Drusus

Drūsus, i, m.,

• a well-known Roman surname in the Livian family, first assumed by the Livius who slew the Gallic general Drausus, Suet. Tib. 3.—Esp.
• • • 1 M. Livius Drusus, uncle of Cato Uticensis, murdered by Q. Varius, Cic. Arch. 3, 6; Vell. 2, 13.—
    • 2 Claudius Drusus Nero, son of Tib. Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla, father of Germanicus, the theme of Hor. C. 4, 4; Suet. Claud. 1; Tac. A. 1, 33.— Hence, Drūsĭānus, a, um, adj.: fossa, Tac. A. 2, 8, or Drūsīnus, a, um, adj.: fossae, a canal on the Lower Rhine, constructed by Drusus, the son of Livia, Suet. Claud. 1.
• —Drūsilla, ae, f., the name of several females of the Livian family.— Esp.
• • • 1 Livia Drusilla, the second wife of Augustus, v. Livius.—
    • 2 Drusilla, daughter of Drusus Germanicus, Tac. A. 6, 15; Suet. Calig. 7; 24 al.

Drūsus, ī, m., Beiname eines Zweiges der Livia gens u. einiger Claudii (zuerst angenommen von einem Livier, als er den feindlichen gallischen Feldherrn getötet hatte, s. Suet. Tib. 3, 2.) – Zu nennen sind hier: M. Livius Drusus, der Oheim des Kato Uticensis, in seinem eigenen Hause von Q. Varius ermordet, weil er mehrere der gracchischen Gesetze zu erneuern suchte, Cic. Arch. 6. Vell. 2, 13 sq. – Claudius Drusus Nero, Sohn der Livia Drusilla u. des Tib. Klaudius Nero, (s. Orelli Hor. carm. 4, 4), Suet. Claud. 1, 1. Tac. ann. 1, 33. – Plur. Drusi, Verg. Aen. 6, 824. – Dav.: A) Drūsiānus u. Drūsīnus, a, um, drusianisch u. drusinisch, fossa Drus., der vom gen. Klaud. Drusus Nero geführte Kanal, der die alte Yssel mit der neuen verband, Tac. ann. 2, 8. Suet. Claud. 1, 2. – B) Drūsilla, ae, f., weibl. Name in der drus. Familie, unter dem bes. bekannt sind: a) Livia Drusilla, s. Līvius. – b) Tochter des Drusus Germanicus, Schwester und Konkubine des Kaligula, Tac. ann. 6, 15. Suet. Cal. 7.

Drūsus, (8) ī, m. , surnom dʼune branche de la gens Livia : Cic. Arch. 6 || surnom de qqes Claudii ; not^t Claudius Drusus Nero, frère de Tibère, père de Germanicus et de lʼempereur Claude : Suet. Claud. 1 ; Tac. Ann. 1, 33.

Drusus

Δροῦσος, the name of a distinguished family of the Livia gens. It is said by Suetonius (Suet. Tib. 3), that the first Livius Drusus acquired the cognomen Drusus for himself and his descendants, by having slain in close combat one Drausus, a chieftain of the enemy. This Livius Drusus, he goes on to say, was propraetor in Gaul, and, according to one tradition, on his return to Rome, brought from his province the gold which had been paid to the Senones at the time when the Capitol was besieged. This account seems to be as little deserving of credit as the story that Camillus prevented the gold from being paid, or obliged it to be restored in the first instance.

Of the time when the first Livius Drusus flourished, nothing more precise is recorded than that M. Livius Drusus, who was tribune of the plebs with C. Gracchus in B. C. 122, was his abnepos. This word, which literally means grandson's grandson, may possibly mean indefinitely a more distant descendant, as atavus in Horace (Hor. Carm. 1.1) is used indefinitely for an ancestor.

Pighius (Annales, i. p. 416) conjectures, that the first Livius Drusus was a son of M. Livius Denter, who was consul in B. C. 302, and that Livius Denter, the son, acquired the agnomen of Drusus in the campaign against the Senones under Cornelius Dolabella, in B. C. 283. He thinks that the descendants of this Livius Denter Drusus assumed Drusus as a family cognomen in place of Denter. There is much probability in this conjecture, if the origin of the name given by Suetonius ne correct; for the Senones were so completely subdued by Dolabella and Domitius Calvinus (Appian, Gall. iv. fr. 11, ed. Schweigh.), that they seem to have been annihilated as an independent people, and we never afterwards read of them as being engaged in war against Rome. On this supposition, however, according to the ordinary duration of human life, M. Livius Drusus, the patronus senatus of B. C. 122, must have been, not the abnepos, but the ad nepos, or grandson's grandson's son, of the first Drusus, and hence Pighius (l.c.) proposes to read in Suetonius ad nepos in place of abnepos.

Suetonius (Suet. Tib. 2) mentions a Claudius Drusus, who erected in his own honour a statue with a diadem at Appii Forum, and endeavoured to get all Italy within his power by overrunning it with his clientelae. If we may judge from the position which this Claudius Drusus occupies in the text of Suetonius, he was not later than P. Claudius Pulcher, who was consul in B. C. 249. It is not easy to imagine any rational origin of the cognomen Drusus in the case of this early Claudius, which would be consistent with the account of the origin of the cognomen given by Suetonius in the case of the first Livius Drusus. The asserted origin from the chieftain Drausus may be, as Bayle (Dictionnaire, s. v. Drusus) surmises, one of those fables by which genealogists strive to increase the importance of families. The connexion of the family of Drusus with the first emperors probably reflected a retrospective lustre upon its republican greatness. (Verg. A. 6.825.)

Drusus

1. M. Livius Drusus, the father, natural or adoptive, of No. 2. (Fast. Capit.)

Drusus

2. M. Livius Drusus Aemilianus, M. F., the father of No. 3. (Fast. Capit.) Some modern writers call him Mamilianus instead of Aemilianus, for transcribers are not agreed as to the correct reading of the Capitoline marbles, which are broken into three fragments in the place where his name is mentioned under the year of his son's consulship. (Compare the respective Fasti of Marliani, the fabricator Goltzius, Sigonius, and Piranesi, ad A. U. C. 606.)

Drusus

3. C. Livius M. AEMILIANI F. M. N. Drusus, was consul in B. C. 147 with P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus. Of his father nothing is known, but it may be inferred with much probability that M. Drusus Aemilianus belonged to the Aemilia gens, and was adopted by some M. Livius Drusus. It is possible, however, that M. Livius Drusus, the grandfather, had by different wives two sons named Marcus, and that one of them was the son of Aemilia, and was called, from his mother, Aemilianus. (Dict. of Ant. p. 641, s. v. Nomen.)

There was a Roman jurist, named C. Livius Drusus, who has, by many writers, been identified with the subject of the present article. Cicero (Tusc. Qu. 5.38) mentions Drusus the jurist before mentioning Cn. Aufidius, and speaks of Drusus as from tradition (accepimus), whereas he remembered having seen Aufidius. The jurist Drusus, in his old age, when deprived of sight, continued to give advice to the crowds who used to throng his house for the purpose of consulting him. Hence it has been rather hastily inferred, that Drusus the jurist was anterior to Aufidius, and was never seen by Cicero, and could not have been the son of the Drusus who was consul in B. C. 147. Others are disposed to identify the jurist with the son, No. 5, and there is certainly no absurdity in supposing the son of one who was consul in B. C. 147 to have died at an advanced age before Cicero (born B. C. 106) happened to meet him, or was old enough to remember him. Seeing, however, that Cicero was an active and inquisitive student at 16, and considering the inferences as to age that may be collected from the years when No. 4 and No. 6, the brother and nephew of No. 5, held offices, the argument founded upon Tusc. Qu. 5.38 seems to be rather in favour of identifying the jurist with our present No. 3; but, in truth, there are not sufficient data to decide the question. (Rutilius, Vitae JCtorum 19; Guil. Grotius, de Vit. JCtorum, 1.4.8.)

The jurist, whether father or son, composed works of great use to students of law (V. Max. 8.7), although his name is not mentioned by Pomponius in the fragment de Origine Juris. There is a passage in the Digest (19. tit. 1. s. 37.1), where Celsus cites and approves an opinion, in which Sex. Aelius and Drusus coincide, to the effect that the seller might bring an equitable action for damages (arbitrium) against the buyer, to recover the expenses of the keep of a slave, whom the buyer, without due cause, had refused to accept. (Maiansius, ad XXX JCtos. ii. p. 35.)

Priscian (Ars Gram. lib. viii. p. 127, ed. Colon. 1528) attributes to Livius the sentence, " Impubes libripens esse non potest, neque antestari." It is probable that the jurist Livius Drusus is here meant, not only from the legal character of the fragment, but because Priscian, whenever he quotes Livius Andronicus or the historian Livy, gives a circumstantial reference to the particular work. (Dirksen, Bruchstücke aus den Schriften der Römischen Juristen, p. 45.)

