of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or
to the army, he banished her to the island of Pandataria [353]. Upon her
reviling him for it, he caused a centurion to beat out one of her eyes;
and when she resolved to starve herself to death, he ordered her mouth to
be forced open, and meat to be crammed down her throat. But she
persisting in her resolution, and dying soon afterwards, he persecuted
her memory with the basest aspersions, and persuaded the senate to put
her birth-day amongst the number of unlucky days in the calendar. He
likewise took credit for not having caused her to be strangled and her
body cast upon the Gemonian Steps, and suffered a decree of the senate to
pass, thanking him for his clemency, and an offering of gold to be made
to Jupiter Capitolinus on the occasion.

LIV. He had by Germanicus three grandsons, Nero, Drusus, and Caius; and
by his son Drusus one, named Tiberius. Of these, after the loss of his
sons, he commended Nero and Drusus, the two eldest sons of Germanicus, to
the senate; and at their being solemnly introduced into the forum,
distributed money among the people. But when he found that on entering
upon the new year they were included in the public vows for his own
welfare, he told the senate, "that such honours ought not to be conferred
but upon those who had been proved, and were of more advanced years." By
thus betraying his private feelings towards them, he exposed them to all
sorts of accusations; and after practising many artifices to provoke
(226) them to rail at and abuse him, that he might be furnished with a
pretence to destroy them, he charged them with it in a letter to the
senate; at the same time accusing them, in the bitterest terms, of the
most scandalous vices. Upon their being declared enemies by the senate,
he starved them to death; Nero in the island of Ponza, and Drusus in the
vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by some, that Nero was driven to a
voluntary death by the executioner's shewing him some halters and hooks,
as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is
said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff with
which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered,
that it was with difficulty they were collected.

LV. Besides his old friends and intimate acquaintance, he required the
assistance of twenty of the most eminent persons in the city, as
counsellors in the administ