Upon his return to Rome, having introduced his son Drusus into the forum, he immediately removed from Pompey's house, in the Carinae, to the gardens of Maecenas, on the Esquiline,The street called Carinae, at Rome, has been mentioned before; AUGUSTUS, c. v.; and also Maecenas's house on the Esquiline, ib. c. lxx. The gardens were formed on ground without the walls, and before used as a cemetery for malefactors, and the lower classes. Horace says Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atqueAggere in aprico spatiari.Sat. i. viii. 13. and resigned himself entirely to his ease, performing only the common offices of civility in private life, without any preferment in the government. But Caius and Lucius being both carried off in the space of three years, he was adopted by Augustus, along with their brother Agrippa; being obliged in the first place to adopt Germanicus, his brother's son. After his adoption, he never more acted as master of a family, nor exercised, in the smallest degree, the rights which he had lost by it. For he neither disposed of anything in the way of gift, nor manumitted a slave; nor so much as received any estate left him by will, nor any legacy, without reckoning it as a part of his peculium or property held under his father. From that day forward, nothing was omitted that might contribute to the advancement of his grandeur, and much more, when, upon Agrippa being discarded and banished, it was evident that the hope of succession rested upon him alone.

The tribunitian authority was again conferred upon him for five years,A.U.C. 575 and a commission given him to settle the affairs of Germany. The ambassadors of the Parthians, after having had an audience of Augustus, were ordered to apply to him likewise in his province. But on receiving intelligence of an insurrection in Illyricum,A.U.C. 760 he went over to superintend the management of that new war, which proved the most serious of all the foreign wars since the Carthaginian. This he conducted during three years, with fifteen legions and an equal number of auxiliary forces, under great difficulties, and an extreme scarcity of corn. And though he was several times recalled, he nevertheless persisted; fearing lest an enemy so powerful, and so near, should fall upon the army in their retreat. This resolution was attended with good success; for he at last reduced to complete subjection all Illyricum, lying between Italy and the kingdom of Noricum, Thrace, Macedonia, the river Danube, and the Adriatic gulf.