Drusus received a good classical education, and when he was 20 he married Antonia Minor, daughter of triumvir Marcus Antonius. Formerly known as Gaius Octavianus Thurinus, Augustus Caesar accepted the boys as his own. Five years later, the father died and the boys were taken back into the care of their mother, who had since married the heir to the great Roman dictator, Gaius Julius Caesar. Just months before, Livia had divorced his father, and the young boy and his older brother, also called Tiberius Claudius Nero, had gone to live with their father. Should he continue on or turn back? His decision would change the course of history.ĭecimus Claudius Drusus, born on January 14, 38 bc, was the child of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. For the first time during the four-year-long campaign, the confidence that had driven him to lead his 35,000 men through an extraordinary adventure to the banks of the Elbe River had suddenly deserted him. He was not sure whether he had just woken from a nightmare, had a premonition, or seen a ghost. On a sultry summer night in 9 BC, 29-year-old commander of Augustus Caesar ’s army in Germania bolted upright in his cot, dripping with sweat.

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