Drusus the Elder
(Nero Claudius Drusus, 38–9 B.C.) Son of Livia, brother of the future emperor Tiberius, and the stepson of Augustus, Drusus was the father of the noted general Nero Claudius Germanicus and the future emperor Claudius (both of whose mother was Mark Antony’s daughter, Antonia Minor). Drusus himself became an accomplished military leader. Beginning in 15 B.C., he and his brother Tiberius pushed back the Raetians, a tribal group that had invaded parts of northern Italy and Gaul. Between 12 and 9 B.C., Drusus pushed into Germania, reaching the Rhine and Elbe Rivers and defeating groups of tribal Chatti and Suebi. On route home, he fell from his horse and soon afterward died, plunging the Roman populace into deep Page 25 | Top of Articlemourning. After a huge, solemn funeral ceremony in Rome’s Forum, he was buried in the Campus Martius. See Claudius ; Tiberius .