ABSTRACT
One of Tiberius’ first acts when the death of Augustus left him alone in power was to ask the Senate for a grant of proconsular imperium for his adopted son Germanicus, who had been supervising the chastisement of the German tribes as Augustus’ legate.1 It was appropriate that this advancement to independent imperium should come when the dynasty had been weakened by the death of the man from whom the subordinate command had stemmed; but what Tiberius’ request also secured to Germanicus was an immediate grant of a power that he was eventually to share with his adoptive brother. In Tacitus’ view there were many who wondered in AD 14 whether Germanicus would be content to wait. If there were such rumours their propagators, and those soldiers of Germanicus who offered to march for the Principate, and really meant their offer, were misinformed. There is no evidence that Germanicus contemplated making a premature and hazardous bid for supremacy when his future position was guaranteed by ancestry, adoption, experience, and powers. All the evidence attests the propriety of Germanicus’ attitude towards his adoptive father, from his first appearance in the Balkan campaigns to the end of his life. Nor does Tacitus omit to inform his readers of the impartiality with which Tiberius treated his sons.2 His testimony is borne out to the full by what we know of the positions held by Germanicus and Drusus during the first four years of the regime. The three years that separated the two young men were matched by the three years that separated their first consulships of AD 12 and 15 respectively, and by the three years that separated the grants of proconsular imperium made to them: Drusus’ Balkan command dates to AD 17.3 In the following year, after celebrating his triumph over Germany, the elder brother entered as Tiberius’ colleague upon his second consulship, which was to be, like Tiberius’ second consulship of 7 BC, the prelude to an Eastern command, and although Drusus’ second consulship of AD 21, also as Tiberius’ colleague, came two years after his brother’s death, it is hard to believe that it was not already in prospect in 18.
