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28Meanwhile he increased the power of Agrippa, who had returned from Syria, by giving him the tribunician power again for another five years, and he sent him out to Pannonia, which was eager for war, entrusting him with greater authority than the officials outside Italy ordinarily possessed. 2And Agrippa set out on the campaign in spite of the fact that the winter had already begun (this was the year in which Marcus Valerius and Publius Sulpicius were the consuls); but when the Pannonians became terrified at his approach and gave up their plans for rebellion, he returned, and upon reaching Campania, fell ill. 3Augustus happened to be exhibiting, in the name of his sons, contests of armed warriors at the Panathenaic festival, and when he learned of Agrippa’s illness, he set out for Italy; and finding him dead, he conveyed his body to the capital and caused it to lie in state in the Forum. He also delivered the eulogy over the dead, after first hanging a curtain in front of the corpse. 4Why he did this, I do not know. Some, however, have stated that it was because he was high priest, others that it was because he was performing the duties of censor. But both are mistaken, since neither the high priest is forbidden to look at a corpse, nor the censor, either, except when he is about to complete the census; but if he looks upon a corpse then, before his purification, all his work has to be done over again. 5Now Augustus not only did what I have recorded, but also had the funeral procession of Agrippa conducted in the manner in which his own was afterward conducted, and he buried him in his own sepulchre, though Agrippa had taken one for himself in the Campus Martius.
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