At last she accosted him with invidious expostulations
and prayers; "that he would relieve her solitude, and give her a husband.
She was still endowed with proper youth; to virtuous women there was no
consolation but that of marriage; and Rome afforded illustrious men who
would readily assent to entertain the wife of Germanicus, and his
children." Tiberius was not ignorant to what mighty power in the state,
that demand tended; but, that he might betray no tokens of resentment or
fear, he left her, though instant with him, without an answer. This
passage, not related by the authors of our annals, I found in the
commentaries of her daughter Agrippina; her, who was the mother of the
Emperor Nero, and has published her own life with the fortunes of her
family.
As to Agrippina; still grieving and void of foresight, she was yet more
sensibly dismayed by an artifice of Sejanus, who employed such, as under
colour of friendship warned her, "that poison was prepared for her, and
that she must shun eating at her father-in-law's table." She was a
stranger to all dissimulation: so that as she sat near him at table, she
continued stately and unmoved; not a word, not a look escaped her, and she
touched no part of the meat.
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