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Rh tions of the dying Germanicus were addressed to her. "Then turning to his wife," writes the annalist, "he adjured her by her remembrance of him, by their common children, to divest herself of her unbending spirit and bow to fortune in the storm of her anger; and, on her return to the city, not to irritate those who were more than a match for her, by a competition for the mastery. So much was said by him openly, and more in secret." The injunction was in vain: year by year the number of her supporters diminished: the brave and loyal were driven to suicide, or into exile, or handed over to the executioner: the timid forsook her or became spies on her actions and words; and she herself, by occasional indiscretions, nursed the jealousy or incurred the anger of Tiberius. Of her three sons one only survived her; and she herself, after undergoing countless indignities, died, it is said, of starvation in the island of Ponza (Pontia).

In his designs against the family of Germanicus, Sejanus, if not aided, was not crossed by the aged widow of Augustus. To Agrippina and her children Livia felt, and did not conceal it, all the hatred of a step-mother. The favor which she extended to her eldest son Tiberius, seems not to have included his brother Drusus—assuredly not Drusus' sons. The despotic and dangerous old woman, whom, for her crafty and intriguing spirit, Caligula called "a Ulysses in petticoats"—was more likely to cherish the jealousy of the Cæsar, and applaud the plans of his minister, than to shelter from their cruelty Agrippina and her orphaned children.

The function of Public Informer (delator) is one of the most perplexing features in Cæsarian history. It