Cornelius Sisenna was blamed for the conduct of his wife and stated in the senate that he had married her with the knowledge and on the advice of the emperor,—­whereat Augustus grew exceedingly angry.  He indulged in no violence of word or action but hurried out of the senate-chamber and then a little later came back again, choosing rather to do this (as he said to his friends afterward), in spite of its not being right, than to remain where he was and be compelled to do some harm.

[B.C. 12 (a. u. 742)]

[-28-] Meantime he bestowed upon Agrippa, who had come from Syria, the great honor of the tribunician authority for another five years, and sent him out to Pannonia, which was ready for war, allowing him greater powers than officials outside of Italy ordinarily possessed.  Agrippa made the campaign though it already was winter:  Marcus Valerius and Publius Sulpicius were the consuls.  As the Pannonians became terror stricken at his approach and showed no further signs of uprising he returned, and on reaching Campania fell sick.  Augustus happened to be giving, under the name of his children, contests of armed warriors at the Panathenaic festival, and when he learned of Agrippa’s condition he left the country.  Finding him dead, he conveyed his body to the capital and allowed it to lie in state in the Forum.  He also delivered the oration over the dead man, with a curtain stretched in front of the corpse.  Why he did this I know not.  Yet some have said it was because he was high priest, and others because he was discharging the functions of censor.  Both are mistaken.  A high priest is not forbidden to behold a corpse, nor yet a censor, except when he is about to put the finishing touches to the census.  Then if he sees such an object before his purification, all his work is rendered null and void.  Besides this oration Augustus conducted his funeral procession in the way that his own was later conducted.  He buried him in his own tomb, though the deceased had a lot of his own in the Campus Martius.

[-29-] Such was the end of Agrippa, who had in every way proved himself clearly the noblest of the men of his day and used the friendship of Augustus for the emperor’s own greatest benefit and for that of the commonwealth.  So much as he surpassed others in excellence, to such an extent did he voluntarily make himself lower than his patron.  He employed all his own skill and bravery for what would prove most profitable to Augustus and expended all the honor and power received from him on benefiting others.  As a result he never became in the least troublesome to Augustus nor the object of jealousy on the part of others.  He helped his friend organize the monarchy like one who was really in love with the idea of supreme power and he won over the populace by his kindness, showing himself most truly a friend of the people.  At his death he left them gardens and the bath-house called after his name, so that they