Before the impressions of this grief were worn away, the death of
Agrippina was published. I suppose she had lived thus long upon the hopes,
which from the execution of Sejanus she had conceived; but, feeling
afterwards no relaxation of cruelty, death grew her choice: unless she
were bereaved of nourishment, and her decease feigned to have been of her
own seeking. For, Tiberius raged against her with abominable imputations,
reproaching her "with lewdness; as the adulteress of Asinius Gallus; and
that upon his death she became weary of life." But these were none of her
crimes: Agrippina impatient of an equal lot, and eager for rule, had
thence sacrificed to masculine ambition all the passions and vices of
women. The Emperor added, "that she departed the same day on which Sejanus
had suffered as a traitor two years before, and that the same ought to be
perpetuated by a public memorial." Nay, he boasted of his clemency, in
"that she had not been strangled, and her body cast into the charnel of
malefactors." For this, as for an instance of mercy the Senate solemnly
thanked him, and decreed "that, on the seventeenth of October, the day of
both their deaths, a yearly offering should be consecrated to Jupiter for
ever.
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