Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/1102

Rh 1084 DRUSUS. trious Antonia, a daughter — and, according to the preponderance of authority [Antonia, No. o], the ynnn<ier daughter — of M. Antonius the triumvir by Octavia, the sister of Augustus. Their mutual attachment was unusually great, and the unsullied fidelity of Drusus to the marriage-bed became a theme of popular admiration and applause in a profligate age. It is finely referred to by Pedo Albinovanus in his beautiful poem upon the death of Drusus : Tu concessHs amor, tu solus et ultimus illi, Tu requies fesso grata laboris eras. He must have been young when he married ; for, though he died at the age of thirty, he had several children who died before him, besides the three, Germanicus, Livia, and Claudius, who survived their father. He began public life early. In B. c. 1 9, he ob- tained permission, by a decree of the senate, to fill all magistracies five years before the regular time. (Dion Cass. liv. 10.) In the beginning of B. c. 16, we find him presiding with his brother at a gladiatorial show; and when Augustus, upon his departure for Gaul, took Tiberius, wlio was then praetor, along with him, Drusus was left in the city to discharge, in his brother's place, the important duties of that office. (Dion Cass. liv. 19.) In the following year he was made quaestor, and sent against the Rhaetians, who were accused of having committed depredations upi>n Roman travellers and allies of the Romans. The mountainous parts of the country were inhabited by banditti, who levied contributions from the pe^iceful cultivators of the plains, and plundered all who did not purchase freedom from attack by special agreement. Every chance male who fell into their hands was mur- dered. Drusus attacked and routed them near the Tridentine Alps, as they were about to make a foray into Italy. His victory was not decisive, but he obtained praetorian honours as liis reward. The Rhaetians, after being repulsed from lUily, continued to infest the frontier of Gaul. Tiberius was then despatched to join Drusus, and the bro- thers jointly defeated simie of the tribes of the Rliaeti and Vindelici, while others submitted with- out resistance. A tribute was imposed upon the country. The greater part of the population was carried off, while enough were left to till the soil without being able to rebel. (Dion Cass. liv. 22 ; Strab. iv. fin. ; Floras, iv. 12.) These exploits of the young step-sons of Augustus are the theme of a spirited ode of Horace. {Carm. iv. 4, ib. 14.) On the return of Augustus to Rome from Gaul, in B. c. 13, Dnisus was sent into that province, which had been driven into revolt by the exaction of the Roman governor, Licinius, who, in order to increase the amount of the monthly tribute, had divided the year into fourteen months. Drusus made a new assessment of property for the purpose of taxation, and in B. c. 12 quelled the tumults which had been occasioned by his financial mea- sures. (Liv. Ejnt. cxxxvi. cxxxvii.) The Sicambri and their allies, under pretence of attending an annual festival held at Lyons at the altar of Au- gustus, had fomented the disaffection of the Gallic chieftains. In the tumults which ensued, their troops had crossed the Rhiiie. Dnisus now drove them back into the Batavian island, and pursued them in their own territory, laying waste the greater part of their country. He then followed the course of the Rhine, sailed to the ocean, sub- j DRUSUS. dued the Frisians, laid upon them a moderate tri- bute of beeves-hides, and passed by shallows into the territory of the Chauci, where his vessels grounded upon the ebbing of the tide. From this danger he was rescued by the friendly assistance of the Fri- sians. Winter now approached. He returned to Rome, and in B. c. 11 was made praetor urbanus. Drusus was the first Roman general who pene- trated to the German ocean. It is probable that he united the military design of reconnoitering the coast with the spirit of adventure and scientific discovery. (Tac. (Jerm. 34.) From the migratory character of the tribes he subdued, it is not easy to fix their locality with precision ; and the diffi- culty of geographical exactness is increased by the alterations which time and the elements* have made in the face of the country. Mannert and others identify the Dollart with the place where the fleet of Drusus went ashore ; but the Dollart first as- sumed its present form in a.d. 1277; and Wilhelm ( Feldzuge dcr Nero Clawiius Drusus iin Nordlichen TeuisclJand) makes the Jahde, westward of the mouth of the Weser, the scene of this misadven- ture. It is by no means ceruiin by what course Drusus reached the ocean, although it is the gene- ral opinion that he had already constructed a canal uniting the eastern arm of the Rhine with the Yssel, and so had opened himself a way b}' the Zuydersee. This opinion is confirmed by a pas- sage in Tacitus {Ann. ii. H), where Germanicus, upon entering the Fossa Drusiuna, prays for the protection of his father, who had gone the same way before him, and then sails by the Zuydersee (Lacus Flevus) to the ocean, up to the mouth of the Ems (Amisia). To this expedition of Drusus may perhaps be referred the naval battle in the Euis mentioned by Strabo (vii. init.)^ in which the Bructeri were defeated, and the subjugation of the ishinds on the coast, especially Byrchamis (Borkum). (Strab. vii. 34; Plin. H.N. iv. 13.) Ferdinand Wachter (Ersch und Gruber's Ency- clop'ddie., s. v. Dnisus) thinks, that the canal of Drusus must have been too great 'a work to be completed at so early a period, and that Dru- sus could not have had time to run up the Ems. He supposes, that Dmsus sailed to the ocean by one of the natural channels of the river, and that the inconvenience he experienced and the geographical knowledge he gained led him to avail himself of the capabilities afforded by the Lacus Flevus for a safer junction with the ocean ; that his works on the Rhine wei;e probably begun in this campaign, and were not finished until some years afterwards. The precise nature of those works cannot now be determined. They appear to have consisted not only of a canal (fossa), but of a dj'ke or mound {agger., moles) across the Rhine. Suetonius seems to use even the word fossae in the sense of a mound, not a canal. " Trans Tiberim fossas novi et immensi operis effecit, quae nunc adhuc Drusinae vocantur." {Clatiti. i.) Tacitus {Ann. xiii. .53) says, that Paullinus Pompeius, in A. D. .58, completed the agger coercendo Rheno which had been begun by Driisus sixty-three years before ; and afterwards relates that Civilis, by de- stroying the moles formed by Drusus, allowed the waters of tlie Rhine to rush down and inundate the side of Gaul. {HisLv.]9.) The most probable opi- nion seems to be, that Drusus dug a canal from the Rhine near Amheim to the Yssel, near Doesberg (wiiich bears a trace of his name), and that he also