Agrippina, after the body of her husband had been burned on the funeral pyre, set forth in the depth of winter on her journey to Rome with his ashes. At every port where the fleet touched she received a sad but an imposing ovation. All the friends of her husband crowded to Brundusium, where she was to disembark; but they could not agree as to whether she should be received in respectful silence or with some more demonstrative expression of their sympathy. Tacitus thus depicts the affecting scene: "Nothing was settled when the fleet came sweeping slowly in, not rigged out in sprightly fashion, but wearing the ensigns of sadness. When, however, the widow descended from the ship, bearing the funeral urn in her hand, accompanied by her two infants and with her eyes steadily fixed on the ground, one simultaneous groan burst from the entire assemblage." Neither Tiberius, nor Livia, nor Antonia, the mother of Germanicus, attended the funeral. Tacitus gives the reasons that were alleged, but does not decide which was nearest the truth. "Tiberius and Livia either thought public lamentation beneath their dignity, or else they feared lest if folk peered into their faces their hypocrisy would be discovered. Whether sickness detained Antonia, or overmuch sorrow and inability to go through the ceremony, is not known. I would rather believe that she was held back by Tiberius and Livia, who did not leave the palace, that they might seem to mourn in private." Agrippina had been exhorted by her dying husband, "as she would cherish his memory, and for the sake of their children, to divest herself of her unyielding spirit, and humble herself to Fortune in the storm of her displeasure; and, on her return to the city, not to irritate, in a competition for the mastery, those who were more than a match for her." Such advice given to a Roman matron would have appeared unnecessary to the men of the old regime; but there was now a throne in Rome, and consequently women jostled each other for the place of power behind it. Agrippina needed just such counsel; but her nature would not allow her to profit by it. Irreproachable in her life, her virtues were not beautified by the divine gift of good humor; and she possessed no philosophy. Her mind was of that sort, more common among women than men, in which an idea having once been entertained is henceforth unassailable and undetachable by reason. Than this class of mind there is nothing more exasperating in human knowledge, and it is not to be wondered at that she irritated Tiberius. These two angered each other on every occasion of their meeting: the emperor by his cruel persecution of Agrippina's friends, and she him both by her air of martyrdom and by her evident and constant suspicion that he was planning some nefarious project against herself.