Drusus

4. M. Livius C. F. M. AEMILIANI N. Drusus, son of No. 3, was tribune of the plebs in the year B. C. 122, when C. Gracchus was tribune for the second time. The senate, alarmed at the progress of Gracchus in the favour of the people, employed his colleague Drusus, who was noble, well educated, wealthy, eloquent, and popular, to oppose his measures and undermine his influence. Against some of the laws proposed by Gracchus, Drusus interposed his veto without assigning any reason. (Appian, App. BC 1.23.) He then adopted the unfair and crooked policy of proposing measures like those which he had thwarted. He steered by the side of Gracchus, merely in order to take the wind out of his sails. Drusus gave to the senate the credit of every popular law which he proposed, and gradually impressed the populace with the belief that the optimates were their best friends. The success of this system earned for him the designation patronus senatus. (Suet. Tib. 3.) Drusus was able to do with applause that which Gracchus could not attempt without censure. Gracchus was blamed for proposing that the Latins should have full rights of citizenship. Drusus was lauded for proposing that no Latin should be dishonoured by rods even in time of actual military service. Gracchus, in his agrarian laws, reserved a rent payable into the public treasury, and was traduced. Drusus relieved the grants of public land from all payment, and was held up as a patriot. Gracchus proposed a law for sending out two colonies, and named among the founders some of the most respectable citizens. He was abused as a popularity-hunter. Drusus introduced a law for establishing no fewer than twelve colonies, and for settling 3000 poor citizens in each. He was applauded, and was assisted in carrying the measure. These twelve colonies are supposed by Niebuhr (Hist. of Rome, iv. p. 349) to be the same with those mentioned by Cicero (pro Caocina, 35). In all these measures, the conduct of Drusus was seen to be exempt from sordid motives of gain. He took no part in the foundation of colonies, reserved no portions of land to himself, and left to others the management of business in which the disbursement of money was concerned. Gracchus, on the other hand, was anxious to have the handling of money, and got himself appointed one of the founders of an intended colony at Carthage. The populace, ever suspicious in pecuniary matters, when they saw this, thought that all his fine professions were pretexts for private jobs. Besides, Drusus cleverly took advantage of his absence to wound him through the side of Fulvius Flaccus. Flaccus was hot-headed and indiscreet, and Drusus contrived to throw the obloquy of his indiscretion and misconduct upon Gracchus. Thus was the policy of the senate and Drusus completely successful. Gracchus was outbidden and discredited, and his power was for ever gone. (Plut. C. Gracchus, 8-11; Cic. Brut. 28, de Fin. 4.24.)

The policy and legislation of Drusus in his tribunate bear some resemblance to those of his son, who was killed in his tribunate 31 years afterwards. Hence it is sometimes difficult to determine whether passages in the classical authors relate to the father or the son, and in some cases it is probable that the father and the son have been confounded by ancient writers. In a case of doubt the presumption is that the son [No. 6] is intended, since his tragical death, followed close by the Marsic war, has rendered the year of his tribunate a conspicuous era in Roman history.

We read nothing more of Drusus, until he obtained the consulship in B. C. 112. He probably passed through the regular gradations of office as aedile and praetor. He may be the praetor urbanus, whose decision, that an action of mandatum lay against an heir as such, is mentioned ad Heren. 2.13, and he may be the Drusus praetor, an instance of whose legal astuteness is recorded in a letter of Cicero to Atticus (vetus illud Drusi praetoris, &c., 7.2); but we should rather be disposed to refer these passages to some member of the family (perhaps No. 2 or No. 1), who attained the praetorship, but did not reach the higher office of consul.

Drusus obtained Macedonia as his province, and proceeded to make war upon the Scordisci. He was so successful in his military operations, that he not only repelled the incursions of this cruel and formidable enemy upon the Roman territory in Macedonia, but drove them out of part of their own country, and even forced them to retire from Thrace to the further or Dacian side of the Danube. (Florus, 3.4.) Upon his return, he was welcomed with high honours (Liv. Epit. lxiii.), and his victory was received with the warmer satisfaction from its following close upon the severe defeat of C. Cato in the same quarter. (Dio Cass. Frag. Peiresc. 93, ed. Reimar, i. p. 40.) It is very likely that he obtained a triumph, for Suetonius (Suet. Tib. 3) mentions three triumphs of the Livia gens, and only two (of Livius Salinator) are positively recorded. There is, however, no proof that Dusus triumphed. The Fasti Triumphales of this year are wanting, and Vaillant (Num. Ant. Fam. Rom. ii. p. 52) has been misled into the quotation of a conjectural supplement as an authority. In a passage in Pliny (Plin. Nat. 33.50), which has been relied upon as proving that Drusus triumphed, the words triumphalem senem do not refer to the Drusus mentioned immediately before.

Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. vii. p. 119, ed. Reiske) mentions a Drusus who died in his office of censor, upon which his colleague, Aemilius Scaurus, refused to abdicate, until the tribunes of the plebs ordered him to be taken to prison. It is highly probable that our Drusus is intended, and that his censorship fell in the year B. C. 109, when the remains of the Capitoline marbles shew that one of the censors died during his magistracy. (Fasti, p. 237, Basil. 1559.)

Drusus

5. C. Livius C. F. M. AEMILIANI N. Drusus, was a son of No. 3. Pighius (Annales, 3.20), contrary to all probability, confounds him with Livius Drusus Claudianus, the grandfather of Tiberius. [See No. 7.] He approached his brother, No. 4, in the influence of his character and the weight of his eloquence. (Cic. Brut. 28.) Some have supposed him to be the jurist C. Livius Drusus. referred to by Cicero (Tusc. Qu. 5.38) and Valerius Maximus (8.7), but see No. 3. Diodorus (Script. Vet. Nov. Coll. ii. p. 115, ed. Mai) mentions the great power which the two Drusi acquired by the nobility of their family, their good feeling, and their courteous demeanour. It seems to have been thought, that they could do anything they liked, for, after a certain law had been passed, some one wrote under it in jest, " This law binds all the people but the two Drusi." It is far more likely that two brothers than that, as Mai supposes, a father and son (viz. No. 4 and No. 6) should be thus referred to; and, from the context, we doubt not that No. 4 and the present No. 5, contemporaries of the Gracchi, are designated.

Drusus

6. M. Livius Drusus, M. F. C. N., was a son of No. 4. His ambitious temper manifested itself with precocious activity. From boyhood he never allowed himself a holiday, but, before he was of an age to assume the toga virilis, he frequented the forum, busied himself in trials, and sometimes exerted his influence so effectually with the judices as to induce them to give sentence according to his wish. (Senec. de Brev. Vit. 6.) His character and morals in his youth were pure and severe (Cic. de Off. 1.30), but a self-sufficient conceit was conspicuous in his actions. When quaestor in Asia, he would not wear the insignia of office: " ne quid ipso esset insignius." (Aurel. Vict. de Vir. Ill. 66.) When he was building a house upon the Palatine mount, the architect proposed a plan to prevent it from being overlooked. " No," said he, " rather construct it so that all my fellow-citizens may see everything I do." This house has a name in history : it passed from Drusus into the family of Crassus, and can be traced successively into the hands of Cicero, Censorinus, and Rutilius Sisenna. (Vell. Paterc. 2.15.) Velleius Paterculus slightly differs from Plutarch (Reip. Gerend. Praecepta, ix. p. 194, ed. Reiske) in relating this anecdote, and the reply to the architect has been erroneously attributed to an imaginary Julius Drusus Publicola, from a false reading in Plutarch of Ἰουλιος. for Αιούϊος, and a false translation of the epithet ὁ δημαγωγός

Drusus inherited a large fortune from his father, the consul; but, in order to obtain political influence, he was profuse and extravagant in his expenditure. The author of the treatise de Viris Illustribus, usually ascribed to Aurelius Victor, says that, from want of money, he sometimes stooped to unworthy practices. Magulsa, a prince of Mauretania, had taken refuge in Rome from the resentment of Bocchus, and Drusus was induced by a bribe to betray him to the king, who threw the wretched prince to an elephant. When Adherbal, son of the king of the Numidians (Micipsa), fled to Rome, Drusus kept him a prisoner in his house, hoping that his father would pay a ransom for his release. These two statements occur in no other author, and the second is scarcely reconcilable with the narrative of Sallust. The same author states, that Drusus was aedile, and gave magnificent games, and that when Remmius, his colleague in the aedileship, suggested some measure for the benefit of the commonwealth, he asked sarcastically, "What's our commonwealth to you?" Pighius, however (Annales, iii. p. 82), and others, considering that M. Drusus, the son, died in his tribuneship--an office usually held before that of aedile--are of opinion, that Aurelius Victor has confounded several events of the father's life with those of the son.

It appears from Cicero (Cic. Brut. 62, pro Mil. 7), that Drusus was the uncle of Cato of Utica, and the great-uncle of Brutus. These relationships were occasioned by successive marriages of his sister Livia. We agree with Manutius (ad Cic. de Fin. 3.2) in thinking, in opposition to the common opinion, that she was first married to Q. Servilius Caepio [Caepio, No. 8, p. 535a.], whose daughter was the mother of Brutus, that she was divorced from Caepio, and then married the father of Cato of Utica; for Cato, according to Plutarch (Cato Min. 1) was brought up in the house of his uncle Drusus along with the children of Livia and Caepio, who was then living, and who survived Drusus. (Liv. Epit. lxxiii.) As Cato of Utica was born B. C. 95 (Plut. Cat. Mi. 2, 3, 73; Liv. Epit. 114; Sallust. Catil. 54), and as Drusus, who died B. C. 91, survived his sister, we must suppose, unless her first marriage was to Caepio, that an extraordinary combination of events was crowded into the years B. C. 95-91 : viz. 1st. the birth of Cato; 2nd. the death of his father; 3rd. the second marriage of Livia; 4th. the births of at least three children by her second husband; 5th. her death; 6th. the rearing of her children in the house of Drusus; 7th. the death of Drusus.

