The news of the disaster of Varus came like a thunderbolt on Augustus, who was one of those men who are given to fear the worst. At Rome it was thought that the Germans would cross the river, and destroy the legions on the Lower Rhine, and that the Gauls would also take up arms and unite with the Germans; so that a war in the Alps seemed near at hand. No doubt Augustus expected also that Marbod would rise; but the latter, who had here an opportunity of gaining eternal glory, shamefully kept quiet, for which he afterwards ended his days a prisoner at Ravenna. Augustus wished to make a general levy; yet he met with great difficulty, owing to the inconceivable aversion to military service which had all at once arisen among the Italians: in Marius’ times one might have raised as many legions as one wanted. Fathers maimed the hands of their children, to make them unfit for service; soldiers were taken from the lowest ranks of society; attempts were made to enlist freedmen; patrons were induced to emancipate strong slaves on condition of their entering the army: whereas formerly slaves were punished with death, if they presumed to take unto themselves the honour of military service. Tiberius had orders to set out in all haste for Gaul: Nonius Asprenas has the merit of having checked the tide; Tiberius went on with the work. Afterwards, Germanicus, the son of Drusus, was sent in his stead, who at once took measures for an offensive war. But Augustus did not live to see it. Augustus was now full of days, but his health had very much improved: he had in fact, during the last third of his life, little or no illness at all. Thus he had gently become an old man, and was quite under the thraldom of his wife, who grew worse as she grew older, and shut out from all access to him every one who was not subservient to her. Towards her own son Drusus, she may indeed have had the feelings of a step-mother; to Germanicus at least she bore a deadly hatred. Germanicus and Agrippina were patterns of domestic excellence; their married life, at a time when every trace of the virtues of home had been lost, when elsewhere marriage was merely a bond of indifference, and often even of hatred, was most remarkably beautiful:—it was because Germanicus was fondly attached to his wife and his children, that he became an object of hatred to his grandmother. Livia did not at all like Tiberius’ own son Drusus, as he was too friendly with his adopted brother Germanicus, though otherwise he had quite the character of his father. Augustus passed the last years of his life in the consciousness of being enthralled: he was unhappy in more than one respect, and in this life already he had to suffer for many of his misdeeds; the overthrow of Varus put him utterly beside himself. Tiberius was going to Illyricum, and Augustus wished to meet him at Beneventum: he had passed several summers at Capreæ in the bay of Naples, the most paradise-like spot in