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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Women of the Caesars
+
+Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2005 [EBook #16324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Livia, the wife of Augustus, superintending the weaving
+of robes for her family.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+
+
+BY
+
+GUGLIELMO FERRERO
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+MCMXI
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1911, by
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+Published, October, 1911
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVINNE PRESS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I  WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
+
+  II  LIVIA AND JULIA
+
+ III  THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
+
+  IV  TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
+
+   V  THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA
+
+  VI  AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Livia, the Wife of Augustus, Superintending the Weaving of Robes for
+her Family . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+A Roman Marriage Custom
+
+Eumachia, a Public Priestess of Ancient Rome
+
+The Forum under the Caesars
+
+The So-called Bust of Cicero
+
+Julius Caesar
+
+The Sister of M. Nonius Balbus
+
+Livia, the Mother of Tiberius, in the Costume of a Priestess
+
+The Young Augustus
+
+The Emperor Augustus
+
+A Silver Denarius of the Second Triumvirate
+
+Silver Coin Bearing the Head of Julius Caesar
+
+The Great Paris Cameo
+
+Octavia, the Sister of Augustus
+
+A Reception at Livia's Villa
+
+Mark Antony
+
+Antony and Cleopatra
+
+Tiberius, Elder Son of Livia and Stepson of Augustus
+
+Drusus, the Younger Brother of Tiberius
+
+Statue of a Young Roman Woman
+
+A Roman Girl of the Time of the Caesars
+
+Costumes of Roman Men, Women, and Children in the Procession of a Peace
+Festival
+
+Bust of Tiberius in the Museo Nazionale, Naples
+
+Types of Head-dresses Worn in the Time of the Women of the Caesars
+
+A Roman Feast in the Time of the Caesars
+
+Depositing the Ashes of a Member of the Imperial Family in a Roman
+Columbarium
+
+The Starving Livilla Refusing Food
+
+Costume of a Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis Maxima)
+
+Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins
+
+Bust, Supposed to be of Antonia, Daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia,
+and Mother of Germanicus, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
+
+Caligula
+
+A Bronze Sestertius (Slightly Enlarged), Showing the Sisters of
+Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on One Side and
+Germanicus on the Other Side
+
+A Bronze Sestertius with the Head of Agrippina the Elder, Daughter of
+Agrippa and Julia, the Daughter of Augustus
+
+Claudius, Messalina, and Their Two Children in What is Known as the
+"Hague Cameo"
+
+Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the Caesars
+
+The Emperor Caligula
+
+Claudius
+
+The Emperor Claudius
+
+Messalina, Third Wife of Claudius
+
+The Philosopher Seneca
+
+The Emperor Nero
+
+Agrippina the Younger, Sister of Caligula and Mother of Nero
+
+Britannicus
+
+Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline Museum, Rome
+
+Agrippina the Younger
+
+The Emperor Nero
+
+The Death of Agrippina
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+
+
+I
+
+WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
+
+"Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and
+unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are
+permitted by our customs.  Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed to
+take his wife to a dinner away from home?  Does it happen that the
+mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms
+frequented by strangers and show herself among them?  Not so in Greece:
+there the woman accepts invitations only among families to which she is
+related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner part of the house
+which is called the _gynaeceum_, where only the nearest relatives are
+admitted."
+
+This passage, one of the most significant in all the little work of
+Nepos, draws in a few, clear, telling strokes one of the most marked
+distinctions between the Greco-Asiatic world and the Roman.  Among
+ancient societies, the Roman was probably that in which, at least among
+the better classes, woman enjoyed the greatest social liberty and the
+greatest legal and economic autonomy.  There she most nearly approached
+that condition of moral and civil equality with man which makes her his
+comrade, and not his slave--that equality in which modern civilization
+sees one of the supreme ends of moral progress.
+
+The doctrine held by some philosophers and sociologists, that military
+peoples subordinate woman to a tyrannical régime of domestic servitude,
+is wholly disproved by the history of Rome.  If there was ever a time
+when the Roman woman lived in a state of perennial tutelage, under the
+authority of man from birth to death--of the husband, if not of the
+father, or, if not of father or husband, of the guardian--that time
+belongs to remote antiquity.
+
+When Rome became the master state of the Mediterranean world, and
+especially during the last century of the republic, woman, aside from a
+few slight limitations of form rather than of substance, had already
+acquired legal and economic independence, the condition necessary for
+social and moral equality.  As to marriage, the affianced pair could at
+that time choose between two different legal family régimes: marriage
+with _manus_, the older form, in which all the goods of the wife passed
+to the ownership of the husband, so that she could no longer possess
+anything in her own name; or marriage without _manus_, in which only
+the dower became the property of the husband, and the wife remained
+mistress of all her other belongings and all that she might acquire.
+Except in some cases, and for special reasons, in all the families of
+the aristocracy, by common consent, marriages, during the last
+centuries of the republic, were contracted in the later form; so that
+at that time married women directly and openly had gained economic
+independence.
+
+During the same period, indirectly, and by means of juridical evasions,
+this independence was also won by unmarried women, who, according to
+ancient laws, ought to have remained all their lives under a guardian,
+either selected by the father in his will or appointed by the law in
+default of such selection.  To get around this difficulty, the fertile
+and subtle imagination of the jurists invented first the _tutor
+optivus_, permitting the father, instead of naming his daughter's
+guardian in his will, to leave her free to choose one general guardian
+or several, according to the business in hand, or even to change that
+official as many times as she wished.
+
+To give the woman means to change her legitimate guardian at pleasure,
+if her father had provided none by will, there was invented the _tutor
+cessicius_, thereby allowing the transmission of a legal guardianship.
+However, though all restrictions imposed upon the liberty of the
+unmarried woman by the institution of tutelage disappeared, one
+limitation continued in force--she could not make a will.  Yet even
+this was provided for, either by fictitious marriage or by the
+invention of the _tutor fiduciarius_.  The woman, without contracting
+matrimony, gave herself by _coemptio_ (purchase) into the _manus_ of a
+person of her trust, on the agreement that the _coemptionator_ would
+free her: he became her guardian in the eyes of the law.
+
+[Illustration: A Roman marriage custom.  The picture shows the bride
+entering her new home in the arms of the bridegroom.]
+
+There was, then, at the close of the republic little disparity in legal
+condition between the man and the woman.  As is natural, to this almost
+complete legal equality there was united an analogous moral and social
+equality.  The Romans never had the idea that between the _mundus
+muliebris_ (woman's world) and that of men they must raise walls, dig
+ditches, put up barricades, either material or moral.  They never
+willed, for example, to divide women from men by placing between them
+the ditch of ignorance.  To be sure, the Roman dames of high society
+were for a long time little instructed, but this was because, moreover,
+the men distrusted Greek culture.  When literature, science, and
+Hellenic philosophy were admitted into the great Roman families as
+desired and welcome guests, neither the authority, nor the egoism, nor
+yet the prejudices of the men, sought to deprive women of the joy, the
+comfort, the light, that might come to them from these new studies.  We
+know that many ladies in the last two centuries of the republic not
+only learned to dance and to sing,--common feminine studies,
+these,--but even learned Greek, loved literature, and dabbled in
+philosophy, reading its books or meeting with the famous philosophers
+of the Orient.
+
+Moreover, in the home the woman was mistress, at the side of and on
+equality with her husband.  The passage I have quoted from Nepos proves
+that she was not segregated, like the Greek woman: she received and
+enjoyed the friends of her husband, was present with them at festivals
+and banquets in the houses of families with whom she had friendly
+relations, although at such banquets she might not, like the man,
+recline, but must, for the sake of greater modesty, sit at table.  In
+short, she was not, like the Greek woman, shut up at home, a veritable
+prisoner.
+
+She might go out freely; this she did generally in a litter.  She was
+never excluded from theaters, even though the Roman government tried as
+best it could for a long period to temper in its people the passion for
+spectacular entertainments.  She could frequent public places and have
+recourse directly to the magistrates.  We have record of the assembling
+and of demonstrations made by the richest women of Rome in the Forum
+and other public places, to obtain laws and other provisions from the
+magistrates, like that famous demonstration of women that Livy
+describes as having occurred in the year 195 B.C., to secure the
+abolition of the Oppian Law against luxury.
+
+What more?  We have good reason for holding that already under the
+republic there existed at Rome a kind of woman's club, which called
+itself _conventus matronarum_ and gathered together the dames of the
+great families.  Finally, it is certain that many times in critical
+moments the government turned directly and officially to the great
+ladies of Rome for help to overcome the dangers that menaced public
+affairs, by collecting money, or imploring with solemn religious
+ceremonies the favor of the gods.
+
+One understands then, how at all times there were at Rome women much
+interested in public affairs.  The fortunes of the powerful families,
+their glory, their dominance, their wealth, depended on the
+vicissitudes of politics and of war.  The heads of these families were
+all statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated
+the wife, and the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the
+absorption with which she must have followed the fortunes of politics,
+domestic and foreign; for with these were bound up many family
+interests, and often even the life of her husband.
+
+[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]
+
+
+Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
+everything like the family of contemporary civilization?  Have we
+returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
+forebears?
+
+No.  If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
+there are also crucial differences.  Although the Roman was disposed to
+allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
+that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
+and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
+civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
+marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
+their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
+characters and aspirations.  The individualistic conception of
+matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
+the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political
+and social point of view.  The purpose of marriage was, so to speak,
+exterior to the pair.  As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical
+spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every suggestion of
+the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the
+state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat never regarded
+matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded religion and law,
+as other than instruments for political domination, as means for
+increasing and establishing the power of every great family, and by
+family affiliations to strengthen the association of the aristocracy,
+already bound together by political interest.
+
+For this reason, although the Roman conceded many privileges and
+recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think
+that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her
+own husband.  Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at
+least in a first marriage.  The choice rested with the fathers, who
+were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys.
+The heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together
+in the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations
+of the Senate.  Did the idea occur to both that their children, if
+affianced then, at seven or eight years of age, might cement more
+closely the union of the two families, then straightway the matter was
+definitely arranged.  The little girl was brought up with the idea that
+some day, as soon as might be, she should marry that boy, just as for
+two centuries in the famous houses of Catholic countries many of the
+daughters were brought up in the expectation that one day they should
+take the veil.
+
+Every one held this Roman practice as reasonable, useful, equitable; to
+no one did the idea occur that by it violence was done to the most
+intimate sentiment of liberty and independence that a human being can
+know.  On the contrary, according to the common judgment, the
+well-governing of the state was being wisely provided for, and these
+alliances were destroying the seeds of discord that spontaneously
+germinate in aristocracy and little by little destroy it, like those
+plants sown by no man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and become
+their ruin.
+
+This is why one knows of every famous Roman personage how many wives he
+had and of what family they were.  The marriage of a Roman noble was a
+political act, and noteworthy; because a youth, or even a mature man,
+connecting himself with certain families, came to assume more or less
+fully the political responsibilities in which, for one cause or
+another, they were involved.  This was particularly true in the last
+centuries of the republic,--that is, beginning from the Gracchi,--when
+for the various reasons which I have set forth in my "Greatness and
+Decline of Rome," the Roman aristocracy divided into two inimical
+parties, one of which attempted to rouse against the other the
+interests, the ambitions, and the cupidity, of the middle and lower
+classes.  The two parties then sought to reinforce themselves by
+matrimonial alliances, and these followed the ups and downs of the
+political struggle that covered Rome with blood.  Of this fact the
+story of Julius Caesar is a most curious proof.
+
+The prime reason for Julius Caesar's becoming the chief of the popular
+party is to be found neither in his ambitions nor in his temperament,
+and even less in his political opinions, but in his relationship to
+Marius.  An aunt of Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest
+bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having entered politics, had become
+the first general of his time, had been elected consul six times, and
+had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutons.  The self-made man
+had become famous and rich, and in the face of an aristocracy proud of
+its ancestors, had tried to ennoble his obscure origin by taking his
+wife from an ancient and most noble, albeit impoverished and decayed,
+patrician family.
+
+But when there broke out the revolution in which Marius placed himself
+at the head of the popular party, and the revolution was overcome by
+Sulla, the old aristocracy, which had conquered with Sulla, did not
+forgive the patrician family of the Julii for having connected itself
+with that bitter foe, who had made so much mischief.  Consequently,
+during the period of the reaction, all its members were looked upon
+askance, and were suspected and persecuted, among them young Caesar,
+who was in no way responsible for the deeds of his uncle, since he was
+only a lad during the war between Sulla and Marius.
+
+This explains how it was that the first wife of Caesar, Cossutia, was
+the daughter of a knight; that is, of a financier and revenue-farmer.
+For a young man belonging to a family of ancient senatorial nobility,
+this marriage was little short of a _mésalliance_; but Caesar had been
+engaged to this girl when still a very young man, at the time when, the
+alliance between Marius and the knights being still firm and strong,
+the marriage of a rich knight's daughter would mean to the nephew of
+Marius, not only a considerable fortune, but also the support of the
+social class which at that moment was predominant.  For reasons unknown
+to us, Caesar soon repudiated Cossutia, and before the downfall of the
+democratic party he was married to Cornelia, who was the daughter of
+Cinna, the democratic consul and a most distinguished member of the
+party of Marius.  This second marriage, the causes of which must be
+sought for in the political status of Caesar's family, was the cause of
+his first political reverses.  For Sulla tried to force Caesar to
+repudiate Cornelia, and in consequence of his refusal, he came to be
+considered an enemy by Sulla and his party and was treated accordingly.
+
+[Illustration: The Forum under the Caesars.]
+
+It is known that Cornelia died when still very young, after only a few
+years of married life, and that Caesar's third marriage in the year 68
+B.C., was quite different from his first and second, since the third
+wife, Pompeia, belonged to one of the noblest families of the
+conservative aristocracy--was, in fact, a niece of Sulla.  How could
+the nephew of Marius, who had escaped as by miracle the proscriptions
+of Sulla, ever have married the latter's niece?  Because in the dozen
+years intervening between 80 and 68, the political situation had
+gradually grown calmer, and a new air of conciliation had begun to blow
+through the city, troubled by so much confusion, burying in oblivion
+the bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into fresh life
+admiration for Marius, that hero who had conquered the Cimbri and the
+Teutons.  In that moment, to be a nephew of Marius was no longer a
+crime among any of the great families; for some, on the contrary, it
+was coming to be the beginning of glory.  But that situation was
+short-lived.  After a brief truce, the two parties again took up a
+bitter war, and for his fourth wife Caesar chose Calpurnia, the
+daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58, and a most
+influential senator of the popular party.
+
+Whoever studies the history of the influential personages of Caesar's
+time, will find that their marriages follow the fortunes of the
+political situation.  Where a purely political reason was wanting,
+there was the economic.  A woman could aid powerfully a political
+career in two ways: by ably administering the household and by
+contributing to its expenses her dower or her personal fortune.
+Although the Romans gave their daughters an education relatively
+advanced, they never forgot to inculcate in them the idea that it was
+the duty of a woman, especially if she was nobly born, to know all the
+arts of good housewifery, and especially, as most important, spinning
+and weaving.  The reason for this lay in the fact that for the
+aristocratic families, who were in possession of vast lands and many
+flocks, it was easy to provide themselves from their own estates with
+the wool necessary to clothe all their household, from masters to the
+numerous retinue of slaves.  If the _materfamilias_ knew sufficiently
+well the arts of spinning and weaving to be able to organize in the
+home a small "factory" of slaves engaged in such tasks, and knew how to
+direct and survey them, to make them work with zeal and without theft,
+she could provide the clothing for the whole household, thus saving the
+heavy expense of buying the stuffs from a merchant--notable economy in
+times when money was scarce and every family tried to make as little
+use of it as possible.  The _materfamilias_ held, then, in every home,
+a prime industrial office, that of clothing the entire household, and
+in proportion to her usefulness in this office was she able to aid or
+injure the family.
+
+More important still were the woman's dower and her personal fortune.
+The Romans not only considered it perfectly honorable, sagacious, and
+praiseworthy for a member of the political aristocracy to marry a rich
+woman for her wealth, the better to maintain the luster of his rank, or
+the more easily to fulfil his particular political and social duties,
+but they also believed there could be no better luck or greater honor
+for a rich woman than for this reason to marry a prominent man.  They
+exacted only that she be of respectable habits, and even in this regard
+it appears that, during certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes shut
+one eye.
+
+Tradition says, for example, that Sulla, born of a noble family, quite
+in ruin, owed his money to the bequest of a Greek woman whose wealth
+had the most impure origin that the possessions of a woman can possibly
+have.  Is this tradition only the invention of the enemies of the
+terrible dictator?  In any event, how people of good standing felt in
+this matter in normal times is shown by the life of Cicero.
+
+Cicero was born at Arpino, of a knightly family, highly respectable,
+and well educated, but not rich.  That he was able to pursue his
+brilliant forensic and political career, was chiefly due to his
+marriage to Terentia, who, although not very rich, had more than he,
+and by her fortune enabled him to live at Rome.  But it is well known
+that after long living together happily enough, as far as can be
+judged, Cicero and Terentia, already old, fell into discord and in 46
+B.C. ended by being divorced.  The reasons for the divorce are not
+exactly clear, but from Cicero's letters it appears that financial
+motives and disputes were not wanting.  It seems that during the civil
+wars Terentia refused to help Cicero with her money to the extent he
+desired; that is to say, at some tremendous moment of those turbulent
+years she was unwilling to risk all her patrimony on the uncertain
+political fortune of her husband.
+
+[Illustration: The so-called bust of Cicero.  All but the head is
+modern.  Now in the Museo Capitolino, it was formerly in the Palazzo
+Barberini.]
+
+Cicero's divorce, obliging him to return the dower, reduced him to the
+gravest straits, from which he emerged through another marriage.  He
+was the guardian of an exceedingly rich young woman, named Publilia,
+and one fine day, at the age of sixty-three, he joined hands with this
+seventeen-year-old girl, whose possessions were to rehabilitate the
+great writer.
+
+
+This conception of matrimony and of the family may seem unromantic,
+prosaic, materialistic; but we must not suppose that because of it the
+Romans failed to experience the tenderest and sweetest affections of
+the human heart.  The letters of Cicero himself show how tenderly even
+Romans could love wife and children.  Although they distrusted and
+combatted as dangerous to the prosperity and well-being of the state
+those dearest and gentlest personal affections that in our times
+literature, music, religion, philosophy, and custom have educated,
+encouraged, and exalted, as one of the supreme fountains of civil life,
+should we therefore reckon them barbarians?  We must not forget the
+great diversity between our times and theirs.  The confidence which
+modern men repose in love as a principle, in its ultimate wisdom, in
+its beneficial influence or the affairs of the world; in the idea that
+every man has the right to choose for himself the person of the
+opposite sex toward whom the liveliest and strongest personal
+attraction impels him--these are the supreme blossoms of modern
+individualism, the roots of which have been able to fasten only in the
+rich soil of modern civilization.
+
+The great ease of living that we now enjoy, the lofty intellectual
+development of our day, permit us to relax the severe discipline that
+poorer times and peoples, constrained to lead a harder life, had to
+impose upon themselves.  Although the habit may seem hard and
+barbarous, certainly almost all the great peoples of the past, and the
+majority of those contemporary who live outside our civilization, have
+conceived and practised matrimony not as a right of sentiment, but as a
+duty of reason.  To fulfil it, the young have turned to the sagacity of
+the aged, and these have endeavored to promote the success of marriage
+not merely to the satisfaction of a single passion, usually as brief as
+it is ardent, but according to a calculated equilibrium of qualities,
+tendencies, and material means.
+
+The principles regulating Roman marriage may seem to us at variance
+with human nature, but they are the principles to which all peoples
+wishing to trust the establishment of the family not to passion as
+mobile as the sea, but to reason, have had recourse in times when the
+family was an organism far more essential than it is to-day, because it
+held within itself many functions, educational, industrial, and
+political, now performed by other institutions.  But reason itself is
+not perfect.  Like passion, it has its weakness, and marriage so
+conceived by Rome produced grave inconveniences, which one must know in
+order to understand the story, in many respects tragic, of the women of
+the Caesars.
+
+The first difficulty was the early age at which marriages took place
+among the aristocracy.  The boys were almost always married at from
+eighteen to twenty; the girls, at from thirteen to fifteen.  This
+disadvantage is to be found in all society in which marriage is
+arranged by the parents, because it would be next to impossible to
+induce young people to yield to the will of their elders in an affair
+in which the passions are readily aroused if they were allowed to reach
+the age when the passions are strongest and the will has become
+independent Hardly out of childhood, the man and the woman are
+naturally more tractable.  On the other hand, it is easy to see how
+many dangers threatened such youthful marriages in a society where
+matrimony gave to the woman wide liberty, placing her in contact with
+other men, opening to her the doors of theaters and public resorts,
+leading her into the midst of all the temptations and illusions of life.
+
+The other serious disadvantage was the facility of divorce.  For the
+very reason that matrimony was for the nobility a political act, the
+Romans were never willing to allow that it could be indissoluble;
+indeed, even when the woman was in no sense culpable, they reserved to
+the man the right of undoing it at any time he wished, solely because
+that particular marriage did not suit his political interests.  And the
+marriage could be dissolved by the most expeditious means, without
+formality--by a mere letter!  Nor was that enough.  Fearing that love
+might outweigh reason and calculation in the young, the law granted to
+the father the right to give notice of divorce to the daughter-in-law,
+instead of leaving it to the son; so that the father was able to make
+and unmake the marriages of his sons, as he thought useful and fitting,
+without taking their will into account.
+
+The woman, therefore, although in the home she was of sovereign
+equality with the man and enjoyed a position full of honor, was,
+notwithstanding, never sure of the future.  Neither the affection of
+her husband nor the stainlessness of her life could insure that she
+should close her days in the house whither she had come in her youth as
+a bride.  At any hour the fatalities of politics could, I will not say,
+drive her forth, but gently invite her exit from the house where her
+children were born.  An ordinary letter was enough to annul a marriage.
+So it was that, particularly in the age of Caesar when politics were
+much perturbed and shifting, there were not a few women of the
+aristocracy who had changed husbands three or four times, and that not
+for lightness or caprice or inconstancy of tastes, but because their
+fathers, their brothers, sometimes their sons, had at a certain moment
+besought or constrained them to contract some particular marriage that
+should serve their own political ends.
+
+It is easy to comprehend how this precariousness discouraged woman from
+austere and rigorous virtues, the very foundation of the family; how it
+was a continuous incitement to frivolity of character, to dissipation,
+to infidelity.  Consequently, the liberty the Romans allowed her must
+have been much more dangerous than the greater freedom she enjoys
+today, since it lacked its modern checks and balances, such as personal
+choice in marriage, the relatively mature age at which marriages are
+nowadays made, the indissolubility of the matrimonial contract, or,
+rather, the many and diverse restrictions placed upon divorce, by which
+it is no longer left to the arbitrary will or the mere fancy of the man.
+
+In brief, there was in the constitution of the Roman family a
+contradiction, which must be well apprehended if one would understand
+the history of the great ladies of the imperial era.  Rome desired
+woman in marriage to be the pliable instrument of the interests of the
+family and the state, but did not place her under the despotism of
+customs, of law, and of the will of man in the way done by all other
+states that have exacted from her complete self-abnegation.  Instead,
+it accorded to her almost wholly that liberty, granted with little
+danger by civilizations like ours, in which she may live not only for
+the family, for the state, for the race, but also for herself.  Rome
+was unwilling to treat her as did the Greek and Asiatic world, but it
+did not on this account give up requiring of her the same total
+self-abnegation for the public weal, the utter obliviousness to her own
+aspirations and passions, in behalf of the race.
+
+[Illustration: Julius Caesar]
+
+This contradiction explains to us one of the fundamental phenomena of
+the history of Rome--the deep, tenacious, age-long puritanism of high
+Roman society.  Puritanism was the chief expedient by which Rome
+attempted to solve the contradiction.  That coercion which the Oriental
+world had tried to exercise upon woman by segregating her, keeping her
+ignorant, terrorizing her with threats and punishments, Rome sought to
+secure by training.  It inculcated in every way by means of education,
+religion, and opinion the idea that she should be pious, chaste,
+faithful, devoted alone to her husband and children; that luxury,
+prodigality, dissoluteness, were horrible vices, the infamy of which
+hopelessly degraded all that was best and purest in woman.  It tried to
+protect the minds of both men and women from all those influences of
+art, literature, and religion which might tend to arouse the personal
+instinct and the longing for love; and for a long time it distrusted,
+withstood, and almost sought to disguise the mythology, the arts, and
+the literature of Greece, as well as many of the Asiatic religions,
+imbued as they were with an erotic spirit of subtle enticement.
+Puritanism is essentially an intense effort to rouse in the mind the
+liveliest repulsion for certain vices and pleasures, and a violent
+dread of them; and Rome made use of it to check and counterbalance the
+liberty of woman, to impede and render more difficult the abuses of
+such liberty, particularly prodigality and dissoluteness.
+
+It is therefore easy to understand how this puritanism was a thing
+serious, weighty, and terrible, in Roman life; and how from it could be
+born the tragedies we have to recount.  It was the chief means of
+solving one of the gravest problems that has perplexed all
+civilizations--the problem of woman and her freedom, a problem earnest,
+difficult, and complex which springs up everywhere out of the
+unobstructed anarchy and the tremendous material prosperity of the
+modern world.  And the difficulty of the problem consists, above all,
+in this: that, although it is a hard, cruel, plainly iniquitous thing
+to deprive a woman of liberty and subject her to a régime of tyranny in
+order to constrain her to live for the race and not for herself, yet
+when liberty is granted her to live for herself, to satisfy her
+personal desires, she abuses that liberty more readily than a man does,
+and more than a man forgets her duties toward the race.
+
+She abuses it more readily for two reasons: because she exercises a
+greater power over man than he over her; and because, in the wealthier
+classes, she is freer from the political and economic responsibilities
+that bind the man.  However unbridled the freedom that man enjoys,
+however vast his egoism, he is always constrained in a certain measure
+to check his selfish instincts by the need of conserving, enlarging,
+and defending against rivals his social, economic, and political
+situation.
+
+But the woman?  If she is freed from family cares, if she is authorized
+to live for her own gratification and for her beauty; if the opinion
+that imposes upon her, on pain of infamy, habits pure and honest,
+weakens; if, instead of infamy, dissoluteness brings her glory, riches,
+homage, what trammel can still restrain in her the selfish instincts
+latent in every human being?  She runs the mighty danger of changing
+into an irresponsible being who will be the more admired and courted
+and possessed of power--at least as long as her beauty lasts--the more
+she ignores every duty, subordinating all good sense to her own
+pleasure.
