Tacitus 4.41

• Tiberius, in reply, after praising the loyal sentiments of Sejanus and briefly enumerating the favours he had bestowed on him, asked time for impartial consideration, adding that while other men's plans depended on their ideas of their own interest, princes, who had to regulate their chief actions by public opinion, were in a different position.
• Tiberius said "I do not take refuge in an answer which it would be easy to return, that Livia can herself decide whether she considers that, after Drusus, she ought again to marry or rather to endure life in the same home, and that she has in her mother and grandmother counsellors nearer and dearer to her. I will deal more frankly.
• Tiberius maintained that the enmity of Agrippina will blaze out more fiercely if Livia's marriage rends, so to say, the house of the Caesars into two factions.
• Tiberius said that even as it is, feminine jealousies break out, and his grandsons are torn asunder by the strife. He asked what will happen if the rivalry is rendered more intense by such a marriage.
• Tiberius said that Sejanus is mistaken if he thinks that he will then remain in the same position, and that Livia, who has been the wife of Caius Caesar and afterwards of Drusus, will have the inclination to pass her old age with a mere Roman knight.
• Tiberius said that though he might allow it, do you imagine it would be tolerated by those who have seen her brother, her father, and our ancestors in the highest offices of state?
• Tiberius said that Sejanus indeed desires to keep within his station, but those magistrates and nobles who intrude on him against his wishes and consult him on all matters, openly give out that he has long overstepped the rank of a knight and gone far beyond Tiberius' father's friendships, and from their dislike of him they also condemn Tiberius.
• Tiberius said that Augustus had thoughts of giving his daughter to a Roman knight, but it is not surprising that, with so many distracting cares, foreseeing too the immense elevation to which a man would be raised above others by such an alliance, he talked of Caius Proculeius and certain persons of singularly quiet life, wholly free from political entanglements.
• Tiberius said that if the hesitation of Augustus is to influence us, how much stronger is the fact that he bestowed his daughter on Marcus Agrippa, then on Tiberius himself.
• Tiberius said that as a friend, he has stated all this without reserve, but he will not oppose Sejanus' plans or those of Livia.
• Tiberius said that his own earnest thoughts and the ties with which he is still purposing to unite Sejanus to himself, he shall for the present forbear to explain.
• Tiberius declared that nothing is too grand to be deserved by Sejanus' merits and his goodwill towards Tiberius, and when an opportunity presents itself, either in the Senate, or in a Popular assembly, Tiberius shall not be silent.