier from thence; and being now considered by Tiberius as one regardless of himself, all his counsels, however bloody and destructive, were listened to with blind credulity: so that he assumed the office of a judge against the offspring of Germanicus, and suborned such as were to act the parts of accusers, and especially to pursue and blacken Nero, the next in succession; a young Prince modest indeed, but forgetful of that restraint and circumspection which his present situation required. He was misguided by his freedmen and the retainers to his house; who eager to be masters of power, animated him with intemperate counsels; "that he would show a spirit resolute and assured; it was what the Roman People wished, what the armies longed for: nor would Sejanus dare then to resist; though he now equally insulted the tameness of an old man and the sloth of a young one."