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.

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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:

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.”

(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.

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.

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Found among the curse tablets was one bearing the name “Germanicus,” surrounded by magical invocations to the gods of the underworld. Germanicus’s supporters set out to find the culprit. It was assumed Piso had commissioned them. Piso’s wife, Plancina, employed a woman who was said to be notorious for her poisons and evil arts, which only added to their suspicions. Circumstantial evidence against Piso was stacking up.

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Aware of Germanicus’s accusations, Piso decided to leave Syria for Rome. While en route, news reached him that Germanicus was making a recovery. When the same news reached Rome, it was received with widespread joy. A crowd armed with torches rushed to the streets in the middle of the night, carrying animals for sacrifice and shouting: “Salva Roma, salva patria, salvus est Germanicus—Rome is safe, the fatherland is safe, Germanicus is safe.” Their mood was short-lived.

Soon after, Germanicus died in Antioch. Before he passed, Germanicus openly accused both Piso and Plancina of his murder. Tacitus’s Annals describes Germanicus on his deathbed saying, “Now in fact I am separated from you by the wickedness of Piso and Plancina, his wife, and I leave my prayers in your hearts.”

Doctors carefully inspected his body for evidence of poison but found none. In Antioch, his funeral was a simple affair, but Tacitus relays that mourners offered “recollections of his virtues. There were those who … compared his decease with that of Alexander the Great.”

Piso on trial 

Germanicus’s body was cremated, and the ashes were given to his widow to be returned to Rome. Accompanied by her children, the grieving Agrippina used this journey to both honor her late husband and to call out those she believed were responsible for his death. When she arrived on Italy’s southern coast at Brindisi, Agrippina was welcomed with great outpourings of public grief. Tiberius, however, was markedly absent and had only allowed modest ceremonies for Germanicus to be held in Rome.

Unsettled by the populace’s mourning, Tiberius turned attention to Piso, who had returned to Syria after Germanicus’s death. Piso would be put on trial before the Senate. The Senate’s verdict was conclusive: Piso, governor of Syria, was convicted of killing Germanicus, insubordination, and having provoked the civil war in Syria that broke out after Germanicus died. The governor was condemned to death, but he committed suicide before the punishment could be carried out. After Piso’s death, the Senate imposed six posthumous penalties against him, including forbidding public mourning, removal of portraits and statues, and confiscation of his property.

Despite Piso’s conviction, debate over Germanicus’s death persists today. Scholars do believe he may have died of natural causes, but no definitive proof exists. If Germanicus was murdered, Piso remains the lead suspect, but Tiberius has also come under suspicion. Late in the emperor’s reign, he began to target his political opponents—including Agrippina and two of Germanicus’s sons. But to complicate matters for future historians, Tiberius adopted Germanicus’s surviving son, Gaius Julius

Caesar Germanicus, who would become the next emperor. History knows him better as Caligula. 

(Was Caligula mad—or just misunderstood?)