At the funeral of Augustus he had to read the oration.  A lump in his throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed the paper to his son Drusus to finish.  “Oh!” cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, “what dissimulation! what rank hypocrisy! when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the dead man’s shoes.”  When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole hope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings that none saw a muscle of his face moved by emotion while he read the oration.  “Oh!” cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, “what a cold unfeeling monster!” Tiberius, with an absolute eye for reading men’s thoughts, knew well what was being said on either occasion.

When Augustus died, his one surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, was mad and under restraint in the island of Planasia, near Elba.  A plot was hatched to spirit him away to the Rhine, and have him there proclaimed as against Tiberius by the legions.  One Clemens was deputed to do this; but when Clemens reached Planasia, he found Agrippa murdered.  Says Suetonius: 

“It remained doubtful whether Augustus left the order (for the murder) in his last moments, to prevent any public disturbance after his death; or whether Livia issued it in the name of Augustus, or whether it was issued with or without the knowledge of Tiberius.”—­Tacitus in the right,—­though truly this Agrippa Postumus was a peculiarly violent offensive idiot, and Augustus knew well what the anti-Claudian faction was capable of.  Nor can one credit that gracious lady Livia with it; though it was she who persuaded Tiberius to hush the thing up, and rescind his order for a public senatorial investigation.  For an order to that effect he issued; and Tacitus, more suo, puts it down to his hypocrisy.  Tacitus’ method with Tiberius is this:  all his acts of mercy are to be attributed to weak-spiritedness; all his acts of justice, to blood-tyranny; everything else to hypocrisy and dissimulation.

Neither Augustus, nor yet Livia, then, had Agrippa killed; must we credit it to Tiberius?  Less probably, I think, it was he than either of the others:  I can just imagine Augustus taking the responsibility for the sake of Rome, but not Tiberius criminal for his own sake.  Here is an explanation which incriminates neither:  it may seem far-fetched; but then many true things do.  We know how the children of darkness hate the Messengers of Light.  Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the Julian-republican clique for the opposite.  He stood for the nations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high purposes of the Law.  They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the old spoils system.—­Down him then! said they.  And how?—­Fish up mad Postumus, and let’s have a row with the Legions of the Rhine.—­Yes; that sounds pretty—­for you who are not in the deep know of the thing.  But how far do you think the Legions of the Rhine are going to support this young revolting-habited madman against the first general of the age?  You are green; you are crude, my friends;—­but go to it; your plot shall do well.  But we, the cream and innermost of the party,—­we have another.  Let the madman be murdered,—­and who shall be called the murderer?