+
+This is the reason why woman, in periods commanded by strong social
+discipline, is the most beneficent and tenacious among the cohesive
+forces of a nation; and why, in times when social discipline is
+relaxed, she is, instead, through ruinous luxury, dissipation, and
+voluntary sterility, the most terrible force for dissolution.
+
+[Illustration: The sister of M. Nonius Balbus.]
+
+One of the greatest problems of every epoch and all civilizations is to
+find a balance between the natural aspiration for freedom that is none
+other than the need of personal felicity--a need as lively and profound
+in the heart of woman as of man--and the supreme necessity for a
+discipline without which the race, the state, and the family run the
+gravest danger.  Yet this problem to-day, in the unmeasured
+exhilaration with which riches and power intoxicate the
+European-American civilization, is considered with the superficial
+frivolity and the voluble dilettantism that despoil or confuse all the
+great problems of esthetics, philosophy, statesmanship, and morality.
+We live in the midst of what might be called the Saturnalia of the
+world's history; and in the midst of the swift and easy labor, the
+inebriety of our continual festivities, we feel no more the tragic in
+life.  This short history of the women of the Caesars will set before
+the eyes of this pleasure-loving contemporary age tragedies among whose
+ruins our ancestors lived from birth to death, and by which they
+tempered their minds.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LIVIA AND JULIA
+
+In the year 38 B.C. it suddenly became known at Rome that C. Julius
+Caesar Octavianus (afterward the Emperor Augustus), one of the
+triumvirs of the republic, and colleague of Mark Antony and Lepidus in
+the military dictatorship established after the death of Caesar, had
+sent up for decision to the pontifical college, the highest religious
+authority of the state, a curious question.  It was this: Might a
+divorced woman who was expecting to become a mother contract a marriage
+with another man before the birth of her child?  The pontifical college
+replied that if there still was doubt about the fact the new marriage
+would not be permissible; but if it was certain, there would be no
+impediment.  A few days later, it was learned that Octavianus had
+divorced his wife Scribonia and had married Livia, a young woman of
+nineteen.  Livia's physical condition was precisely that concerning
+which the pontiffs had been asked to decide, and in order to enter into
+this marriage she had obtained a divorce from Tiberius Claudius Nero.
+
+The two divorces and the new marriage were concluded with unwonted
+haste.  The first husband of Livia, acting the part of a father, gave
+her a dowry for her new alliance and was present at the wedding.  Thus
+Livia suddenly passed into the house of her new husband where, three
+months later, she gave birth to a son, who was called Drusus Claudius
+Nero.  This child Octavianus immediately sent to the house of its
+father.
+
+To us, marriage customs of this sort seem brutal, shameless, and almost
+ridiculous.  We should infer that a woman who lent herself to such
+barter and exchange must be a person of light manners and of immoral
+inclinations.  At Rome, however, no one would have been amazed at such
+a marriage or at the procedure adopted, had it not been for the
+extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable
+or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child,
+and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its
+somewhat sophistical consent.  For all were accustomed to seeing the
+marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on
+such bases.  Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded,
+apparently with the consent of all concerned?  Why did they all, Livia
+and Octavianus not less than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impatient
+that everything should be settled with despatch?
+
+[Illustration: Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a
+priestess.]
+
+The legend which then formed about the family of Augustus, a legend
+hostile at almost every point, has interpreted this marriage as a
+tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the dissolute and perverse
+triumvir.  I, too, in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed my
+belief that this haste, at least, was the effect not of political
+motives but of a passionate love inspired in the young triumvir by the
+very beautiful Livia.  A longer reflection upon this episode has
+persuaded me, however, that there is another manner, less poetic
+perhaps, but more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, this famous
+alliance, which was to have so great an importance in the history of
+Rome.
+
+To arrive at the motives of this marriage we must consider who was
+Livia and who was Octavianus.  Livia was a woman of great beauty, as
+her portraits prove.  But this was not all.  She belonged also to two
+of the most ancient and conspicuous families of the Roman nobility.
+Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, was by birth a Claudius,
+adopted by a Livius Drusus.  He was descended from Appius the Blind,
+the famous censor and perhaps the most illustrious personage of the
+ancient republic.  His grandfather, his great-grand-father, and his
+great-great-grandfather had been consuls, and consuls and censors may
+be found in the collateral branches of the family.  A sister of his
+grandfather had been the wife of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his
+father had married Lucullus, the great general.  He came, therefore, of
+one of the most ancient and glorious families.  Not less noble was the
+family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him.  It counted eight
+consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and one dictatorship.
+Thus the father of Livia belonged by birth and adoption to two of those
+ancient, aristocratic families which for a long time and even in the
+midst of the most tremendous revolutions the people had venerated as
+semi-divine and into whose story was interwoven the history of the
+great republic.  Nor had the first husband given to Livia been less
+noble, for Tiberius Claudius Nero was descended like Livia from Appius
+the Blind, though through another son of the great censor.  In Livia
+was concentrated the quintessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she
+was at Rome what in London to-day the daughter of the Duke of
+Westminster or the Duke of Bedford would be, and her noble rank
+explains the rôle which her family had played during the Civil War.  In
+the great revolution which broke out after the death of Caesar, the
+father of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by the triumvirs; he
+had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had died by his own hand after
+Philippi.  In 40, after the Perusinian war and only two years before
+Livia's marriage with Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia had
+been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the vengeance of Octavianus.
+
+Who on the other hand was Octavianus?  A parvenu, with a nobility
+altogether too recent!  His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae
+(now Velletri), a financier and a man of affairs; it was only his
+immediate father who succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer
+grandfather in entering the Roman nobility.  He had married a sister of
+Caesar and, though still young when he died, had become a senator and
+pretor.  Octavianus was, therefore, the descendant, as we should
+express it in Europe to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled.
+Although by adopting him in his will Caesar had given him his name,
+that of an ancient patrician family, the modest origin of Octavianus
+and the trade of his grandfather were known to everybody.  In a country
+like Rome where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old nobility was
+still highly venerated by the people and formed a closed caste, jealous
+of its exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of origin was a
+handicap and a danger, especially when Octavianus had as colleagues
+Antony and Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient and illustrious
+origin than his own.
+
+We can readily explain, therefore, even without admitting that Livia
+had aroused in him a violent passion, why the future Augustus should
+have been so impatient to marry her in 38 B.C.  The times were stormy
+and uncertain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice of fortune had
+raised to the head of a revolutionary dictatorship, was certainly the
+weakest of the three colleagues, because of his youth, his slighter
+experience, the feebler prestige among his soldiers, and, last of all,
+the greater obscurity of his lineage.  Antony, especially, who had
+fought in so many wars, with Caesar and alone, who belonged to a family
+of really ancient nobility, was much more popular than he among the
+soldiers and had stronger relations with the great families.  He was
+therefore more powerful than Octavianus both in high places and in low.
+A marriage with Livia meant much to the future Augustus.  It would open
+for him a door into the old aristocracy; it would draw him closer to
+those families which, in spite of the revolution, were still so
+influential and venerable; it would be the means of lessening the
+hatred, contempt, and distrust in which these families held him.  It
+was for him what Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise and the
+consequent connection with the imperial family of Austria had been for
+the former Corsican officer, become Emperor of the French.  Since, now,
+a lady who belonged to one of these great families was disposed to
+marry him, it would have been foolish to put obstacles in the way; it
+was necessary to act with despatch; time and fortune might change.
+
+Such are the motives that may have induced Augustus to hasten the
+nuptials.  But what were the motives of Livia in accepting this
+marriage, in such stormy times, when the fortunes of the future
+Augustus were still so uncertain?  A passage in Velleius Paterculus
+would lead us to believe that he who devised this historic marriage was
+none other than that same first husband of Livia, Tiberius Claudius
+Nero himself!  According to our ideas it is inconceivable; but not at
+all strange according to the ideas of the Roman.  It is probable that
+Tiberius Claudius Nero, feeling that the triumph of the revolution was
+now assured, had wished by this marriage to attach to the cause of the
+old aristocracy the youngest of the three revolutionary leaders.
+Already well along in years and infirm,--he was to die shortly
+after,--Nero, who well knew the intelligence of his young wife, was
+perhaps planning to place her in the house of the man in whom all saw
+one of the future lords of Rome.  Thus he would bind him to the
+interests of the aristocracy.  In the person of Livia there entered
+into the house of Octavianus the old Roman nobility, which, defeated at
+Philippi, was striving to reacquire through the prestige and the
+cleverness of a woman what it had not been able to maintain by arms.
+
+All her life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact,
+Livia fulfilled her mission.  She succeeded in resolving into the
+admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the
+liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man
+as a duty.  She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that
+lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and
+tempestuous history never ceased to admire.  Even and serene,
+completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with a
+robust will, she accommodated herself without difficulty to all the
+sacrifices which her rank and situation imposed upon her.  She changed
+husbands without repugnance, though her marriage to Octavianus occurred
+but five years after the proscriptions, while he was still red with the
+blood of her family and friends.  Likewise she renounced her two sons,
+the future emperor Tiberius, who had been born before her second
+marriage, as well as the one who had been born after.  So too when, a
+few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their
+guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with
+the most careful motherly solicitude.  To the second husband, whom
+politics had given her, she was a faithful companion.  Scandal imputed
+to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of
+insatiable ambitions and perfidious intrigues.  No one ever dared
+accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct.  The
+great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
+poise of her spirit.  In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
+triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
+from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
+with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
+interests of the world,--laws and elections, wars and peace,--she
+preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry.  These
+she had learned as a child in the house of her father,--a house as much
+more illustrious with inherited glory as it was poorer in wealth than
+that which Victory had prepared for Augustus on the Palatine.
+
+[Illustration: The young Augustus.]
+
+We know--it is Suetonius who tells us--that this house on the Palatine
+built by Augustus, in which Livia spent the larger part of her life,
+was small and not at all luxurious.  In it there was not a single piece
+of marble nor a precious mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the
+same bedchamber, and the furniture of the house was so simple that in
+the second century of our era it was exhibited to the public as an
+extraordinary curiosity.  The imperial pair had several villas, at
+Lanuvium, at Palestrina, at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious
+and simple.  Nor was there any more pomp and ceremony about the dinners
+to which they invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, the
+dignitaries of the state and the heads of the great families.  Only on
+very special occasions were six courses served; usually there were but
+three.  Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven
+by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands,--though she
+did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom,--but by her slaves and
+freed-women.  Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia
+counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms
+which were in the house.  As she carefully parceled out the wool to the
+slaves, watching over them lest they steal or waste it, and frequently
+taking her place among them while they were at work, she felt that she
+too contributed to the prosperity and the glory of the empire.
+
+Simplicity, loyalty, industry, an absolute surrender of one's own
+personality to the family and its interests,--these, in the great
+families, were the traditional feminine virtues which lived again in
+Livia to the admiration of her contemporaries.  But with these virtues
+were associated also the need and the pride of participating in the
+affairs and work of her husband, that interest in politics which had
+been common to the intelligent women of the nobility.  No one at Rome
+was astonished, especially in the upper classes, that Livia should
+occupy herself actively with politics; that Augustus should frequently
+come to her for counsel, or that he should not make any serious
+decision without having consulted her; that, in short, she should at
+the same time attend to her husband's clothes and aid him in governing
+the empire.  For so had done from time immemorial all the great ladies
+of the aristocracy, mindful of their good repute and the prosperity of
+their families.  And Livia must have tried the more earnestly to fulfil
+all that her education had taught her to consider a sacred duty, since
+to a woman of her old-fashioned breeding the times must have appeared
+especially difficult and perilous.
+
+The civil wars had greatly reduced in numbers the historic aristocracy
+of Rome, and the peace which followed after so long a time and which
+had been so anxiously invoked, very soon began to threaten the
+prosperity of the remnant of that nobility with a more insidious but
+more inevitable ruin.  About 18 B.C., when Livia was approaching her
+fortieth year, the men of the new generation who had not seen the civil
+wars, for when these ended they were either unborn or only in their
+infancy, were already beginning to come to the front.  They brought
+with them a previously unknown spirit of luxury, of enjoyment, of
+dissipation, of rebellion against discipline, of egotism and fondness
+for the new, which rendered very difficult, not to say impossible, the
+continuation of the aristocratic régime.  Women submitted with more and
+more repugnance to those obligatory marriages, arranged for reasons of
+state, which had formerly been the tradition and the sure bulwark of
+dominion for the aristocracy.  The increase of celibacy was rendering
+sterile the most celebrated stocks; the most lamentable vices and
+disorders became tolerated and common in the most illustrious families,
+and ruinous habits of extravagance spread generally among that
+aristocracy, once so simple and austere.  All this had grown up after
+the conquest of Egypt, which had established more points of contact
+with the East; and it increased in proportion as those industries and
+the commerce in articles of luxury which had flourished at Alexandria
+under the Ptolemies were gradually transplanted to Rome, where the
+merchants hoped to establish among their conquerors the clientele which
+had been lost with the fall of the Kingdom of the Nile.  The ladies
+especially took up with the new oriental customs, and, preferring
+expensive stuffs and jewels, turned from the loom, which Livia had
+wished to preserve as the emblem of womanhood.  Many young men of the
+great families were beginning to show a distaste for the army, for the
+government of the state, for jurisprudence, for all those activities
+which had been the jealous privilege of the nobility of the past.  One
+gave himself up to literary pursuits, another cultivated philosophy,
+another busied himself only with the increase of his inherited fortune,
+while another lived only in pleasure and idleness.  So it happened that
+there began to appear descendants of great houses who refused to be
+senators; every year an effort had to be made to find a sufficient
+number of candidates for the more numerous positions like the
+questorship, and in the army it was no easy matter to fill all the
+posts of the superior officers which were reserved for members of the
+nobility.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Augustus.  This statue was found in 1910 in
+the Via Labicana, not far from the Colosseum.]
+
+The Roman aristocracy then, that glorious Roman aristocracy which had
+escaped the massacres of the proscriptions and of Philippi, ran grave
+danger of dying out through a species of slow suicide, if energetic
+measures were not taken to supply the necessary remedies.  It is
+certain that Livia had a conspicuous part in the policy of restoring
+the aristocracy, to which Augustus was impelled by the old nobility,
+especially toward the year 18 B.C., when with this purpose in view he
+proposed his famous social laws.  The _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_
+attempted by various penalties and promises to constrain the members of
+the aristocracy to contract marriage and to found a family, thus
+combatting the increasing inclination to celibacy and sterility.  The
+_Lex de adulteriis_ aimed to reestablish order and virtue in the
+family, by threatening the unfaithful wife and her accomplice with
+exile for life and the confiscation of a part of their substance.  It
+obliged the husband to expose the crime to the tribunals; if the
+husband could not or would not make the accusation, it provided that
+the father should do so; and in case both husband and father failed, it
+authorized any citizen to step forth as accuser.  Finally the _Lex
+sumptuaria_ was designed to restrain the extravagance of wealthy
+families, particularly that of the women, prohibiting them from
+spending too large a part of the family fortune in jewels, apparel,
+body slaves, festivities, or buildings, especially in the building of
+sumptuous villas, then a growing fashion.  In short, it was the purpose
+of these laws to bring the ladies of the Roman aristocracy to a course
+of conduct patterned upon the example of Livia.  In the protracted
+discussions concerning these laws, which took place in the senate,
+Augustus on one occasion made a long speech in which he cited Livia as
+a model for the ladies of Rome.  He set forth minutely the details of
+her household administration, telling how she lived, what relations she
+had with outsiders, what amusements she thought proper for a person of
+her rank, how she dressed and at what expense.  And no one in the
+senate judged it unworthy of the greatness of the state or contrary to
+custom thus to introduce the name and person of a great lady into the
+public discussion of so serious a matter of governmental policy.
+
+Livia, then, about 18 B.C. personified in the eyes of the Romans the
+perfect type of aristocratic great lady created by long tradition.
+Having been safely preserved by good fortune through the long civil
+wars, this model was now set back again upon a fitting pedestal in the
+most powerful and richest family of the empire.  She was the living
+example of all the virtues which the Romans most cherished, a beloved
+wife and a heeded counselor to the head of the state, honored with that
+veneration which power, virtue, nobility of birth, and the dignified
+beauty of face and figure drew from every one; furthermore, there were
+her two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, both intelligent, handsome, full of
+activity, docile to the traditional education which she sought to give
+them in order that they might be the worthy continuators of the great
+name they bore.  Livia, with all this in her favor, might have been
+expected to live a happy and tranquil life, serenely to fulfil her
+mission amid the admiration of the world.
+
+[Illustration: A silver denarius of the Second Triumvirate.  The
+portrait at the right (obverse) is of Caesar Octavianus (Augustus),
+with a slight beard to indicate mourning, and at the left (reverse), of
+Mark Antony.  The date is 41 B.C.]
+
+[Illustration: Silver coin bearing the head of Julius Caesar.  This
+coin, a denarius, worth about seventeen cents, represents Caesar as
+Pontifex Maximus.  Together with all the other Roman coins bearing
+Caesar's image, it was struck in the year before his death--44-45 B.C.
+The fact that Caesar placed his image on these coins may have
+strengthened the suspicion of his enemies that he wished to make
+himself king.]
+
+But opposition and difficulties sprang up in her own family.  In 39
+B.C. Augustus had had by Scribonia a daughter, Julia.  Following in the
+government of his family, as in so large a part of his politics, the
+traditions of the old nobility, Augustus gave his daughter in marriage
+when very young,--she was not yet past seventeen,--just as he early
+gave wives to Livia's two sons, whose guardian he was.  In each case in
+order to assure within his circle harmony and power, he chose the
+consort in his own family or from among his friends.  To Tiberius he
+gave Agrippina, a daughter of Agrippa, his close friend and most
+faithful collaborator; to Drusus he gave Antonia, the younger daughter
+of Mark Antony and Octavia, sister of Augustus.  To Julia he gave
+Marcellus, his nephew, the son of Octavia and her first husband.  But
+while the marriages of Drusus and Tiberius proved successful and the
+two couples lived lovingly and happily, such was not the case with the
+marriage of Julia and Marcellus.  As a result, disagreeable
+misunderstandings and rancors soon made themselves felt in the family.
+We do not know exactly what were the causes of these disagreements.  It
+seems that Marcellus, under the influence of Julia, assumed a tone
+somewhat too haughty and insolent, such as was not becoming in a youth
+who, although the nephew of Augustus, was still taking his first steps
+in his political career; and it seems too that this conduct of his was
+especially offensive to Agrippa, who, next to Augustus, was the first
+person in the empire.
+
+In short, at seventeen, Julia desired that her husband should be the
+second personage of the state in order that she might come immediately
+after Livia or even be placed directly on an equality with her.
+According to the Roman ideas of the family and of its discipline, this
+was a precocious and excessive ambition, unbecoming a matron, much less
+a young girl.  For the duty of the woman was to follow faithfully and
+submissively the ambitions of her lord and not to impart to him her own
+ambitions or make him her tool.  In contrast to Livia, who was so
+docile and placid in her respect for the older traditions of the
+aristocracy, so firm and strong in her observance of the duties, not
+infrequently grievous and difficult, which this tradition imposed,
+Julia represented the woman of that new generation which had grown up
+in the times of peace--a type more rebellious against tradition, less
+resigned to the serious duties and difficult renunciations of rank;
+much more inclined to enjoy its prerogatives than disposed to bear that
+heavy burden of obligations and sacrifices with which the previous
+generations had balanced privilege.  Beautiful and intelligent, even in
+the early years of her first marriage she showed a great passion for
+studies, and a fine artistic and literary taste, and with these a
+lively inclination toward luxury and display which hardly suited with
+the spirit or the letter of the _Lex sumptuaria_ which her father had
+carried through in that year.  But fraught with greater danger than all
+this was her ardent and passionate temperament, which both in the
+family and in politics was altogether too frequently to drive her to
+desire and to carry through that which, rightly or wrongly, was
+forbidden to a woman by law, custom, and public opinion.
+
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a young woman endowed with
+so fiery and ambitious a nature did not become in the hands of Augustus
+as docile a political instrument as Livia.  Julia wished to live for
+herself and for her pleasure, not for the political greatness of her
+father; and indeed, Augustus, who had a fine knowledge of men, was so
+impressed by this first unhappy experiment that when Marcellus, still a
+very young man, died in 23 B.C., he hesitated a long time before
+remarrying the youthful widow.  For a moment, indeed, he did think of
+bestowing her not upon a senator but upon a knight, that is, a person
+outside of the political aristocracy, evidently with the intention of
+stifling her too eager ambitions by taking from her all means and hope
+of satisfying them.  Then he decided upon the opposite expedient, that
+of quieting those ambitions by entirely satisfying them, and so gave
+Julia, in 21 B.C., to Agrippa, who had been the cause of the earlier
+difficulties.  Agrippa was twenty-four years older than she and could
+have been her father, but he was in truth the second person of the
+empire in glory, riches, and power.  Soon after, in 18 B.C., he was to
+become the colleague of Augustus in the presidency of the republic and
+consequently his equal in every way.
+
+Thus Julia suddenly saw her ambitions gratified.  She became at
+twenty-one the next lady of the empire after Livia, and perhaps even
+the first in company with and beside her.  Young, beautiful,
+intelligent, cultured, and loving luxury, she represented at Livia's
+side and in opposition to her, the trend of the new generation in which
+was growing the determination to free itself from tradition.  She
+lavished money generously, and there soon formed about her a sort of
+court, a party, a coterie, in which figured the fairest names of the
+Roman aristocracy.  Her name and her person became popular even among
+the common people of Rome, to whom the name of the Julii was more
+sympathetic than that of the Claudii, which was borne by the sons of
+Livia.  The combined popularity of Augustus and of Agrippa was
+reflected in her.  It may be said, therefore, that toward 18 B.C., the
+younger, more brilliant, and more "modern" Julia began to obscure Livia
+in the popular imagination, except in that little group of old
+conservative nobility which gathered about the wife of Augustus.  So
+true is this that about this time, Augustus, wishing to place himself
+into conformity with his law _de maritandis ordinibus_, reached a
+significant decision.  Since that law fixed at three the number of
+children which every citizen should have, if he wished to discharge his
+whole duty toward the state, and since Augustus had but a single
+daughter, he decided to adopt Caius and Lucius, the first two sons that
+Julia had borne to Agrippa.  This was a great triumph for her, in so
+far as her sons would henceforth bear the very popular name of Caesar.
+
+But the difficulties which the first marriage with Marcellus had
+occasioned and which Augustus had hoped to remove by this second
+marriage soon reappeared in another but still more dangerous form, for
+they had their roots in that passionate, imperious, bold, and imprudent
+temperament of Julia.  This temperament the Roman education had not
+succeeded in taming; it was strengthened by the undisciplined spirit of
+the times.  And with it Julia soon began to abuse the fortune, the
+popularity, the prestige, and the power which came to her from being
+the daughter of Augustus and the wife of Agrippa.  Little by little she
+became possessed by the mania of being in Rome the antithesis of Livia,
+of conducting herself in every case in a manner contrary to that
+followed by her stepmother.  If the latter, like Augustus, wore
+garments of wool woven at home, Julia affected silks purchased at great
+price from the oriental merchants.  These the ladies of the older type
+considered a ruinous luxury because of the expense, and an indecency
+because of the prominence which they gave to the figure.  Where Livia
+was sparing, Julia was prodigal.  If Livia preferred to go to the
+theater surrounded by elderly and dignified men, Julia always showed
+herself in public with a retinue of brilliant and elegant youths.  If
+Livia set an example of reserve, Julia dared appear in the provinces in
+public at the side of her husband and receive public homage.  In spite
+of the law which forbade the wives of Roman governors to accompany
+their husbands into the provinces, Julia prevailed upon Agrippa to make
+her his companion when in the year 16 B.C. he made his long journey
+through the East.  Everywhere she appeared at his side, at the great
+receptions, at the courts, in the cities; and she was the first of the
+Latin women to be apotheosized in the Orient.  Paphos called her
+"divine" and set up statues to her; Mitylene called her the New
+Aphrodite, Eressus, Aphrodite Genetrix.  These were bold innovations in
+a state in which tradition was still so powerful; but they could
+scarcely have been of serious danger to Julia, if her passionate
+temperament had not led her to commit a much more serious imprudence.
+Agrippa, compared to her, was old, a simple, unpolished man of obscure
+origin who was frequently absent on affairs of state.  In the circle
+which had formed about Julia there were a number of handsome, elegant,
+pleasing young men; among others one Sempronius Gracchus, a descendant
+of the famous tribunes.  Julia seems toward the close to have had for
+him, even in the lifetime of Agrippa, certain failings which the _Lex
+de adulteriis_ visited with terrible punishments.
+
+[Illustration: The great Paris Cameo.  This is the largest ancient
+cameo known, and is said to have been sent from Constantinople by
+Baldwin II. to Louis IX.  It represents the living members of the
+imperial family protected by the deified Augustus.  In the center
+Tiberius is shown seated, as Jupiter, with his mother, Livia, at his
+left, as Ceres.  In front of them stand Germanicus and his mother
+Antonia.]
+
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if from this time on there
+should have been fostered between Julia and Livia a half-suppressed
+rivalry.  The fact is, in itself, very probable and several indications
+of it have remained in tradition and in history.  We know also that two
+parties were already beginning to gather about the two women.  One of
+these might be called the party of the Claudii and of the old
+conservative nobility, the other the party of the Julii and of that
+youthful nobility which was following the modern trend.  As long as
+Agrippa lived, Augustus, by holding the balance between the two
+factions, succeeded in maintaining a certain equilibrium.  With the
+death of Agrippa, which occurred in 12 B.C., the situation was changed.
+
+Julia was now for the second time a widow, and by the provisions of the
+_Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ should remarry.  Augustus in the
+traditional manner sought a husband for her, and, seeking him only with
+the idea of furthering a political purpose, he found for her Tiberius,
+the elder son of Livia.  Tiberius was the stepbrother of Julia and was
+married to a lady whom he tenderly loved; but these were considerations
+which could hardly give pause to a Roman senator.  In the marriage of
+Tiberius and Julia, Augustus saw a way of snuffing out the incipient
+discord between the Julii and the Claudii, between Julia and Livia,
+between the parties of the new and of the old nobility.  He therefore
+ordered Tiberius to repudiate the young, beautiful, and noble Agrippina
+in order to marry Julia.  For Tiberius the sacrifice was hard; we are
+told that one day after the divorce, having met Agrippina at some
+house, he began to weep so bitterly that Augustus ordered that the
+former husband and wife should never meet again.  But Tiberius, on the
+other hand, had been educated by his mother in the ancient ideas, and
+therefore knew that a Roman nobleman must sacrifice his feelings to the
+public interest.  As for Julia, she celebrated her third wedding
+joyfully; for Tiberius, after the deaths of Agrippa and of his own
+brother Drusus, was the rising man, the hope and the second personage
+of the empire, so that she was not forced to step down from the lofty
+position which the marriage with Agrippa had given her.  Tiberius,
+furthermore, was a very handsome man and for this reason also he seems
+not to have been displeasing to Julia, who in the matter of husbands
+considered not only glory and power.
