The Romans finally succeed in restoring control…

Fan Chong (who will eventually become the leader of all Chimei leaders, albeit in a collective leadership) initiates his own rebellion in 18, also in the modern Rizhao region.

Using Mount Tai as his base, he is able to gather about ten thousand men.

He soon enters into an alliance with other rebel leaders Pang An, Xu Xuan, Xie Lu, and Yang Yin, pooling resources with them, and they soon became powerful and unstoppable by the local governments.

Artabanus II had been raised to the throne in about CE 10 by those Parthian grandees who would not acknowledge Vonones I, whom the Roman Emperor Augustus had sent from Rome (where he lived as hostage), as successor of his father late Phraates IV.

The war between the two pretenders is long and doubtful; on a coin Vonones mentions a victory over Artabanus.

Artabanus in CE 12 at last defeated his rival completely and occupied the Parthian capital Ctesiphon.

Vononeshad fled to Armenia, where he was acknowledged as king, under the protection of the Romans.

But when Artabanus, demanding his deposition, invaded Armenia, Vonones fled to Syria, and the emperor Tiberius thought it prudent to support him no longer.

As Augustus does not wish to begin a war with the Parthians, he removes Vonones I into Syria, where he is kept in custody, though in a kingly style.

Tiberius' nephew and heir Germanicus, whom he sends to the East, concludes a treaty with Artabanus, in which he is recognized as king and friend of the Romans.

Germanicus organizes Cappadocia and Commagene into provinces.

During a sightseeing trip to Egypt (not a regular province, but the personal property of the Emperor) he seems to have unwittingly usurped several imperial prerogatives.

Germanicus, as a result of his many successes, is granted control over the eastern part of the empire in CE 18, just as both Agrippa and Tiberius had received before, and is clearly the successor to Tiberius.

Tiberius, becoming increasingly embittered with the position of Princeps, begins to depend more and more upon the limited secretariat left to him by Augustus, and specifically upon Sejanus and the Praetorians.

In CE 17 or 18, Tiberius trims the ranks of the Praetorian guard responsible for the defense of the city, and moves it from encampments outside of the city walls into the city itself, giving Sejanus access to somewhere between six thousand and nine thousand troops.

The Praetorian Guard is an elite unit of the Roman army formed by Augustus in 27 BCE, with the specific function to serve as a bodyguard to the emperor and members of the imperial family.

Much more than a guard however, the Praetorians also manage the day-to-day care of the city, such as general security and civil administration.

Furthermore, their presence serves as a constant reminder to the people and the Senate of the substantial armed force that serves as the basis for the imperial power.

Augustus had been careful, however, to uphold the republican veneer of this regime, and had only allowed nine cohorts to be formed (one less than in a normal Roman legion), which were inconspicuously scattered across various lodging houses in the city, and commanded by two prefects.

It is likely that Lucius Seius Strabo had came to the attention of Augustus through his connection with Maecenas.

Sometime after 2 BCE, Strabo had been appointed prefect of the Praetorian Guard, one of the two most powerful positions a Roman knight could attain in the Empire.

This office he carried on dutifully and without incident until the death of Augustus in 14.

Little is known about the life that Strabo’s son, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, had led prior to this date, but according to Tacitus, he accompanied Gaius Caesar, adopted grandson of Augustus, during his campaigns in Armenia in 1 BCE.

It was upon the accession of Tiberius in 14, that Sejanus was appointed prefect of the Praetorian Guard as the colleague of his father Strabo, and began his rise to prominence.

When Strabo was assigned to the governorship of Egypt in 15, Sejanus became the sole commander of the Praetorians and had instigated reforms that have helped shape the guard into a powerful tool of the principate.

Sejanus had served the imperial family for almost twenty years when he became Praetorian Prefect in CE 15.

Wang Mang, at the behest of his official Tian Kuang, reacts oddly to the agrarian rebellions by raising taxes in 19, which only aggravates the rebels.

Maroboduus has remained neutral in the war of revenge launched by Tiberius and Germanicus against the Cherusci.

War had broken out in 17 between Arminius and Maroboduus, and after an indecisive battle Maroboduus had withdrawn in 18 into the area now known as Bohemia.