Q. Servilius Caepio was the rival of Drusus in birth, fortune, and influence. (Flor. 3.17 ) Originally they were warm friends. As Caepio married Livia, the sister of Drusus, so Drusus married Servilia, the sister of Caepio (γάμων ἐπαλλαγή, Dio Cass. Fray. Peiresc. 110, ed. Reimar. vol. i. p. 45). Dio Cassius may be understood to refer to domestic causes of quarrel; but, according to Pliny, a rupture was occasioned between them from competition in bidding for a ring at a public auction ; and to this small event have been attributed the struggles of Drusus for pre-eminence, and ultimately the kindling of the social war. (Plin. Nat. 33.6.) The mutual jealousy of the brothersin-law proceeded to such great lengths, that on one occasion Drusus declared he would throw Caepio down the Tarpeian rock. (De Vir. Ill. 66.)

Drusus was early an advocate of the party of the optimates. When Saturninus was killed in B. C. 100, he was one of those who took up arms for the safety of the state (Cic. pro Rabir. Perd. reo. 7), and supported the consul Marius, who was now, for once, upon the side of the senate. (Liv. Epit. xix.) In the dispute between the senate and the equites for the possession of the judicia, Caepio took the part of the equites, while Drusus advocated the cause of the senate with such earnestness and impetuosity, that, like his father, he seems to have been termed patronus senatus. (Cic. pro Mil. 7; Diod. xxxvi. fr. fin. ed. Bipont. x. p. 480.) The equites had now, by a lex Sempronia of C. Gracchus, enjoyed the judicia from B. C. 122, with the exception of the short interval during which the lex Servilia removed the exclusion of the senate [see p. 880a]. It must be remembered that the Q. Servilius Caepio who proposed this short-lived law (repealed by another lex Servilia of Servilius Glaucia) was perhaps the father of Q. Servilius Caepio, the brother-in-law of Drusus, but was certainly a different person and of different politics. [See p. 535a.] The equites abused their power, as the senate had done before them. As farmers of the public revenues, they committed peculation and extortion with an habitual impunity, which assumed in their own view the complexion of a right. When accused, they were tried by accomplices and partizans, and " it must be a hard winter when wolf devours wolf." On the other hand, in prosecutions against senators of the opposite faction, the equites had more regard to political animosity than to justice. Even in ordinary cases, where party feeling was not concerned, they allowed their judicial votes to be purchased by bribery and corrupt influence. The recent unjust condemnation of Rutilius Rufus had weakened the senate and encouraged the violence of the equites, when, in B. C. 91, Drusus was made tribune of the plebs in the consulate of L. Marcius Philippus and Sex. Julius Caesar. (Flor. l.c.)

Under the plea of an endeavour to strengthen the party of the senate, Drusus determined to gain over the plebs, the Latins, and the Italic socii. The ardour of his zeal was increased by the attack which his enemy Caepio directed against the nobility by prosecuting some of their leaders. From the conflicting statements and opposite views of Roman writers as to his motives and conduct, his character is in some respectsa problem. Even partyspirit was at fault in estimating a man whose measures were regarded as revolutionary, while his political sentiments were supposed to be profoundly aristocratic. Velleius Paterculus (2.13; compare what is said by the Pseudo-Sallust in Epist. 2 ad C. Caes. de Rep. Ord.) applauds him for the tortuous policy of attempting to wheedle the mob, by minor concessions to their demands, into a surrender of important claims to the optimates; but we cannot help thinking (comp. Flor. 3.18; Liv. Epit. lxx. lxxi.), that he cared as much for self as for party--that personal rivalries mingled with honest plans for his country's good and enlightened views above the capacity of the times--that, at last, he was soured by disappointment into a dangerous conspirator, --and that there were moments when visions of sole domination floated, however indistinctly, before his eyes. He was eager in the pursuit of popularity, and indefatigable in the endeavour to gain and exercise influence. It was one of the objects of his restless and self-sufficient spirit to become the arbiter of parties, and he acted from immediate impulses, without considering nicely the result of his conduct. There was deep meaning in the witticism of Granius, the public crier, who, when Drusus saluted him in the ordinary phrase, " Quid agis, Grani? " asked in reply, " Immo vero, tu Druse, quid agis?" (Cic. pro Planc. 14.)

To conciliate the people, Drusus renewed several of the propositions and imitated the measures of the Gracchi. He proposed and carried laws for the distribution of corn, or for its sale at a low price, and for the assignation of public land (leges frumentariae, agrariae, Liv. Epit. lxxi.). The establishment of several colonies in Italy and Sicily, which had long been voted, was now effected. (Appian, de Bell. Civ. 1.35.) Nothing could surpass the extravagance of the largesses to which he persuaded the senate to accede. (Tac. Ann. 3.27.) He declared that he had been so bountiful, that nothing was left to be given, by any one else, but air and dirt, " coelum ant coenum. " (De Vir. Ill. 66; Flor. 3.17.) It was probable the exhaustion of the public treasury produced by such lavish expenditure that induced him to debase the silver coinage by the alloy of one-eighth part of brass. (Plin. Nat. 33.18.) Presumptuous, arrogant, and rash, he assumed a station to which he was not entitled by authority and experience, notwithstanding the splendour of his birth and the power of his eloquence. But his energy went far(as energy like his always will do) in silencing opposition, and begetting submission to his will. Once, when the senate invited his attendance at their place of meeting, he sent a message in answer : " Let them come to me--to the Curia Hostilia, near the Rostra," and they were so abject as to obey. (V. Max. 9.5.2: " Cum senatus ad eum misisset, ut in Curiam veniret. 'Quare non potius,' inquit, 'ipse in Hostiliam, propinquam Rostris, id est, ad me venit?" This passage is remarkable for the opposition between Curia and Hostilia; whereas it is ordinarily stated that, in classical writers, Curia, without more, denotes the Curia Hostilia.)

Such conduct naturally produced a reaction of feeling among some proud men, who had a high sense of their own importance, saw the false position in which their party was placed, and disliked pushing effrontery. In Cicero (Cic. de Orat. 3.1, 2) we find a description of a scene full of turbulence and indecorum, where Philippus, the consul, inveighs against the senate, while Drusus and the orator Crassus withstand him to the face. From the known politics of the persons concerned, this scene is exceedingly difficult to explain; but we Lelieve that it occurred at a period in the career of Drusus when he had not yet identified himself with the formidable cabals of the Latins and Italians, and when, in spite of his popular measures, he still retained the confidence of the senate, from his resistance to the equites. We believe that the haughty Philippus upbraided the senate for their complaisance to Drusus in favouring the plebs, and that it was the unmeasured rebuke of the aristocrat which roused the esprit de corps of the senator Crassus. We know from other sources that Philippus opposed the passing of the agrarian laws of Drusus, and interrupted the tribune while he was haranguing the assembly; whereupon Drusus sent one of his clients, instead of the regular viator, to arrest the consul. (V. Max. 9.5.2; Florus, 3.17, and Auct. de Vir. Ill. vary slightly from each other and from Valerius Maximus.) This order was executed with extreme violence, and Philippus was collared so tightly, that the blood started from his nostrils; upon which Drusus, taunting the luxurious epicurism of the consul, cried out, " Psha! it is only the gravy of thrushes." (Schottus, ad Auct. de Vir. Ill. 66.)

Having thus bought over the people (who used to rise and shout when he appeared), and having, by promising to procure for them all the rights of citizenship, induced the Latini and Italic socii to assist him, Drusus was able, by force and intimidation, to carry through his measures concerning the judicia (" legem judiciariam pertulit," Liv. Epit. lxxi.). Some writers, following Liv. Epit. lxxi., speak of his sharing the judicia between the senate and the equites; but his intention seems to have been entirely to transfer the judicia to the senate; for, without any positive exclusion of the equites and lower orders, as long as senators were eligible, it is probable that no names but those of senators would be placed by the praetors upon the lists of judices. (Puchta, Institutionen, 1.71.) We accept the circumstantial statement of Appian (App. BC 1.35), according to which the law of Drusus provided that the senate, now reduced below the regular number of 300, should be reinforced by the introduction of an equal number of new menmbers selected from the most distinguished of the equites; and enacted that the senate, thus doubled in number, should possess the judicia. The law seems to have been silent as to any express exclusion of the equites; but it might be implied from its language that such exclusion was contemplated, and, so far as its positive enactment referred to the new members, they were entitled to be placed on the list of judices, qua senators, not qua equites. Nor was there any prospective regulation for supplying from the equestrian order vacancies in the judicial lists. To this part of the law was added a second part, appointing a commission of inquiry into the bribery and corruption which the equites had practised while in exclusive possession of the judicia. (Appian, l.c.; compare Cic. pro Rabir. Post. 7, pro Cluent. 56.)