+
+The marriage of Julia and Tiberius began under happy auspices.  Julia
+seemed to love Tiberius and Tiberius did what he could to be a good
+husband.  Julia soon felt that she was once more to become a mother and
+the hope of this other child seemed to cement the union between husband
+and wife.  But the rosy promises of the beginning were soon
+disappointed.  Tiberius was the son of Livia, a true Claudius, the
+worthy heir of two ancient lines, an uncompromising traditionalist,
+therefore a rigid and disdainful aristocrat, and a soldier severe with
+others as with himself.  He wished the aristocracy to set the people an
+example of all the virtues which had made Rome so great in peace and
+war: religious piety, simplicity of customs, frugality, family purity,
+and rigid observance of all the laws.  The luxury and prodigality which
+were becoming more and more wide-spread among the young nobility had no
+fiercer enemy than he.  He held that a man of great lineage who spent
+his substance on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor to his
+country, and no one demanded with greater insistence than he that the
+great laws of the year 18 B.C., the sumptuary law, the laws on marriage
+and adultery, should be enforced with the severest rigor.  Julia, on
+the other hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joyous companies of
+elegant youths, an easy, brilliant life full of amusement.
+
+[Illustration: Octavia, the sister of Augustus.]
+
+For greater misfortune, the son who was born of their union died
+shortly after and discord found its way between Julia and Tiberius.
+Sempronius Gracchus, who knew how to profit by this, reappeared and
+again made advances to Julia.  She again lent her ear to his bland
+words and the domestic disagreement rapidly became embittered.
+Tiberius,--this is certain,--soon learned that Julia had resumed her
+relations with Sempronius Gracchus, and a new, intolerable torment was
+added to his already distressed life.  According to the _Lex de
+adulteriis_, he as husband should have made known the crime of his wife
+to the pretor and have had her punished.  He had been one of those who
+had always most vehemently denounced the nobility for their weakness in
+the enforcement of this law.  Now that his own wife had fallen under
+the provisions of the terrible statute, to which so many other women
+had been forced to submit, the moment had come to give the weak that
+example of unconquerable firmness which he had so often demanded of
+others.  But Julia was the daughter of Augustus.  Could he call down,
+without the consent of Augustus, so terrible a scandal upon the first
+house of the empire, render its daughter infamous, and drive her into
+exile?  Augustus, though he desired his daughter to be more prudent and
+serious, yet loved and protected her; above all, he disliked dangerous
+scandal, and Julia dared to do whatever she wished, knowing herself
+invulnerable under his protection and his love.
+
+To this hard and false situation Tiberius, fuming with rage, had to
+adjust himself.  He lived in a separate apartment, keeping up with
+Julia only the relations necessary to save appearances, but he could
+not divorce her, much less publish her guilt.  The situation grew still
+worse when political discontent began to use for its own ends the
+discord between Julia and Tiberius.  Tiberius had many enemies among
+the nobility, especially among the young men of his own age; partly
+because his rapid, brilliant career had aroused much jealousy, partly
+because his conservative, traditionalist tendencies toward authority
+and militarism disturbed many of them.  More and more among the
+nobility there was increasing the desire for a mild and easy-going
+government which should allow them to enjoy their privileges without
+hardship and which should not be too severe in imposing its duties upon
+them.
+
+On the other hand, Julia was most ambitious.  Since, after the
+disagreements with Tiberius had broken out, she could no longer hope to
+be the powerful wife of the first person of the empire after Augustus,
+she sought compensation.  Thus there formed about Julia a party which
+sought in every way to ruin the lofty position which Tiberius occupied
+in the state, by setting up against him Caius Caesar, the son of Julia
+by Agrippa, whom Augustus had adopted and of whom he was very fond.  In
+6 B.C., Caius Caesar was only fourteen years old, but at that period an
+agitation was set on foot whereby, through a special privilege conceded
+to him by the senate, he was to be named consul for the year of Rome
+754, when Caius should have reached twenty.  This was a manoeuver of
+the Julian party to attract popular attention to the youth, to prepare
+a rival for Tiberius in his quality as principal collaborator of
+Augustus, and to gain a hold upon the future head of the state.
+
+The move was altogether very bold; for this nomination of a child
+consul contradicted all the fundamental principles of the Roman
+constitution, and it would probably have been fatal to the party which
+evolved it, had not the indignant rage of Tiberius assured its triumph.
+Tiberius opposed this law, which he took as an offense, and he wished
+Augustus to oppose it, and at the outset Augustus did so.  But then,
+either because Julia was able to bend him to her desires or because in
+the senate there was in truth a strong party which supported it out of
+hatred for Tiberius, Augustus at last yielded, seeking to placate
+Tiberius with other compensations.  But Tiberius was too proud and
+violent an aristocrat to accept compensations and indignantly demanded
+permission to retire to Rhodes, abandoning all the public offices which
+he exercised.  He certainly hoped to make his loss felt, for indeed
+Rome needed him.  But he was mistaken.  This act of Tiberius was
+severely judged by public opinion as a reprisal upon the public for a
+private offense.  Augustus became angry with him and in his absence all
+his enemies took courage and hurled themselves against him.  The honors
+to Caius Caesar were approved amid general enthusiasm and the Julian
+party triumphed all along the line; it reached the height of power and
+popularity, while Tiberius was constrained to content himself with the
+idle life of a private person at Rhodes.
+
+[Illustration: A reception at Livia's villa.  The scene evidently is at
+Livia's country palace at Prima Porta.  Agrippa is seen descending the
+steps to be received by Augustus and Livia (who are not shown in the
+picture).  The original of the status of Augustus, here shown, was
+found in the ruins of Livia's villa close to the flight of marble steps
+and its base.  The remains of the steps and the base of the statue are
+standing to-day at Prima Porta.]
+
+But at Rome Livia still remained.  From that moment began the mortal
+duel between Livia and Julia.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
+
+Tiberius had now broken with Augustus, he had lost the support of
+public opinion, he was hated by the majority of the senate.  At Rhodes
+he soon found himself, therefore, in the awkward position of one who
+through a false move has played into the hands of his enemies and sees
+no way of recovering his position.  It had been easy to leave Rome; to
+reënter it was difficult, and in all probability his fortune would have
+been forever compromised, and he would never have become emperor, had
+it not been for the fact that in the midst of this general defection
+two women remained faithful.  They were his mother, Livia, and his
+sister-in-law, Antonia, the widow of that brother Drusus who, dying in
+his youth, had carried to his grave the hopes of Rome.
+
+Antonia was the daughter of the emperor's sister Octavia and of Mark
+Antony, the famous triumvir whose name remains forever linked in story
+with that of Cleopatra.  This daughter of Antony was certainly the
+noblest and the gentlest of all the women who appear in the lugubrious
+and tragic history of the family of the Caesars.  Serious, modest, and
+even-tempered, she was likewise endowed with beauty and virtue, and she
+brought into the family and into its struggles a spirit of concord,
+serenity of mind, and sweet reasonableness, though they could not
+always prevail against the violent passions and clashing interests of
+those about her.  As long as Drusus lived, Drusus and Antonia had been
+for the Romans the model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their
+tender affection had become proverbial; yet the Roman multitude, always
+given to admiring the descendants of the great families, was even more
+deeply impressed by the beauty, the virtue, the sweetness, the modesty,
+and the reserve of Antonia.  After the death of Drusus, she did not
+wish to marry again, even though the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ made
+it a duty.  "Young and beautiful," wrote Valerius Maximus, "she
+withdrew to a life of retirement in the company of Livia, and the same
+bed which had seen the death of the youthful husband saw his faithful
+spouse grow old in an austere widowhood."  Augustus and the people were
+so touched by this supreme proof of fidelity to the memory of the
+ever-cherished husband that by the common consent of public opinion she
+was relieved of the necessity of remarrying; and Augustus himself, who
+had always carefully watched over the observance of the marital law in
+his own family, did not dare insist.  Whether living at her villa of
+Bauli, where she spent the larger part of her year, or at Rome, the
+beautiful widow gave her attention to the bringing up of her three
+children, Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius.  Ever since the death of
+Octavia, she had worshiped Livia as a mother and lived in the closest
+intimacy with her, and, withdrawn from public life, she attempted now
+to bring a spirit of peace into the torn and tragic family.
+
+Antonia was very friendly with Tiberius, who, on his side, felt the
+deepest sympathy and respect for his beautiful and virtuous
+sister-in-law.  It cannot be doubted, therefore, that in this crisis
+Antonia, who was bound to Livia by many ties, must have taken sides for
+Livia's son Tiberius.  But Antonia was too gentle and mild to lead a
+faction in the struggle which during these years began between the
+friends and the enemies of Tiberius, and that rôle was assumed by
+Livia, who possessed more strength and more authority.
+
+The situation grew worse and worse.  Public opinion steadily became
+more hostile to Tiberius and more favorable to Julia and her elder son,
+and it was not long before they wished to give to her younger son,
+Lucius, the same honors which had already been bestowed upon his
+brother Caius.  Private interest soon allied itself with the hatred and
+rancor against Tiberius; and scarcely had he departed when the senate
+increased the appropriation for public supplies and public games.  All
+those who profited by these appropriations were naturally interested in
+preventing the return of Tiberius, who was notorious for his opposition
+to all useless expenditures.  Any measure, however dishonest, was
+therefore considered proper, provided only it helped to ruin Tiberius;
+and his enemies had recourse to every art and calumny, among other
+things actually accusing him of conspiracies against Augustus.  Even
+for a woman as able and energetic as Livia it was an arduous task to
+struggle against the inclinations of Augustus, against public opinion,
+against the majority of the senate, against private interest, and
+against Julia and her friends.  Indeed, four years passed during which
+the situation of Tiberius and his party grew steadily worse, while the
+party of Julia increased in power.
+
+Finally the party of Tiberius resolved to attempt a startlingly bold
+move.  They decided to cripple the opposition by means of a terrible
+scandal in the very person of Julia.  The _Lex Julia de adulteriis_,
+framed by Augustus in the year 18, authorized any citizen to denounce
+an unfaithful wife before the judges, if the husband and father should
+both refuse to make the accusation.  This law, which was binding upon
+all Roman citizens, was therefore applicable even to the daughter of
+Augustus, the widow of Agrippa, the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar,
+those two youths in whom were centered the hopes of the republic.  She
+had violated the _Lex Julia_ and she had escaped the penalties which
+had been visited on many other ladies of the aristocracy only because
+no one had dared to call down this scandal upon the first family of the
+empire.  The party of Tiberius, protected and guided by Livia, at last
+hazarded this step.
+
+It is impossible to say what part Livia played in this terrible
+tragedy.  It is certain that either she or some other influential
+personage succeeded in gaining possession of the proofs of Julia's
+guilt and brought them to Augustus, threatening to lay them before the
+pretor and to institute proceedings if he did not discharge his duty.
+Augustus found himself constrained to apply to himself his own terrible
+law.  He himself had decreed that if the husband, as was then the case
+of Tiberius, could not accuse a faithless woman, the father must do so.
+It was his law, and he had to bow to it in order to avoid scandals and
+worse consequences.  He exiled Julia to the little island of
+Pandataria, and at the age of thirty-seven the brilliant, pleasing, and
+voluptuous young woman who had dazzled Rome for many years was
+compelled to disappear from the metropolis forever and retire to an
+existence on a barren island.  She was cut off by the implacable hatred
+of a hostile party and by the inexorable cruelty of a law framed by her
+own father!
+
+[Illustration: Mark Antony.]
+
+The exile of Julia marks the moment when the fortunes of Tiberius and
+Livia, which had been steadily losing ground for four years, began to
+revive, though not so rapidly as Livia and Tiberius had probably
+expected.  Julia preserved, even in her misfortune, many faithful
+friends and a great popularity.  For a long time popular demonstrations
+were held in her favor at Rome, and many busied themselves tenaciously
+to obtain her pardon from Augustus, all of which goes to prove that the
+horrible infamies which were spread about her were the inventions of
+enemies.  Julia had broken the _Lex Julia_,--so much is certain,--but
+even if she had been guilty of an unfortunate act, she was not a
+monster, as her enemies wished to have it believed.  She was a
+beautiful woman, as there had been before, as there are now, and as
+there will be hereafter, touched with human vices and with human
+virtues.
+
+As a matter of fact, her party, after it had recovered from the
+terrible shock of the scandal, quickly reorganized.  Firm in its
+intention of having Julia pardoned, it took up the struggle again, and
+tried as far as it could to hinder Tiberius from returning to Rome and
+again taking part in political life, knowing well that if the husband
+once set foot in Rome, all hope of Julia's return would be lost.  Only
+one of them could reënter Rome.  It was either Tiberius or Julia; and
+more furiously than ever the struggle between the two parties was waged
+about Augustus.
+
+Caius and Lucius Caesar, Julia's two youthful sons, of whom Augustus
+was very fond, were the principal instruments with which the enemies of
+Tiberius fought against the influence of Livia over Augustus.  Every
+effort was made to sow hatred and distrust between the two youths and
+Tiberius, to the end that it might become impossible to have them
+collaborate with him in the government of the empire, and that the
+presence of Julia's sons should of necessity exclude that of her
+husband.  A further ally was soon found in the person of another child
+of Julia and Agrippa, the daughter who has come down into history under
+the name of the Younger Julia.  Augustus had conceived as great a love
+for her as for the two sons, and there was no doubt that she would aid
+with every means in her power the party averse to Tiberius; for her
+mother's instincts of liberty, luxury, and pleasure were also inherent
+in her.  Married to L. Aemilius Paulus, the son of one of the greatest
+Roman families, she had early assumed in Rome a position which made
+her, like her mother, the antithesis of Livia.  She, too, gathered
+about her, as the elder Julia had done, a court of elegant youths, men
+of letters, and poets,--Ovid was of the number,--and with this group
+she hoped to be able to hold the balance of power in the government
+against that coterie of aged senators who paid court to Livia.  She,
+too, took advantage of the good-will of her grandfather, just as her
+mother had done, and in the shadow of his protection she displayed an
+extravagance which the laws did not permit, but which, on this account,
+was all the more admired by the enemies of the old Roman Puritanism.
+As though openly to defy the sumptuary law of Augustus, she built
+herself a magnificent villa; and, if we dare believe tradition, it was
+not long before she, too, had violated the very law which had proved
+disastrous to her mother.
+
+Thus, even after the departure of Julia, her three children, Caius,
+Lucius, and Julia the Younger, constituted in Rome an alliance which
+was sufficiently powerful to contest every inch of ground with the
+party of Livia; for they had public opinion in their favor, they
+enjoyed the support of the senate, and they played upon the weakness of
+Augustus.  In the year 2 A.D., after four years of exhaustive efforts
+spent in struggle and intrigue, all that Livia had been able to obtain
+was the mere permission that Tiberius might return to Rome, under the
+conditions, however, that he retire to private life, that he give
+himself up to the education of his son, and that he in no wise mingle
+in public affairs.  The condition of the empire was growing worse on
+every side; the finances were disordered, the army was disorganized,
+and the frontiers were threatened, for revolt was raising its head in
+Gaul, in Pannonia, and especially in Germany.  Every day the situation
+seemed to demand the hand of Tiberius, who, now in the prime of life,
+was recognized as one of the leading administrators and the first
+general of the empire.  But, for all Livia's insistence, Augustus
+refused to call Tiberius back into the government.  The Julii were
+masters of the state, and held the Claudii at a distance.
+
+[Illustration: Antony and Cleopatra.]
+
+Perhaps Tiberius would never have returned to power in Rome had not
+chance aided him in the sudden taking off, in a strange and unforeseen
+manner, of Caius and Lucius Caesar.  The latter died at Marseilles,
+following a brief illness, shortly after the return of Tiberius to
+Rome, August 29, in the year 2 A.D.  It was a great grief to Augustus,
+and, twenty months after, was followed by another still more serious.
+In February of the year 4, Caius also died, in Lycia, of a wound
+received in a skirmish.  These two deaths were so premature, so close
+to each other, and so opportune for Tiberius, that posterity has
+refused to see in them simply one of the many mischances of life.
+Later generations have tried to believe that Livia had a hand in these
+fatalities.  Yet he who understands life at all knows that it is easier
+to imagine and suspect romantic poisonings of this sort than it is to
+carry them out.  Even leaving the character of Livia out of
+consideration, it is difficult to imagine how she would have dared, or
+have been able, to poison the two youths at so great a distance from
+Rome, one in Asia, the other in Gaul, by means of a long train of
+accomplices, and this at a moment when the family of Augustus was
+divided by many hatreds and every member was suspected, spied upon, and
+watched by a hostile party.  Furthermore, it would have been necessary
+to carry this out at a time when the example of Julia proved to all
+that relationship to Augustus was not a sufficient defense against the
+rigors of the law and the severity of public opinion when roused by any
+serious crime.  Besides, it is a recognized fact that people are always
+inclined to suspect a crime whenever a man prominent in the public eye
+dies before his time.  At Turin, for example, there still lives a
+tradition among the people that Cavour was poisoned, some say by the
+order of Napoleon III, others by the Jesuits, simply because his life
+was suddenly cut off, at the age of fifty-two, at the moment when Italy
+had greatest need of him.  Indeed, even to-day we are impressed when we
+see in the family of Augustus so many premature deaths of young men;
+but precisely because these untimely deaths are frequent we come to see
+in them the predestined ruin of a worn-out race in history.  All
+ancient families at a certain moment exhaust themselves.  This is the
+reason why no aristocracy has been able to endure for long unless
+continually renewed, and why all those that have refused to take in new
+blood have failed from the face of the earth.  There is no serious
+reason for attributing so horrible a crime to a woman who was venerated
+by the best men of her time; and the fables which the populace, always
+faithful to Julia, and therefore hostile to Livia, recounted on this
+score, and which the historians of the succeeding age collected, have
+no decisive value.
+
+The deaths of Caius and Lucius Caesar were therefore a great good
+fortune for Tiberius, because it determined his return to power.  The
+situation of the empire was growing worse on every hand; Germany was in
+the midst of revolt, and it was necessary to turn the army over to
+vigorous hands.  Augustus, old and irresolute, still hesitated, fearing
+the dislike which was brewing both in the senate and among the people
+against the too dictatorial Tiberius.  At last, however, he was forced
+to yield.
+
+The more serious, more authoritative, more ancient party of the
+senatorial nobility, in accord with Livia and headed by a nephew of
+Pompey, Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna, forced him to recall Tiberius,
+threatening otherwise to have recourse to some violent measures the
+exact character of which we do not know.  The unpopularity of Tiberius
+was a source of continual misgivings to the aging Augustus, and it was
+only through this threat of a yet greater danger that they finally
+overcame his hesitation.  On June 26, in the fourth year of our era,
+Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son, and had conferred upon him for
+ten years the office of tribune, thus making him his colleague.
+Tiberius returned to power, and, in accordance with the wishes of
+Augustus, adopted as his son Germanicus, the elder son of Drusus and
+Antonia, his faithful friend.  He was an intelligent, active lad of
+whom all entertained the highest hopes.
+
+[Illustration: Tiberius, elder son of Livia and stepson of Augustus.
+Augustus, lacking a male heir, first adopted his younger stepson
+Drusus, who died 9 B.C. owing to a fall from his horse.  In 4 A.D.  he
+adopted Tiberius, and was succeeded by him as Emperor in 14 A.D.]
+
+On his return to power, Tiberius, together with Augustus, took measures
+for reorganizing the army and the state, and sought to bring about by
+means of new marriages and acts of clemency a closer union between the
+Julian and Claudian branches of the family, then bitterly divided by
+the violent struggles of recent years.  The terms of Julia's exile were
+made easier; Germanicus married Agrippina, another daughter of Julia
+and Agrippa, and a sister of Julia the Younger; the widow of Caius
+Caesar, Livilla, sister of Germanicus and daughter of Antonia, was
+given to Drusus, the son of Tiberius, a young man born in the same year
+as Germanicus.  Drusus, despite certain defects, such as irascibility
+and a marked fondness for pleasure, gave evidence that he possessed the
+requisite qualities of a statesman--firmness, sound judgment, and
+energy.  The policy which dictated these marriages was always the
+same--to make of the family of Augustus one formidable and united body,
+so that it might constitute the solid base of the entire government of
+the empire.  But, alas! wise as were the intentions, the ferments of
+discord and the unhappiness of the times prevailed against them.  Too
+much had been hoped for in recalling Tiberius to power.  During the ten
+years of senile government, the empire had been reduced to a state of
+utter disorder.  The measures planned by Tiberius for reestablishing
+the finances of the state roused the liveliest discontent among the
+wealthy classes in Italy, and again excited their hatred against him.
+In the year 6 A.D., the great revolt of Pannonia broke out and for a
+moment filled Italy with unspeakable terror.  In an instant of mob
+fury, they even came to fear that the peninsula would be invaded and
+Rome besieged by the barbarians of the Danube.  Tiberius came to the
+rescue, and with patience and coolness put down the insurrection, not
+by facing it in open conflict, but by drawing out the war to such a
+length as to weary the enemy, a method both safe and wise, considering
+the unreliable character of the troops at his command.  But at Rome,
+once the fear had subsided, the long duration of the war became a new
+cause for dissatisfaction and anger, and offered to many a pretext for
+venting their long-cherished hatred against Tiberius, who was accused
+of being afraid, of not knowing how to end the war, and of drawing it
+out for motives of personal ambition.  The party averse to Tiberius
+again raised its head and resorted once more to its former policy--that
+of urging on Germanicus against Tiberius.  The former was young,
+ambitious, bold, and would have preferred daring strokes and a war
+quickly concluded.  It is certain that there would have risen then and
+there a Germanican and a Tiberian party, if Augustus, on this occasion,
+had not energetically sustained Tiberius from Rome.  But the situation
+again became strained and full of uncertainty.
+
+In the midst of these conflicts and these fears, a new scandal broke
+out in the family of Augustus.  The Younger Julia, like her mother,
+allowed herself to be caught in violation of the _Lex Julia de
+adulteriis_, and she also was compelled to take the road of exile.  In
+what manner and at whose instance the scandal was disclosed we do not
+know; we do know, however, that Augustus was very fond of his
+granddaughter, whence we can assume that in this moment of turbid
+agitation, when so much hatred was directed against his family and his
+house, and when so many forces were uniting to overthrow Tiberius
+again, notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the empire, Augustus
+felt that he must a second time submit to his own law.  He did not dare
+contend with the puritanical party, with the more conservative minority
+in the senate,--the friends of Tiberius,--over this second victim in
+his family.  Without a doubt everything possible was done to hush up
+the scandal, and there would scarcely have come down to us even a
+summary notice of the exile of the second Julia had it not been that
+among those exiled with her was the poet Ovid, who was to fill twenty
+centuries with his laments and to bring them to the ears of the latest
+generations.
+
+Ovid's exile is one of those mysteries of history which has most keenly
+excited the curiosity of the ages.  Ovid himself, without knowing it,
+has rendered it more acute by his prudence in not speaking more clearly
+of the cause of his exile, making only rare allusions to it, which may
+be summed up in his famous words, _carmen et error_.  It is for this
+reason that posterity has for twenty centuries been asking itself what
+was this error which sent the exquisite poet away to die among the
+barbarous Getae on the frozen banks of the Danube; and naturally they
+have never compassed his secret.  But if, therefore, it is impossible
+to say exactly what the error was which cost Ovid so dearly, it is
+possible, on the other hand, to explain that unique and famous episode
+in the history of Rome to which, after all, Ovid owes a great part of
+his immortality.  He was not the victim, as has been too often
+repeated, of a caprice of despotism; and therefore he cannot be
+compared with any of the many Russian writers whom the administration,
+through fear and hatred, deports to Siberia without definite reason.
+Certainly the error of Ovid lay in his having violated some clause of
+the _Lex Julia de adulteriis_, which, as we know, was so comprehensive
+in its provisions that it considered as accessories to the crime those
+guilty of various acts and deeds which, judged even with modern rigor
+and severity, would seem reprehensible, to be sure, but not deserving
+of such terrible punishment.  Ovid was certainly involved under one of
+these clauses,--which one we do not, and never shall, know,--but his
+error, whether serious or light, was not the true cause of his
+condemnation.  It was the pretext used by the more conservative and
+puritanical part of Roman society to vent upon him a long-standing
+grudge the true motives of which lay much deeper.
+
+What was the standing of this poet of the gay, frivolous, exquisite
+ladies whom they wished to send into exile?  He was the author of that
+graceful, erotic poetry who, through the themes which he chose for his
+elegant verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward luxury, diversion,
+and the pleasures which had transformed the austere matron of a former
+day into an extravagant and undisciplined creature given to
+voluptuousness; the poet who had gained the admiration of women
+especially by flattering their most dangerous and perverse tendencies.
+The puritanical party hated and combatted this trend of the newer
+generations, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid on account of its
+disastrous effects upon the women, whom it weaned from the virtues most
+prized in former days--frugality, simplicity, family affection, and
+purity of life.  The Roman aristocracy did not recognize the right of
+absolute literary freedom which is acknowledged by many modern states,
+in which writers and men of letters have acquired a strong political
+influence.  The theory, held by many countries to-day that any
+publication is justifiable, provided it be a work of art, was not
+accepted by the Romans in power.  On the contrary, they were convinced
+that an idea or a sentiment, dangerous in itself, became still more
+harmful when artistically expressed.  Therefore Rome had always known
+the existence of a kind of police supervision of ideas and of literary
+forms, exercised through various means by the ruling aristocracy, and
+especially in reference to women, who constituted that element of
+social life in which virtue and purity of customs are of the greatest
+consequence.  The Roman ladies of the aristocracy, as we have seen,
+received considerable instruction.  They read the poets and
+philosophers, and precisely for this reason there was always at Rome a
+strong aversion to light and immoral literature.  If books had
+circulated among men only, the poetry of Ovid would perhaps not have
+enjoyed the good fortune of a persecution which was to focus upon it
+the attention of posterity.  The greater liberty conceded to women thus
+placed upon society an even greater reserve in the case of its
+literature.  This Ovid learned to his cost when he was driven into
+exile because his books gave too much delight to too many ladies at
+Rome.  By the order of Augustus these books were removed from the
+libraries, which did not hinder their coming down to us entire, while
+many a more serious work--like Livy's history, for example--has been
+either entirely or in large part lost.
+
+[Illustration: Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius.]
