more important collaborators. Sejanus was therefore able, by using his
influence over Tiberius, to lay a thousand difficulties and obstacles
in the way of even the legitimate ambitions of the most eminent men of
the opposite faction. Nor were these the only weapons employed; others
no less efficacious were called into play, and intrigues, calumnies,
accusations, and trials were set on foot without scruple and with a
ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has painted with indelible colors.
Among these intrigues two matrimonial projects must be mentioned. In
the year 25 Sejanus attempted a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife
Apicata, and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla (Livia), the widow
of Drusus. Sejanus had frequented the political aristocracy of the
empire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only
their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.
He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of
acquiring and consolidating power. He had therefore disrupted his
first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have
redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the
imperial household. But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius
refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was
afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina. The
emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine
quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the
Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew's sons. And what would
happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing
hatreds? _Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio_? The reply is
significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of
harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina,
was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both
factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a
reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these