My parents had had six children before me but as my mother always accompanied my father on his campaigns a child had to be very hardy to survive. Only my brother Germanicus, five years older than myself, and my sister Livilla, a year older than myself, were living: both inherited my father’s magnificent constitution. I did not. I nearly died on three occasions before my second year and, had not my father’s death brought the family back to Rome, it is most unlikely that this story would have been written.