+
+
+After the fall of the second Julia up to the time of his death, which
+occurred August 23, in the year 14 A.D., Augustus had no further
+serious griefs over the ladies of his family.  The great misfortune of
+the last years of his government was a public misfortune--the defeat of
+Varus and the loss of Germany.  But with what sadness must he have
+looked back in the last weeks of his long life upon the history of his
+family!  All those whom he had loved were torn from him before their
+time by a cruel destiny: Drusus, Caius, and Lucius Caesar by death; the
+Julias by the cruelty of the law and by an infamy worse than death.
+The unique grandeur to which he had attained had not brought fortune to
+his family.  He was old, almost alone, a weary survivor among the tombs
+of those dear to him who had been untimely lost through fate, and with
+the still sadder memories of those who had been buried in a living
+grave of infamy.  His only associates were Tiberius, with whom he had
+become reconciled; Antonia, his sweet and highly respected
+daughter-in-law; and Livia, the woman whom destiny had placed at his
+side in one of the most critical moments of his life, the faithful
+companion through fifty-two years of his varied and wonderful fortune.
+We can therefore understand why it was that, as the historians tell us,
+the last words of the old emperor should have been a tender expression
+of gratitude to his faithful wife.  "Farewell, farewell, Livia!
+Remember our long union!"  With these words, rendering homage to the
+wife whom custom and the law had made the faithful and loving
+companion, and not the docile slave, of her husband, he ended his life
+like a true Roman.
+
+If the family of Augustus had undergone grievous vicissitudes during
+his life, its situation became even more dangerous after his death.
+The historian who sets out with the preconceived notion that Augustus
+founded a monarchy, and imagines that his family was destined to enjoy
+the privileges which in all monarchies are accorded the sovereign's
+house, will never arrive at a complete understanding of the story of
+the first empire.  His family did, to be sure, always enjoy a
+privileged status, if not at law, at least in fact, and through the
+very force of circumstances; but it was not for naught that Rome had
+been for many centuries an aristocratic republic in which all the
+families of the nobility had considered themselves equal, and had been
+subject to the same laws.  The aristocracy avenged itself upon the
+imperial family for the privileges which the lofty dignity of its head
+assured it by giving it hatred instead of respect.  They suspected and
+calumniated all of its members, and with a malicious joy subjected
+them, whenever possible, to the common laws and even maltreated with
+particular ferocity those who by chance fell under the provisions of
+any statute.  As a compensation for the privileges which the royal
+family enjoyed, they had to assume the risk of receiving the harshest
+penalties of the laws.  If any of them, therefore, fell under the rigor
+of these laws, the senatorial aristocracy especially was ever eager to
+enjoy the atrocious satisfaction of seeing one of the favored tortured
+as much as or more than the ordinary man.  There is no doubt, for
+example, that the two Julias were more severely punished and disgraced
+than other ladies of the aristocracy guilty of the same crime.  And
+Augustus was forced to waive his affection for them in order that it
+might not be said, particularly in the senate, that his relatives
+enjoyed special favors and that Augustus made laws only for others.
+
+[Illustration:  Statue of a young Roman woman.]
+
+Yet as long as Augustus lived, he was a sufficient protection for his
+relatives.  He was, especially in the last twenty years of his life,
+the object of an almost religious veneration.  The great and stormy
+epoch out of which he had risen, the extraordinary fortune which had
+assisted him, his long reign, the services both real and imaginary
+which he had rendered the empire--all had conferred upon him such an
+authority that envy laid aside its most poisonous darts before him.
+Out of respect for him even his family was not particularly calumniated
+or maltreated, save now and then in moments of great irritation, as
+when the two Julias were condemned.  But after his death the situation
+grew considerably worse; for Tiberius, although he was a man of great
+capacity and merit, a sagacious administrator and a valiant general,
+did not enjoy the sympathy and respect which had been accorded to
+Augustus.  Rather was he hated by those who had for a long time sided
+with Caius and Lucius Caesar and who formed a considerable portion of
+the senate and the aristocracy.  It was not the spontaneous admiration
+of the senate and of the people, but the exigencies of the situation,
+which had made him master of the government when Augustus died.  The
+empire was at war with the Germans, and the Pannonico-Illyrian
+provinces were in revolt, and it was necessary to place at the head of
+the empire a man who should strike terror to the hearts of the
+barbarians and who on occasion should be able to combat them.
+Tiberius, furthermore, was so well aware that the majority of the
+senate and the Roman people would submit to his government only through
+force, that he had for a long time been in doubt whether to accept the
+empire or not, so completely did he understand that with so many
+enemies it would be difficult to rule.
+
+Under the government of Tiberius the imperial family was surrounded by
+a much more intense and open hatred than under Augustus.  One couple
+only proved an exception, Germanicus and Agrippina, who were very
+sympathetic to the people.  But right here began the first serious
+difficulties for Tiberius.  Germanicus was twenty-nine years old when
+Tiberius took over the empire, and about him there began to form a
+party which by courting and flattering both him and his wife began to
+set him up against Tiberius.  In this they were unconsciously aided by
+Agrippina.  Unlike her sister Julia, she was a lady of blameless life;
+faithfully in love with her husband; a true Roman matron, such as
+tradition had loved; chaste and fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six
+had already borne nine children, of whom, however, six had died.  But
+Agrippina was to show that in the house of Augustus, in those
+tumultuous, strange times, virtue was not less dangerous than vice,
+though in another way and for different reasons.  She was so proud of
+her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at
+Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and
+increased by her excessive pride in her virtue.  And among these
+defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and
+tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a
+dangerous lack of balance and judgment.  Agrippina was not evil; she
+was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and
+therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what
+seemed expedient.  She had much influence over her husband, whom she
+accompanied upon all his journeys; and out of the great love she bore
+him, in which her own ambition had its part, she urged him on to
+support that hidden movement which was striving to oppose Germanicus to
+the emperor.
+
+That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that
+Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be
+carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to
+the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia
+was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor.  After his
+divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of
+tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part
+by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law.  No one exercised so
+much influence as Antonia over the diffident and self-centered spirit
+of the emperor.  Whoever wished to obtain a favor from him could do no
+better than to intrust his cause to Antonia.  There is no doubt,
+therefore, that Antonia checked her son, and in his society
+counterbalanced the influence of his wife.
+
+But even if two parties were not formed, it was not long before other
+difficulties arose.  Discord soon made itself felt between Livia and
+Agrippina.  More serious still was the fact that Germanicus, who, after
+the death of Augustus, had been sent as a legate to Gaul, initiated a
+German policy contrary to the instructions given him by Tiberius.  This
+was due partly to his own impetuous temperament and partly to the
+goadings of his wife and the flatterers who surrounded him.  Tiberius,
+whom the Germans knew from long experience, no longer wished to molest
+them.  The revolt of Arminius proved that when their independence was
+threatened by Rome they were capable of uniting and becoming dangerous;
+when left to themselves they destroyed one another by continual wars.
+It was advisable, therefore, according to Tiberius, not to attack or
+molest them, but at the proper moment to fan the flames of their
+continual dissensions and wars in order that, while destroying
+themselves, they should leave the empire in peace.  This wise and
+prudent policy might please a seasoned soldier like Tiberius, who had
+already won his laurels in many wars and who had risen to the pinnacle
+of glory and power.  It did not please the pushing and eager youth
+Germanicus, who was anxious to distinguish himself by great and
+brilliant exploits, and who had at his side, as a continual stimulus,
+an ambitious and passionate wife, surrounded by a court of flatterers.
+Germanicus, on his own initiative, crossed the Rhine and took up the
+offensive again all along the line, attacking the most powerful of the
+German tribes one after the other in important and successful
+expeditions.  At Rome this bold move was naturally looked upon with
+pleasure, especially by the numerous enemies of Tiberius, either
+because boldness in politics rather than prudence always pleases those
+who have nothing to lose, or because it was felt that the glory which
+accrued to Germanicus might offend the emperor.  And Tiberius, though
+he did disapprove, allowed his adopted son to continue for a time,
+doubtless in order that he might not have to shock public opinion and
+that it might not seem that he wished to deprive the youthful
+Germanicus of the glory which he was gaining for himself.
+
+[Illustration:  A Roman girl of the time of the Caesars.]
+
+He was nevertheless resolved not to allow Germanicus to involve Rome
+too deeply in German affairs, and when it seemed to him that the youth
+had fittingly proved his prowess and had made the enemies of Rome feel
+its power sufficiently, he recalled him and in his stead sent Drusus,
+who was his real, and not his adopted, son.  But this recall did not at
+all please the party of Germanicus, who were loud and bitter in their
+recriminations.  They began to murmur that Tiberius was jealous of
+Germanicus and his popularity; that he had recalled him in order to
+prevent his winning glory by an immortal achievement.  Tiberius so
+little thought of keeping Germanicus from using his brilliant qualities
+in the service of Rome that shortly after, in the year 18 A.D., he sent
+him into the Orient to introduce order into Armenia, which was shaken
+by internal dissensions, and he gave him a command there not less
+important than the one of which he had deprived him.  At the same time
+he was unwilling to intrust things entirely to the judgment of
+Germanicus, in whom he recognized a young man of capacity and valor,
+but, nevertheless, a young man influenced by an imprudent wife and
+incited by an irresponsible court of flatterers.  For this reason he
+placed at his side an older and more experienced man in whom he had the
+fullest confidence--Cnaeus Piso, a senator who belonged to one of the
+most illustrious families in Rome.
+
+It was the duty of Cnaeus Piso to counsel, to restrain, and to aid the
+young Germanicus, and doubtless also to keep Tiberius informed of all
+that Germanicus was doing in the East.  When we remember that Tiberius
+was responsible for the empire, no one will deny him the right of
+setting a guard upon the young man of thirty-three, into whose hands
+had been intrusted many and serious interests.  But though this idea
+was warrantable in itself, it became the source of great woe.
+Germanicus was offended, and, driven on by his friends, he broke with
+Piso.  The latter had brought with him his wife Plancina, who was a
+close friend of Livia, just as Germanicus had brought Agrippina.  The
+two wives fell to quarreling no less furiously than their husbands, and
+two parties were formed in the Orient, one for Piso and one for
+Germanicus, who accused each other of illegality, extortion, and
+assuming unwarranted powers; and each thought only of undoing what the
+other had accomplished.  It is difficult to tell which of the two was
+right or in how far either was right or wrong, for the documents are
+too few and the account of Tacitus, clouded by an undiscerning
+antipathy, sheds no light upon this dark secret.  In any case, we are
+sure that Germanicus did not always respect the laws and that he
+occasionally acted with a supreme heedlessness which now and then
+forced Tiberius to intervene personally, as he did on the occasion when
+Germanicus left his province with Agrippina in order that, dressed like
+a Greek philosopher, he might make a tour of Egypt and see that
+country, which then, as now, attracted the attention of persons of
+culture.  But at that time, unlike the present, there was an ordinance
+of Augustus which forbade Roman senators to set foot in Egypt without
+special permission.  As he had paid no attention to this prohibition,
+we need not be astonished if we find that Germanicus did not respect as
+scrupulously as Tiberius wished all the laws which defined his powers
+and set limits to his authority.
+
+However that may be, the dissension between Germanicus and Piso filled
+the entire Orient with confusion and disorder, and it was early echoed
+at Rome, where the party hostile to Tiberius continued to accuse him,
+out of motives of hatred and jealousy, of forever laying new obstacles
+in the way of his adopted son.  Livia, too, now no longer protected by
+Augustus, became a target for the accusations of a malevolent public
+opinion.  It was said that she persecuted Germanicus out of hatred for
+Agrippina.  Tiberius was much embarrassed, being hampered by public
+opinion favorable to Germanicus and at the same time desiring that his
+sons should set an example of obedience to the laws.
+
+A sudden catastrophe still further complicated the situation.  In 19
+A.D. Germanicus was taken ill at Antioch.  The malady was long and
+marked by periods of convalescence and relapses, but finally, like his
+father and like his brothers-in-law, Germanicus, too, succumbed to his
+destiny in the fullness of youth.  At thirty-four, when life with her
+most winning smiles seemed to be stretching out her arms to him, he
+died.  This one more untimely death brought to an abrupt end a most
+dangerous political struggle.  Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+people, whose imagination had been aroused, should have begun to murmur
+about poison?  The party of Germanicus was driven to desperation by
+this death, which virtually ended its existence, and destroyed at a
+single stroke all the hopes of those who had seen in Germanicus the
+instrument of their future fortune.  They therefore eagerly collected,
+embellished, and spread these rumors.  Had Agrippina been a woman of
+any judgment or reflection, she would have been the first to see the
+absurdity of this foolish gossip; but as a matter of fact no one placed
+more implicit faith in such reports than she, now that affliction had
+rendered her even more impetuous and violent.
+
+It was not long before every one at Rome had heard it said that
+Germanicus had been poisoned by Piso, acting, so it was intimated in
+whispers, at the bidding of Tiberius and Livia.  Piso had been the tool
+of Tiberius; Plancina, the tool of Livia.  The accusation is absurd; it
+is even recognized as such by Tacitus, who was actuated by a fierce
+hatred against Tiberius.  We know from him how the accusers of Piso
+recounted that the poison had been drunk in a health at a banquet to
+which Piso had been invited by Germanicus and at which he was seated
+several places from his host; he was supposed to have poured the poison
+into his dishes in the presence of all the guests without any one
+having seen him!  Tacitus himself says that every one thought this an
+absurd fable, and such every man of good sense will think it to-day.
+But hatred makes even intelligent persons believe fables even more
+absurd; the people favorable to Germanicus were embittered against Piso
+and would not listen to reason.  All the enemies of Tiberius easily
+persuaded themselves that some atrocious mystery was hidden in this
+death and that, if they instituted proceedings against Piso, they might
+bring to light a scandal which would compromise the emperor himself.
+They even began to repeat that Piso possessed letters from Tiberius
+which contained the order to poison Germanicus.
+
+[Illustration: Costumes of Roman men, women, and children in the
+procession of a peace festival.  These reliefs formed part of the outer
+frieze of the right wall of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace), erected by
+Augustus and dedicated 9 B.C.  This and another well-preserved section
+are in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.  One of two other fragments in the
+Villa Medici contains the head and bust of Augustus, and with the
+section here shown completes what is supposed to be a group of the
+family of Augustus.]
+
+At last Agrippina arrived at Rome with the ashes of her husband, and
+she began with her usual vehemence to fill the imperial house, the
+senate, and all Rome with protests, imprecations, and accusations
+against Piso.  The populace, which admired her for her fidelity and
+love for her husband, was even more deeply stirred, and on every hand
+the cry was raised that an exemplary punishment ought to be meted out
+to so execrable a crime.
+
+If at first Piso had treated these absurd charges with haughty disdain,
+he soon perceived that the danger was growing serious and that it was
+necessary for him to hasten his return to Rome, where a trial was now
+inevitable.  One of Germanicus's friends had accused him; Agrippina, an
+unwitting tool in the hands of the emperor's enemies, every day stirred
+public opinion to still higher pitches of excitement through her grief
+and her laments; the party of Germanicus worked upon the senate and the
+people, and when Piso arrived at Rome he found that he had been
+abandoned by all.  His hope lay in Tiberius, who knew the truth and who
+certainly desired that these wild notions be driven out of the popular
+mind.  But Tiberius was watched with the most painstaking malevolence.
+Any least action in favor of Piso would have been interpreted as a
+decisive proof that he had been the murderer's accomplice and therefore
+wished to save him.  In fact, it was being reported at Rome with
+ever-increasing insistence that at the trial Piso would show the
+letters of Tiberius.  When the trial began, Livia, in the background,
+cleverly directed her thoughts to the saving of Plancina; but Tiberius
+could do no more for Piso than to recommend to the senate that they
+exercise the most rigorous impartiality.  His noble speech on this
+occasion has been preserved for us by Tacitus.  "Let them judge," he
+said, "without regard either for the imperial family or for the family
+of Piso."  The admonition was useless, for his condemnation was a
+foregone conclusion, despite the absurdity of the charges.  The enemies
+of Tiberius wished to force matters to the uttermost limit in the hope
+that the famous letters would have to be produced; and they acted with
+such frenzied hatred and excited public opinion to such a pitch that
+Piso killed himself before the end of the trial.
+
+The violence of Agrippina had sent an innocent victim to follow the
+shade of her young husband.  Despite bitter opposition, the emperor,
+through personal intervention, succeeded in saving the wife, the son,
+and the fortune of Piso, whose enemies had wished to exterminate his
+house root and branch.  Tiberius thus offered a further proof that he
+was one of the few persons at Rome who were capable in that trying and
+troubled time of passing judgment and of reasoning with calm.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
+
+The blackest and most tragic period in the life of Tiberius begins with
+the death of Germanicus and the terrible scandal of the suit against
+Piso.  It was to pass into history as the worst period of the "Tiberian
+tyranny"; for it was at this time that the famous _Lex de majestate_
+[1] (on high treason), which had not been applied under Augustus, came
+to be frequently invoked, and through its operation atrocious
+accusations, scandalous trials, and frightful condemnations were
+multiplied in Rome, to the terror of all.  Many committed suicide in
+despair, and illustrious families were given over to ruin and infamy.
+
+[Illustration: Tiberius.]
+
+Posterity still holds Tiberius to account for these tragedies; his
+cruel and suspicious tyranny is made responsible for these accusations,
+for the suits which followed, and for the cruel condemnations in which
+they ended.  It is said that every free mind which still remembered
+ancient Roman liberty gave him umbrage and caused him distress, and
+that he could suffer to have about him only slaves and hired assassins.
+But how far this is from the truth!  How poorly the superficial
+judgment of posterity has understood the terrible tragedy of the reign,
+of Tiberius!  We always forget that Tiberius was the next Roman emperor
+after Augustus; the first, that is, who had to bear the weight of the
+immense charge created by its founder, but without the immense prestige
+and respect which Augustus had derived from the extraordinary good
+fortune of his life, from the critical moment in which he had taken
+over the government, from the general opinion that he had ended the
+civil wars, brought peace back to an empire in travail, and saved Rome
+from the imminent ruin with which Egypt and Cleopatra had threatened
+it.  For these reasons, while Augustus lived, the envy, jealousy,
+rivalry, and hatred of the new authority were held in check in his
+presence; but they were ever smoldering in the Roman aristocracy, which
+considered itself robbed of a part of its privileges, and always felt
+itself humiliated by this same authority, even when it was necessary to
+submit to it in cases of supreme political necessity.  But all this
+envy, all these jealousies, all these rivalries,--I have said it
+before, but it is well to repeat it, since the point is of capital
+importance for the understanding of the whole history of the first
+empire,--were unleashed when Tiberius was exalted to the imperial
+dignity.
+
+What in reality was the situation of Tiberius after the death of
+Germanicus?  We must grasp it well if we wish to understand not only
+the cruelty of the accusations brought under the law of high treason,
+but also the whole family policy followed by the second emperor.  It
+was he who had to bear the burden of the whole state, of the finances,
+of the supplies, of the army, of the home and foreign policies; his was
+the will that propelled, and the mind that regulated, all.  To him
+every portion of the empire and every social class had recourse, and it
+was to him that they looked for redress for every wrong or
+inconvenience or danger.  It was to him that the legions looked for
+their regular stipend, the common people of Rome for abundant grain,
+the senate for the preservation of boundaries and of the internal
+order; the provinces looked to him for justice, and the sovereign
+allies or vassals for the solution of all internal difficulties in
+which they became involved.  These responsibilities were so numerous
+and so great that Tiberius, like Augustus, attempted to induce the
+senate to aid him by assuming its share, according to the ancient
+constitution; but it was in vain, for the senate sought to shield
+itself, and always left to him the heavier portion.
+
+[Illustration: Types of head-dresses worn in the time of the women of
+the Caesars.]
+
+Is it conceivable that a man could have discharged so many
+responsibilities in times when the traditions of the government were
+only beginning to take form if he had not possessed a commanding
+personal authority, if he had not been the object of profound and
+general respect?  Augustus would not have been able to govern so great
+an empire for more than forty years with such slight means had it not
+been for the fact, fortunate alike for himself and for the state, that
+he did enjoy this profound, sincere, and general admiration.  Tiberius,
+on the other hand, who was already decidedly unpopular when he came
+into power, had seen this unpopularity increase during the first six
+years of his rule, despite all the efforts he had put forth to govern
+well.  His solicitude about maintaining a certain order within the
+state was described as haughtiness and harshness, his preoccupation
+lest the precarious resources of the government be dissipated in
+useless expenditures was dubbed avarice, and the prudence which had
+impelled him to restrain the rash policy of expansion and aggression
+which Germanicus had tried to initiate beyond the Rhine was construed
+as envy and surly malignity.  Against all considerations of justice,
+logic, or good sense, this accusation was repeated, and now that
+destiny had cut down Germanicus, he was accused _sotto voce_ of being
+responsible for his death by many of the great families of Rome and
+even in senatorial circles.  They treated it as most natural that
+through jealousy he should poison his own nephew, his adopted son, the
+popular descendant of Drusus, the son of that virtuous Antonia who was
+his best and most faithful friend!  But if, after having been accepted
+as true by the great families of Rome who sent it on its rounds, such a
+report had been allowed to circulate through the empire, how much
+authority would have been left to an emperor who was suspected of so
+terrible a crime?  How could he have maintained discipline in the army,
+of which he was the head, and order among the people of Rome, of whom,
+as tribune, he was the great protector?  How could he have directed,
+urged on, or restrained the senate, of which he was, in the language of
+to-day, the president?  The various Italian peoples from whom the army
+was drawn did not yet consider the head of the state a being so
+superior to the laws that it would be permissible for him to commit
+crimes which were branded as disgustingly repulsive to ordinary human
+nature.
+
+No historian who understands the affairs of the world in general, and
+the story of the first century of the empire in particular, will
+attribute to ferocity or to the tyrannical spirit of Tiberius the
+increasingly harsh application of the _Lex de majestate_ which followed
+the death of Germanicus and the trial of Piso.  This harshness was the
+natural reaction against the delirium of atrocious calumnies against
+Tiberius which raged in the aristocracy of that time and especially in
+the house of Agrippina.  For she, in spite of the undeniably virtuous
+character of her private life, was influenced by friends who, for
+motives of political advancement took advantage of her passions and
+inexperience.
+
+Too credulous of Tacitus, many writers have severely characterized the
+facility and the severity with which the senate condemned those accused
+under the _Lex de majestate_: they consider it an indication of ignoble
+servility toward the emperor.  Yet we know very well that the Roman
+senate at that time was not composed merely of adulators and hirelings;
+it still included many men of intelligence and character.  We can
+explain this severity only by admitting that there were many persons in
+the senate who judged that the emperor could not be left defenseless
+against the wild slanders of the great families, since these
+extravagant and insidious calumnies compromised not only the prestige
+and the fame of the ruler, but also the tranquillity, the power, and
+the integrity of the empire.  Undoubtedly the _Lex de majestate_ did
+give rise in time to false accusations, to private reprisals, and to
+unjust sentences of condemnation.  Although it had been devised to
+defend the prestige of the state in the person of the magistrates who
+represented it, the law was frequently invoked by senators who wished
+to vent their fiercest personal hatreds.  Nor can it be denied that
+cupidity was the cause of many iniquitous calumnies directed against
+wealthy persons whose fortunes were coveted by their accusers.  Yet we
+must go slow in accusing Tiberius of these excesses.  Tacitus himself,
+who was averse to the emperor, recounts several incidents which show
+him in the act of intervening in trials of high treason for the benefit
+of the accused precisely for the purpose of hindering these excesses of
+private vengeance.  The accounts which we have of many other trials are
+so brief and so biased that it is not fair for us to hazard a judgment.
+
+We do know, however, that after the death of Germanicus there was
+formed at Rome, in the imperial family and the senate, a party of
+Agrippina, which began an implacable war upon Tiberius, and that
+Tiberius, the so-called tyrant, was at the beginning very weak,
+undecided, and vacillating in his resistance to this new opposition.
+His opponents did not spare his person; they did their best to spread
+the belief that the emperor was a poisoner, and persecuted him
+relentlessly with this calumny; they were already pushing forward Nero,
+the first-born son of Germanicus, though in 21 A.D. he was only
+fourteen years old, in order that he might in time be made the rival of
+Tiberius.  The latter, indeed, tried at first to moderate the charges
+of high treason, his supreme defense; he feigned that he did not know
+or did not see many things, and instead of resisting, he began to make
+long sojourns away from Rome, thus turning over the capital, in which
+the pretorian guard remained, to the calumnies of his enemies.  Of all
+these enemies the most terrible was Agrippina, who, passionate,
+vehement, without judgment, abused in good faith both the relationship
+which protected her and the pity which her misfortune had aroused.  She
+allowed no occasion for taunting Tiberius with his pretended crime to
+escape her, using to this end not only words, but scenes and actions,
+which impressed the public even more strongly than open accusations
+could have done.  A supper to which Tiberius had invited her became
+famous at Rome, for at it she refused obstinately and ostentatiously to
+touch any food or drink whatever, to the astonishment of the guests,
+who understood perfectly what her gestures meant.  And such calumnies
+and such affronts Tiberius answered only with a weary and disdainful
+inertia; at most, when his patience was exhausted, some bitter and
+concise reproof would escape him.
+
+I have no doubt that Tiberius had resolved at the beginning to avoid
+all harsh measures as far as possible; for unpopular, misunderstood,
+and detested as he was, he did not dare to use violence against a large
+part of the aristocracy and against his own house.  Furthermore,
+Agrippina was the least intelligent of the women of the family, and her
+senseless opposition could be tolerated as long as Livia and Antonia,
+the two really serious ladies of the family, sided with Tiberius.  But
+it is easy to understand that this situation could not long endure.  A
+power which defends itself weakly against the attacks of its enemies is
+destined to sink rapidly into a decline, and the party of Agrippina
+would therefore quickly have gained favor and power had there not
+arisen, to sustain the vacillating strength of Tiberius, a man whose
+name was to become sadly famous--Sejanus--the commander of the
+pretorian guard.
+
+Sejanus belonged to an obscure family of knights--to what we should now
+call the _bourgeoisie_.  He was not a senator, and he held no great
+political position; for his charge as commander of the guard was a
+purely military office.  In ordinary times he would have remained a
+secondary personage, exclusively concerned with the exacting duties of
+his command; but the party of Agrippina with its intrigues, and the
+weakness and uncertainty of Tiberius, made of him, however, for a
+certain time, a formidable power.  It is not difficult to see whence
+this power arose.  The loyalty of the pretorian guard, upon which
+depended the security and the safety of the imperial authority, was one
+of the things which must seriously have preoccupied Tiberius,
+particularly in the face of the persistent and insidious intrigues and
+accusations of the party of Agrippina.  The guard lived at Rome, in
+continual contact with the senate and the imperial house.  Everything
+which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the
+emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and
+the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the
+pretorians.  If the guard could have been persuaded that the emperor
+was a poisoner of his kindred, their loyalty would have been exposed to
+numberless intrigues and attempts at seduction.  In such a condition of
+affairs, a commander of the guard who could inspire Tiberius with a
+complete and absolute trust might easily acquire a great influence over
+him.  Sejanus knew how to inspire this trust.  This was partly by
+reason of his origin, for the equestrian order, on account of its
+ancient rivalry with the senatorial nobility, was more favorably
+inclined than the latter toward the imperial authority; and partly also
+on account of certain reforms which he had succeeded in introducing
+into the pretorian guard.
