V. Amongst other liberal studies, he applied himself to the law. He married Lepida 653, by whom he had two sons; but the mother and children all dying, he continued a widower; nor could he be prevailed upon to marry again, not even Agrippina herself, at that time left a widow by the death of Domitius, who had employed all her blandishments to allure him to her embraces, while he was a married man; insomuch that Lepida’s mother, when in company with several married women, rebuked her for it, and even went so far as to cuff her.
Most of all, he courted the empress Livia 654, by whose favour, while she was living, he made a considerable figure, and narrowly missed being enriched by the will which she left at her death; in which she distinguished him from the rest of the (404) legatees, by a legacy of fifty millions of sesterces. But because the sum was expressed in figures, and not in words at length, it was reduced by her heir, Tiberius, to five hundred thousand: and even this he never received. 655
VI. Filling the great offices before the age required for it by law, during his praetorship, at the celebration of games in honour of the goddess Flora, he presented the new spectacle of elephants walking upon ropes. He was then governor of the province of Aquitania for near a year, and soon afterwards took the consulship in the usual course, and held it for six months 656.
It so happened that he succeeded L. Domitius, the father of Nero, and was succeeded by Salvius Otho, father to the emperor of that name; so that his holding it between the sons of these two men, looked like a presage of his future advancement to the empire.
Being appointed by Caius Caesar to supersede Gaetulicus in his command, the day after his joining the legions, he put a stop to their plaudits in a public spectacle, by issuing an order, “That they should keep their hands under their cloaks.” Immediately upon which, the following verse became very common in the camp: