He was the golden boy of ancient Rome. Did someone want him dead?

Germanicus was not supposed to die young. The great-nephew of Emperor Augustus was supposed to become the next ruler of Rome. But at the peak of his political career, Rome’s golden boy suddenly and mysteriously died.

Germanicus was handsome, gifted with social graces, and a charismatic leader on the battlefield. Emperor Augustus arranged for his heir, Tiberius, to formally adopt Germanicus at age 19, giving a tacit indication that Germanicus, not Tiberius’s son Drusus, should be the next emperor.

In A.D. 14 Augustus died, and Tiberius became Rome’s next emperor. Some believed, perhaps in bad faith, that Germanicus’s talents were overshadowing Tiberius, a diligent man who lacked his adopted son’s charisma. With rumors of Tiberius’s envy and a plethora of political enemies around him, Germanicus had a number of potential rivals who might have wished him dead. When he died at age 34, many believed that the cause was murder.

A silver engraving shows Tiberius in a chariot ride during his own triumph with a ivory scepter in one hand and a laurel branch in the other.

After Germanicus’s success in Germania, Tiberius granted his adopted son a triumph in Rome. This first-century A.D. silver scyphus (left) shows Tiberius in a chariot during his own triumph, with an ivory scepter and laurel branch.
HERVÉ LEWANDOWSKI/RMN-GRAND PALAIS
(These three kings ruled Rome. Their bloody reigns sparked a revolution.)

War hero
It was assumed that Germanicus would one day rule the empire and should be trained for the role. When Tiberius became emperor, he commissioned Germanicus to reestablish Roman influence east of the Rhine River after the Germanic tribes defeated the Roman legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9.

The young Germanicus, who was at this time consul in Gaul, crossed the Rhine and invaded Germania with the support of eight loyal legions. He finally achieved victory at the Battle of Idistaviso, near the Weser River, in A.D. 16. Tiberius granted Germanicus a triumph and asked him to return to Rome. First- and second-century A.D. historian Tacitus described how Tiberius praised his adopted son:

The commotion in the East could only be settled by the wisdom of Germanicus: for his own years were trending to their autumn, and those of Drusus were as yet scarcely mature.
A painting of Germanicus and his soldiers confronting the enemy soldiers face-to-face to ask for the bodies of fallen men to give them a dignified burial.

TEUTOBURG ROUTGermanicus orders the recovery of the remains of Roman soldiers and the banners of legions destroyed by Arminius and his men in the Teutoburg Forest, to give them a dignified burial.

Despite malicious rumors about the emperor’s envy of Germanicus’s military successes, Tiberius gave him special mandate to sort out affairs in the Greek east in A.D. 17. Knowing and governing these provinces was an indispensable step in the training of future emperors.

But Tiberius made a decision not understood by some. In addition to granting Germanicus supreme command of the east, Tiberius appointed statesman Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso as governor of Syria. The province of Syria was influential because the legions protecting the dangerous frontier facing the Parthian Empire, Rome’s main enemy at the time, were stationed in the Syrian capital of Antioch.

Piso, a Roman senator of ancient lineage, had a reputation for being severe, and it seems that Germanicus was opposed to his appointment. Rumors abounded; critics said that Emperor Tiberius had appointed Piso at the instigation of his own mother, Empress Livia, with the intention of secretly controlling Germanicus. Piso was accompanied in Syria by his wife, Plancina, a close friend of Livia, and charged, according to ancient historians, with waging a campaign of hostility and intimidation against Germanicus and his wife, Agrippina. In the Annals, Tacitus writes, “The belief has been held that he did in fact receive private instructions from Tiberius; and Plancina, beyond question, had advice from the ex-empress, bent with feminine jealousy upon persecuting Agrippina.”

This stone bust is carved into the shape of Agrippina the Elder who was Germanicus’s wife and Augustus’s granddaughter.

This first century A.D. bust at the National Archaeological Museum, Naples shows Agrippina the Elder who was Germanicus’s wife and Augustus’s granddaughter.
(Roman Empress Agrippina was a master strategist. She paid the price for it.)

Foreboding future
Germanicus’s journey to the east was, in many ways, a consolidation of power. First he arrived at Nicopolis, the city built by Augustus near Actium. Germanicus traveled to Athens from Actium. This was a happy and festive visit, where his whole family was received with great honors. But the road to the east had its tribulations, too. When Germanicus arrived in the province of Asia, he visited the famous oracle at Claros near Colophon, where the priests transmitted the will of Apollo through verse. To everyone’s surprise, the oracle did not have a favorable message for Germanicus. In fact, the priest foretold his premature death.

Germanicus carried out his duties in the east effectively. He saw the new king of Armenia crowned and built diplomatic relations with Parthia and its satellite kingdoms. In Piso’s eyes, Germanicus’s friendly diplomacy was weakening Rome’s position. Piso began a smear campaign against Germanicus, while corrupting the legions by buying their support to turn them against Germanicus. The relationship between the two men worsened when the latter decided to visit Egypt.

Lauded in Egypt
According to a papyrus found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, when Germanicus arrived in Alexandria, the locals welcomed him with an outpouring of enthusiasm. They would shout out their support during his public appearances. Perhaps encouraged by this reception, Germanicus tried to alleviate a grain shortage in the province by opening the imperial granaries, the main source of wheat for the city of Rome. Wheat supplies to the empire’s capital were impacted, generating a fear of food shortages.

Germanicus’s oversight was making Tiberius uneasy. And the feeling was compounded by Piso’s negative reports. The relationship between Tiberius and Germanicus worsened, and the two grew estranged. When Germanicus returned from Egypt to Antioch in Syria, his enmity with Piso was already common knowledge.

Then Germanicus suddenly fell ill. In antiquity, identifying the cause of any illness was tricky. It wasn’t easy to accept that a 34-year-old man destined for the highest responsibilities could fall seriously ill with no warning or clear cause. Looking for other reasons, friends and relatives believed Piso, Germanicus’s great enemy, had led a conspiracy against him. Germanicus himself agreed.

A painting of Germanicus bed-ridden and ill with his wife Agrippina and their children at his bedside.

Agrippina and her children surround Germanicus on his deathbed in Gérard de Lairesse’s 17th-century painting.
BPK/SCALA, FLORENCE
Soon those close to Germanicus claimed to have found evidence in the palace that the general was being subjected to malicious magical practices. They claimed to have found charred remains of human bodies, accompanied by incantations and curses. Curse tablets were thin sheets of lead inscribed with magic spells.