The figure of Germanicus in Tacitus' Annals has long been interpreted with exceptional unanimity. Only one recent scholar has questioned the validity of the usual version: that Tacitus knew a Germanicus whose actual career was often open to the criticism of failure, blundering, and weakness, but that the historian did the best he could with the facts to make the popular hero a foil to the villain Tiberius and a shining exemplar of political virtue.

M. P. Charlesworth, for instance: ‘Young, handsome and courageous, he was reputed to possess his father's Republican and democratic sentiments, and since a.d. 13 he had been in command of the armies of the Rhine. It may be suspected that the tradition, so uniformly favourable to him and kindly to his memory [n.: The portrait in Tacitus should be compared with the shorter eulogies that are to be found in Suetonius, Calig. 3 and Josephus, Ant. XVIII, [6], 207ff.], rests on writers who were glad to find in his gracious figure a foil to the dourness of Tiberius, but it is obvious that he had much to attract.’ E. Koestermann can speak of Tacitus' partiality for the illustrious figure of Germanicus as self-evident. B. Walker is representative: ‘The greater length of the account of the German mutiny is then explained by the appearance there of Tacitus' political hero Germanicus (who does not, when one reads carefully, acquit himself particularly well; but certainly the facts were against Tacitus here, and he did what he could for Germanicus, with difficult material)’; and, ‘The memory of Drusus, his German campaigns, and his loyal though somewhat operatic handling of the German mutiny, combine to build up for Germanicus an heroic stature.’