fact that he did place her with Marcus Agrippa and then with myself? In consideration of our friendship, I have not thought it right to conceal these considerations; however, I will not stand in the way of what you and Livilla propose. I will omit for the present to refer to some plans that I have formed, and to tell you the ties by which I propose to associate you with myself. I will only disclose this, that there is no position so lofty that it is not deserved by your virtues and your disposition towards myself; and when the opportunity comes, I will speak openly in the Senate, or in a public address.” Even in this letter there are suspicious passages. Tiberius could hardly have spoken of the magistrates who broke into him against the will of Sejanus without an admission of weakness, which is almost incredible, unless we are to assume that he wished to snub Sejanus, an assumption, however, which is not supported by the conclusion of the letter. Nor was this letter a public document, preserved in the public records; if preserved at all, it was among the family papers. One important hint we get from this letter: its writer or editor ranges Livilla and her child in opposition to Agrippina and her children, and saw in the possible marriage with Sejanus a strengthening of the children of Drusus against the children of Germanicus. A similar protection had been given thirty-six years previously to the children of Julia, when Tiberius was made their stepfather. Livilla never married Sejanus, but her attempt to marry him supplies a clue to the labyrinth of plots in the Imperial household. If the principle of heredity was to be recognized, the heirs to the throne were Livilla’s son, the younger Tiberius, and Agrippina’s sons, the former representing the Claudians, the latter the Julians, and the situation was repeated which had existed when Tiberius and his brother had represented the Claudians, Caius and Lucius Cæsar the Julians. Livilla, anxious for the safety of her son and eager to promote his interests, endeavoured to fasten herself to the strongest man in the State, who would unquestionably on the decease of Tiberius be in possession of the controlling military power. According to the accepted story, there was a guilty connexion between Sejanus and Livilla before the death of her husband, and Sejanus had divorced his wife at the request of his paramour; the two together had poisoned Drusus. All cases of poisoning are inherently suspect, and it is by no means incredible that Drusus was not really poisoned, and that the guilty intimacy of Livilla with Sejanus previous to the death of her husband was surmised at a later period when her subsequent conduct had given colour to such a story. According to the narrative supplied to us, Sejanus cannot have been under fifty when this intimacy began, and was probably nearer sixty; Livilla cannot have been less than five and thirty. If the story is true, they were certainly a mature couple of lovers.