After Drusus had so far succeeded, the reaction set in rapidly and strongly. The Romans, who were usually led as much by feeling as by calculation, required to be managed with peculiar tact and delicacy; but Drusus had a rough way of going to work, which, even in the moment of success, set in array against him the vanity and prejudices of public men; and in his measures themselves there appeared to be a species of trimming, which, while it seemed intended to displease none, was ultimately found to be unsatisfactory to all. It may be that he was actuated by a single-minded desire to do equal justice to all, and to remedy abuses wherever they might lurk, careless of the offence which his reforms might give; but even his panegyrists among the ancients do not view his character in this light. Whatever else were his motives (and we believe them to have been complex--multa varie moliebatur), he appeared to be the slave of many masters. Mob-popularity is at best but fleeting, and those of the people who had not been favoured with the distribution of lands were discontented at the luck of their more fortunate competitors. The Roman populace hated the foreigners who were striving to obtain equal franchise with themselves. The great body of the equites, who were very numerous, felt all the invi-diousness of raising a select few to the rank of senators, while the rest would not only suffer the mortification of exclusion, but be practically deprived of that profitable share which they had previously enjoyed in the administration of justice. But worse than all was the apprehended inquisition into their past misdeeds. The senators viewed with dislike the proposed elevation to their own level of nearly 300 equites, now far below them in rank, and dreaded the addition of a heterogeneous mass, which was likely to harmonize badly with the ancient body. Moreover, they now suspected the ambition of Drusus, and did not choose to accept the transfer of the judicia at his hands. The Latins and socii demanded of him with stern importunity the price of their recent assistance ; and their murmurs at delay were deepened when they saw the Roman populace dividing the ager publicus, and depriving them of those possessions which they had hitherto occupied by stealth or force. They even began to tremble for their private property. (Appian, l.c.; Auct. de Vir. Ill. 66.)

In this state of affairs, the united dissatisfaction of all parties enabled the senate, upon the proposition of Philippus, who was augur as well as consul, to undo, by a few short lines, what had lately been done. (Cic. de Leg. 2.6, 12.) The senate now, in pursuance of that anomalous constitution which practically allowed a plurality of supreme legislative powers, voted that all the laws of Drusus, being carried against the auspices. were null and void from the beginning. "Senatui videtur, M. Drusi legibus populum non teneri." (Cic. pro Cornel. fr. ii. vol. iv. P. ii. p. 449; Asconius, in Cic. pro Cornel. p. 68, ed. Orelli.) The lex Caecilia Didia required that a law, before being put to the vote in the comitia, should be promulgated for three nundinae (17 days), and directed that several distinct clauses should not be put to the vote in a lump. If we may trust the suspected oration pro Domo (100.16 and 100.20), the senate resolved that, in the passing of the laws of Drusus, the provisions of the lex Caecilia Didia had not been observed.

It is difficult to suppose that the largesses of corn and land, so far as they had been carried into effect, were revoked; but probably the establishment of colonies was stopped in its progress, and undoubtedly the lex judiciaria was completely defeated. From the expressions of some ancient authors, it might be imagined that the lex judiciaria had never been carried; but this is to be explained by considering that, during its short apparent existence, it never came into actual operation, and that, according to the resolution of the senate, it was null ab initio for want of essential pre-requisites of validity. From the narrative of Velleius Paterculus (2.13, 14) and Asconius (l.c.), it might be inferred (contrary to the opinion of several modern scholars), that it was in the lifetime of Drusus that the senate declared his laws null, and the fact is now established by a fragment of Diodorus Siculus brought to light by Mai (Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, ii. p. 116); from which we learn that Drusus told the senate, that he could have prevented them from passing their resolutions, had he chosen to exert his power, and that the hour would come when they would rue their suicidal act. As to the precise order of these events, which took place within the period of a few months, we are in want of detailed information. The 70th and 71st books of Livy are unfortunately lost, and the abbreviated accounts of minor historians are not always easily reconcilable with each other and with the incidental notices contained in other classical authors.

Drusus, who had been sincere in his promises, felt grievously the difficulty of performing them. Weariness and vexation of spirit overtook him. He found that, with all his followers, he had not one true friend. He repented him of his unquiet life, and longed for repose; but it was too late to retreat. The monstrous powers that he had brought into life urged him onward, and he became giddy with the prospect of danger and confusion that lay before him. (Senec. de Brev. Vit. 6.) Then came the news of strange portents and fearful auguries from all parts of Italy to perplex and confound his superstitious soul. (Oros. 5.18; Obsequ. 114. He was himself an augur and pontifex; pro Domo. 46. Hence the expression sodalis meus in the mouth of Cotta, Cic. de Nat. Deor. 3.32.) Then came the exasperating thought of the ingratitude of the senate, and the determination to make them feel the energy which they had slighted. Thus agitated by uneasy passions, he scrupled not to meddle with the two-edged weapons of intrigue, sedition, and conspiracy, which he had neither force nor skill to wield. He was like the Gracchi with their lustre faded. (Gracchorum obsoletus nitor, Auct. ad Heren. 4.34.) He adopted the factious practice (of which the example was first set by C. Gracchus), of holding separate meetings of his followers, and he made distinctions among them according to their supposed fidelity. One he would admit to a private interview, another he would invite to a conference where several were present, and there were some whom he did not ask to attend except on those occasions when all his adherents were summoned in a body. In furtherance of a common object, the secret conclave plotted, and the more general association worked and organized, while the crowded meeting and the armed mob intimidated by the demonstration and exercise of physical force. (Senec. de Benef. 6.34; Liv. Epit. lxxxi.) In Mai's extracts from Diodorus (l.c.) is preserved a remarkable oath (unaccountably headed ὅρκος Φιλίππου), by which members of the association bound themselves together. After calling by name on the Roman gods, demigods, and heroes, the oath proceeds: " I swear that I will have the same friends and foes with Drusus; that I will spare neither substance, nor parent, nor child, nor life of any, so it be not for the good of Drusus and of those who have taken this oath; that if I become a citizen by the law of Drusus, I will hold Rome my country, and Drusus my greatest benefactor; and that I will administer this oath to as many more as I be able. So may weal or woe be mine as I keep this oath or not." The ferment soon became so great, that the public peace was more than threatened. Standards and eagles were seen in the streets, and Rome was like a battlefield, in which the contending armies were encamped. (Florus, l.c.)

The end could not much longer be postponed. At a public assembly of the tribes, when the impatience and disappointment of the multitude were loudly expressed, Drusus was seized with a fainting fit, and carried home apparently lifeless. Some said that his illness was a pretence to gain time. It did in fact give him a brief respite, and public prayers for his recovery were put up throughout Italy. Some said, that the fit was occasioned by an overdose of goat's-blood, which he had swallowed, in order, by his pale countenance, to accredit a report that Caepio had attempted to poison him. Feverish anxiety, coupled with great mental and bodily exertion, had probably brought on a return of his old disorder, epilepsy, which was supposed to have been cured by a voyage he once made to Anticyra, for the purpose of taking hellebore upon the spot where it grew. (De Vir. Ill. 66; Plin. Nat. 28.41, 25.21; Gel. 17.15.)

Affairs now approached a crisis. The social war was manifestly bursting into flame; and the consuls, looking upon Drusus as a chief conspirator, resolved to meet his plots by counterplots. He knew his danger, and, whenever he went into the city, kept a strong body-guard of attendants close to his person. The accounts of his death vary in several particulars. Appian says, that the consuls invited a party of Etruscans and Umbrians into the city to waylay him under pretence of urging their claims to citizenship; that he became afraid to appear abroad, and received his partizans in a dark passage in his house; and that, one evening at dusk, when dismissing the crowds who attended, he suddenly cried out that he was wounded, and fell to the ground with a leather-cutter's knife sticking in his groin. The writer de Viris Illustribus relates that, at a meeting on the Alban mount, the Latins conspired to kill Philippus; that Drusus, though he warned Philippus to beware, was accused in the senate of plotting against the consul's life; and that he was stabbed upon entering his house on his return from the Capitol. (Compare also Vell. Paterc. 2.14.)

Assassinated as he was in his own hall, the image of his father was sprinkled with his blood; and, while he was dying, he turned to those who surrounded him, and asked, with characteristic arrogance, based perhaps upon conscious honesty of purpose, " Friends and neighbours, when will the commonwealth have a citizen like me again ?" Though he was cut off in the flower of manhood, no one considered his death premature. It was even rumoured that, to escape from inextricable embarrassments, he had died by his own hand. The assassin was never discovered, and no attempts were made to discover him. Caepio and Philippus (Ampelius, 26) were both suspected of having suborned the crime; and when Cicero (de Nat. Deor. 3.33) accuses Q. Varius of the murder, he probably does not mean that it was the very hand of Varius which perpetrated the act.

Cornelia, the mother of Drusus, a matron worthy of her illustrious name, was present at the deathscene, and bore her calamity--a calamity the more bitter because unsweetened by vengeance--with the same high spirit, says Seneca (Cons. ad Marc. 16), with which her son had carried his laws.

After the fall of Drusus, his political opponents treated his death as a just retribution for his injuries to the state. This sentiment breathes through a fragment of a speech of C. Carbo, the younger (delivered B. C. 90), which has been celebrated by Cicero (Orator, 63) for the peculiarity of its trochaic rythm: " O Marce Druse (patrem appello), tu dicere solebas saeram esse rempublieam : quicumque eam violavissent, ab omnibus esse ei poenas persolutas. Patris dictum sapiens temeritas fili comprobavit." (Niebuhr, History of Rome, vol. iv. Lecture xxxii.; Bayle, Dict. s. v. Drusus; De Brosses, Vie du Consul Philippe in Mémoires de l' Académie des Inscriptions, xxvii. p. 406.)