+
+[Illustration: A Roman feast in the time of the Caesars.]
+
+Once he had acquired the emperor's confidence, the ambitious and
+intelligent prefect of the pretorians proceeded to render himself
+indispensable in all things.  The moment was favorable; Tiberius was
+becoming more and more wearied of his many affairs, of his many
+struggles, of his countless responsibilities; more and more disgusted
+with Rome, with its society, with the too frequent contact with the men
+whom it was his fate to govern.  He was in the earlier stages of that
+settled melancholy which grew deeper and deeper in the last ten years
+of his life, and which had grown upon him as the result of long
+antagonisms, of great bitterness, and of continual terrors and
+suspicions; and if it is true that Tiberius was addicted to the vice of
+heavy drinking, as we hear from ancient writers, the abuse of wine may
+also have had its part in producing it.  The tyrant, as historians have
+been pleased to call him, did actually seem to weaken in the fight for
+those ideals in which he had so long and so ardently believed.  He
+tried to please the people by advocating no measures that might seem
+harsh or excessive to them.  He even resisted, in the year 22 A.D., the
+pressure that his own party--his own puritan party--brought to bear
+upon him to apply with the utmost severity and discipline the laws
+against the fast increasing luxury of the men and women of his day.
+His reply to such pressure was a letter to the senate in which he
+deplored, among other things, the passion that so many women were
+showing for jewels and precious stones imported from distant countries.
+He maintained that it was the fault of such women that so much gold
+left the country and pointed out how much more wisely the money could
+be spent in fortifying the boundaries of the empire.
+
+In view of all this it is not difficult to understand why the man who
+for many years had done everything for himself, who had never wished to
+have either counselors or confidants about him, now that he was growing
+old needed the support of younger energies and of stronger wills.  But
+in his family he could rely only upon his son Drusus, who had now
+become a serious and trustworthy man, and in the year 22 A.D. he asked
+the senate that it concede to his son the tribunician power; that is,
+that they make him his colleague.  But the son did not suffice, and
+Sejanus therefore succeeded in making himself, together with Drusus, in
+fact, if not in name, the first and most active and influential
+collaborator and counselor of Tiberius.  He was even more active and
+influential than Drusus, for the latter was frequently absent on
+distant military missions to the confines of the empire, while Sejanus,
+as commander of the pretorian guard, was virtually always at Rome,
+where the emperor now appeared less and less frequently.
+
+Such was the origin of the anomalous power of this man, who was not
+even a senator--a power which was the result of the weakness of
+Tiberius and of the fierce discords which divided the aristocracy; and
+it was a power which must of necessity prove disastrous, especially to
+the party of Agrippina and Germanicus.  Although indications are not
+lacking that there was no great harmony or friendship between Sejanus
+and Drusus, it is evident that Sejanus, as the energetic representative
+of the interests of Tiberius, must have directed all his efforts
+against the friends of Agrippina, who was arousing the fiercest
+opposition to the emperor.  But in the year 23, an unforeseen event
+seemed suddenly to change the situation and to render possible a
+reconciliation between Tiberius and the party of Agrippina.  In this
+year, Drusus also, like so many other members of his family, died
+prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, and on this occasion, for the
+time being, at least, no one raised the cry of poisoning.  This
+unexpected misfortune moved Tiberius profoundly, for he dearly loved
+his son, and it seemed for a moment to determine the triumph of
+Agrippina's party.  Now that his son had been taken from him, where, if
+not among the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, could Tiberius look for
+a successor?  And, as a further proof that Tiberius desired as far as
+possible to avoid conflict in the bosom of his family, he did not
+hesitate a moment, despite all the annoyances and difficulties which he
+had suffered at the hands of Agrippina and her friends.  He officially
+recognized that in the sons of Germanicus were henceforth placed the
+future hopes of his family and of the empire.  Of the two elder, Nero
+was now sixteen and Drusus was somewhat younger, though we do not know
+his exact age.  These he summoned to appear before the senate, and he
+presented them to the assembly with a noble discourse the substance of
+which Tacitus has preserved for us, exhorting the youths and the senate
+to fulfil their respective duties for the greatness and the prosperity
+of the republic.
+
+[Illustration: Depositing the ashes of a member of the imperial family
+in a Roman columbarium.]
+
+After the death of Drusus, therefore, a reconciliation became possible
+in the family of the Caesars.  The latent rivalry between the families
+of Tiberius and Germanicus was extinguished.  Indeed, even in the midst
+of the tears shed for the early death of Drusus, a gleam of concord
+seems to have shone down upon the house desolated by many tragedies,
+while Sejanus, whose power depended upon the strife of the factions,
+was for a moment set aside and driven back into the shadows.  But it
+was not to continue long; for soon the flames of discord broke out more
+violently than ever.  Whom shall we blame, Sejanus or Agrippina?
+Tacitus says that it was the fault of Sejanus, whom he accuses of
+having tried to destroy the descendants of Germanicus, in order to
+usurp their place: but he himself is forced to admit in another passage
+(Annals iv., 59) that virtually a little court of freedmen and
+dependents gathered about Nero, the leader of the sons of Germanicus,
+urging him on against Tiberius and Sejanus, and begging him to act
+quickly.  "This," they said, "is the will of the people, the desire of
+the armies.  Nor would Sejanus, who was even then making light of the
+patience of the old man and of the dilatoriness of the youth, have
+dared to resist him."  From such speeches it is only a short step to
+plans for rebellion and conspiracy.  In all probability the blame for
+this later and more bitter dissension must, as usually happens, be
+divided between the two factions.  The party of Agrippina, emboldened
+by its good fortune and by the weakness of Tiberius, was, after the
+death of Drusus, conscious of its own supremacy.  Its members had only
+a single aim; even before it was possible they wished to see Nero, the
+first-born son of Germanicus, in the position of Tiberius.  They
+therefore took up again their struggles and intrigues against Tiberius,
+and attempted to incite Nero against the emperor.  But this time
+Sejanus was blocking their pathway.  The death of Drusus had even
+further increased the trust and affection which the emperor had for his
+assistant, and he was henceforth the only confidant and the only friend
+of the emperor; a war without quarter between him and Agrippina, her
+sons and the party of Germanicus, was inevitable.  And Sejanus opened
+the action by attempting to exclude from the magistracy and from office
+all the friends of Agrippina and all the members of the opposing
+faction.  At this time it was difficult to arrive at any of the more
+important offices without being recommended to the senate by the
+emperor, against whose choice the senate no longer dared to rebel;
+since the emperor was held responsible for the conduct of the
+government, it was only just that he should be allowed to select his
+more important collaborators.  Sejanus was therefore able, by using his
+influence over Tiberius, to lay a thousand difficulties and obstacles
+in the way of even the legitimate ambitions of the most eminent men of
+the opposite faction.  Nor were these the only weapons employed; others
+no less efficacious were called into play, and intrigues, calumnies,
+accusations, and trials were set on foot without scruple and with a
+ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has painted with indelible colors.
+Among these intrigues two matrimonial projects must be mentioned.  In
+the year 25 Sejanus attempted a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife
+Apicata, and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla (Livia), the widow
+of Drusus.  Sejanus had frequented the political aristocracy of the
+empire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only
+their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.
+He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of
+acquiring and consolidating power.  He had therefore disrupted his
+first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have
+redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the
+imperial household.  But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius
+refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was
+afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina.  The
+emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine
+quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the
+Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew's sons.  And what would
+happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing
+hatreds?  _Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio_?  The reply is
+significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of
+harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina,
+was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both
+factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a
+reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these
+struggles.
+
+[Illustration: The starving Livilla refusing food.]
+
+In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this refusal was a slight success
+for the party of Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted on
+its own account an analogous move.  Agrippina asked Tiberius for
+permission to remarry.  If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made
+this request on her own initiative, impelled by one of those numerous
+and more or less reasonable caprices which were continually shooting
+through her head.  But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long
+widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any
+_arričre-pensée_ whatever?  Furthermore, if this proposal had been
+merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been
+so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter
+of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs?  It is more
+probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim.  By giving a
+husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give a leader to the
+anti-Tiberian party.  The sons of Germanicus were too young, and
+Agrippina was too violent and tactless, to be able alone to cope
+successfully with Sejanus, supported as he was by Tiberius, by Livia,
+and by Antonia.  We can thus explain why Tiberius opposed and prevented
+the marriage: Agrippina, unassisted, had caused him sufficient trouble;
+it would have been entirely superfluous for him to sanction her taking
+to herself an official counselor in the guise of a husband.
+
+This time Sejanus triumphed over the ill success of his rivals, and the
+struggle continued in this manner between the two parties, but with an
+increasing advantage to Sejanus.  Beginning with the year 26, we see
+numerous indications that the party of Agrippina and Germanicus was no
+longer able to resist the blows and machinations of Sejanus, who
+detached from it, one after another, all the men of any importance.  He
+either won them over to himself through his favors and his promises, or
+he frightened them with his threats; and those who resisted most
+tenaciously, he destroyed with his suits.
+
+Tiberius was the storm-center of these struggles, and contrary to what
+legend has reported, he attempted as far as he was able to prevent the
+two parties from going to extremes.  But what pain, repugnance, and
+fatigue it must have cost him to make the effort necessary for
+maintaining a last ray of reason and justice among so many evil
+passions, animosities, ambitions, and rivalries!  It must have cost him
+dearly, for he had grown up in the time when the dream of a great
+restoration of the aristocracy was luring the upper classes of Rome
+with its fairest and most luminous smile.  As a young man he had known
+and loved Vergil, Horace, and Livy, the two poets and the historian of
+this great dream; like all the elect spirits of those now distant
+years, he had seen behind this vision a great senate, a glorious and
+terrible army, an austere and revered republic like that which Livy had
+pictured with glowing colors in his immortal pages.
+
+Instead of all this, he was now forced to take his place at the head of
+this decadent and wretched nobility, which seemed to be interested only
+in rending itself asunder with calumnies, denunciations, suits, and
+scandalous condemnations, and which repaid him for all that he had done
+and was still doing for its safety and the prosperity of the empire by
+directing against his name the most atrocious calumnies, the fiercest
+railleries, and every sort of ridiculous and infamous legend.  He had
+dreamed of victories over the enemies of Rome, and he had to resign
+himself to struggling day and night against the hysterical extravagance
+of Agrippina: he had to be content, even without the sure hope of
+success, if he could convince the majority that he was not a poisoner.
+Authority without glory or respect, power divorced from the means
+sufficient for its exercise--such was the situation in which the
+successor of Augustus, the second emperor, after twelve years of a
+difficult and trying reign, found himself.  He no longer felt himself
+safe at Rome, where he feared rightly or wrongly that his life was
+being continually threatened, and it is not astonishing that, old,
+wearied, and disgusted, between the years 26 and 27 he should have
+retired definitely to Capri, seeking to hide his misanthropy, his
+weariness, and his disgust with men and things in the wonderful little
+isle which a delightful caprice of nature had set down in the lap of
+the divine Bay of Naples.
+
+But instead of the peace he sought at Capri, Tiberius found the infamy
+of history.  How dark and terrible are the memories of him associated
+with the charming isle, which, violet-tinted, on beautiful sunny days
+emerges from an azure sea against an azure sky!  That fragment of
+paradise fallen upon the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the
+world is said to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce
+cruelties and abominable vices.  Tiberius passed sentence upon himself,
+in the opinion of posterity, when he secluded himself in Capri.  Ought
+we, without a further word, to transcribe this sentence?  There are, to
+be sure, no decisive arguments to prove false the accounts about the
+horrors of Capri which the ancients, and especially Suetonius, have
+transmitted to us; there are some, however, which make us mistrust and
+withhold our judgment.  Above all, we have the right to ask ourselves
+how, from whom, and by access to what sources did Suetonius and the
+other ancients learn so many extraordinary details.  It must be
+remembered that all the great figures in the history of Rome who had
+many enemies, like Sylla, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus himself, were
+accused of having scandalous habits.  Precisely because the puritan
+tradition was strong at Rome, such an accusation did much harm, and for
+this reason, whether true or false, enemies were glad to repeat it
+whenever they wished to discredit a character.  Lastly, all the ancient
+writers, even the most hostile, tell us that up to a ripe age Tiberius
+preserved his exemplary habits.  Is it likely, then, that suddenly,
+when already old, he should have soiled himself with all the vices?  At
+all events, if there is any truth contained in these accounts, we can
+at most conclude that as an old man Tiberius became subject to some
+mental infirmity and that the man who took refuge at Capri was no
+longer entirely sane.
+
+Certain it is, in any case, that after his retirement to Capri,
+Tiberius seriously neglected public affairs, and that Sejanus was
+finally looked upon at Rome as the _de facto_ emperor.  The bulletins
+and reports which were sent from the empire and from Rome to the
+emperor passed through his hands, as well as the decisions which
+Tiberius sent back to the state.  At Rome, in all affairs of serious or
+slight importance, the senators turned to Sejanus, and about him, whom
+all fell into the habit of considering as the true emperor, a court and
+party were formed.  In fear of his great power, the senators and the
+old aristocracy suppressed the envy which the dizzy rise of this
+obscure knight had aroused.  Rome suffered without protest that a man
+of obscure birth should rule the empire in the place of a descendant of
+the great Claudian family, and the senators of the most illustrious
+houses grew accustomed to paying him court.  Worse still, virtually all
+of them aided him, either by openly favoring him or by allowing him a
+free hand, to complete the decisive destruction of the party and the
+family of Germanicus,--of that same Germanicus of whom all had been
+fond and whose memory the people still venerated.
+
+[Illustration: Costume of a chief vestal (virgo vestalis maxima).]
+
+After the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, all felt that Agrippina and
+her sons were inevitably doomed sooner or later to succumb in the duel
+with the powerful, ambitious, and implacable prefect of the pretorians
+who represented Tiberius at Rome.  Only a few generous idealists
+remained faithful to the conquered, who were now near their
+destruction; such supporters as might possibly ease the misery of ruin,
+but not ward it off or avoid it.  Among these last faithful and heroic
+friends was a certain Titius Sabinus, and the implacable Sejanus
+destroyed him with a suit of which Tacitus has given us an account, a
+horrible story of one of the most abominable judicial machinations
+which human perfidy can imagine.  Dissensions arose to aggravate the
+already serious danger in which Agrippina and her friends had been
+placed.  Nero, the first-born son, and Drusus, the second, became
+hostile at the very moment when they should have united against the
+ruthless adversary who wished to exterminate them all.  A last rock of
+refuge remained to protect the family of Germanicus.  It was Livia, the
+revered old lady who had been present at the birth of the fortunes of
+Augustus and the new imperial authority, and who had held in her arms
+that infant world which had been born in the midst of the convulsions
+of the civil wars, and a little later had watched it try its first
+steps on the pathway of history.  Livia did not much love Agrippina,
+whose hatred and intrigues against Tiberius she had always blamed; but
+she was too wise and too solicitous of the prestige of the family to
+allow Sejanus entirely to destroy the house of Germanicus.  As long as
+she lived, Agrippina and Nero could dwell safely in Rome.  But Livia
+was feeble, and in the beginning of 29, at the age of eighty-six, she
+died.  The catastrophe which had been carefully prepared by Sejanus was
+now consummated; a few months after the death of Livia, Agrippina and
+Nero were subjected to a suit, and, under an accusation of having
+conspired against Tiberius, were condemned to exile by the senate.
+Shortly after his condemnation, Nero committed suicide.
+
+The account which Tacitus gives us of this trial is obscure, involved,
+and fragmentary, for the story is broken off at its most important
+point by an unfortunate lacuna in the manuscript.  The other historians
+add but little light with their brief phrases and passing allusions.
+We do not therefore entirely understand either the contents of the
+charges, the reason for the condemnation, the stand taken by the
+accused, or the conduct of Tiberius with regard to the accusation.  It
+seems hardly probable that Agrippina and Nero could have been truly
+guilty of a real conspiracy against Tiberius.  Isolated as they had
+been by Sejanus after the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, they would
+scarcely have been able to set a conspiracy on foot, even if they had
+so desired.  They were paying the penalty for the long war of calumnies
+and slanders which they had waged upon Tiberius, for the aversion and
+the scorn which they had always shown for him.  In this course of
+conduct many senators had encouraged them as long as Tiberius alone had
+not dared to have recourse to violent and cruel measures in order to
+make himself respected by his family.  But such acts of disrespect
+became serious crimes for the unfortunate woman and her hapless son,
+even in the eyes of the senators who had encouraged them to commit
+them, now that Sejanus had reinvigorated the imperial authority with
+his energy, and now that all felt that behind Tiberius and in his name
+and place there was acting a man of decision who knew how to punish his
+enemies and to reward his friends.
+
+The trial and condemnation of Agrippina and Nero were certainly the
+machinations of Sejanus, who carried along with him not only the senate
+and the friends of the imperial family, but perhaps even Tiberius
+himself.  They prove how much Sejanus had been able to strengthen
+imperial authority, which had been hesitating and feeble in the last
+decade.  Sejanus had dared to do what Tiberius had never succeeded in
+doing; he had destroyed that center of opposition which gathered about
+Agrippina in the house of Germanicus.  It is therefore scarcely
+necessary to say that the ruin of Agrippina still further increased the
+power of Sejanus.  All bowed trembling before the man who had dared
+humiliate the very family of the Julio-Claudii.  Honors were showered
+upon his head; he was made senator and pontifex; he received the
+proconsular power; there was talk of a marriage between him and the
+widow of Nero; and it was finally proposed that he be named consul for
+five years.  Indeed, in 31, through the will of Tiberius, he actually
+became the colleague of the emperor himself in the consulate.  He
+needed only the tribunician power to make him the official collaborator
+of the emperor and his designated successor.  Every one at Rome,
+furthermore, considered him the future prince.
+
+[Illustration: Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins.]
+
+But having arrived at this height, Sejanus's head was turned, and he
+asked himself why he should exercise the rule and have all its burdens
+and dangers while he left to others the pomp, the honors, and the
+advantages.  Although Tiberius allowed the senate to heap honors upon
+his faithful prefect of the pretorians, and though he himself showed
+his gratitude to him in many ways, even going to the point of being
+willing to give him the widow of Nero in marriage, he never really
+expected to take him as his colleague or to designate him as his
+successor.  Tiberius was a Claudian, and that a knight without ancestry
+should be placed at the head of the Roman aristocracy was to him
+unthinkable; after the exile of Nero he had cast his eyes upon Caius,
+another son of Germanicus, as his possible successor.  Nor had he
+hidden his intention: he had even clearly expressed it in different
+speeches to the senate.  Therefore Sejanus must finally have come to
+the conclusion that if he continued to defend Tiberius and his
+interests, he could no longer hope for anything from him, and might
+even compromise the influence and the popularity which he had already
+acquired.  Tiberius was hated and detested, there was a numerous party
+opposed to him in the senate, and he was extremely unpopular among the
+masses.  Many admired Sejanus through spiteful hatred of Tiberius, for
+it amounted to saying that they preferred to be governed by an obscure
+knight rather than by an old and detested Claudian who had shut himself
+up in Capri.
+
+And thus Sejanus seems to have deluded himself into believing that if
+he succeeded in doing away with the emperor, he could easily take his
+position by setting aside the young son of Germanicus and profiting by
+the popularity which the fall of Tiberius would bring him.  Little by
+little he came to an understanding with the enemies of Tiberius and
+prepared a conspiracy for the final overthrow of the odious government
+of the son of Livia.  Many senators had agreed to this, and certainly
+few conspiracies were ever organized under more favorable auspices.
+Tiberius was old, disgusted with everything and everybody, and alone in
+Capri; he had virtually not a single friend in Rome; what happened in
+the world he knew only through what Sejanus told him.  He was therefore
+entirely in the hands of the man who was preparing to sacrifice him to
+the tenacious hatred of the people and the senatorial aristocracy.
+Young, energetic, and the favorite of fortune, Sejanus had with him a
+formidable party in the senate, he was the commander of the pretorian
+guard,--that is, of the only military force stationed in Italy,--and he
+had terrified with his implacable persecutions all those whom he had
+failed to win over through his promises or his favors.  Could the duel
+between this misanthropic old man and this vigorous, energetic,
+ruthless climber end in any other way than with the defeat of the
+former?
+
+[Illustration: Bust, supposed to be of Antonia--daughter of Mark Antony
+and Octavia--and mother of Germanicus.]
+
+But now stepping forward suddenly from the shadows to which she had
+retired, a lady appeared, threw herself between the two contestants,
+and changed the fate of the combat.  It was Antonia, the daughter of
+the famous triumvir, the revered widow of Drusus.
+
+After the death of Livia, Antonia was the most respected personage of
+the imperial family in Rome.  She still watched, withdrawn but alert,
+over the destiny of the house now virtually destroyed by death,
+dissensions, the cruelty of the laws, and the relentless anger of the
+aristocracy.  It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and
+courageously she informed Tiberius.  The latter, in danger and in
+Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period.  The
+danger was most threatening, especially because Sejanus was the
+commander of the pretorian guard.  Tiberius beguiled him with friendly
+letters, dangling in front of him the hope that he had conceded to him
+the tribunician power.--that is, that he had made him his
+colleague,--while at the same time he secretly took measures to appoint
+a successor for him.  Suddenly Sejanus learned that he was no longer
+commander of the guard, and that the emperor had accused him before the
+senate of conspiracy.  In an instant, under this blow, the fortunes of
+Sejanus collapsed.  The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu,
+the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated
+the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and
+the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him.  Sejanus,
+his family, his friends, his accomplices, and those who seemed to be
+his accomplices, were put to death after summary trials by the fury of
+the mob; and in Rome blood flowed in torrents.
+
+Antonia might now have enjoyed the satisfaction of having saved through
+her foresight not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when suddenly
+one of the surges of that fierce tempest of ambitions and hatreds tore
+from her side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow of Drusus, and
+cast her as a prey into that sea of blind popular frenzy.  The reader
+has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was
+hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata.
+Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and
+she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in
+which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance
+with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry.  I confess that this accusation
+seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation
+of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it.  Above all, it is
+well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have had of this crime, and
+how she could have procured them even if the crime had been committed.
+Since the two accomplices would have been obliged to hide their
+infamous deed from all, there was no one from whom they would have
+concealed it more carefully than from Apicata.  We must further note
+that it is not probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was in the year
+23, would have thought of committing so serious a crime as that of
+poisoning the son of his protector.  For what reason would he have done
+so?  He did not then think of succeeding Tiberius; by removing Drusus,
+he would merely have improved the situation of the family of
+Germanicus, which at that time was already hostile to him and with
+which he was preparing to struggle.  Instead, might not this accusation
+_in extremis_ be the last vengeance of a repudiated woman against the
+rival who for a moment had threatened to take the position from which
+she herself had been driven?  Apicata did not belong to the
+aristocracy, and, unlike the ladies of the senatorial families, she had
+not therefore been brought up with the idea of having to serve docilely
+as an instrument for the political career of her own husband.  Perhaps
+her denunciation was the revenge of feminine jealousy, of that passion
+which the lower orders of Roman society did not extinguish in the
+hearts of their women as did the aristocracy.
+
+This denunciation, however,--we know this from the pages of ancient
+writers,--was one of the most terrible griefs of Tiberius's old age.
+He had loved his son tenderly, and the idea of leaving so horrible a
+crime unpunished, in case the accusation was true, drove him to
+desperation.  Yet, on the other hand, Livilla, the presumptive
+criminal, was the daughter of his faithful friend, of that Antonia who
+had saved him from the treacheries of Sejanus.  As for the public, ever
+ready to believe all the infamies which were reported of the imperial
+house, it was firmly convinced that Livilla was an abominable poisoner.
+A great trial was set on foot; many suspects were put to torture, which
+is evidence that they were arriving at no definite conclusions, and
+this was probably because they were seeking for the proofs of an
+imaginary crime.  Livilla, however, did not survive the scandal, the
+accusations, the suspicions of Tiberius, and the distrust of those
+about her.  Because she was the daughter of Drusus and the
+daughter-in-law of Tiberius, because she belonged to the family which
+fortune had placed at the head of the immense empire of Rome, she would
+not be able to persuade any one that she was innocent.  The obscure
+woman, without ancestry, who was accusing her from the grave, would be
+taken at her word by every one; she would convince posterity and
+history; against all reason she would prevail over the greatness of
+Livilla!  So Livilla took refuge in her mother's house and starved
+herself to death, for she was unable to outlive an accusation which it
+was impossible to refute.
+
+Tiberius's reign continued for six years after this terrible tragedy,
+but it was only a species of slow death-agony.  The year 33 saw still
+another tragic event--the suicide of Agrippina and her son Drusus.  Of
+the race of Germanicus there remained alive only one son, Caius (the
+later Emperor Caligula), and three daughters, of whom the eldest,
+Agrippina, the mother of Nero, had been married a few years before to
+the descendant of one of the greatest houses of Rome, Cnaeus Domitius
+Enobarbus.  Tiberius still remained as the last relic of a bygone time
+to represent ideas and aspirations which were henceforth lost causes,
+amid the ruins and the tombs of his friends.  Posterity, following in
+the footsteps of Tacitus, has held him and his dark nature alone
+responsible for this ruin.  We ought to believe instead that he was a
+man born to a loftier and more fortunate destiny, but that he had to
+pay the penalty for the unique eminence to which fortune had exalted
+him.  Like the members of his family who had been driven into exile,
+who had died before their time, who had been driven to suicide in
+despair, he, too, was the victim of a tragic situation full of
+insoluble contradictions; and precisely because he was destined to
+live, he was perhaps the most unfortunate victim of them all.
