Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 4: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During the Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
[-27-] Nor did he, while observing such strictness in ordinary public
business, neglect the conduct of his own family. Indeed, he rebuked
Tiberius because he had seated Gaius beside him at the thanksgiving
festival which he gave in honor of the emperor's return: and he censured
the people for honoring him with applause and eulogies. On the death of
Lepidus he was appointed high priest and the senate consequently wished
to vote him certain honors;[10] but he declared that he would not accept
them, and when the senators became urgent he rose and left the gathering.
So that measure was not ratified, and he received no official residence,
but because it was absolutely essential that the high priest should live
on public ground he made a portion of his own dwelling public property.
The house of the rex sacrificulus, however, he gave to the vestal virgins
because it was separated merely by a wall from their apartments.
Cornelius Sisenna was blamed for the conduct of his wife and stated in
the senate that he had married her with the knowledge and on the advice
of the emperor,--whereat Augustus grew exceedingly angry. He indulged in
no violence of word or action but hurried out of the senate-chamber and
then a little later came back again, choosing rather to do this (as he
said to his friends afterward), in spite of its not being right, than to
remain where he was and be compelled to do some harm.
[B.C. 12 (_a. u._ 742)]
[-28-] Meantime he bestowed upon Agrippa, who had come from Syria, the
great honor of the tribunician authority for another five years, and sent
him out to Pannonia, which was ready for war, allowing him greater powers
than officials outside of Italy ordinarily possessed. Agrippa made the
campaign though it already was winter: Marcus Valerius and Publius
Sulpicius were the consuls. As the Pannonians became terror stricken at
his approach and showed no further signs of uprising he returned, and on
reaching Campania fell sick. Augustus happened to be giving, under the
name of his children, contests of armed warriors at the Panathenaic
festival, and when he learned of Agrippa's condition he left the country.
Finding him dead, he conveyed his body to the capital and allowed it to
lie in state in the Forum. He also delivered the oration over the dead
man, with a curtain stretched in front of the corpse. Why he did this
I know not. Yet some have said it was because he was high priest, and
others because he was discharging the functions of censor. Both are
mistaken. A high priest is not forbidden to behold a corpse, nor yet
a censor, except when he is about to put the finishing touches to the
census. Then if he sees such an object before his purification, all his
work is rendered null and void. Besides this oration Augustus conducted
his funeral procession in the way that his own was later conducted. He
buried him in his own tomb, though the deceased had a lot of his own in
the Campus Martius.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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