In the next year Catualda, a Marcomannic nobleman, who had been exiled by Maroboduus and fled to the Goths, returns—perhaps by a subversive Roman intervention, possibly at the instigation of Drusus—and defeats Maroboduus.

The deposed king has to flee to Italy and Tiberius detains him in Ravenna, where Maroboduus will die eighteen years later, in 37.

Shortly afterwards, Catualda himself is driven out by the Hermundurian Vibilius and flees to Forum Iulii (Fréjus) (Tac. Ann.2, 62-63).

Germanicus, stopping in Antioch in 19 on the return trip from Egypt, finds that the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, has canceled the provincial arrangements that he had made.

Germanicus in turn orders Piso's recall to Rome, although this action is probably beyond his authority.

In the midst of this feud, Germanicus is stricken with a mysterious illness and dies shortly thereafter in Antioch.

His death arouses much speculation, with several sources blaming Piso, acting under orders from Emperor Tiberius.

This will never be proven, and Piso will later die while facing trial (ostensibly by suicide, but Tacitus supposes Tiberius may have had him murdered before he could implicate the emperor in Germanicus' death).

Germanicus’ death, announced in Rome during December of 19, brings much public grief in Rome and throughout the Roman Empire.

There is public mourning during the festive days in December.

The historians Tacitus and Suetonius record the posthumous honors of Germanicus and his funeral, at which there are no procession statues of Germanicus, but there are abundant eulogies and reminders of his fine character.

His posthumous honors include his name being placed into the Carmen Saliare, the Curule chairs, and as an honorary seat of the Brotherhood of Augustus; his coffin is crowned by oak-wreaths.

Other honors include his ivory statue as head of procession of the Circus Games.

His posts of priest of Augustus and Augur are to be filled by members of the imperial family; knights of Rome give his name to a block of seats in a theater in Rome.

Arches are raised to him throughout the Roman Empire; in particular, arches record his deeds and death at Rome, Rhine River and Nur Mountains.

In Antioch, where he is cremated, a sepulcher and funerary monument are dedicated to him.

On the day of Germanicus’ death his sister Livilla gives birth to twins.

Germanicus had made a Latin version, which survives, of Aratus's Phainomena, for which reason he is ranked among Roman writers on astrology.

His work is popular enough for scholia to be written on it, which have survived.

The dating of a magnificent sculpture of Rome’s first emperor, known as the Augustus of Prima Porta, is widely contested.

It is thought to be a marble copy of a possible bronze original.

This original, along with other high honors, is devoted to Augustus by the Senate in 20 BCE and set up in a public place.

Up until this time Augustus has lived modestly, but the fact that the statue was found in his wife's villa shows that he was thoroughly pleased with it.

It is also contested that this particular sculpture is a reworking in marble of a bronze original, possibly a gift from Tiberius Caesar to his mother Livia (since it was found in her villa Ad Gallinas Albas in the vicinity of the ninth marker of the via Flaminia, and close to a late Imperial gate called Prima Porta) after Augustus' death and in honor of the woman who had campaigned so long for him to become the next Caesar.

This would explain the divine references to Augustus in the piece, notably his being barefoot, the standard representation of gods or heroes in classical iconography.

Also, the reliefs in the cuirass depict the retrieval of Crassus' standards captured by the Parthians, an event in which the young Tiberius himself took a part, serving as intermediary with the Parthian king, in the act that is shown in the central scene of the armor, possibly his grandest service to his adopted father Augustus.

With the introduction of Tiberius as the figure responsible for the retrieval of the standards, he associates himself with Augustus, the emperor and the new god, as Augustus himself had done previously with Julius Caesar.

Under this hypothesis, the dating of the statue can be placed during the first years of Tiberius' reign as emperor.

Many Jews have immigrated to Rome during Tiberius' early reign and have begun proselytizing Roman citizens and performing Jewish rites.

Tiberius is suspicious and in 19 CE orders Jews who are of military age to join the Roman Army.

Tiberius banishes the rest of the Jews from Rome and threatens to enslave them for life if they do not leave the city.