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Rh night reach Italy, and in three weeks the capital itself, which was then slenderly supplied with guards, for the most effective divisions of the army were stationed in Upper or Lower Germany. The mutiny was sufficiently grave to render it necessary for the emperor to despatch his son Drusus, and one of the prætorian prefects, Ælius Sejanus, with a formidable force of cavalry and veteran infantry, to the Pannonian camp. A timely eclipse, however, so disheartened the rebels, that, after committing many atrocities, they returned to their standards under the impression that the gods frowned on their revolt.

But if the Pannonian revolt was a spark, a mutiny of the legions in Upper and Lower Germany threatened to be a devouring flame. For there, in both provinces, the disaffected soldiers were in the immediate neighbourhood of the free Germans, proud of their demolition of Varus and his army five years before, and ever watching for an opportunity to cross to the left bank of the Rhine. The most popular general of the day, the Cæsar Germanicus, was in command of eight legions—a force that with auxiliaries consisted of at least 60,000 men. Tiberius might affect to dread some half-dozen of the nobles, but he was sincere in his apprehensions of his adopted son. Him indeed he suspected unjustly. The noble and loyal disposition of Germanicus was a riddle to the moody and timid master of thirty legions, and he probably distrusted him the more for a straightforward dealing of which he was himself incapable. To hear from successive messengers that the legions of the Rhine were in revolt; that they had offered to proclaim their commander Cæsar; that they had demanded and