He afterwards proceeded to an open rupture with her, and, as is said, upon this
					occasion. She having frequently urged him to place among the judges a person who
					had been made free of the, city, he refused her request, unless she would allow
					it to be inscribed on the roll, "That the appointment had been extorted from him
					by his mother." Enraged at this, Livia 
					brought forth from her chapel some letters from Augustus to her, complaining of
					the sourness and insolence of Tiberius 's temper, and these she read. So much was he offended at
					these letters having been kept so long, and now produced with so much bitterness
					against him, that some considered this incident as one of the causes of his
					going into seclusion, if not the principal reason for so doing. In the whole
					years he lived during his retirement, he saw her but once, and that for a few
					hours only. When she fell sick shortly afterwards, he was quite unconcerned
					about visiting her in her illness; and when she died, after promising to attend
					her funeral, he deferred his coming for several days, so that the corpse was in
					a state of decay and putrefaction before die interment; and he then forbad
					divine honours being paid to her, pretending that he acted according to her own
					directions. He likewise annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her
					friends and acquaintance; not even sparing those to whom, on her death-bed, she
					had recommended the care of her funeral, but condemning one of them, a man of
					equestrian rank, to the tread-mill. Antlia; a machine for
						drawing up water in a series of connected buckets, which was worked by the
						feet, nisupedum. He entertained no paternal affection either for his own son Drusus, or his
					adopted son Germanicus. Offended at the vices of the former, who was of a loose
					disposition and led a dissolute life, he was not much affected at his death;
					but, almost immediately after the funeral, resumed his attention to business,
					and prevented the courts from being longer closed. The ambassadors from the
					people of Ilium coming rather late to
					offer their condolence, he said to them by way of banter, as if the affair had
					already faded from his memory, "And I heartily condole with you on the loss of
					your renowned countryman Hector ." He so
					much affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as
					utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as ruinous to
					the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to Alexandria without his knowledge, upon
					occasion of a great and sudden famine at Rome . It was believed that he took care to have him dispatched
					by Cneius Piso, his lieutenant in Syria . This person was afterwards tried for the murder, and would,
					as was supposed, have produced his orders, had they not been contained in a
					private and confidential dispatch. The follo-ring words therefore were posted up
					in many placez, and frequently shouted in the night: "Give us back our
					Germanicus." This suspicion was afterwards confirmed by the barbarous treatment
					of his wife and children. His daughter-in-law Agrippina, after the death of her husband, complaining upon
					some occasion with more than ordinary freedom, he took her by the hand, and
					addressed her in a Greek verse to this effect: "My dear child, do you think
					yourself injured, because you are not empress?" Nor did he ever vouchsafe to
					speak to her again. Upon her refusing once at supper to taste some fruit which
					he presented to her, he declined inviting her to his table, pretending that she
					in effect charged him with a design to poison her; whereas the whole was a
					contrivance of his own. He was to offer the fruit, and she to be privately
					cautioned against eating what would infallibly cause her death. At last, having
					her accused of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or to the
					army, he banished her to the island of Pandataria. The
						elder Agrippina was banished to this island by Augustus. See. c. lxiii. of
						his life. Upon her reviling him for it, he caused a centurion to
					beat out one of her eyes; and when she resolved to starve herself to death, he
					ordered her mouth to be forced open, and meat to be crammed down her throat. But
					she persisting in her resolution, and dying soon afterwards, he persecuted her
					memory with the basest aspersions, and persuaded the senate to put her birth-day
					amongst the number of unlucky days in the calendar. He likewise took credit for
					not having caused her to be strangled and her body cast upon the Gemonian Steps,
					and suffered a decree of the senate to pass, thanking him for his clemency, and
					an offering of gold to be made to Jupiter Capitolinus on the occasion. He had by Germanicus three grandsons, Nero , Drusus, and Caius; and by his son Drusus one, named
					Tiberius. Of these, after the loss of his sons, he commended Nero and Drusus,
					the two eldest sons of Germanicus, to the senate; and at their being solemnly in
					troduced into the forum, distributed money among the people. But when he found
					that on entering upon the new year they were included in the public vows for his
					own welfare, he told the senate, " that such honours ought not to be conferred
					but upon those who had been proved, and were of more advanced years." By thus
					betraying his private feelings towards them,' he exposed them to all sorts of
					accusations; and after practising many artifices to provoke them to rail at and
					abuse him, that he might be furnished with a pretence to destroy them, he
					charged them with it in a letter to the senate: and at the same time accusing
					them, in the bitterest terms, of the most scandalous vices. Upon their being
					declared enemies by the senate, he starved them to death; Nero in the island of
						 Ponza , and Drusus in the vaults of
					the Palatium. It is thought by some that Nero was driven to a voluntary death by
					the executioner's shewing him some halters and hooks, as if he had been sent to
					him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is said, was so rabid with hunger, that
					he attempted to eat the chaff with which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of
					both were so scattered, that it was with difficulty they were collected. Besides his old friends and intimate acquaintance, he required the assistance of
					twenty of the most eminent persons in the city, as counsellors in the
					administration of public affairs. Out of all this number, scarcely two or three
					escaped the fury of his savage disposition. All the rest he destroyed upon one
					pretence or another; and among them AFlius Sejanus, whose fall was attended with
					the ruin of many others. He had advanced this minister to the highest pitch of
					grandeur, not so much from any real regard for him, as that by his base and
					sinister contrivances he might ruin the children of Germani cus, and thereby
					secure the succession to his own grandson by Drusus.