+
+
+[1] There was in the Roman legal system no public prosecutor and
+virtually no police.  Every Roman citizen was supposed to watch over
+the laws and see that they were not infringed.  On his retirement from
+office, any governor or magistrate ran the risk of being impeached by
+some young aspirant to political honors, and not infrequently oratory,
+an art much cultivated by the Romans, triumphed over righteousness.  In
+the earlier period the ground on which charges were usually brought was
+malversation; in the time of the empire they were also frequently
+brought under the above-mentioned law _de majestate_.  It has been said
+that this common act of accusation, the birthright of the Roman
+citizen, the greatly esteemed palladium of Roman freedom, became the
+most convenient instrument of despotism.  Since he who could bring a
+criminal to justice received a fourth of his possessions and estates,
+and since it brought the accuser into prominence, delation was
+recklessly indulged in by the unscrupulous, both for the sake of gain
+and as a means of venting personal spite.  The vice lay at the very
+heart of the Roman system, and was not the invention of Tiberius.  He
+could hardly have done away with it without overthrowing the whole
+Roman procedure.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA
+
+After the death of Tiberius (37 A.D.), the problem of the succession
+presented to the senate was not an easy one.  In his will, Tiberius had
+adopted, and thereby designated to the senate as his successors, Caius
+Caligula, the son of Germanicus, and Tiberius, the son of his own son
+Drusus.  The latter was only seventeen, and too young for such a
+responsibility.  Caligula was twenty-seven, and therefore still very
+young, although by straining a point he might be emperor; yet he did
+not enjoy a good reputation.  If we except him, there was no other
+member of the family old enough to govern except Tiberius Claudius
+Nero, the brother of Germanicus and the only surviving son of Drusus
+and Antonia.  He was generally considered a fool, was the
+laughing-stock of freedmen and women, and such a gawk and clown that it
+had been impossible to put him into the magistracy.  Indeed, he was not
+even a senator when Tiberius died.
+
+[Illustration: Caligula.]
+
+As they could not consider him, there remained only Caligula, unless
+they wished to go outside the family of Augustus, which, if not
+impossible, was at least difficult and dangerous.  For the provinces,
+the German barbarians, and especially the soldiers of the legions, were
+accustomed to look upon this family as the mainstay of the empire.  The
+legions had become specially attached to the memory and to the race of
+Drusus and Germanicus, who still lived in the minds of the soldiers as
+witnesses to their former exploits and virtues.  During the long
+watches of the night, as their names were repeated in speech and story,
+their shades, idealized by death, returned again to revisit the camps
+on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube.  The veneration and affection
+which the armies had once felt for the Roman nobility were now centered
+about the family of Augustus.  In this difficulty, therefore, the
+senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a part of the testament of
+Tiberius, elected Caligula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor.
+
+The death of Tiberius, however, was destined to show the Romans for the
+first time that although it was hard to find an emperor, it might even
+be harder to find an empress.  During the long reign of Augustus, Livia
+had discharged the duties of this difficult position with incomparable
+success.  Tiberius had succeeded Augustus, and after his divorce from
+Julia had never remarried.  There had therefore been a long interregnum
+in the Roman world of feminine society, during which no one had ever
+stopped to think whether it would be easy or difficult to find a woman
+who could with dignity take over the position of Livia.  The problem
+was really presented for the first time with the advent of Caligula;
+for, at twenty-seven, he could not solve it as simply as Tiberius had
+done.  In the first place, it was to be expected that a man of his age
+would have a wife; secondly, the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ made
+marriage a necessity for him, as for all the senators; furthermore, the
+head of the state needed to have a woman at his side, if he wished to
+discharge all his social duties.  The celibacy of Tiberius had
+undoubtedly contributed to the social isolation which had been fatal
+both to him and to the state.
+
+Therefore in Caligula's time the Roman public became aware that the
+problem confronting it was a most difficult one.  A most exacting
+public opinion, hesitating between the ideals of two epochs, wished to
+see united in the empress the best part, both of the ancient and of the
+modern customs, and was consequently demanding that the second Livia
+should possess virtually every quality.  It was necessary that she
+should be of noble birth; that is, a descendant of one of those great
+Roman families which with every year were becoming less numerous, less
+prolific, less virtuous, and more fiercely divided among themselves by
+irreconcilable hatreds.  This latter was a most serious difficulty; for
+by marrying into one of these lines, the emperor ran the risk of
+antagonizing all those other families which were its enemies.  The
+empress, furthermore, must be the model of all the virtues; fruitful,
+in order to obey the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_; religious, chaste,
+and virtuous, that she might not violate the _Lex de adulteriis_;
+simple and modest, in deference to the _Lex sumptuaria_.  She must be
+able to rule wisely over the vast household of the emperor, full of his
+slaves and freedmen, and she must aid her husband in the fulfilment of
+all those social duties--receptions, dinners, entertainments--which,
+though serious concerns for every Roman nobleman, were even more
+serious for the emperor.  That she should be stupid or ignorant was of
+course out of the question.  In fact, from this time to the downfall of
+Nero the difficulties of the imperial family and its authority arise
+not so much from the emperors as from their wives; so that it may truly
+be said that it was the women who unwittingly dragged down to its ruin
+the great Julio-Claudian house.
+
+[Illustration: A bronze sestertius (slightly enlarged), showing the
+sisters of Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on one
+side and Germanicus on the other side.]
+
+[Illustration: A bronze sestertius with the head of Agrippina the
+Elder, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, the daughter of Augustus.  She
+was the wife of Germanicus, and their daughter, Agrippina the younger,
+was the mother of the Emperor Nero.]
+
+But if the difficulty was serious, there never was a man so little
+fitted and so ill prepared to face it as this young man of twenty-seven
+who had been exalted to the imperial dignity after the death of
+Tiberius.  Four years before his election as emperor, he had married a
+certain Julia Claudilla, a lady who doubtless belonged to one of the
+great Roman families, but about whom we have no definite information.
+We cannot say, therefore, whether or not at the side of a second
+Augustus she might have become a new Livia.  In any case, it is certain
+that Caligula was not a second Augustus.  He was probably not so
+frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was
+certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and
+unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne
+had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time
+when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared.
+For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he
+had continually feared that the fate of his mother and his two brothers
+was likewise waiting for him.  Far from having dreamed that he would be
+raised to the imperial purple, he had merely desired that he might not
+have to end his days as an exile on some desert island in the
+Mediterranean.  So much good fortune after the long persecutions of his
+family profoundly disturbed his mental faculties, which had not
+originally been well balanced, and it fomented in him that delirium of
+grandeur which violently directed his desires toward distant Egypt, in
+the customs of which, rather than in those of Rome, he, in the
+exaltation of power, sought satisfaction for his imperial vanity.  From
+his earliest youth Caligula had shown a great inclination for the
+products and the men of that far country, then greatly admired and
+greatly feared by the Romans.  For instance, we know that all his
+servants were Egyptians, and that Helicon, his most faithful and
+influential freedman, was an Alexandrian.  But shortly after his
+elevation this admiration for the land of the Ptolemies and the
+Pharaohs broke forth into a furor of Egyptian exoticism, which impelled
+him to an attempt to bring his own reign into connection with the
+policies of his great-grandfather Mark Antony.  He sought to introduce
+into Rome the ideas, the customs, the sumptuousness, and the
+institutions of the Pharaoh-Ptolemaic monarchy, to make of his palace a
+court similar to that of Alexandria, and of himself a divine king,
+adored in flesh and blood, as sovereigns were adored on the banks of
+the Nile.
+
+Caligula was undoubtedly mad, but his madness would have seemed less
+chaotic and incomprehensible, and a thread of sense would have been
+discovered even in his excesses and in the ravings of his unsettled
+mind, if it had been understood that many of his most famous freaks
+were moved and inspired by this Egyptian idea and tendency.  In the
+madness of Caligula, as in the story of Antony and the tragedy of
+Tiberius, there is forever recurring, under a new form, the great
+struggle between Italy and the East, between Rome and Alexandria, which
+can never be divorced from the history of the last century of the
+republic and the first century of the empire.  Whoever carefully sifts
+out the separate actions in the disordered conduct of the third Roman
+emperor will easily rediscover the thread of this idea and the trace of
+this latent conflict.  For instance, we see the new emperor scarcely
+elected before he introduced the worship of Isis among the official
+cults of the Roman state and assigned in the calendar a public festival
+to Isis.  In short, he was favoring those Egyptian cults which
+Tiberius, with his "old-Roman" sympathies, had fiercely combatted.
+Furthermore, we see Caligula prohibiting the festival in commemoration
+of the battle of Actium, which had been celebrated every year for more
+than half a century.  At first sight the idea seems absurd; but it must
+not be considered a caprice; for with this act Caligula was intending
+to initiate the historical rehabilitation of Mark Antony, the man who
+had tried to shift the center of Roman politics from Rome to
+Alexandria.  The emperor meant to make plain to Rome that she was no
+longer to boast of having humiliated Alexandria with arms, since
+Alexandria would henceforth be taken as a model in all things.
+
+[Illustration: Claudius, Messalina, and their two children in what is
+known as the "Hague Cameo."]
+
+Just as the dynasty of the Ptolemies had been surrounded by a
+semi-religious veneration, Caligula, inspired as he was by Egyptian and
+Ptolemaic conceptions, sought to have this same veneration bestowed
+upon his entire family--that family which under Tiberius had been
+persecuted and defamed by suits and decimated by suicides through the
+envy of the aristocracy, which was forever unwilling to forgive its too
+great prestige.  Caligula not only hastened to set out in person to
+gather up the bones of Agrippina, his mother, and of his brother, in
+order to bring them to Rome and deposit them piously in the tomb of
+Augustus,--that was a natural duty of filial piety,--but he also
+prohibited any one to name among his ancestors the great Agrippa, the
+builder of the Pantheon, because his very obscure origin seemed a blot
+upon the semi-divine purity of his race.  He had the title of Augusta
+and all the privileges of the vestal virgins bestowed upon his
+grandmother Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and the faithful
+friend of Tiberius; he had these same vestal privileges bestowed upon
+his three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla; he had assigned to
+them a privileged position equal to his own at the games in the circus;
+he even had it decreed that their names should be included in the vows
+which the magistrates and pontiffs offered every year for the
+prosperity of the prince and of his people, and that in the prayers for
+the conservation of his power there should also be included a prayer
+for their felicity.  This was a small revolution from the
+constitutional point of view; for the Romans, though allowing their
+women ample freedom to occupy themselves with politics from the
+retirement of their homes, had never recognized for them any official
+capacity.  Tiberius, faithfully adhering in this also to tradition, had
+gone as far as to prevent the senate, at the time of Livia's death,
+from voting public honors to her memory, which, he thought, might have
+justified the belief that his mother had been, not a matron of the old
+Roman stamp, but a public personage.  Caligula, however, was quite
+indifferent to tradition, and by his expressed will, as if in reaction
+against the persecutions and the humiliations which the imperial family
+had suffered under Tiberius, even the sisters of the emperor acquired a
+sacred character and a privileged position in the state.  For the first
+time the women of the imperial family acquired the character of
+official personages.
+
+It cannot be denied that the transition from atrocious prosecutions to
+divine honors was somewhat sudden, but this is merely a further proof
+that Caligula was endowed with a violent, impulsive, and irreflective
+temperament.  In any case, there was neither scandal nor protest at
+that time.  Caligula during the first months of his rule was popular,
+not for his measures in favor of the women of his family, but for
+reasons of far greater importance.  He had inaugurated a régime which
+promised to be more indulgent, more prodigal, less harsh than that of
+Tiberius.  Extravagance had made rapid strides, especially in the ranks
+of the aristocracy, during the twenty-two years of Tiberius's rule: and
+although the latter, especially toward the end of his life, had ceased
+struggling against this tendency, nevertheless his well-known aversion
+to sumptuous living, and the example of simplicity which he set before
+the eyes of all, had always been a cause of preoccupation to the
+aristocracy--to men as well as women.  There was no certainty that the
+emperor might not again, some day, try to enforce the sumptuary laws.
+When Caligula therefore began his career, indicating very clearly his
+sympathies with the modernizing party by his eagerness to do away with
+the old Roman simplicity, the young aristocracy of both sexes did not
+conceal their satisfaction.  After a long period of old-fashioned
+traditional policy, enforced by the two preceding emperors, they
+welcomed with joy the young reformer who set out to introduce in the
+imperial government the spirit of the new generations.  No one was
+sorry that all the purveyors of voluptuousness,--mimes, singers,
+actors, dancers of both sexes, cooks, and puppets,--should with noisy
+joy break into the imperial palace, which had been official, severe,
+and cold under Tiberius, and bring back pleasure, luxury, and
+festivals.  All hoped that under the rule of this indulgent, youthful
+emperor, life, especially at Rome, would become more pleasant and gay;
+and no one therefore felt disposed to protest against the official
+honors which, contrary to custom, had been bestowed upon the women of
+the imperial family.
+
+In truth, if he, still harking back to Egyptian ideas and customs, had
+been content with surrounding his family, especially its women, with a
+respect which would have protected them against the infamous
+accusations and iniquitous persecutions to which many had fallen
+victims, he might have had credit for an action which was good, just,
+and useful to the state.  That strange condition of affairs which had
+been growing up under Tiberius was both absurd and dangerous to the
+country: the emperor was honored with extraordinary powers and made the
+object of a semi-religious veneration; but his family, and especially
+its women, were, as a sort of retribution, set outside the laws and
+fiercely assailed in a thousand insidious ways.  But the lunatic
+Caligula was not the man to keep even a wise proposal within reasonable
+limits.  Power, popularity, and praise quickly aroused all that was
+warped and excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he showed at the
+end of the year 37, he entertained an idea which must have seemed to
+the Romans a horrible impiety.  His wife died soon after he became
+emperor.  Another marriage seemed obligatory, and he decided that he
+would marry his sister Drusilla.
+
+Historians have represented this intention as the perverse delirium of
+an unbridled sensuality.  It was certainly the gross act of a madman,
+but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for
+it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between
+brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the
+Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt.  This oriental custom certainly
+seems a horrible aberration to us, who have been educated according to
+the strict and austere doctrines of Christianity, which, inheriting in
+these matters the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has purified and
+rendered them more rigorous.  But for centuries in Egypt,--that is, in
+the most ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations,--this horrible
+aberration was looked upon as a sovereign privilege which brought the
+royal dynasty into relationship with the gods.  By means of it, this
+family preserved the semi-divine purity of its blood; and perchance
+this custom, which had survived up to the fall of the Ptolemies, was
+only the projection of ideas and customs which in most ancient times
+had had a much wider diffusion along the Mediterranean world, for
+traces of it can be found even in Greek mythology.  For were not
+Jupiter and Juno, who constituted the august Olympian couple, at the
+same time also brother and sister?   Gradually restricted through the
+spreading of Greek civilization, this custom was finally eradicated at
+the shores of the Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction of the
+kingdom of the Ptolemies.
+
+The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it into his head to transplant
+this custom to Rome--to transplant it with all the religious pomp of
+the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform the family of Augustus, which
+up to the present had been merely the most eminent family of the Roman
+aristocracy, into a dynasty of gods and demigods, whose members were to
+be united by marriage among themselves in order not to pollute the
+celestial purity of their blood.  A fraternal and divine pair were to
+rule at Rome, like another Arsinoë and Ptolemy, whom the Alexandrian
+throngs had worshiped on the banks of the Nile.  The idea had already
+matured in his mind at the end of the year 37, and among his three
+sisters he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife.  This is proved
+by a will made at the time of an illness which he contracted in the
+autumn of the first year of his rule.  In this will he appointed
+Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but also of his empire, a wild
+folly from the point of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit women
+to the government; but it proves that Caligula had already thought and
+acted like an Egyptian king.
+
+[Illustration: Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the
+Caesars.]
+
+It is easy to understand why the peace and harmony which had been
+reestablished for a moment in the troubled imperial family by the
+advent of Caligula should have been of brief duration.  His grandmother
+and his sisters were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and this exotic
+madness of his could inspire in them only an irresistible horror.  This
+brought confusion into the imperial family, and after having suffered
+the persecutions of Sejanus and his party, the unhappy daughters of
+Germanicus found themselves in the toils of the exacting caprices of
+their brother.  In fact, in 38, Caligula had already broken with his
+grandmother, whom the year before he had had proclaimed Augusta; and
+between the years 38 and 39, catastrophes followed one another in the
+family with frightful rapidity.  His sister Drusilla, whom, as
+Suetonius tells us, he already treated as a lawful wife, died suddenly
+of some unknown malady while still very young.  It is not improbable
+that her health may have been ruined by the horror of the wild
+adventure, which was neither human nor Roman, into which her brother
+sought to drag her by marriage.  Caligula suddenly declared her a
+goddess, to whom all the cities must pay honors.  He had a temple built
+for her, and appointed a body of twenty priests, ten men and ten women,
+to celebrate her worship; he decreed that her birthday should be a
+holiday, and he wished the statue of Venus in the Forum to be carved in
+her likeness.
+
+But in proportion as Caligula became more and more fervid in this
+adoration of his dead sister, the disagreement between himself and his
+other two sisters became more embittered.  Julia Livilla was exiled in
+38; Agrippina, the wife of Domitius Enobarbus, in 39, and about this
+same time the venerable Antonia died.  It was noised about that
+Caligula had forced her to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and
+Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against the life of the emperor.
+How much truth there may be in these reports it is difficult to say,
+but the reason for all these catastrophes may be affirmed with
+certainty.  Life in the imperial palace was no longer possible,
+especially for women, with this madman who was transforming Rome into
+Alexandria and who wished to marry a sister.  Even Tiberius, the son of
+Drusus and co-heir to the empire with Caligula, was at about this time
+defeated in some obscure suit and disappeared.
+
+Caligula therefore remained alone at Rome to represent in the imperial
+palace the family which only ironically can be considered as the most
+fortunate in Rome.  Of three generations, upon whom fate seemed to have
+showered all the gifts of life, there remained at his side only
+Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen,
+whom no one molested because all could make game of him.  A madman and
+an imbecile,--or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,--this
+was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after the
+battle of Actium.
+
+Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the divine honors of the Roman
+Olympus, Caligula was reduced to hunting for wives in the families of
+the aristocracy.  But it seems that even there could be found no great
+abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the
+Olympian consorts of so capricious a god.  In three years he married
+and repudiated three--and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust
+the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves.  The first was Livia
+Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso.  The emperor, who had seen the woman
+at the marriage celebration, became, we are told, so infatuated with
+her that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he then married her,
+and a few days later repudiated her.  Caligula is said to have compared
+himself on this occasion to Romulus who ravished the Sabine woman, and
+to Augustus who raped Livia.  The second was Lollia Paulina, wife of
+Caius Memmius, proconsul of a distant province.  Caligula heard of the
+prodigious beauty of Lollia's grandmother.  The portrayal of her charms
+made him fall in love with her granddaughter, though absent and
+distant.  He gave orders for her immediate recall to Rome, and as soon
+as she could be divorced from her husband he married her.  This union,
+like the former one, lasted only a brief time.  The third wife was
+Milonia Caesonia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, though from
+the accounts of ancient writers she appears to have been much older
+than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he
+first loved her.  It is difficult to determine how much truth there is
+in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his
+frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love--a passion
+which deranges somewhat even wise men.  It is not strange, therefore,
+that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater
+excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men.  Yet some of
+these accounts seem a little incredible even when ascribed to a madman.
+However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, Milonia Caesonia
+are figures without relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one of
+whom had time enough even to occupy the highest post.  In vain the
+people expected that there would appear in the imperial palace a worthy
+successor to Livia.  Caligula, like all madmen, was by nature solitary,
+and could not live with other human beings: he was to remain alone, a
+prey to his ravings, which became even stranger and more violent.  He
+now wished to impose upon the empire the worship of his own person,
+without considering any opposition or local traditions and
+superstitions.  In doing this he did violence not only to the civic and
+republican sentiment of Italy, which detested this worship of a living
+man as an ignoble oriental adulation, but also to the religious feeling
+of the Hebrews, to whom this cult appeared most horrible and idolatrous.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Caligula.]
+
+In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and sedition arose in all
+parts of the empire.  The extravagances, the wild expenditures, the
+riotous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula increased the
+discontent and disgust on every hand.  We need not take literally all
+the accounts of his cruelty and violence which ancient writers have
+transmitted to us,--even Caligula has been blackened,--but it is
+certain that his government in the last two years of his reign
+degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, violent, and cruel tyranny.
+One day the empire awoke in terror to the fact that the imperial
+family--that family in which the legions, the provinces, and the
+barbarians saw the keystone of the state--no longer existed; that in
+the vast imperial palace, empty of women, empty of children, empty of
+hope, there wandered a raging madman of thirty-one, who divorced a wife
+every six months, who foolishly wasted the treasure and the blood of
+his subjects, and who was concerned with no other thought than that of
+having himself worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by all the
+empire.  A conspiracy was formed in the palace itself, and Caligula was
+killed.
+
+
+The senate was much perplexed when it heard of the death of Caligula.
+What was to be done?  The majority was inclined to restore the former
+republican government by abolishing the imperial authority, and to give
+back to the senate the supreme direction of the state, which little by
+little had passed into the hands of the emperor.  But many recognized
+that this return to the ancient form of government would be neither
+easy nor without danger.  Could the senate, neglected, divided, and
+disregarded as it was, succeed in governing the immense empire?  On the
+other hand, it was not much easier to find an emperor, granted that an
+emperor was henceforth necessary.  In the family of Augustus there was
+only Claudius, too foolish and ridiculous for them to think of making
+him the head of the state.  It seems that some eminent senator offered
+his candidacy, but the senate hesitated in perplexity, on the ground
+that if the authority of the members of the family of Augustus was
+already so uncertain, so debatable, and so darkly threatened, what
+would happen to a new emperor, unknown to the legions and the
+provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors?  While the
+senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered
+Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering
+through fear lest he too be killed.  Recognizing in him the brother of
+Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor.  An act of will is
+always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations: the
+senate yielded to the legions, and recognized Claudius the imbecile as
+emperor.
+
+[Illustration: Claudius.]
+
+But Claudius was not an imbecile, although he appeared such to many.
+Instead, he was, so to speak, a man half-grown, in whom certain parts
+of the mind were highly developed, but whose character had remained
+that of a child, timid, capricious, impulsive, giddy, and incapable of
+self-mastery.  In intellect he was learned, even cultivated; he was
+fond of studies, of history, literature, and archaeology, and spoke and
+wrote well.  But Augustus had been forced to give up the attempt to
+have him enter upon a political career because he had been unable to
+make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary
+dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the
+firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men.
+Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate,
+gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the
+imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his
+slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did with him what
+they wished.
+
+He did not lack the intellectual qualities necessary for governing
+well, but of the moral qualities he had none.  He was intelligent, and
+he looked stupid: he was able to consider the great questions of
+politics, war, and finance with breadth of view, with original and
+acute intelligence, but he never succeeded in having himself taken
+seriously by the persons who surrounded him.  He dared undertake great
+projects, like the conquest of Britain, and he lost his head at the
+wildest fable about conspiracy which one of his intimates told him; he
+had mind sufficient to govern the empire as well as Augustus and
+Tiberius had done, but he could not succeed in getting obedience from
+four or five slaves or from his own wife.
+
+Such a man was destined to turn out a rather odd emperor, at once great
+and ridiculous.  He made important laws, undertook gigantic public
+works and conquests of great moment; but in his own house he was a weak
+husband, incapable of exercising any sort of authority over his wife.
+With these conjugal weaknesses he seriously compromised the imperial
+authority, while at the same time he was consolidating it and rendering
+it illustrious with beautiful and wise achievements, especially in the
+first seven years of his rule, while he lived with Valeria Messalina.
+
+We must admit in his justification that in this matter he had not been
+particularly fortunate; for fate had given him to wife a lady who,
+notwithstanding her illustrious ancestors,--she belonged to one of the
+greatest families of Rome, related to the family of Augustus,--was not
+exactly suited to be his companion in the imperial dignity.  Every one
+knows that the name of Valeria Messalina has become in history
+synonymous with all the faults and all the vices of which a woman can
+be guilty.  This, as usual, is the result of envy and malevolence which
+never offered truce to the family of Augustus as long as any of its
+members lived.  Many of the infamies which are attributed to her are
+evidently fables, complacently repeated by Tacitus and Suetonius, and
+easily believed by posterity.  But it is certain that if Messalina was
+not a monster, she was a beautiful woman, capricious, gay, powerful,
+reckless, avid of luxury and of money, who had never scrupled to abuse
+the weakness of her husband in any way either by deceiving him or by
+obliging him to follow her will and her caprice in everything.  She was
+a woman, in short, neither very virtuous nor serious.  There are such
+women at all times and in all social classes, and they are generally
+considered by the majority not as monsters, but as a pleasing, though
+dangerous, variety of the feminine sex.  Under normal conditions,
+nevertheless, when the husband exercises a certain energy and sagacity,
+even the danger which may result from them is relatively slight.
+
+But chance had made of Messalina an empress, and Messalina was not a
+sufficiently intelligent or serious woman to understand that if she had
+been able to abuse the weakness of Claudius with impunity while he had
+been the most obscure member of the imperial family, it was a much more
+difficult matter to continue to abuse it after he had become the head
+of the state.  It was from this error that all their difficulties
+arose.  Elated by her new position, Messalina more than ever took
+advantage of her husband's infirmity.  She began by starting new
+dissensions in the imperial family.  Claudius had recalled to Rome the
+two victims of Caligula's Egyptian caprices, Agrippina and Julia
+Livilla; but if the latter no longer found a brother in Rome to
+persecute them, they did find their aunt, and they had gained but
+little by the exchange.  Messalina soon took umbrage at the influence
+which the two sisters acquired over the mind of their weak-willed
+uncle, and it was not long before Julia Livilla was accused under the
+_Lex de adulteriis_, and exiled with Seneca, the famous philosopher,
+whom they wished rightly or wrongly to pass off as her lover.
+Agrippina, like her mother, was a virtuous woman, as is proved by the
+fact that she could not be attacked with such weapons and was enabled
+to remain in Rome; though she also had to live prudently and beware of
+her enemy, and much the more as she had only recently become a widow
+and could therefore not even count upon the protection of a husband.
+Though Agrippina remained at Rome, she was isolated and reduced to a
+position of helplessness.
+
+Messalina alone, together with four or five intelligent and
+unscrupulous freedmen, hedged Claudius about, and there began the
+period of their common government--a government of incredible waste and
+extortion.  Among these freedmen there were, to be sure, men like
+Narcissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, who did not aim merely
+at putting money into their purses, but who helped Claudius to govern
+the empire properly.  Messalina, on the other hand, thought only of
+acquiring wealth, that she might dissipate it in luxury and pleasures.
+The wife of the emperor had been selling her influence to the sovereign
+allies and vassals, to all the rich personages of the empire, who
+desired to obtain any sort of favor from the imperial authority; she
+had been seen bartering with the contractors for public works, mingling
+in the financial affairs of the state every time that there was any
+occasion to make money.  And with the money thus amassed she indulged
+in ostentatious displays which violated all the prohibitions of the
+_Lex sumptuaria_, leading a life of unseemly pleasures, in which it is
+easy to imagine what sort of example of all the finer feminine virtues
+she set.  Claudius either knew nothing of all this or else submitted
+without protest.
