All they whose hopes in my fortune, all they
whose kindred blood, and even they whose envy, possessed them with
impressions about me whilst living, shall bewail me dead; that once great
in glory, and surviving so many wars, I fell at last by the dark devices
of a woman. To you will be place left to complain in the Senate, and place
to invoke the aid and vengeance of the laws. To commemorate the dead with
slothful wailings, is not the principal office of friends: they are to
remember his dying wishes, to fulfil his last desires. Even strangers will
lament Germanicus: you are my friends: if you loved me rather than my
fortune, you will vindicate your friendship: show the people of Rome my
wife, her who is the grand-daughter of Augustus, and enumerate to them our
six children. Their compassion will surely attend you who accuse; and the
accused, if they pretend clandestine warrants of iniquity, will not be
believed; if believed, not pardoned." His friends, as a pledge of their
fidelity, touching the hand of the dying prince, swore that they would
forego their lives sooner than their revenge. Then turning to his wife, he
besought her "that in tenderness to his memory, in tenderness to their
common children, she would banish her haughty spirit, yield to her hostile
fortune, nor, upon her return to Rome, by an impotent competition for
ruling, irritate those who were masters of rule.
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