Drusus

7. Livius Drusus Claudianus, the father of Livia, who was the mother of the emperor Tiberius. He was one of the gens Claudia, and was adopted by a Livius Drusus. (Suet. Tib. 3; Vell. Paterc. 2.75.) It was through this adoption that the Drusi became connected with the imperial family. Pighius (Annales, iii. p. 21), by some oversight which is repugnant to dates and the ordinary laws of human mortality, makes him the adopted son of No. 3, and confounds him with No. 5, and, in this error, has been followed by Vaillant. (Num. Ant. Fam. Rom. 2.51.) There is no such inconsistency in the supposition that he was adopted by No. 7, who is spoken of by Suetonius as if he were an ancestor of Tiberius. (Augustinus, Fam. Rom. (Livii) p. 77; Fabretti, Inscr. c. 6, No. 38.) The father of Livia, after the death of Caesar, espoused the cause of Brutus and Cassius, and, after the battle of Philippi, being proscribed by the conquerors, he followed the example of others of his own party, and killed himself in his tent. (Dio Cass 48.44; Vell. Paterc. 2.71.) It is likely that he is the Drusus who, in B. C. 43, encouraged Decimus Brutus in the vain hope that the fourth legion and the legion of Mars, which had fought under Caesar, would go over to the side of his murderers. (Cic. ad Fanm. 11.19.2.)

In other parts of the correspondence of Cicero, the name Drusus occurs several times, and the person intended may be, as Manutius conjectured, identical with the father of Livia. In B. C. 59, it seems that a lucrative legation was intended for a Drusus, who is called, perhaps in allusion to some discreditable occurrence, the Pisaurian. (Ad Att. 2.7.3.) A Drusus, in B. C. 54, was accused by Lucretius of praevaricatio, or corrupt collusion in betraying a cause which he had undertaken to prosecute. Cicero defended Drusus, and he was acquitted by a majority of four. The tribuni aerarii saved him, though the greater part of the senators and equites were against him; for though by the lex Fufia each of the three orders of judices voted separately, it was the majority of single votes, not the majority of majorities, that decided the judgment. (Ad Att. 4.16. §§ 5, 8, ib. 15.9, ad Qu. Fr. 2.16.3. As to the mode of counting votes, see Ascon. in Cic. pro Mil. p. 53, ed. Orelli.) In B. C. 50, M. Caelius Rufus, who was accused of an offence against the Scantinian law, thinks it ridiculous that Drusus, who was then probably praetor, should be appointed to preside at the trial. Upon this ground it has been imagined that there was some stigma of impurity upon the character of Drusus. (Ad Fam. 8.12.3, 14.4.) He possessed gardens, which Cicero was very anxious to purchase. (Ad Att. 12.21.2, 22.3, 23.3, 13.26.1.)

Drusus

8. M. Livius Drusus Libo was probably aedile about B. C. 28, shortly before the completion of the Pantheon, and may be the person who is mentioned by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 36.15. s. 24) as having given games at Rome when the theatre was covered by Valerius, the architect of Ostium. He was consul in B. C. 15. As his name denotes, he was originally a Scribonius Libo, and was adopted by a Livius Drusus. Hence he is supposed to have been adopted by Livius Drusus Claudianus [No. 7], whose name, date, want of male children, and political associations with the party opposed to Caesar, favour the conjecture. He is also supposed to have been the father of the Libo Drusus, or Drusus Libo [No. 10], who conspired against Tiberius. As Pompey the Great would appear from Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 2.27) to have been the proavus of the conspirator, Scribonia his amita, and the young Caesars (Caius and Lucius) his consobrini, Drusus Libo, the father, is supposed to have marrried a granddaughter of Pompey. Still there are difficulties in the pedigree, which have perplexed Lipsius, Gronovius, Ryckius, and other learned commentators on the cited passage in Tacitus. M. de la Nauze thinks that the father was a younger brother of Scribonia, the wife of Augustus, and that he married his grandniece, the daughter of Sextus Pompeius. According to this explanation, he was about 26 years younger than his elder brother, L. Scribonius Libo, who was consul B. C. 34, and whose daughter was married to Sextus Pompeius. (D. C. 48.16 ; Appian, App. BC 5.139.)

There is extant a rare silver coin of M. Drusus Libo, bearing on the obverse a naked head, supposed by some to be the head of his natural, by others of his adoptive, father. On the reverse is a sella curulis, between cornucopiae and branches of olive, with the legend M. Livi Drusus Libo, L. F., headed by the words Ex. S.C. It may be doubted whether the letters L. F. do not denote that Lucius was the praenomen of the adoptive father. (Morell. Thes. Num. ii. p. 586; Drumann's Rom. iv. p. 591, n. 63; De la Nauze, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxxv. p. 600.)

Drusus

9. Livia Drusilla [Livia.]

Drusus

10. L. Scribonius Libo Drusus, or, as he is called by Velleius Paterculus (2.130), Drusus Libo, is supposed to have been the son of No. 8, to which article we refer for a statement of the difficulty experienced by commentators in attempting to explain his family connexions. Firmius Catus, a senator, in A. D. 16, taking advantage of the facility and stupidity of his disposition, his taste for pleasure and expense, and his family pride, induced him to seek empire with its attendant wealth, and to consult soothsayers and magicians as to his chances of success. He was betrayed by Catus through Flaccus Vescularius to the emperor Tiberius, who nevertheless made him praetor, and continued to receive him at table without any mark of suspicion or resentment. At length he was openly denounced by Fulcinius Trio, for having required one Junius to summon shades from the infernal regions. Hereupon he strove at first to excite compassion by a parade of grief, illness, and supplication. As if he were too un well to walk, he was carried in a woman's litter to the senate on the day appointed for opening the prosecution, and stretched his suppliant hands to the emperor, who received him with an unmoved countenance, and, in stating the case to be proved against him, affected a desire neither to suppress nor to exaggerate aught. Finding that there was no hope of pardon, he put an end to his own life, though his aunt Scribonia had tried in vain to dissuade him from thus doing another's work; but he thought that to keep himself alive till it pleased Tiberius to have him slain would rather be doing another's work. Even, after his death, the prosecution was continued by the emperor. His property was forfeited to his accusers. His memory was dishonoured, and public rejoicings were voted upon his death. Cn. Lentulus proposed that thenceforth no Scribonius should assume the cognomen Drusus. (Tac. Ann. 2.27_32; Suet. Tib. 25; D. C. 7.15; Senec. Epist. 70.)

Drusus

11. Nero Claudius Drusus (commonly called by the moderns Drusus Senior, to distinguish him from his nephew, the son of Tiberius), had originally the praenomen Decimus, which was afterwards exchanged for Nero; and, after his death, received the honourable agnomen Germanicus, which is appended to his name on coins. Hence care should be taken not to confound him with the celebrated Germanicus, his son. His parents were Livia Drusilla (afterwards Julia Augusta) and Tiberius Claudius Nero, and through both of them he inherited the noble blood of the Claudii, who had never yet admitted an adoption into their gens. From the adoption of his maternal grandfather [No. 7] by a Livius Drusus, he became legally one of the representatives of another illustrious race. He was a younger brother of Tiberius Nero, who was afterwards emperor. Augustus, having fallen in love with his mother, procured a divorce between her and her husband, and married her himself. Drusus was born in the house of Augustus three months after this marriage, in B. C. 38, and a suspicion prevailed that Augustus was more than a step-father. Hence the satirical verse was often in men's mouths, Τοῖς εὐτυχοῦσι καὶ τρίμηνα παιδία.

Augustus took up the boy, and sent him to Nero his father, who soon after died, having appointed Augustus guardian to Tiberius and Drusus. (D. C. 48.44; Vell. 2.62; Suet. Aug. 62, Claud. 1; Prudentius, de Simulacro Liviae.)

Drusus, as he grew up, was more liked by the people than was his brother. He was free from dark reserve, and in him the character of the Claudian race assumed its most attractive, as in Tiberius its most odious, type. In everything he did, there was an air of high breeding, and the noble courtesy of his manners was set off by singular beauty of person and dignity of form. He possessed in a high degree the winning quality of always exhibiting to wards his friends an even and consistent demeanour, without capricious alternations of familiarity and distance, and he seemed adapted by nature to sustain the character of a prince and statesman. (Tac. Ann. 6.51; Vell. 4.97.) It was known that he had a desire to see the commonwealth restored, and the people cherished the hope that he would live to give them back their ancient liberties. (Suet. Cl. 1; Tac. Ann. 1.33.) He wrote a letter to his brother, in which he broached the notion of compelling Augustus to resign the empire; and this letter was betrayed by Tiberius to Augustus (Suet. Tib. 50.) But notwithstanding this indication that the affection of Tiberius was either a hollow pretence, or yielded to his sense of duty to Augustus, the brothers maintained during their lives an appearance, at least, of fraternal tenderness, which, according to Valerius Maximus (5.5.3), had only one parallel--the friendship of Castor and Pollux ! In the domestic relations of life, the conduct of Drusus was exemplary. He married the beautiful and illustrious Antonia, a daughter--and, according to the preponderance of authority [Antonia, No. 5], the younger 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 concessus 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. 19, he obtained permission, by a decree of the senate, to fill all magistracies five years before the regular time. (D. C. 54.10.) 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, who 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. (D. C. 54.19.) In the following year he was made quaestor, and sent against the Rhaetians, who were accused of having committed depredations upon Roman travellers and allies of the Romans. The mountainous parts of the country were inhabited by banditti, who levied contributions from the peaceful 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 murdered. 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 his reward. The Rhaetians, after being repulsed from Italy, continued to infest the frontier of Gaul. Tiberius was then despatched to join Drusus, and the brothers jointly defeated some of the tribes of the Rhaeti and Vindelici, while others submitted without 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. (D. C. 54.22 ; Strab. iv. fin.; Florus, 4.12.) These exploits of the young step-sons of Augustus are the theme of a spirited ode of Horace. (Carm. 4.4, ib. 14.)

