pite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only
their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.
He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of
acquiring and consolidating power. He had therefore disrupted his
first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have
redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the
imperial household. But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius
refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was
afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina. The
emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine
quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the
Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew's sons. And what would
happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing
hatreds? _Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio_? The reply is
significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of
harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina,
was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both
factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a
reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these
struggles.

[Illustration: The starving Livilla refusing food.]

In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this refusal was a slight success
for the party of Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted on
its own account an analogous move. Agrippina asked Tiberius for
permission to remarry. If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made
this request on her own initiative, impelled by one of those numerous
and more or less reasonable caprices which were continually shooting
through her head. But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long
widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any
_arriere-pensee_ whatever? Furthermore, if this proposal had been
merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been
so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter
of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs? It is more
probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim. By giving a
husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give a leader to the
anti-Tiberian party. The sons of Germanicus were too young, and
Agrippina was too violent and tactless, to be able alone to cope
successfully