[-13-] Now Tiberius began to treat more harshly those accused of any crime and became at enmity with his son Drusus, who was most licentious and cruel (as is evidenced by the fact that the sharpest kind of swords was called Drusian after him); him he often censured both privately and publicly.  Once he said to him outright in the Presence of many witnesses:  “While I live you shall perform no act of violence or insolence, and if you venture to do any such thing, you shall be cut off from the possibility after I am dead.”  For during some time the emperor continued to live a very temperate life and allowed no one else to indulge in licentiousness but punished numbers for it.  Yet once when the senators evinced a desire to have a penalty imposed by law upon those guilty of lewd living he would make no such ruling, explaining that it is better to correct them privately in some way or other instead of laying them open to a public punishment.  Under existing conditions, he said, there was a chance of bringing some of them to moderation through fear of disgrace, and they might endeavor to escape discovery; but if the law should once be overcome by nature, no one would pay any further heed to it.  Not a few men also were wearing quantities of purple clothing (though this had formerly been forbidden); of these no one was either rebuked or fined:  but when a rain came up on a certain festival the emperor put on a dark woolen cloak.  After this none of them dared any longer to assume any different kind of garb.

This is the way he behaved under all conditions so long as Germanicus lived.  Subsequent to that event he changed many of his ways.  Perhaps he had been minded from the first as he later appeared to feel, and had been merely shamming as long as Germanicus existed because he saw that he was lying in wait for the leadership; or perhaps he was excellent by nature but drifted into vice when he was deprived of his rival. [-14-] I shall notice also separate events,—­all those, at least that deserve mention,—­each in its proper place.

[A.D. 15 (a. u. 768)]

In the consulship of Drusus his son and of Gaius Norbanus he presented to the people the bequests made by Augustus:  this was after some one had approached a corpse that was being carried out through the Forum for burial and bending down had whispered something in its ear; when the spectators asked what he had said, he stated that he had commissioned the dead to tell Augustus that they had got nothing as yet.  This man the emperor immediately despatched, in order (as he jokingly said) that he might carry his own message to Augustus; with the rest he settled after a little, distributing sixty-five denarii apiece.  Some say this payment was made the previous year.

At this time certain knights desired to enter a championship contest in the games which Drusus had arranged for his own celebration and that of Germanicus; Tiberius did not view their combat, and when one of them was killed he forbade the other to fight as a gladiator again.  Still other conflicts took place in connection with the horse-race that was in honor of Augustus’s birthday; indeed, a few beasts were slain.  So things went on for a number of years.