The day his remains were reposited in the tomb of Augustus, various were
the symptoms of public grief; now the vastness of silence; now the uproar
of lamentation; the city in every quarter full of processions; the field
of Mars on a blaze of torches: here the soldiers under arms, the
magistrates without the insignia, the people by their tribes, all cried in
concert that "the Commonwealth was fallen, and henceforth there was no
remain of hope;" so openly and boldly that you would have believed they
had forgot, who bore sway. But nothing pierced Tiberius more than the
ardent affections of the people towards Agrippina, while such titles they
gave her as "the ornament of her country, the only blood of Augustus, the
single instance of ancient virtue;" and, while applying to heaven, they
implored "the continuance of her issue, that they might survive the
persecuting and malignant."
There were those who missed the pomp of a public funeral, and compared
with this the superior honours and magnificence bestowed by Augustus on
that of Drusus the father of Germanicus; "that he himself had travelled,
in the sharpness of winter, as far as Pavia, and thence, continuing by the
corpse, had with it entered the city; round his head were placed the
images of the Claudii and Julii; he was mourned in the Forum; his encomium
pronounced in the Rostras; all sorts of honours, such as were the
inventions of our ancestors, or the improvements of their posterity, were
heaped upon him.
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