" Hence the whole court was
filled with close consultations, and expresses were despatched to the
generals and armies. On the 16th of March, so deep a swoon seized him,
that he was believed to have paid the last debt of mortality: insomuch
that Caligula, in the midst of a great throng, paying their
congratulations, was already appearing abroad, to assume the first offices
of sovereignty, when sudden notice came, "that Tiberius had recovered his
sight and voice, and, to strengthen his fainting spirits, had called for
some refreshment." Hence dread seized all, and the whole concourse about
Caligula dispersed, every man resuming false sorrow, or feigning
ignorance: he himself was struck speechless, and thus fallen from the
highest hopes, waited for present death. Macro continued undismayed, and
ordering the apartment to be cleared, caused the feeble old man to be
smothered with a weight of coverings. Thus expired Tiberius in the
seventy-eighth year of his age.
He was the son of Nero, and on both sides a branch of the Claudian House;
though his mother had been ingrafted by adoptions into the Livian, and
next into the Julian stock.
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