In this they were unconsciously aided by Agrippina.  Unlike her sister Julia, she was a lady of blameless life; faithfully in love with her husband; a true Roman matron, such as tradition had loved; chaste and fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six had already borne nine children, of whom, however, six had died.  But Agrippina was to show that in the house of Augustus, in those tumultuous, strange times, virtue was not less dangerous than vice, though in another way and for different reasons.  She was so proud of her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and increased by her excessive pride in her virtue.  And among these defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a dangerous lack of balance and judgment.  Agrippina was not evil; she was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what seemed expedient.  She had much influence over her husband, whom she accompanied upon all his journeys; and out of the great love she bore him, in which her own ambition had its part, she urged him on to support that hidden movement which was striving to oppose Germanicus to the emperor.

That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor.  After his divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law.  No one exercised so much influence as Antonia over the diffident and self-centered spirit of the emperor.  Whoever wished to obtain a favor from him could do no better than to intrust his cause to Antonia.  There is no doubt, therefore, that Antonia checked her son, and in his society counterbalanced the influence of his wife.

But even if two parties were not formed, it was not long before other difficulties arose.  Discord soon made itself felt between Livia and Agrippina.  More serious still was the fact that Germanicus, who, after the death of Augustus, had been sent as a legate to Gaul, initiated a German policy contrary to the instructions given him by Tiberius.  This was due partly to his own impetuous temperament and partly to the goadings of his wife and the flatterers who surrounded him.  Tiberius, whom the Germans knew from long experience, no longer wished to molest them.  The revolt of Arminius proved that when their independence was threatened by Rome they were capable of uniting and becoming dangerous; when left to themselves they destroyed one another by continual wars.  It was