On the return of Augustus to Rome from Gaul, ill B. C. 13, Drusus 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 measures. (Liv. Epit. cxxxvi. cxxxvii.) The Sicambri and their allies, under pretence of attending an annual festival held at Lyons at the altar of Augustus, had fomented the disaffection of the Gallic chieftains. In the tumults which ensued, their troops had crossed the Rhine. Drusus 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, subdued the Frisians, laid upon them a moderate tribute 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 Frisians. Winter now approached. He returned to Rome, and in B. C. 11 was made praetor urbanus.

Drusus was the first Roman general who penetrated 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. Germ. 34.) From the migratory character of the tribes he subdued, it is not easy to fix their locality with precision; and the difficulty 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 assumed its present form in A. D. 1277; and Wilhelm (Feldzüge der Nero Claudius Drusus im Nördlichen Teutschland) makes the Jahde, westward of the mouth of the Weser, the scene of this misadventure. It is by no means certain by what course Drusus reached the ocean, although it is the general 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 by the Zuydersee. This opinion is confirmed by a passage in Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 2.8), where Germanicus, upon entering the Fossa Drusiana, 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 Ems mentioned by Strabo (vii. init.), in which the Bructeri were defeated, and the subjugation of the islands on the coast, especially Byrchamis (Borkum). (Strab. 7.34; Plin. Nat. 4.13.) Ferdinand Wachter (Ersch und Gruber's Encyclopädie, s. v. Drusus) thinks, that the canal of Drusus must have been too great'a work to be completed at so early a period, and that Drusus could not have had time to run up the Ems. He supposes, that Drusus 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 were 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 dyke or mound (ayger, 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." (Claud. i.) Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 13.53) says, that Paullinus Pompeius, in A. D. 58, completed the agger coercendo Rheno which had been begun by Drusus sixty-three years before; and afterwards relates that Civilis, by destroying the moles formed by Drusus, allowed the waters of the Rhine to rush down and inundate the side of Gaul. (Hist. 5.19.) The most probable opinion seems to be, that Drusus dug a canal from the Rhine near Arnheim to the Yssel, near Doesberg (which bears a trace of his name), and that he also widened the bed of the narrow outlet which at that time connected the Lacus Flevus with the ocean. These were his fossae. With regard to his agger or moles, it is supposed that he partly dammed up the south-western arm of the Rhine (the Vahalis or Waal), in order to allow more water to flow into the north-eastern arm, upon which his canal was situated. But this hypothesis as to the situation of the dyke is very doubtful. Some modern authors hold that the Yssel ran into the Rhine, and did not run into the Zuydersee, and that the chief work of Drusus consisted in connecting the Yssel with a river that ran from Zutphen into the Zuydersee.

He did not tarry long at Rome. On the commencement of spring he returned to Germany, subdued the Usipetes, built a bridge over the Lippe, invaded the country of the Sicambri, and passed on through the territory of the Cherusci as far as the Visurgis (Weser). This he was able to effect from meeting with no opposition from the Sicambri, who were engaged with all their forces in fighting against the Chatti. He would have gone on to cross the Weser had he not been deterred (such were the ostensible reasons) by scarcity of provisions, the approach of winter, and the evil omen of a swarm of bees which settled upon the lances in front of the tent of the praefectus castrorum. (Jul. Obsequens, 1.132.) Ptolemy (2.11) mentions the τρόπαια Δρούσου, which, to judge from the longitude and latitude he assigns to them (viz. long. 33°. 45'. lat. 52°. 45'.), were probably erected on the spot where the army reached the Weser. No doubt Drusus found it prudent to retreat. In retiring, he was often in danger from the stratagems of the enemy, and once was nearly shut up in a dangerous pass near Arbalo, and narrowly escaped perishing with his whole army. But the careless bravery of the Germans saved him. His enemies had already by anticipation divided the spoil. The Cherusci chose the horses, the Suevi the gold and silver, and the Sicambri the prisoners. Thinking that the Romans were as good as taken, after immolating twenty Roman centurions as a preparatory sacrifice, they rushed on without order, and were repulsed. It was now they, and their horses, and sheep, and neck-chains (torques), that were sold by Drusus. Henceforward they confined themselves to distant attacks. (D. C. 54.20; Florus, 4.12; Plin. Nat. 11.18.) Drusus had breathing time to build two castles, one at the confluence of the Luppia and the Aliso, and the other near the country of the Chatti on the Rhine. The latter is probably the modern Cassel over against Mayence. The former is thought by some who identify the Aliso with the Alm, to be the modern Elsen Neuhaus in the district of Paderborn; by others, who identify the Aliso with the Lise, to be Lisborn near Lippstadt in the district of Miinster. Drusus now returned to Rome with the reputation of having conquered several tribes beyond the Rhine (Liv. Epit. cxxxviii.), and received as his reward a vote of the senate granting him an ovation with the insignia of a triumph, and decreeing that at the end of his praetorship he should have proconsular authority. But Augustus would not allow him to bear the title of imperator, which had been conferred upon him by the army in the field.

In the next year, B. C. 10, Drusus was again at his post. The Chatti left the territory which had been assigned to them by the Romans. After having long refused to become allies of the Sicambri, they now consented to join that powerful people; but their united forces were not a match for Drusus. Some of the Chatti he subdued; others he could do no more than harass and annoy. He attacked the Nervii, who were headed by Senectius and Anectius (Liv. Epit. cxxxix); and it was probably in this campaign that he built a castle upon the Taunus. (Tac. Ann. 1.56.) He then returned to Rome with Augustus and Tiberius, who had been in Lugdunensian Gaul, watching the result of the war in Germany, and upon his arrival he was elected to the consulship, which was to commence on the Kalends of January, B. C. 9. Drusus could not rest in peace at Rome. To worry and subjugate the Germans appeared to be the main object of his life. Without waiting for the actual commencement of his consulship (Pedo Albin. 1. 139) he returned to the scene of battle, undeterred by evil forebodings, of which there was no lack. There had been horrible storms and inundations in the winter months, and the lightning had struck three temples at Rome. (Ib. 1. 401; Dio Cass. lv.) He attacked the Chatti, won a hard-fought battle, penetrated to the country of the Suevi, gave the Marcomanni (who were a portion of the Suevi) a signal defeat, and with the arms taken as spoil erected a mound as a trophy. It was now perhaps that he gave the Suevi Vannius as their king. (Tac. Ann. 12.29.) He then turned his forces against the Cherusci, crossed the Weser (?), and carried all before him to the Elbe. (Messalla Corvin. de Aug. Prog. 39; Ped. Albin. 50.17, 113; Aur. Vict. Epit. i.; Orosius, 4.21.) The course that Drusus took on his way to the Elbe cannot be determined. Florus (4.12) speaks of his making roads through (patefecit) the Hercynian forest, and Wilhelm (Feldzüge, &c. p. 50) thinks that he advanced through Thuringia. Drusus endeavoured in vain to cross the Elbe. (Dio Cass. iv. init.; Eutrop. 4.12.) A miraculous event occurred : a woman of dimensions greater than human appeared to him, and said to him, in the Latin tongue, " Whither goest thou, insatiable Drusus ? The Fates forbid thee to advance. Away ! The end of thy deeds and thy life is nigh. " Dio Cassius cannot help believing the fact of the apparition, seeing that the prophetic warning was so soon fulfilled ! Thus deterred by the guardian Genius of the land, Drusus hastened back to the Rhine, after erecting trophies on the banks of the Elbe. Suetonius (Suet. Cl. 1) varies from Dio Cassius in the particulars of this legend, and some of the moderns endeavour to explain it by referring the denunciation to a German prophetess or Wala. On his retreat, wolves howled round the camp, two strange youths appeared on horseback among the intrenchments, the screams of women were heard, and the stars raced about in the sky. (Ped. Albin. 1. 405.) Such were the superstitious fears which oppressed the minds of the Romans, who would rather flatter themselves that they were submitting to supernatural forces than avoiding the human might of dangerous enemies. Between the Elbe and the Sala (probably the Thuringian Saal), death overtook Drusus. According to the Epitoniser of Livy (cxl.) (whose last books contained a full account of these transactions), the horse of Drusus fell upon his leg, and Drusus died of the fracture on the thirtieth day after the accident. Of the numerous writers who mention the death of Drusus, no one besides alludes to the broken leg. Suetonius, whose history is a rich receptacle of scandal, mentions the incredible report that Drusus was poisoned by Augustus, after having disobeyed an order of the emperor for his recall. It is indeed probable enough that the emperor thought he had advanced far enough, and that it would be unwise to exasperate into hostility the inoffensive tribes beyond the Elbe. Tiberius, Augustus, and Livia were in Pavia (Ticinum) when the tidings of the dangerous illness of Drusus reached them. Tiberius with extraordinary speed crossed the Alps, performing a journey of 200 Roman miles through a difficult and dangerous country, without stopping day or night, and arrived in time to close the eyes of his brother. (Plin. Nat. 12.20; V. Max. 5.5; Ped. Albin. 1. 89; Senec. Consol. ad Polyb. 34.) Drusus, though at the point of death, had yet presence of mind enough to command, that Tiberius should be received with all the distinction due to a consular and an imperator.

