File:Nicolas Poussin - La Mort de Germanicus.jpg

English: The subject is drawn from The Annals of Tacitus, Books II, LXXI, LXXII:
Germanicus (15 B.C.­A.D. 19), the son of Nero Claudius Drusus, was a famous and extremely popular Roman general who carried out several successful military campaigns in Germany. He was named commander of the eight legions of the Rhine by his uncle Tiberius, who was then Emperor. Recalled to Rome in A.D. 16, his warm reception by the populace inflamed the jealousy and fear of Tiberius who immediately sent him to the East to remove him from the public eye. In the meantime, Tiberius also made Piso, an ambitious member of the Roman nobility, the governor of Syria and ordered him to spy on Germanicus' movements. When Germanicus unexpectedly died while in Syria, Piso and his wife Plancina were accused of poisoning him, supposedly at Tiberius' instigation. Although the prosecution was unable to prove that Germanicus had, in fact, been poisoned, Piso's subsequent suicide was construed as a cover-up. This gave further credence to the widespread suspicion that Tiberius, or even his mother Livia, was behind the murder.^[1]