The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though
he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution
despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter
to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from his father
ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of
Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt,
Augustus had often complained of the young man's character, and had thus
succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree of the Senate for his
banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to destroy any of his
kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the sentence of the
grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It was more probable
that Tiberius
and Livia, the
one from fear, the other from a stepmother's enmity, hurried on the
destruction of a youth whom they suspected and hated. When the centurion
reported, according to military custom, that he had executed the command,
Tiberius replied that he had not given the command, and that the act must be
justified to the Senate.
As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the
secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this,
fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril
would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not
to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any
services performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength
of imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for "the
condition," he said, "of holding empire is that an account cannot be
balanced unless it be rendered to one person."