The summer camp where Drusus died was called Scelerata, the Accursed. The corpse was carried in a marching military procession to the winterquarters of the army at Moguntiacum (Mayence) upon the Rhine, Tiberius walking all the way as chief mourner. The troops wished the funeral to be celebrated there, but Tiberius brought the body to Italy. It was burnt in the field of Mars, and the ashes deposited in the tomb of Augustus, who composed the verses that were inscribed upon his sepulchral monument, and wrote in prose a memorial of his life. In a funeral oration held bv Augustus in the Flaminian Circus, he exclaimed, " I pray the gods to make my adopted sons Caius and Lucius like Drusus, and to vouchsafe to me as honourable a death as his."

Among the honours paid to Drusus the cognomen Germanicus was decreed to him and his posterity. A marble arch with trophies was erected to his memory on the Appian Way, and the representation of this arch may be seen upon extant coins, as for example, in the coin annexed, which was struck by order of Augustus. He had a cenotaph on the Rhine, an altar near the Lippe (Tac. Ann. 2.7), and Eusebius (Chronicon ad A. D. 43) speaks of a Drusus, the nephew of the emperor Claudius, who had a monument at Mayence; but here Drusus Senior seems to be meant, and there is probably a confusion between the son and the father of Gernanicus. It is to the latter that the antiquaries of Mayence refer the Eichelstein and the Drusiloch. Besides the coins of Drusus, several ancient signet-rings with his effigy have been preserved (Lippert, Dactyliothek, i. No. 610-12, ii. No. 241 and No. 255); and among the bronzes found at Herculaneum there is one which is supposed to contain a full-length likeness of Drusus.

In the preceding narrative the dates have been collected from Dio Cassius and the Epitomiser of Livy. In assigning the precise date of events not mentioned by those writers, it is often necessary to have recourse to uncertain conjecture.

The misery that Drusus must have occasioned among the German tribes was undoubtedly excessive. Some antiquaries have imagined that the German imprecation " Das dich der Drus hole" may be traced to the traditional dread of this terrible conqueror. The country was widely devastated, and immense multitudes were carried away from their homes and transplanted to the Gallic bank of the Rhine. Such was the horror occasioned by the advance of the Romans, that the German women often dashed their babes against the ground, and then flung their mangled bodies in the faces of the soldiers. (Oros. 6.21.) Drusus himself possessed great animal courage. In battle he endeavoured to engage in personal combat with the chieftains of the enemy, in order to earn the glory of the spolia opima. He had no contemptible foe to contend against, and though he did not escape unscathed--though, as Varus soon had occasion to feel, the Germanic spirit was not quelled--he certainly accomplished an important work in subjugating the tribes between the Rhine and the Weser, and erecting fortresses to preserve his conquests. According to Florus, he erected upwards of fifty fortresses along the banks of the Rhine, besides building two bridges across that river, and establishing garrisons and guards on the Meuse, the Weser, and the Elbe. He impressed the Germans not less by the opinion of his intellect and character than by the terror of his arms. They who resisted had to dread his unflinching firmness and severity, but they who submitted might rely on his good faith. He did not, like his successor Varus, rouse and inflame opposition by tyrannous insolence or wanton cruelty to the conquered. Whether, educated as he was in scenes of bloodshed, he would have fulfilled the expectations of the people, had he lived to attain the empire, it is impossible to pronounce. He was undoubtedly, in his kind, one of the great men of his day. To require that a Roman general, in the heat of conquest, should shew mercy to people who, according to Roman ideas, were ferocious and dangerous barbarians, or should pause to balance the cost against the glory of success, would be to ask more than could be expected of any ordinary mortal in a similar position. It is not fair to view the characters of one age by the light of another; for he who has lived, says Schiller, so as to satisfy the best of his own time, has lived for all times.

(Bayle, Dict. s. v.; Ferd. Wachter, in Ersch una Gruber's Encyclopädie, s. v.; Wilhelm, die Feldzüge des Nero Claudius Drusus in dem Nördl. Deuschland, Halle, 1826.)

Drusus

12. Tiberius Nero Caesar, the emperor Tiberius. [Tiberius.]

Drusus

13. Germanicus Caesar. [Germanicus.]

Drusus

14. Livia. [Livia ]

Drusus

15. Ti. Claudius Drusus Caesar, the emperor Claudius. [Claudius, p. 775b.]

Drusus

16. Drusus Caesar, commonly called by modern writers Drusus Junior, to distinguish him from his uncle Drusus, the brother of Tiberius (No. 11), was the son of the emperor Tiberius by his first wife, Vipsania, who was the daughter of Agrippa by Pomponia, the daughter of Atticus. Thus, his great-grandfather was only a Roman knight, and his descent on the mother's side was by no means so splendid as that of his cousin Germanicus, who was a grandson of the triumvir Antony and great-nephew of Augustus. He married Livia, the sister of Germanicus, after the death of her first husband, Caius Caesar, the son of Augustus and Scribonia; but his wife was neither so popular nor so prolific as Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus. However, she bore him three children--two sons, who were twins, and a daughter. Of the twins, one died shortly after his father, and the other, Tiberius, was murdered by the emperor Caligula. The daughter, Julia, was first married to Nero, son of Germanicus, and, after his death, she carried the noble blood of the Drusi into the equestrian family of the Rubellii, by uniting herself with C. Rubellius Blandus. (Tac. Ann. 6.27; Juv. Sat. 8.40.) As long as Germanicus lived, the court was divided between the parties of Germanicus and Drusus, and Tiberius artfully held the balance of favour even between them, taking care not to declare which should be his successor. Notwithstanding so many circumstances which were likely to produce alienation and jealousy, it is one of the best traits in the character of Drusus, that he always preserved a cordial friendship for Germanicus, and, upon his death, was kind to his children. (Tac. Ann. 2.43, 4.4.) When Piso, relying on the ordinary baseness of human nature, after the death of Germanicus, endeavoured to secure the protection of Drusus, Drusus replied to his overtures with a studied ambiguity, which appeared to be a lesson of the emperor's craft, for his own disposition was naturally frank and unguarded. (Ann. 3.8.) Though he had not the dissimulation of Tiberius, he was nearly his equal in impurity and in cruelty. He delighted in slaughter, and such was his ferocity, that the sharpest sword-blades took from him the name of Drusine blades. (D. C. 57.13.) He was not only a drunkard himself, but he forced his guests to drink to excess. Plutarch relates how a physician was treated, who was detected in an attempt to keep himself sober by taking bitter-almonds as an antidote to the effects of wine. (Sympos. 1.6.) Tiberius behaved harshly to his son, and often upbraided him, both in public and private, for his debaucheries, mingling threats of disinheritance with his upbraidings.

In A. D. 10 he was quaestor. After the death of Augustus, A. D. 14, (in whose praise he read a funeral oration before the rostra,) he was sent into Pannonia to quell the mutiny of the legions. This task he performed with address, and with the vigour of innate nobility. He ordered the execution of the leaders, and the superstitious fears produced in the minds of the soldiers by an opportune eclipse of the moon aided his efforts. (Tac. Ann. 1.24-30.) After his return to Rome, he was made consul in A. D. 15, and, at the gladiatorial games which he gave in co injunction with Germanicus (his brother by adoption), he made himself so remarkable by his sanguinary taste for vulgarblood, as even to offend the squeamishness of Roman spectators. (Ann. 1.76.) He degraded the dignity of his office by his excesses, and by his fondness for players, whom he encouraged in their factious riots, in opposition to his father's laws. In one of his ordinary ebullitions of passion, he pummelled a Roman knight, and, from this exhibition of his pugilistic propensities, obtained the nickname of Castor. (D. C. 57.14.) In the following year Tiberius sent him to Illyricum, not only to teach him the art of war, and to make him popular with the soldiery, but to remove him from the dissipations of the city. It is not easy to determine the exact scene of his operations, but he succeeded in fomenting dissension among the Germanic tribes, and destroyed the power of Maroboduus. For these successes an ovation was decreed to him by the senate. In the year A. D. 21, he was consul a second time, and the emperor was his colleague. In A. D. 22, he was promoted to the still higher dignity of the " tribunicia potestas," a title devised by Augustus to avoid the obloquy attending the name of king or dictator. By this title subsequent emperors counted the years of their reign upon their coins. It rendered the power of intercession and the sacrosanct character of tribunus plebis compatible with patrician birth. To confer it upon Drusus was clearly to point him out as the intended successor to the empire. (Ann. 3.56.)

On one occasion Drusus, who regarded Sejanus as a rival, gave way to the impetuosity of his temper, and struck the favourite upon the face. The ambition of Sejanus had taught him to aspire to the empire, and to plot against all who stood in his way. The desire of vengeance was now added to the stimulus of ambition. He turned to Livia, the wife of Drusus, seduced her affections, persuaded the adulteress to become the murderer of her hus band, and promised that he would marry her when Drusus was got rid of. Her physician Eudemus was made an accomplice in the conspiracy, and a poison was administered to Drusus by the eunuch Lygdus, which terminated his life by a lingering disease, that was supposed at the time to be the consequence of intemperance. (Suet. Tib. 62.) This occurred in A. D. 23, and was first brought to light eight years afterwards, upon the information of Apicata, the wife of Sejanus, supported by the confessions, elicited by torture, of Eudemus and Lygdus. (Ann. 4.3, 8, 11.)

The funeral of Drusus was celebrated with the greatest external honours, but the people were pleased at heart to see the chance of succession revert to the house of Germanicus. Tiberius bore the death of his only son with a cool equanimity which indicated a want of natural affection.

