Dio's Rome, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 411 pages of information about Dio's Rome, Volume 4.

Dio's Rome, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 411 pages of information about Dio's Rome, Volume 4.
the native soldiery seventy-five each.  Moreover, in the case of children, of whose fathers he had been the heir while they were still small, he enjoined that everything, together with income, should be given back to them when they became men:  this was, indeed his custom while in life.  Whenever he inherited the estate of any one who had offspring, he never neglected to give it all to the man’s children, immediately if they were already adults, and later if it were otherwise.  Though he took such an attitude toward other people’s children he did not restore his daughter from exile, though he deemed her worthy of gifts; and he forbade her being buried in his own tomb.—­So much was learned from the will.

[-33-] Four books were then brought in and Drusus read them.  In the first were written details pertaining to his funeral; in the second all the works which he had done, which he commanded to be inscribed aloft upon bronze columns to be set around his heroum; the third contained an account of military matters, of the revenues and of the public expenditures, the amount of money in the treasuries, and everything else of the sort having a bearing upon the administration; and the fourth had injunctions and orders for Tiberius and for the public.  Among these last was a command that they should not liberate many slaves and should thus avoid filing the city with a variegated rabble.  He also exhorted them not to enroll large numbers as citizens, in order that there might be a distinct difference between themselves and subject nations; to deliver the control of public business to all who had ability both to understand and to act, and never to let it depend on any one person; in this way no one would set his mind on a tyranny nor would the State go to pieces if one fell.  He advised them to be satisfied with present possessions and under no conditions to wish to increase the empire to any greater dimensions.  It would be hard to guard, he said, and this would lead to danger of their losing what was already theirs.  This principle he had himself really always followed not only in speech but also in action.  For, whereas he might have made great acquisitions of barbarian territory, he had not wished to do so.—­These were his injunctions.

[-34-] Then came his funeral.  There was a couch made of ivory and gold and adorned with robes of purple mixed with gold.  In it his body was hidden, in a kind of box down below:  a wax image of him in triumphal garb was displayed.  This one was borne from the Palatium by the officials for the following year, and another of gold from the senate-house, and still another upon a triumphal chariot.  Behind these came the images of his ancestors and of his deceased relatives (except of Caesar, because he had been enrolled among the heroes), and those of other Romans who had been prominent in any way, beginning with Romulus himself.  An image of Pompey the Great was also seen, and all the nations he had acquired, each represented by a likeness which bore some local characteristic, were carried in procession.  After these followed all the remaining objects mentioned above.  When the couch had been placed in view upon the orators’ platform, Drusus read something from that place:  and from the other, the rostra of the Julian shrine, Tiberius delivered the following public oration over the deceased, according to a decree:—­

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Dio's Rome, Volume 4 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.