she died
neglected and impoverished. The emperor was so indignant in view of her
disgraceful conduct, that he excluded her from any inheritance. The
premature death of her sons nearly broke the heart of their grandfather,
bereft of the wise councils and pleasant society of his great ministers,
and bending under the weight of the vast empire which he, as the heir of
Caesar, had received. The loss of his grandsons compelled the emperor to
provide for his succession, and he turned his eyes to Tiberius, his
step-son, who was then at Rhodes. He adopted him as his successor, and
invested him with the tribunitian power. But, while he selected him as his
heir, he also required him to adopt Germanicus, the son of his brother
Drusus.

(M1052) Another great man now appeared upon the stage, L. Domitius
Ahenobardus, the son-in-law of Octavia and Antony, who was intrusted with
the war against the Germanic tribes, and who was the first Roman general
to cross the Elbe. He was the grandfather of Nero. But Tiberius was sent
to supersede him, and following the plan of his brother Drusus, he sent a
flotilla down the Rhine, with orders to ascend the Elbe, and meet his army
at an appointed rendezvous, which was then regarded as a great military
feat, in the face of such foes as the future conquerors of Rome. After
this Tiberius was occupied in reconquering the wide region between the
Adriatic and the Danube, known as Illyricum, which occupied him three
years, A.D. 7-9. In this war he was assisted by his nephew and adopted
son, Germanicus, whose brilliant career revived the hope which had centred
in Drusus.

(M1053) Meanwhile Augustus, wearied with the cares of State, provoked by
the scandals which his daughter occasioned, and irritated by plots against
his life, began to relax his attention to business, and to grow morose. It
was then that he banished Ovid, whose _Tristia_ made a greater sensation
than his immortal _Metamorphoses_. The disaster which befell Varus with a
Roman army, in the forest of Teutoburg, near the river Lippe, when thirty
thousand men were cut to pieces by the Germans under Arminius (Hermann),
completed the humiliation of Augustus, for, in this defeat, he must have
foreseen the future victories of the barbarians. All ideas of extending
the empire beyond the Rhine were now visionary, and that river was
henceforth to remain its boundary on the north. New levies were indeed
dispatched to the Rhine, and Tiberius and Germani