The annexed coin contains on the obverse the head of Drusus, with Drvsvs Caesar Ti. Aug, F. Divi Aug. N., and on the reverse Pontif. Tribvn. Potest. Iter.

Drusus

17. Nero. [Nero.]

Drusus

18. Drusus, a son of Germanicus and Agrippina. In A. D. 23, he assumed the toga virilis, and the senate went through the form of allowing him to be a candidate for the quaestorship five years before the legal age. (Tac. Ann. 4.4.) Afterwards, as we learn from Suetonius (Caligula, 12), he was made augur. He was a youth of an unamiable disposition, in which cunning and ferocity were mingled. His elder brother Nero was higher in the favour of Agrippina, and stood between him and the hope of succession to the empire. This produced a deep hatred of Nero in the envious and ambitious mind of Drusus. Sejanus, too, was anxious to succeed Tiberius, and sought to remove out of the way all who from their parentage would be likely to oppose his schemes. Though he already meditated the destruction of Drusus, he first chose to take advantage of his estrangement from Nero, and engaged him in the plots against his elder brother, which ended in the banishment and death of that wretched prince. (Ann. 4.60.) Tiberius had witnessed with displeasure the marks of public favour which were exhibited towards Nero and Drusus as members of the house of Germanicus, and gladly forwarded the plans that were contrived for their destruction. He declared in the senate his disapprobation of the public prayers which had been offered for their health, and this indication was enough to encourage accusers. Aemilia Lepida, the wife of Drusus, a woman of the most abandoned character, made frequent charges against him. (Ann. 6.40.) The words which he spoke, when heated with wine or roused to anger, were reported to the palace, and represented by the emperor to the senate, in A. D. 30, in a document which contained every charge that could be collected, heightened by invective. Drusus, like his elder brother, was condemned to death as an enemy of the state; but Tiberius kept him for some years imprisoned in a small chamber in the lowest part of the palace, intending to put him forward as a leader of the people, in case any attempt to seize the supreme command should be made by Sejanus. Finding, however, that a belief prevailed that he was likely to be reconciled to Agrippina and her son, with his usual love of baffling expectations, and veiling his intentions in impenetrable obscurity, he gave orders, in A. D. 33, that Drusus should be starved to death. Drusus lived for nine days after this cruel sentence, having prolonged his miserable existence by devouring the tow with which his mattress was stuffed. (Suet. Tib. 54; Tac. Ann. 6.23)

An exact account had been kept by Actius, a centurion, and Didymus, a freedman, of all that occurred in his dungeon during his long incarceration. In this journal were set down the names of the slaves who had beaten or terrified him when he attempted to leave his chamber, the savage rebukes administered to him by the centurion, his secret murmurs, and the words he uttered when perishing with hunger. Tiberius, after his death, went to the senate, inveighed against the shameful profligacy of his life, his desire to destroy his relatives, and his disaffection to the state; and proceeded, in proof of these charges, to order the journal of his sayings and doings to be read. This was too much, even for the Roman senate, degraded as it was. The senators were struck with astonishment and alarm at the contemptuous indecency of such an exposure by a tyrant formerly so dark, and deep, and vary in the concealment of his crimes; and they interrupted the horrid recital, under the pretence of uttering exclamations of detestation at the misconduct of Drusus. (Ann. 6.24.)

In A. D. 31, a pretender had appeared among the Cyclades and in Greece, whose followers gave out that he was Drusus, the son of Germanicus, scaled from prison, and that he was proceeding to join the armies of his father, and to invade Egypt and Syria. This affair might have had serious consequences, had it not been for the activity of Poppaeus Sabinus, who, after a sharp pursuit, caught the false Drusus at Nicopolis, and extracted from him a confession that he was a son of M. Silanus. (Ann. 5.10; D. C. 58.7.)

Drusus

19. Caius Caesar Caligula, the emperor Caligula. [Caligula, p. 563b.]

Drusus

20. Agrippina. [Agrippina, p. 81a.]

Drusus

21. Drusilla. [Drusilla, No. 2.]

Drusus

22. Julia Livilla [Julia.]

Drusus

23. Drusus, one of the two children of the emperor Claudius by his wife Urgulanilla. He died at Pompeii before attaining puberty, in A. D. 20, being choked by a pear which, in play, he had been throwing up and catching in his mouth. This occurred but a few days after he had been engaged to marry a daughter of Sejanus, and yet there were people who reported that he had been fraudulently put to death by Sejanus. (Suet. Claudius, 27; Tac. Ann. 3.29.)

Drusus

24. Claudia. [Claudia, No. 15, p. 762b.]

Drusus

25. Drusilla. [Drusilla, No. 3.]

Drusus

26. Decimus Drusus. In Dig. 1. tit. 13.2, the following passage is quoted from Ulpian:-- Ex quaestoribus quidam solebant provincias sortiri ex Senatus-consulto, quod factum est Decimo Druso et Porcina Consulibus. It has been commonly supposed that Ulpian here refers to a general decree of the senate, made in the consulship he names, and directing the mode of allotting provinces to quaestors in general. We rather believe him to mean that it was usual for the senate, from time to time, to make special decrees relating to the allotment of provinces to particular quaestors, and that he intends to give the date of an early instance in which this was aone. (Comp. Cic. Philipp. 2.20.) Had the former meaning been intended, Ulpian would probably have said ex eo Senatus-consulto, quod fuctum est. It is uncertain who Decimus Drusus was, and when he was consul. The brothers Kriegel, in the Leipzig edition of the Corpus Juris, erroneously refer his consulship to A. U. C. 745 (B. C. 9), when Nero Claudius Drusus (the brother of the emperor Tiberius) and Crispinus were consuls. Pighius (Annal. ad A. U. C. 677) proposes the unauthorized reading D. Bruto et Aemilio for D. Druso et Porcina, and in this conjecture is followed by Bach. (Hist. Jur. Rom. p. 208, ed. 6ta.) Ant. Augustinus (de Nom. Prop. Pandect. in Otto's Thesaurus, i. p. 258) thinks the consulship must have occurred in the time of the emperors, but it is certain that provinces were assigned to quaestors, ex S. C., during the republic. The most probable opinion is that of Zepernick (Ad Siccamam de Judicio Centumvirali, p. 100, n.), who holds that D. Drusus was consul suffectus with Lepidus Porcina in B. C. 137, after the forced abdication of Hostilius Marcinus.

Drusus

27. C. Drusus. Suetonius (August. 94) gives a miraculous anecdote of the infancy of Augustus, for which he cites an extant work of C. Drusus,-- Ut scriptum apud C. Drusum extat. Of this writer nothing is known, but it is not unlikely that he was connected with the imperial family. [J.T.G]

Drusus

(1) Claudius Nero, son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and of Livia, was born B.C. 38. He served early in the army, and was sent, in B.C. 17, with his brother Tiberius, against the Rhaeti and the Vindelici, who had made an irruption into Italy. He defeated the invaders, pursued them across the Alps, and reduced their country. Horace has celebrated this victory in one of his finest odes (iv. 4). Drusus married Antonia Minor, daughter of Antony and Octavia, by whom he had Germanicus and Claudius, afterwards emperor, and Livia or Livilla. In B.C. 14, being sent to quell an insurrection in Gaul, he succeeded by his conciliatory address. In the following year he attacked the Germans, and, carrying the war beyond the Rhine, he obtained a series of victories over the Sicambri, Cherusci, Catti, and Tencteri, and advanced as far as the Visurgis (Weser), for which the Senate bestowed on him and his posterity the surname of Germanicus. In B.C. 9, Drusus was made consul. He was soon after sent by Augustus against the Germans, crossed the Visurgis, and advanced as far as the Albis (Elbe). He imposed a moderate tribute on the Frisians, which, being afterwards aggravated by his successors, caused a revolt in the reign of Tiberius (Tac. Ann. iv. 72). He caused a canal to be cut, for the purpose of uniting the Rhine to the Yssel, which was known long after by the name of Fossa Drusi. Drusus did not cross the Albis, but retired towards the Rhine. Before he reached that river, he died, at the age of thirty, in consequence, as it was reported, of his horse falling upon him and fracturing his leg (Livy , Epit. 142). Tiberius, who was sent for in haste, and found his brother expiring, accompanied his body to Rome, where his funeral was performed with the greatest solemnity. Both Augustus and Tiberius delivered orations in his praise. Drusus was much regretted by both the army and the Romans in general, who had formed great expectations from his manly and generous character.

(2) The son of the emperor Tiberius by Vipsania, daughter of Agrippa. He served with distinction in Pannonia and Illyricum, and was consul with his father, A.D. 21. In a quarrel with the imperial favourite Seianus, he gave the latter a blow in the face. Seianus, in revenge, seduced his wife Livia or Livilla, daughter of Drusus the elder and of Antonia; and the guilty pair destroyed Drusus by poison, which was administered by the eunuch Lygdus. The crime remained a secret for eight years, when it was discovered after the death of Seianus, and Livia was put to death (Tac. Ann. i. 24, etc.; iv. 3 foll.).

(3) Caesar, son of Germanicus and Agrippina, and brother of Nero Caesar and Caligula. He married Aemilia Lepida, who was induced by Seianus to betray her husband. Deluded himself by the arts of that evil minister, he conspired against the life of his brother, Nero Caesar, and was starved to death by order of Tiberius (Tac. Ann. iv. 60).

(4) M. Livius. See Liviae Leges.