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20When Tiberius held the consulship with Drusus, men immediately began to prophesy destruction for Drusus from this very circumstance. For not one of the men who had ever been consul with Tiberius failed to meet a violent death; 2but in the first place there was Quintilius Varus, and next Gnaeus Piso, and then Germanicus himself, all of whom died violent and miserable deaths. Tiberius was evidently doomed to exert some such fatal influence throughout his life; at all events, not only Drusus, his colleague at this time, but also Sejanus, who later shared the office with him, came to destruction.
3While Tiberius was out of town, Gaius Lutorius Priscus, a knight, who took great pride in his poetic talents and had written a notable ode on the occasion of Germanicus’ death, for which he had received a considerable sum of money, was charged with having composed a poem about Drusus, also, during the latter’s illness. For this he was tried in the senate, condemned, and put to death. 4Tiberius was vexed at this, not because the man had been executed, but because the senators had inflicted the death penalty upon a person without his approval. He therefore rebuked them, and ordered a decree to be issued to the effect that no person condemned by them should be executed within ten days and that the decree in such a person’s case should not be made public within that time. The purpose of this was to ensure his learning their decisions in season, even while absent, and of reviewing them.
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