These things filled Germanicus with apprehensions great as his resentment:
"If his doors," he said, "were besieged, if under the eyes of his enemies
he must render up his spirit, what was to be expected to his unhappy wife,
what to his infant children?" The progress of poison was thought too slow;
Piso was impatient, and urging with eagerness to command alone the
legions, to possess alone the province: but Germanicus was not sunk to
such lowness and impotence, that the price of his murder should remain
with the murderer: and by a letter to Piso, he renounced his friendship:
some add, that he commanded him to depart the province. Nor did Piso tarry
longer, but took ship; yet checked her sailing in order to return with the
more quickness, should the death of Germanicus the while leave the
government of Syria vacant.
Germanicus, after a small revival, drooping again; when his end
approached, spoke on this wise to his attending friends: "Were I to yield
to the destiny of nature; just, even then, were my complaints against the
Gods, for hurrying me from my parents, my children, and my country, by a
hasty death, in the prime of life: now shortened in my course by the
malignity of Piso, and his wife, to your breasts I commit my last prayers:
tell my father, tell my brother, with what violent persecutions afflicted,
with what mortal snares circumvented, I end a most miserable life by death
of all others the worst.
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