About the same time Asia and Achaia were alarmed by a prevalent but
short-lived rumour that Drusus, the son of Germanicus, had been seen
in the Cyclades and subsequently on the mainland. There was indeed
a young man of much the same age, whom some of the emperor’s freedmen
pretended to recognise, and to whom they attached themselves with
a treacherous intent. The renown of the name attracted the ignorant,
and the Greek mind eagerly fastens on what is new and marvellous.
The story indeed, which they no sooner invented than believed, was
that Drusus had escaped from custody, and was on his way to the armies
of his father, with the design of invading Egypt or Syria. And he
was now drawing to himself a multitude of young men and much popular
enthusiasm, enjoying the present and cherishing idle hopes of the
future, when Poppaeus Sabinus heard of the affair. At the time he
was chiefly occupied with Macedonia, but he also had the charge of
Achaia. So, to forestall the danger, let the story be true or false,
he hurried by the bays of Torone and Thermae, then passed on to Euboea,
an island of the Aegaean, to Piraeus, on the coast of Attica, thence
to the shores of Corinth and the narrow Isthmus, and having arrived
by the other sea at Nicopolis, a Roman colony, he there at last ascertained
that the man, when skilfully questioned, had said that he was the
son of Marcus Silanus, and that, after the dispersion of a number
of his followers’ he had embarked on a vessel, intending, it seemed,
to go to Italy. Sabinus sent this account to Tiberius, and of the
origin and issue of the affair nothing more is known to me.

At the close of the year a long growing feud between the consuls broke
out. Trio, a reckless man in incurring enmities and a practised lawyer,
had indirectly censured Regulus as having been half-hearted in crushing
the satellites of Sejanus. Regulus, who, unless he was provoked, loved
quietness, not only repulsed his colleague’s attack, but was for dragging
him to trial as a guilty accomplice in the conspiracy. And though
many of the senators implored them to compose a quarrel likely to
end fatally, they continued their enmity and their mutual menaces
till they retired from office.