Most signal was the lustre of
the funeral in a conspicuous procession of images; when at it appeared in
a pompous train, Aeneas, father of the Julian race; all the kings of Alba,
and Romulus founder of Rome; next the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and
his descendants of the Claudian family.
In relating the death of Drusus, I have followed the greatest part of our
historians, and the most faithful: I would not however omit a rumour which
in those times was so prevailing that it is not extinguished in ours;
"that Sejanus having by adultery gained Livia to the murder, had likewise
engaged by constupration the affections and concurrence of Lygdus the
eunuch; because Lygdus was, for his youth and loveliness, dear to his
master, and one of his chief attendants: that when the time and place of
poisoning, were by the conspirators concerted; the eunuch carried his
boldness so high, as to charge upon Drusus a design of poisoning Tiberius;
and secretly warning the Emperor of this, advised him to shun the first
draught offered him in the next entertainment at his son's: that the old
man possessed with this fictitious treason, after he had sate down to
table, having received the cup delivered it to Drusus, who ignorantly and
gaily drank it off: that this heightened the jealousy and apprehensions of
Tiberius, as if through fear and shame his son had swallowed the same
death, which for his father he had contrived.
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