+
+Messalina then, with her peculiar levity of character and violence of
+temperament, continued to emphasize the modernizing Asiatic tendency
+introduced by Caligula into the state, and was influential in
+destroying the puritanic traditions of Rome and replacing them by the
+corruption and pomp of Asia.  Her rôle was exactly the opposite of that
+of Livia.  The latter had been the embodiment of the conservative
+virtues of traditionalism: the former by her egoism, her extravagance,
+and her wantonness was in a fair way to destroy all such traditions.
+Livia had been almost a vestal in her fight for the puritanism of old
+Rome: Messalina most ardently and violently fought to destroy it.
+
+Such an empress, however, could hardly please the public.  While those
+who profited by her dissipations greatly admired Messalina, a lively
+movement of protest was soon started among the people, for they, unlike
+many of the aristocrats, who affected modern views and who pretended to
+scorn the traditions of ancient Rome, were faithful to all such
+puritanical traditions and wished to see at their emperor's side a lady
+adorned with all the fairer virtues of the ancient matron--with those
+virtues, in short, which Livia had personified with such dignity.  How
+could they tolerate this sort of dissipated Bacchante, who should have
+been condemned to infamy and exile with the many other Roman women who
+had been faithless to their husbands; who with the effrontery of her
+unpunished crimes dishonored and rendered ridiculous the imperial
+authority?
+
+To the middle classes the emperor was a semi-sacred magistrate, charged
+with maintaining by law and example the purity of the family, fidelity
+in marital relations, and simplicity of customs.  Now, to their
+amazement, they saw in the person of the empress all the dissipations,
+corruptions, and perversions of the woman who wished to live only for
+her pleasure, to enjoy her beauty, and to have others enjoy it,
+enthroned, to the scandal of all honest minds, in the palace of the
+emperor.  Furthermore, it seemed to every one a scandal that one who
+was an emperor should at the same time be a weak husband; for the
+simple good sense of the Latin would not admit that a man who could
+govern an empire should not be able to command a woman.  It soon became
+the general opinion of all reasonable people that Messalina, in the
+position of Livia upon the Palatine, and with so weak a husband, was
+not only a scandal, but also a continual menace to the public.
+
+[Illustration:  The Emperor Claudius.]
+
+Nevertheless, it would now have been no easy matter, even if the
+emperor had wished it, to convict an empress of infidelity and
+disobedience to one of the great laws of Augustus.  Caligula was a
+madman and had been able to secure three divorces, but a wiser emperor
+would have to think for a long time before rendering public the shame
+and scandals of his family, especially when confronted with an
+aristocracy which was as eager to suspect and calumniate as was the
+aristocracy of Rome.  But the problem became hopeless as soon as the
+emperor did not see or did not wish to see the faults of his wife.
+Would any one dare to step forward and accuse the empress?
+
+The situation gradually became grave and dangerous.  The state,
+governed with intelligence, but without energy, with vast
+contradictions and hesitations, was being strengthened along certain
+lines and was going to pieces along others.  The power and extortions
+of the freedmen were breeding discontent on every hand.  Both through
+what she really did, and what the populace said she had done, Messalina
+was being transformed by the people into a legendary personage whose
+infamous deeds aroused general indignation; but all in vain.
+
+It now became quite evident that an empress was virtually invulnerable,
+and that, once enthroned upon the Palatine, there was no effective
+means of protesting against the various ways in which she could abuse
+her lofty position unless the emperor wished to interfere.  In its
+exasperation, the public finally vented upon Claudius the anger which
+the violence and misconduct of Messalina had aroused.  They declared
+that it was his weakness which was responsible for her conduct; and
+intrigues, deeds of violence, conspiracies, and attempts at civil war
+became, as Suetonius says, every-day occurrences at Rome.
+
+A sense of insecurity and doubt was spreading throughout the state as a
+result of the indecision of the emperor, and all began to ask
+themselves how long a government could last which was at the mercy of a
+wanton.  The violent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in the
+minds of the people, added to this wide-spread feeling of insecurity
+and alarm.  As Caligula, notwithstanding the pontifical sacredness of
+his person, had been slain, to the apparent satisfaction of everybody,
+in his palace by a handful of his supposed friends and supporters, it
+seemed possible that the tragedy might easily be repeated in the case
+of Claudius.  Could not the whole Claudian government be
+overturned,--in a single night, perhaps, as that of Caligula had been
+overturned?  All hearts were filled with suspicion, distrust, and
+alarm, and many concluded that since Claudius had not succeeded in
+ridding the empire of Messalina it would be well to rid it of Claudius.
+
+[Illustration: Messalina, third wife of Claudius.]
+
+So for seven years Messalina remained the great weakness of a
+government which possessed signal merits and accomplished great things.
+Of all the emperors in the family of Augustus, Claudius was certainly
+the one whose life was most seriously threatened, especially because of
+his wife.  Such a situation could not endure.
+
+It finally resolved itself into a tragic scandal, which, if we could
+believe Suetonius and Tacitus, would certainly have been the most
+monstrous extravagance to which an imagination depraved by power could
+have abandoned itself.  According to these writers, Messalina, at a
+loss for some new form of dissipation, one fine day took it into her
+head to marry Silius, a young man with whom she was very much in love,
+who belonged to a distinguished family, and who was the
+consul-designate.  According to them, for the pleasure of shocking the
+imperial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous union, she actually did
+marry him in Rome, with the most solemn religious rites, while Claudius
+was at Ostia!  But is this credible, at least without admitting that
+Messalina had suddenly gone insane?  To what end and for what reason
+would she have committed such a sacrilege, which struck at the very
+heart of popular sentiment?  Dissolute, cruel, and avaricious Messalina
+certainly was, but mad she was not.  And even if we are willing to
+admit that she had gone mad, is it conceivable that all those who would
+have had to lend her their services in the staging of this revolting
+farce had also gone mad?  It is difficult to suppose that they acted
+through fear, for the empress had no such power in Rome that she could
+constrain conspicuous persons publicly to commit such sacrilege.
+
+This episode would probably be an unfathomable enigma had not Suetonius
+by chance given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud omnem fidem
+excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat,
+tabellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For that which would pass all
+belief is the fact that in the marriage which Messalina contracted with
+the adulterer Silius, he himself [Claudius] should have signed the
+figures for the dowry").  If Claudius himself gave a dowry to the
+bride, he therefore knew that the marriage of Messalina and Silius was
+to take place; and it is precisely this fact which seems so incredible
+to Suetonius.  But we know that in the Roman aristocracy a man could
+give away his own wife in this manner; for have we not recounted in
+this present history how Livia was dowered and given in marriage to
+Augustus by her first husband, the grandfather of Claudius?  The
+deeding of a wife with a dowry was a part of the somewhat bizarre
+marriage customs of the Roman aristocracy, which gradually lost ground
+in the first and second century of our era in proportion as the
+prestige and power of that aristocracy declined, and in proportion as
+the middle classes acquired influence in the state and succeeded in
+imposing upon it their ideas and sentiments.  The passage in Suetonius
+proves to us that he no longer understood this matrimonial custom, and
+it is doubtful whether even Tacitus thoroughly understood it.  Nor is
+it improbable that it should have seemed strange even to many of the
+contemporaries of Claudius.  We could therefore explain how, not really
+understanding what had happened, the historians of the following
+century should have believed that Messalina had married Silius while
+she was still the wife of Claudius.
+
+In short, Claudius had been persuaded to divorce Messalina and to marry
+her to Silius.  The passage from Suetonius, if carefully interpreted,
+clearly tells us this.  What means were employed to persuade Claudius
+to consent to this new marriage we do not know.  Suetonius refers to
+this, but he is not clear.  In any case, this point is less important
+than that other question: Why was Messalina, after seven years of
+empire, willing to divorce Claudius and marry Silius?  The problem is
+not an easy one, but after long examination I have decided to accept
+with slight modification the explanation given by Umberto Silvagni in
+his beautiful work, "The Empire and the Women of the Caesars," a book
+which contains many original ideas and much acute observation.
+
+[Illustration: The philosopher Seneca.]
+
+Silvagni, who is an excellent student of Roman history, has well
+brought out how Silius belonged to a family of the aristocracy famous
+for its devotion to the party of Germanicus and Agrippina.  His father,
+who had been a great friend of Germanicus, had been one of the victims
+of Sejanus, and accused in the time of Tiberius under the law of high
+treason, he had committed suicide.  His mother, Sosia Galla, had been
+condemned to exile on account of her devotion to Agrippina.  Starting
+out with these considerations, and examining acutely the accounts of
+all the ancient historians, Silvagni concluded that behind this
+marriage there lay a conspiracy to ruin Claudius and to put Caius
+Silius in his place.  Messalina must sooner or later have felt that the
+situation was an impossible one, that Claudius was not a sufficiently
+strong or energetic emperor to be able to impose the disorganized
+government of himself and his freedmen upon the empire, and that any
+day he might fall a prey to a plot or an assassination.  What would
+happen, she must have asked herself, if Claudius, like Caligula, should
+some day be despatched by a conspiracy?  The same fate would doubtless
+be waiting for her, for, having killed him, the conspirators would
+certainly murder her also.  Consequently she entertained the idea of
+ruining the emperor herself in order to contribute to the elevation of
+his successor, and thus to preserve at his side the position which she
+had occupied in the court of Claudius.  But once Claudius had been
+slain, there would be no other member of the family of Augustus old
+enough to govern.  She therefore decided to choose him in a family
+famous for its devotion to Germanicus and the more popular branch of
+the house, thus hoping the more easily to win over the legions and the
+pretorians to the cause of the new emperor, Since the descendants of
+Drusus were dead, what other option remained to her than to choose a
+successor in the families of the aristocracy who had shown for them the
+greatest devotion and love?
+
+Thus, for the first time, a woman was placed at the head of a really
+vast political conspiracy destined to wrest the supreme power from the
+family of Augustus; and this woman proved her sagacity by knowing how
+to organize this great plot so well and so opportunely that the most
+intelligent and influential among the freedmen of Claudius debated for
+a long time whether they would join her or throw in their lot with the
+emperor.  So doubtful seemed the issue of this struggle between the
+weak husband and the energetic, audacious, and unscrupulous wife!  They
+allowed Messalina and Silius to enlist friends and partisans in every
+part of Roman society, to come to an understanding with the prefect of
+the guards, to obtain the divorce from Claudius, even to celebrate
+their marriage, without opening the eyes of the emperor.  Claudius
+would probably have been destroyed if at the last moment Narcissus had
+not decided to rush to the emperor, who was at Ostia, and, by
+terrifying him in some unspeakable way, had not induced him to stamp
+out the conspiracy with a bold and unexpected stroke.  There followed
+one of those periods of judicial murder which for more than thirty
+years had been costing much Roman blood, and in this slaughter
+Messalina, too, was overthrown.
+
+After the discovery of the conspiracy, Claudius made a harangue to the
+soldiers, in which he told them that as he had not been very successful
+in his marriages he did not intend to take another wife.  The proposal
+was wise, but difficult of execution, for there were many reasons why
+the emperor needed to have a woman at his side.  We very soon find
+Claudius consulting his freedmen on the choice of a new wife.  There
+was much discussion and uncertainty, but the choice finally fell upon
+Agrippina.  That choice was significant.  Agrippina was the niece of
+Claudius, and marriages between uncle and niece, if not exactly
+prohibited, were looked upon by the Romans with a profound revulsion of
+feeling.  Claudius and his freedmen could not have decided to face this
+repugnance except for serious and important reasons.  Among these the
+most serious was probably that after the experience with Messalina, it
+seemed best not to go outside the family.  An empress belonging to the
+family would not be so likely to plot against the descendants of
+Augustus as had been this strange woman, who belonged to one of those
+aristocratic families who deeply hated the imperial house.  Agrippina,
+furthermore, was the daughter of Germanicus.  This was a powerful
+recommendation with the people, the pretorian cohorts, and the legions.
+In addition, she was intelligent, cultured, simple, and economical; she
+had grown up in the midst of political affairs, she knew how the empire
+was governed, and up to this point she had lived a life above reproach.
+She seemed to be the woman above all others destined to make the people
+forget Messalina and to reestablish among the masses respect for the
+family of Augustus, now seriously compromised by many scandals and
+dissensions.  Furthermore, she did not seem to suffer too much by
+comparison with Livia.
+
+Claudius asked the senate to authorize marriages between uncles and
+nieces, as he did not dare to assume the responsibility of going
+counter to public sentiment.  And thus the daughter of Germanicus and
+the sister of Caligula became an empress.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
+
+It is possible, as Tacitus says, that marriage with Claudius was the
+height of Agrippina's ambition, but it is also possible that it was an
+act of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of a woman who had been
+educated in the traditions of the Roman aristocracy, and who therefore
+considered herself merely a means to the political advancement of her
+relatives and her children.
+
+I am rather inclined to accept this second explanation.  When she
+married Claudius, Agrippina not only married an uncle who was much
+older than herself, and who must necessarily prove a rather difficult
+and disagreeable husband, but she bound up her fate with that of a weak
+emperor whose life was continually threatened by plots and revolts, and
+whose hesitations and terrors plainly portended that he would one day
+end by precipitating the imperial authority and government into some
+bizarre and terrible catastrophe.  For Agrippina it meant that she was
+blindly staking her life and her honor, and that she would lose them
+both should she fail to compensate for the innumerable deficiencies of
+her strange husband through her own intelligence and strength of will.
+Every one will recognize how difficult was the task which she had
+undertaken.
+
+But at the beginning fortune favored Agrippina as she boldly took up
+the work that lay before her.  The wild pranks of Caligula and the
+scandals of Messalina had aroused an immeasurable disgust in Rome and
+Italy.  Every one was out of patience.  The senate as well as the
+people were demanding a stronger, more coherent, and respectable
+government, which would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious personal
+and family quarrels which were dividing Rome.  Agrippina was the
+daughter of Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and she had in her
+veins the blood of the Claudii, with all their pride, their energy,
+their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the
+moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her.  Although she was
+a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
+her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
+maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca.  The fact
+that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
+her downfall under the _Lex de adulteriis_, proves the unreliability of
+these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
+suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (_Nihil
+domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret_).  This means that Agrippina
+was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which
+stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that
+both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that
+not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded
+her ruin.  All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw
+this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the
+side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the
+most venerated personages of the family of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+
+The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
+all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
+operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
+Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
+Agrippina herself.  In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
+great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
+fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
+madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
+reign of Claudius.  All this served to bring back into the state a
+little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
+its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government.  Tacitus
+says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (_adductum et quasi
+virile_).  This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
+laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
+to a certain order and discipline.  Severity there was, and more often
+haughtiness (_palam severitas ac saepius superbia_).  The freedmen who
+had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
+is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a check in the
+energy of Agrippina.  The state finances and the fortune of the
+imperial house were reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like all
+the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was an excellent administrator,
+frugal, and ever watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and careful of
+all items of income and expense.  The Roman aristocracy, like all other
+aristocracies, hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches,
+traffickers who had too quickly become wealthy, and all persons whose
+only aim was to amass money.  We know that Agrippina sought to prevent
+as far as possible the malversations of public funds by which the
+powerful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching themselves.  After she
+became empress we hear accounts of numerous suits instituted against
+personages who had been guilty of wasting public treasure, while under
+Messalina no such cases were brought forward.  We know, furthermore,
+that she reestablished the fortune of the imperial family, which in all
+probability had been seriously compromised by the reckless expenditures
+of Messalina.  This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his sentences,
+which, as usual, is colored by his malignity: _Cupido auri immensa
+obtentum habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur_ (She sought to enrich
+the family under the pretext of providing for the needs of the empire).
+What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the contrary, the ancient
+aristocratic conception of wealth, which in the eyes of the great
+families was destined to be a means of government and an instrument of
+power: the family possessed it in order to use it for the benefit of
+the state.
+
+In short, Agrippina attempted to revive the aristocratic traditions of
+government which had inspired the policies of Augustus and Tiberius.
+Not only did she attempt to do this, but, strange as it may seem, she
+succeeded almost without a struggle.  The government of Agrippina was
+from the first a great success.  From the moment when she became
+empress there is discernible in the entire administration a greater
+firmness and consistency of policy.  Claudius no longer seems, as
+formerly, to be at the mercy of his freedmen and the fleeting impulses
+of the moment, and even the dark shadows of the time are lighted up for
+some years.  A certain concord and tranquillity returned to the
+imperial house, to the aristocracy, to the senate, and to the state.
+Although Tacitus accuses Agrippina of having made Claudius commit all
+sorts of cruelties, it is certain that trials, scandals, and suicide
+became much less frequent under her rule.  During the six years that
+Claudius lived after his marriage with Agrippina, scandalous tragedies
+became so rare that Tacitus, being deprived of his favorite materials,
+set down the story of these six years in a single book.  In other
+words, Agrippina encountered virtually no opposition, while Tiberius
+and even Augustus, when they wished to govern according to the
+traditions of the ancient nobility, had to combat the party of the new
+aristocracy, with its modern and oriental tendencies.  This party no
+longer seemed to exist when Agrippina urged Claudius to continue
+resolutely in the policy of his ancestors, for one party only, that of
+the old nobility, seemed with Agrippina to control the state.  This
+must have been the result partly of the disgust for the scandals of the
+previous decade, which had made every one realize the need of restoring
+more serious discipline in the government, and partly of the exhaustion
+which had come upon both parties as the result of so many struggles,
+reprisals, suits, and scandals.  The force of the opposition in the two
+factions gradually diminished.  A greater gentleness induced all to
+accept the direction of the government without resistance, and the
+authority of the emperor and his counselors acquired greater importance
+in proportion as the strength of the opposition in the aristocracy and
+the senate became gradually weaker.
+
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of
+Nero.]
+
+In any case, the empire was no longer to have forced upon it the
+ridiculous and scandalous spectacle of such weaknesses and
+incongruities as had seriously compromised the prestige of the highest
+authority in the first period of the reign of Claudius.  But Agrippina
+was not content with merely making provision as best she could for the
+present; she also looked forward to the future.  She had had a son by
+her first husband, and at the time of her marriage with Claudius this
+youth was about eleven years old.  It is in connection with her plans
+for this son that Tacitus brings his most serious charges against
+Agrippina.  According to his story, from the first day of her marriage
+Agrippina attempted to make of her son, the future Emperor Nero, the
+successor of Claudius, thereby excluding Britannicus, the son of
+Messalina, from the throne.
+
+To obtain this end, she spared, he says, neither intrigues, fraud, nor
+deceit; she had Seneca recalled from exile and appointed tutor of her
+child.  She removed from office the two commanders of the pretorian
+guard, who were creatures of Messalina, and in their stead she had
+elected one of her own, a certain Afranius Burrhus.  She laid pitfalls
+for Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, and in the year 50, by
+dint of much intrigue and many caresses, she finally succeeded in
+having Claudius adopt her son.  But this whole story is merely a
+complicated and fantastic romance, embroidered about a truth which in
+itself is comparatively simple.  Tacitus himself tells us that
+Agrippina was a most exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older
+Roman type--in his own words, _trux et minax_.  She did not follow the
+gentle methods of the newer education, which were gradually being
+introduced into the great families, and she had brought up her son in
+the ancient manner with the greatest simplicity.  It is well to keep in
+mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus nor Nero had any right to
+the throne of Claudius.  The hereditary principle did not yet exist in
+the imperial government: the senate was free to choose whomsoever it
+wished.  To be sure, up to that time the choice had always fallen upon
+a member of the Augustan family; but it had only been because it was
+easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who
+commanded the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who
+had received a certain preparation for the diverse and often difficult
+duties of their office.  And it was precisely for this reason that
+Augustus and Tiberius had always sought to prepare more than one youth
+for the highest office, both in order that the senate might have a
+certain freedom of choice, and also that there might be some one in
+reserve, in case one of these young men should disappoint the hopes of
+the empire or should die prematurely, as so many others had died.  That
+she should have persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not mean,
+therefore, that she wished to set Britannicus aside and give the
+advantage to Nero.  It merely proves that she did not wish the family
+of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and for this reason she intended
+to prepare not only one successor, but two possible successors, to
+Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and
+Tiberius.
+
+[Illustration: Britannicus.]
+
+In order to understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina
+really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was
+adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine.  As Claudius was already
+sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old
+lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his
+senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the
+reign.  There is a further proof that Agrippina had no thought of
+destroying the race of Claudius and Messalina, for before his adoption
+she had married Nero to Octavia, the daughter of the imperial pair.
+Octavia was a woman possessed of all the virtues which the ancient
+Roman nobility had cherished.  She was chaste, modest, patient, gentle,
+and unselfish, and she would be able to assist in strengthening the
+power of her house.  Agrippina had therefore, in the ancient manner,
+affianced the young pair at an early age, and hoped that she might make
+a couple which would serve as an example to the families of the
+aristocracy.
+
+In short, Agrippina, far from seeking to weaken the imperial house by
+destroying the descendants of Messalina, was attempting to bring her
+son into the family precisely for the purpose of giving it strength.
+And, sensible woman that she was, she could hardly have acted
+otherwise.  She had seen the family of Augustus, once so prosperous,
+reduced to a state of exhaustion and virtually destroyed by the fatal
+discord between her mother and Tiberius and the quarrels between her
+brothers.  The state had suffered greatly through the madness of
+Caligula and the reckless hatred of the first Agrippina, and the
+present empress, her daughter, who was not merely fond of her son, but
+endowed in addition with the gift of reflection, sought as far as
+possible to make amends for the evils which had unconsciously been
+wrought.  The hopes of the future were henceforth to abide in
+Britannicus and in Nero.  In Agrippina there reappeared the wisdom of
+her greatest predecessors, and the people were so well satisfied that
+they conferred upon her the very highest honor, such as in her time
+even Livia herself had not received.  She was given the title Augusta;
+she was allowed to ride into the precincts of the Capitol in a gilded
+coach (carpentum), though this was an honor which in old time had been
+conceded only to priests and to the images of the gods.  This last
+descendant of Livia and Drusus, in whom the virtues of a venerated past
+seemed to reappear, was surrounded by a semi-religious adoration.  This
+is an evidence of sincere and profound respect, for though the Romans
+often showered marks of human adulation upon their potentates, it was
+not often that they bestowed honors of so sacred a character.
+
+The unforeseen death of Claudius suddenly cut short the work which
+Agrippina had well under way.  Claudius was sixty-four years old, and
+one night in the month of October of the year 54 he succumbed to some
+mysterious malady after a supper of which, as usual, he had partaken
+inordinately.  Tacitus pretends to know that Agrippina had secretly
+administered poison to Claudius in a plate of mushrooms.  During the
+night, however, fearing lest Claudius would survive, she had called
+Claudius's physician, Xenophon, who was a friend of hers.  The latter,
+while pretending to induce vomiting, had painted his throat with a
+feather dipped in a deadly poison, and had killed him.  This version is
+so strange and improbable that Tacitus himself does not dare affirm it,
+but says that "many believe" that it was in this manner that Claudius
+met his death.  But if there are still people credulous enough to
+believe that the head of a great state can be poisoned in the twinkling
+of an eye by a doctor who brushes his throat with a feather, it is more
+difficult to understand what grounds Agrippina could have had for
+poisoning her husband.  According to Tacitus, it was because she was
+disturbed by the fact that Claudius had for some time shown that he
+preferred Britannicus to Nero; but even if the fact were true, as a
+motive it would be ridiculous.  Augustus was much fonder of Germanicus
+than he was of Tiberius; and yet at his death the senate chose
+Tiberius, and not Germanicus, because at that moment the situation
+clearly called for the former as head of the empire.  When Claudius
+died, Britannicus was thirteen and Nero seventeen years old.  They were
+both, therefore, mere lads, and it was most probable that if the
+imperial seat fell vacant, the senate would choose neither, since they
+were both too young and inexperienced.  This is so true that other
+historians have supposed, on the contrary, that Agrippina had fallen
+out with some one of the more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and seeing
+Claudius waver, had despatched him in order that she herself should not
+end like Messalina.  But this hypothesis also is absurd.  An empress
+was virtually invulnerable.  Messalina had proved this, for she had
+committed every excess and abuse with impunity.  Agrippina, protected
+as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her
+person a virtually sacred character, had nothing to fear either from
+the weak Claudius or from his powerful freedmen.
+
+This accusation of poisoning, therefore, seems to be of precisely the
+same sort as, and not a whit more serious than, all those other similar
+accusations which were brought against the members of the Augustan
+family.  Claudius, who was already sixty-four, in all probability died
+a sudden but natural death, and from the point of view of the interests
+of the house of Augustus, which Agrippina had strongly at heart, he
+died much too soon.  It was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the
+Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings commander of the armies
+and emperor, even though they were the only survivors of the race of
+Augustus.  So true is this that Tacitus tells us that Agrippina kept
+the death of Claudius secret for many hours and pretended that the
+physicians were still struggling to save him, when in reality he was
+already dead, _dum res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur_ (while
+matters were being arranged to assure the empire to Nero).
+Consequently, if everything had to be hurried through in confusion at
+the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina herself must have been
+taken by surprise by the illness and death of Claudius.  She therefore
+cannot be held responsible for having caused it.
+
+It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the course of events.  On
+the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after
+Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the
+doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost.  Agrippina
+immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that
+moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office,
+there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the
+supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus.  The only means of
+avoiding this danger was to bring pressure to bear upon the senate
+through the pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to the family of
+Augustus as the senate was hostile.  She must present one of the two
+youths to the guards and have him acclaimed not head of the empire, but
+head of the armies.  The senate would thereby be constrained to
+proclaim him head of the empire, as they had done in the case of
+Claudius.
+
+But which one of the two youths was it best to choose, Claudius's son
+by blood or his son by adoption?  Nero was chosen as the result of the
+unrighteous ambition of Agrippina, so Tacitus says.  It is very
+probable that Agrippina was more eager to see her own son at the head
+of the empire than to see Britannicus there; but this does not seem to
+have been the real reason of her choice, for it could not have been
+otherwise, even if Agrippina had detested Nero and had cherished
+Britannicus with a maternal affection.  Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and therefore he had to be given the preference over the
+latter.  It was a very bold move to propose that the senate make a
+youth of seventeen emperor; it would have been nothing less than folly
+to ask that they accept a thirteen-year-old lad as commander-in-chief
+of the imperial armies of Rome.
+
+Through the help of Seneca and Burrhus, the plan developed by Agrippina
+was carried out with rapidity and success.  On the thirteenth of
+October, after matters had been arranged with the troops, the doors of
+the imperial palace were thrown open at noon; Nero, accompanied by
+Burrhus, advanced to the cohort which was on guard.  He was received
+with joyous welcome, placed in a litter, borne to the quarters of the
+pretorians, and acclaimed head of the army.  The senate grudgingly
+confirmed his election.  There resulted in Rome a most extraordinary
+situation: a youth of seventeen, educated in the antique manner, and,
+though already married, still entirely under the tutelage of a strict
+mother, had been elevated to the highest position in the immense
+empire.  He was ignorant of the luxury, pleasure, and elegance which
+were becoming general in the great families; outside of a lively
+disposition and docility toward his mother, he had up to this point
+shown no special quality, and no particular vice.  Only one peculiarity
+had been noticed in him: he had studied with great zest music,
+painting, sculpture, and poetry, and had made himself proficient in
+these arts, which were considered frivolous and useless for a Roman
+noble.  On the contrary, he had neglected oratory, which was held a
+necessary art by an aristocracy like the Roman, whose duty it was to
+use speech at councils, in the tribunals, and in the senate, just as it
+used the sword on the fields of battle.  But the majority believed that
+this was merely a passing caprice of youth.
+
+[Illustration: Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline
+Museum, Rome.]
+
+
+Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca and Burrhus, had kept
+the highest office in the state in the family of Augustus, and she had
+done so by a bold move which had not been without its dangers.  She was
+too intelligent not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old emperor could
+have no authority, and that his position would expose him to all sorts
+of envy and intrigue, and to open as well as secret opposition.  She
+succeeded in mitigating this evil and in parrying this danger by
+another very happy suggestion--the virtually complete restoration of
+the old republican constitution.  After the funeral of Claudius, Nero
+introduced himself to the senate, and in a polished and modest
+discourse, seemingly intended to excuse his youth, he declared that of
+all the powers exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep only the
+command of the armies.  All other civil, judicial, and administrative
+functions he turned over to the senate, as in the times of the republic.
+
+This "restoration of the republic" was Agrippina's masterpiece, and
+marks the zenith of her power.  It followed, as a result of her
+decision, that Nero, who was to go down to posterity as the most
+terrible of tyrants, was that one of all the Roman emperors who had the
+most limited power; and furthermore it was likewise the result of her
+activity that the constitution of the empire had never been so close to
+that of the ancient republic as under the government of Nero.  Most
+historians, hallucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and they
+have consequently not recognized that in carrying out this plan
+Agrippina is neither more nor less than the last continuator of the
+great political tradition founded by Augustus.  In the minds of both
+Augustus and Tiberius the empire was to be governed by the aristocracy.
+The emperor was merely the depositary of certain powers of the nobility
+conceded to him for reasons of state.  If these reasons of state should
+disappear, the powers would naturally revert to the nobles.  It was
+therefore expedient at this time to make the senate forget, in the
+presence of a seventeen-year-old emperor, the pressure which had been
+brought to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out the rancor
+against the imperial power which was still dormant in the aristocracy.
+This restoration was not, therefore, a sheer renunciation of privileges
+and powers inherent in the sovereign authority, but an act of political
+sagacity planned by a woman whose knowledge of the art of government
+had been received in the school of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger.]
+
+The move was entirely successful.  The illusion that the imperial
+authority was only a transitory expedient made necessary by the civil
+wars, and that it might one day be entirely abolished, was still deeply
+grounded in the Roman aristocracy.  Every relaxation of authority was
+specially pleasing to the senatorial circles.  The government of Nero
+therefore began under the most favorable auspices, with joyous hope in
+the general promise of concord.  The disaffection which had been felt
+in the last six years of Claudius's government was changed into a
+general and confident optimism, which the first acts of the new
+government and the signs of the future seemed to justify.  Agrippina
+continued to keep Nero subject to her authority, as she had done before
+the election: together with his two masters, Seneca and Burrhus, she
+suggested to him every word and deed.  The senate resumed its ancient
+functions; and governed by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina in
+conjunction with the senate, the empire seemed to be progressing
+wonderfully, and in the eyes of the senators the entire government was
+in a better way than it ever yet had been.
+
+But the situation soon changed.  Agrippina, to be sure, had given her
+son a strictly Roman education, and had brought him up with a
+simplicity and rigor long since out of fashion; and though she had
+early given him a wife, she continued to keep him subject to maternal
+authority.  But, with all this, it is doubtful if there ever was a
+temperament which rebelled against this species of education as
+strongly as did Nero's.  His taste for the arts of drawing and singing,
+the indifference which he had shown for the study of oratory from his
+childhood, these were the seeds from which as time went on his raging
+exoticism was to be developed through the use and abuse of power.  His
+was one of those rioting, contrary, and undisciplined temperaments
+which feel that they must do precisely the opposite of what tradition,
+education, and the general opinion of the society in which they live
+have prescribed as necessary and recognized as lawful.  In the case of
+Nero the defects and the dangers in the ancient Roman education were to
+become apparent.
+
+The first of these dangers declared itself when Nero entered upon one
+of those early marriages of which we have spoken in the first of these
+studies.  Agrippina had early arranged an alliance with a young lady
+who, because of her virtues, nobility of ancestry, and Roman education,
+might have become his worthy companion; but a year after his elevation
+to the imperial dignity, the eighteen-year-old youth made the
+acquaintance of a woman whose beauty inflamed his senses and
+imagination to the point of making him entirely forget Octavia, whom he
+had married from a sense of duty and not for love.  This person was
+Acte, a beautiful Asiatic freedwoman, and the inexperienced, ardent
+youth, already given up to exotic fancies, became so enamoured that he
+one day proposed to repudiate Octavia and to marry Acte.  But a
+marriage between Nero and Acte was not possible.  The _Lex de
+maritandis ordinibus_ prohibited marriages between senators and
+freedwomen.  It was therefore natural that Agrippina should have
+opposed it with all her strength.  She, the great-granddaughter of
+Livia, the granddaughter of Drusus, the daughter of Germanicus,
+educated in the strictest ideas of the old Roman aristocracy, could not
+permit her son to compromise the prestige of the entire nobility in the
+eyes of the lower orders by so scandalous a _mésalliance_.  But on this
+occasion the youth, carried away by his passion, resisted.  If he did
+not actually repudiate Octavia, he disregarded her, and began to live
+with Acte as if she were his wife.  Agrippina insisted that he give up
+this scandalous relationship; but in vain.  The mother and son
+disagreed, and very shortly after having resisted his mother in the
+case of Acte, Nero began to resist her on other occasions.  With
+increasing energy he shook off maternal authority, which up to that
+time he had accepted with docility.
+
+This, however, was a crisis which was sooner or later inevitable.
+Agrippina had certainly made the mistake of attempting to treat Nero
+the emperor too much as she had treated Nero the child; but that the
+crisis should have been reached in this manner as the result of a
+love-affair, and that it should have provoked a misunderstanding
+between the mother and son that was soon to degenerate into hatred, was
+most unfortunate.  Agrippina, though she enjoyed great prestige, had
+also many hidden enemies.  Everybody knew that she represented in the
+government the old aristocratic, conservative, and economical tendency
+of the Claudii,--of Tiberius and of Drusus,--that she looked askance
+upon the development of luxurious habits, the relaxation of morals, and
+the increase of public and private expenditures.  They understood that
+she exerted all her influence to prevent wastefulness, the malversation
+of public moneys, and in general all outlays for pleasures either in
+the state or the imperial family.  Her virtues and her stand against
+Messalina had given her a great prestige, and the reverence which the
+emperor had shown for her had for a long time obliged her enemies to
+keep themselves hidden and to hold their peace.  But this ceased to be
+the case after the incipient discord between her and Nero had allowed
+many to foresee the possibility of using Nero against her.  In
+proportion as Nero became attached to Acte he drew away from his
+mother, and in proportion as he withdrew from his mother his
+capricious, fantastic, and rebellious temper was encouraged to show
+itself in its true light.  The party of the new nobility, with its
+modern and oriental tendencies, had for ten years been held in check by
+the preponderating influence of Agrippina.  But gradually, as the
+exotic and anti-Roman inclinations of the emperor declared themselves,
+this party again became bolder.  The memories of the scandals of
+Caligula and Messalina were becoming effaced by time, the rather severe
+and economical government of Agrippina was showing signs of weakening,
+and all minds were beginning to entertain a vague desire for something
+new.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+
+The two parties which in the times of Augustus had rent Rome asunder
+were now being realined in the imperial house and in the senate--the
+party of the old nobility, which had Agrippina at its head, and the
+party of the modernizing nobility, which was gathering about the
+emperor and trying to claim him as its own.  Tacitus clearly tells us
+that the older and more respectable families of the Roman nobility were
+with Agrippina; and even if he had neglected to tell us so, we might
+easily have guessed it.  For a moment the old, old struggle which had
+been the cause of so many tragedies in the upper classes of Rome seemed
+once more ready to break forth.  But even though Agrippina was the soul
+of the party of the old nobility, the party needed a man whom it could
+oppose to Nero as a possible and better candidate for the imperial
+dignity.
+
+Agrippina, like a true Roman matron of the old type, looked upon the
+family merely as an instrument of political power, and therefore
+subjected her personal affections to the public interest.  She began to
+cast her eyes upon Britannicus, the son of Messalina, who was now
+becoming a young man and who seemed to be more serious-minded than
+Nero.  It was even muttered that she thought of giving her own son's
+place to the son of Messalina, when suddenly, in 55, Britannicus died
+at a dinner at which Nero was present.  Was he poisoned by Nero, as
+Tacitus says?  Although there is no lack of obscurities and
+improbabilities in the account of Tacitus, this time the accusation, if
+it is not true, is at least much more probable than the other
+accusations of the same kind.  It is certain that the report that
+Britannicus had been poisoned was soon current at Rome, and that it was
+believed; and the death of Britannicus was likewise a fatal blow to
+Agrippina and her party.  Tacitus tells us that the death of
+Britannicus caused Agrippina great terror and unspeakable
+consternation, and it is not difficult to divine the reasons.  Nero now
+remained the last and only survivor of the family of Augustus, and it
+was therefore no longer possible to bring any effective opposition to
+bear upon him by setting up some other member of the family who would
+be capable of governing.  The new nobility, with its modern tendencies,
+now rapidly gained strength, and the influence of Agrippina declined
+proportionately.
+
+As a result of the lofty qualities of genius and character with which
+she had been endowed, Agrippina had been able to hold the balance of
+power in the state as long as she had succeeded in keeping the emperor
+under her influence.  This had been true in the cases of both Claudius
+and Nero.  After Nero escaped from her influence, or, rather, after he
+had turned against her, her prestige and her power rapidly diminished,
+and her party lost greatly in size and in power.  Although personally
+the emperor was youthful and weak, the dignity of his office made him
+more powerful than all the members of his family, however energetic and
+intelligent they might be.  At this period, furthermore, Nero was
+supported by an entire party which was daily increasing in strength and
+in numbers, for, as always happens in eras of prosperity and peace, the
+temper of the time was tending toward a milder, gentler, more liberal
+government, and consequently one which would be less authoritative and
+severe.
+
+Agrippina, however, was an energetic woman, not easily discouraged, and
+she continued the struggle.  Consequently for two years longer, even in
+the midst of strife, intrigues, and suspicions, she preserved a
+considerable influence, and was able to check the progress of the
+government in its new direction.  This was either because Nero, though
+no longer exactly obedient to his mother's will, was still too weak,
+too undecided, and too deeply involved in the ideas of his earlier
+education to attempt an open revolt against her, or it was because
+Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate the ultra-conservative
+ideas of the mother with the newer tendencies of the son.
+
+The definitive break with his mother and with her political
+ideas,--that is, with the ideas which had been professed by her
+ancestors,--came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea Sabina.  The
+latter belonged to one of those great Roman families into which the new
+spirit and the new customs had most deeply penetrated.  Rich,
+beautiful, avaricious of luxuries and pleasures, possessed of an
+unbridled personal ambition, she had attracted Nero to herself, and, in
+order to become empress, gave the uncertain youth the decisive impulse
+which was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and the grandson of
+Germanicus into the prodigal and dissolute emperor of history.  She
+encouraged in him his desire to please the populace, and certainly
+never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted
+finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of
+taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of
+Caligula.  Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his
+simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes.  She held
+up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and
+luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and
+pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility.  Poppaea, in short,
+gave herself up to the task of reshaping the education of Nero and of
+destroying the results of Agrippina's patient labor.  Nor was this all.
+She even became, with her restricted intelligence, his adviser in
+politics.  She persuaded him that the policy of authority and economy
+which his mother had desired was rendering him unpopular, and she
+suggested the idea of a policy of liberality toward the people which
+would win him the affection of the masses.  After he had fallen in love
+with Poppaea Sabina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no
+considerable initiative in affairs of state, elaborated and proposed to
+the senate many revolutionary projects for favoring the populace.  He
+finally proposed that they abolish all the _vectigalia_ of the empire;
+that is, all indirect taxes, all tolls and duties of whatever sort.
+The measure would certainly have been most popular, and there was much
+discussion about it in the senate; but the conservatives showed that
+the finances of the empire would be ruined and persuaded Nero not to
+insist.  Nero, however, wished to bring about some reform which would
+help the masses, and he gave orders in an edict that the rates of all
+the _vectigalia_ be published; that at Rome the pretor, and in the
+provinces the propretor and proconsul, should summarily decide all
+suits against the tax-farmers and that the soldiers should be exempt
+from these same _vectigalia_.
+
+[Illustration: The death of Agrippina.]
+
+Though some of these reforms were just, this new policy was also the
+cause of the final rupture with his mother.  Agrippina and Nero, to all
+intents and purposes, no longer saw each other, and Nero, on the few
+visits which he was obliged to pay her in order to save appearances,
+always arranged it so as never to be left alone in her presence.  In
+this manner the influence of Agrippina continued to decline, while the
+popularity of Nero steadily increased as the result of his youth, of
+these first reforms, and of the hopes to which his prodigality had
+given rise.  The public, whose memory is always brief, forgot what
+Agrippina had done and how she had brought back peace to the state, and
+began to expect all sorts of new benefits from Nero.  Poppaea,
+encouraged by the increasing popularity of the emperor, insisted more
+boldly that Nero, in order to make her his wife, should divorce Octavia.
+
+But Agrippina was not the woman to yield thus easily, and she continued
+the struggle against her son, against his paramour, and against the
+growing coterie which was gathering about the emperor.  She opposed
+particularly the repudiation of Octavia, which, being merely the result
+of a pure caprice, would have caused serious scandal in Rome.  But Nero
+was even now hesitating and uncertain.  He still had too clearly before
+him the memory of the long authority of his mother; he feared her too
+much to dare step forth in open and complete revolt.  At last Poppaea
+understood that she could not become empress so long as the mother
+lived, and from that moment the doom of Agrippina was sealed.  Poppaea
+was goaded on by all the new friends of Nero, who wished to destroy
+forever the influence of Agrippina, and by her words and deeds she
+finally brought him to the point where he decided to kill his mother.
+
+But to murder his mother was both an abominable and dangerous
+undertaking, for it meant killing the daughter of Germanicus--killing
+that woman whom the people regarded with a semi-religious veneration as
+a portent of fortune; for she was the daughter of a man whom only a
+premature death had prevented from becoming the head of the empire, and
+she had been the sister, the wife, and the mother of emperors.  For
+this reason the manner of her taking-off had been long debated in order
+that it might remain secret; nor would Nero make his decision until a
+seemingly safe means had been discovered for bringing about the
+disappearance of Agrippina.
+
+It was the freedman Anicetus, the commander of the fleet, who, in the
+spring of 59, made the proposal when Nero was with his court at Baiae,
+on the Bay of Naples.  They were to construct a vessel which, as
+Tacitus says, should open artfully on one side.  If Nero could induce
+his mother to embark upon that vessel, Anicetus would see to it that
+she and the secret of her murder would be buried in the depths of the
+sea.  Nero gave his consent to this abominable plan.  He pretended that
+he was anxious to become reconciled with his mother, and invited her to
+come from Antium, where she then was, to Baiae.  He showed her all
+regard and every courtesy, and when Agrippina, reassured by the
+kindness of her son, set out on her return to Antium, Nero accompanied
+her to the fatal vessel and tenderly embraced her.  It was a calm,
+starry night.  Agrippina stood talking with one of her freedwomen about
+the repentance of her son and the reconciliation which had taken place,
+when, after the vessel had drawn some distance away from the shore, the
+plotters tried to carry out their infernal plan.  What happened is not
+very clear.  The seemingly picturesque description of Tacitus is in
+reality vague and confusing.  It appears that the ship did not sink so
+rapidly as the plotters had hoped, and in the confusion which resulted
+on board, the emperor's mother, ready and resolute, succeeded in making
+her escape by casting herself into the sea and swimming away, while the
+hired assassins on the ship killed her freedwoman, mistaking her for
+Agrippina.
+
+In any case, it is certain that Agrippina arrived safely at one of her
+villas along the coast, with the help, it seems, of a vessel which she
+had encountered as she swam, and that she immediately sent one of her
+freedmen to apprise Nero of the danger from which she had escaped
+through the kindness of the gods and his good fortune!  Agrippina had
+guessed the truth, but for this one time she gave up the struggle and
+sent her messenger, that it might be understood, without her saying so,
+that she forgot and pardoned.  Indeed, what means were left her, a
+lonely woman, of coping with an emperor who dared raise his hand
+against his own mother?
+
+However, fear prevented Nero from understanding.  No sooner had he
+learned that Agrippina had escaped than he lost his head.  In his
+imagination he saw her hastening to Rome and denouncing the horrible
+matricide to the soldiers and the senate; and beside himself with
+terror, he sent for Seneca and Burrhus in order to take counsel with
+them.  It is easy to imagine what the feelings of the two teachers of
+the youth must have been as they listened to the terrible story.  Even
+they failed to understand that Agrippina recognized and declared
+herself conquered.  They, too, feared that she would provoke the most
+frightful scandal which Rome had yet seen, and not knowing what advice
+to give, or rather seeing only a single way out, which was, however,
+too serious and horrible, they held their peace while Nero begged them
+to save him.  At last Seneca, the humanitarian philosopher, turned to
+Burrhus and asked him what would happen if the pretorians should be
+ordered to kill Agrippina.  Burrhus understood that Seneca, though he
+was the first to give the terrible advice, yet wished to leave to him
+the more serious responsibility of carrying it into execution; for
+Burrhus, as commander of the guards, would have had to give the order
+for the murder.  He therefore hastened to say that the pretorians would
+never kill the daughter of Germanicus, and then added that if they
+really wished to do away with Agrippina, the best plan would be for
+Anicetus to carry out the work which he had begun.  His advice was the
+same as Seneca's, but he turned over to a third person the very grave
+responsibility for its execution.  He had, however, chosen this third
+person more wisely than Seneca, for Anicetus could not refuse.  If
+Agrippina lived, it was he who ran the risk of becoming the scapegoat
+for all this bloody and horrible adventure.
+
+As a matter of fact, Anicetus accepted.  The freedman whom Agrippina
+had sent to announce her misfortune was imprisoned and put in chains,
+in order to convey the impression that he had been captured carrying
+concealed weapons and in the act of making an attempt upon the
+emperor's life by the order of his mother.  Anicetus then hastened to
+the villa of Agrippina and surrounded it with a body of sailors.  He
+entered the house, and with two officers rushed into the room where
+Agrippina, reclining upon a couch, was talking with a servant, and
+killed her.  Tacitus tells us that when Agrippina saw one of the
+officers unsheathe his sword, she asked him to thrust her through the
+body which had borne her son.
+
+Thus died the last woman of the house of Augustus, and, with the
+exception of Livia, the most remarkable feminine figure in that family.
+She died like a soldier, on duty and at her post, bravely defending the
+social and political traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the
+time-honored principles of Romanism against the influx of those new
+forces of a later age which were seeking to orientalize the ancient
+Latin republic.  She died for her family, for her caste, and for Rome,
+without even having the reward of being remembered with dutiful regard
+by posterity; for in this struggle she had sacrificed not merely her
+life, but even her honor and her fame.  Such, furthermore, was the
+common destiny of all the members of this family, and if we except
+Livia and Augustus, the privileged pair who founded it, we are at a
+loss to know whether to call it the most fortunate or the most unhappy
+of all the families of the ancient world.  It is impossible for the
+historian who understands this terrible drama, filled with so many
+catastrophes, not to feel a certain impression of horror at the
+vindictive ferocity that Rome showed to this house, which, in order to
+bring back Rome's peace and to preserve her empire, had been fated to
+exalt itself a few degrees above the ordinary level of the ancient
+aristocracy.  Men and women, the young and the old, the knaves and the
+large-hearted, the sages and the fools of the family, alike, all
+without exception, were persecuted and plotted against.  And again, if
+we except the persons of the two founders, and those who, like Drusus
+and Germanicus, had the good fortune to die young, Rome deprived them
+all, deprived even Antonia, of either their life or their greatness or
+their honor, and not infrequently it robbed them of all these three
+together.  Those who, like Tiberius and Agrippina, defended the ancient
+Roman tradition, were hated, hounded, and defamed with a no less angry
+fury than Caligula and Nero, who sought to destroy it.  No one of them,
+whatever his tendencies or intentions, succeeded in making himself
+understood by his times or by posterity; it was their common fate to be
+misunderstood, and therefore horribly calumniated.  The destiny of the
+women was even more tragic than that of the men, for the times demanded
+from them, as a compensation for the great honor of belonging to this
+privileged family, that they possess all the rarest and most difficult
+virtues.
+
+What was the cause of all this? we ask.  How were so many catastrophes
+possible, and how could tradition have erred so grievously?  It is
+almost a crime that posterity should virtually always have studied and
+pondered this immense tragedy of history on the basis of the crude and
+superficial falsification of it which Tacitus has given us.  For few
+episodes in general history impress so powerfully upon the mind the
+fact that the progress of the world is one of the most tragic of its
+phenomena.  Especially is such knowledge necessary to the favored
+generations of prosperous and easy times.  He who has not lived in
+those years when an old world is disappearing and a new one making its
+way cannot realize the tragedy of life, for at such times the old is
+still sufficiently strong to resist the assaults of the new, and the
+latter, though growing, is not yet strong enough to annihilate that
+world on the ruins of which alone it will be able to prosper.  Men are
+then called upon to solve insoluble problems and to attempt enterprises
+which are both necessary and impossible.  There is confusion
+everywhere, in the mind within and in the world without.  Hate often
+separates those who ought to aid one another, since they are tending
+toward the same goal, and sympathy binds men together who are forced to
+do battle with one another.  At such times women generally suffer more
+than men, for every change which occurs in their situation seems more
+dangerous, and it is right that it should be so.  For woman is by
+nature the vestal of our species, and for that reason she must be more
+conservative, more circumspect, and more virtuous than man.  There is
+no state or civilization which has comprehended the highest things in
+life which has not been forced to instil into its women rather than
+into its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the
+stability of the family and the future of the race.  And for every era
+this is a question of life and death.  In such periods when one world
+is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused,
+and all attempts bring forth bizarre results.  He who wishes to
+preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems
+virtue.  Precisely for this reason it is more difficult for a woman
+than for a man to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for she is
+more exposed to the danger of losing her way and of missing her
+particular function; and since she is more likely to fail in realizing
+her natural destiny, she is more likely to be doomed to a life of
+misfortune.
+
+Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, and such especially was
+the fate of its women.  The strangers who visit Rome often go out on
+Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent music that can be heard in
+a room which is situated in one of the little streets near the Piazza
+del Popolo and which used to be called the Corea.  This hall was built
+over an ancient Roman ruin of circular form which any one can still see
+as he enters.  That ruin is the entrance to the tomb which Augustus
+built on the Flaminian Way for himself and his family.  Nearly all of
+the personages whose story we have told were buried in that mausoleum.
+If any reader who has followed this history should one day find himself
+at Rome, listening to a concert in that old Corea, which has now been
+renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let him give a thought to those
+victims of a terrible story of long ago, and may he remember that here,
+where at the beginning of the twentieth century he listens to the flow
+of rivers of sweet sound--here only, twenty centuries ago, could the
+members of the family of Augustus find refuge from their tragic fate,
+and after so much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, rest at last
+in peace.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS ***
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Women of the Caesars
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black; background: White; margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: medium; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: small }
+
+P.letter {font-size: small }
+
+
+</STYLE>
+
+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Women of the Caesars
+
+Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2005 [EBook #16324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Livia, the wife of Augustus" BORDER="2" WIDTH="256" HEIGHT="318">
+<H4>
+[Frontispiece: Livia, the wife of Augustus, superintending <BR>the weaving
+of robes for her family.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+</H1>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+GUGLIELMO FERRERO
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NEW YORK
+<BR><BR>
+THE CENTURY CO.
+<BR><BR>
+MCMXI
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Copyright, 1911, by
+<BR><BR>
+THE CENTURY CO.
+<BR><BR><BR>
+Published, October, 1911
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+THE DEVINNE PRESS
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<TABLE WIDTH="100%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">LIVIA AND JULIA</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H2>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+Livia, the Wife of Augustus, Superintending the Weaving of Robes for
+her Family &#8230; <I>Frontispiece</I>
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-008">
+A Roman Marriage Custom
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-013">
+Eumachia, a Public Priestess of Ancient Rome
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-022">
+The Forum under the Caesars
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-028">
+The So-called Bust of Cicero
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-037">
+Julius Caesar
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-043">
+The Sister of M. Nonius Balbus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-049">
+Livia, the Mother of Tiberius, in the Costume of a Priestess
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-060">
+The Young Augustus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-066">
+The Emperor Augustus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-071">
+A Silver Denarius of the Second Triumvirate
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-071">
+Silver Coin Bearing the Head of Julius Caesar
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-082">
+The Great Paris Cameo
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-087">
+Octavia, the Sister of Augustus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-094">
+A Reception at Livia's Villa
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-103">
+Mark Antony
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-110">
+Antony and Cleopatra
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-115">
+Tiberius, Elder Son of Livia and Stepson of Augustus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-126">
+Drusus, the Younger Brother of Tiberius
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-131">
+Statue of a Young Roman Woman
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-138">
+A Roman Girl of the Time of the Caesars
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-147">
+Costumes of Roman Men, Women, and Children in the Procession of a Peace
+Festival
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-154">
+Bust of Tiberius in the Museo Nazionale, Naples
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-159">
+Types of Head-dresses Worn in the Time of the Women of the Caesars
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-170">
+A Roman Feast in the Time of the Caesars
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-175">
+Depositing the Ashes of a Member of the Imperial Family in a Roman
+Columbarium
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-181">
+The Starving Livilla Refusing Food
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-192">
+Costume of a Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis Maxima)
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-198">
+Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-203">
+Bust, Supposed to be of Antonia, Daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia,
+and Mother of Germanicus, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-214">
+Caligula
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-219">
+A Bronze Sestertius (Slightly Enlarged), Showing the Sisters of
+Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on One Side and
+Germanicus on the Other Side
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-219">
+A Bronze Sestertius with the Head of Agrippina the Elder, Daughter of
+Agrippa and Julia, the Daughter of Augustus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-225">
+Claudius, