" So much openly, and more
in secret; whence he was believed to have warned her of guile and danger
from Tiberius. Soon after he expired, to the heavy sorrow of the province,
and of all the neighbouring countries; insomuch that remote nations and
foreign kings were mourners: such had been his complacency to our
confederates; such his humanity to his enemies! Alike venerable he was,
whether you saw him or heard him; and without ever departing from the
grave port and dignity of his sublime rank, he yet lived destitute of
arrogance and untouched by envy.
The funeral, which was performed without exterior pomp or a procession of
images, drew its solemnity from the loud praises and amiable memory of his
virtues. There were those who from his loveliness, his age, his manner of
dying, and even from the proximity of places where both departed, compared
him in the circumstances of his fate, to Great Alexander: "Each of a
graceful person, each of illustrious descent; in years neither much
exceeding thirty; both victims to the malice and machinations of their own
people, in the midst of foreign nations: but Germanicus gentle towards his
friends; his pleasures moderate; confined to one wife; all his children by
one bed; nor less a warrior, though not so rash, and however hindered from
a final reduction of Germany, broken by him in so many victories, and
ready for the yoke: so that had he been sole arbiter of things, had he
acted with the sovereignty and title of royalty, he had easier overtaken
him in the glory of conquests, as he surpassed him in clemency, in
moderation, and in other virtues.
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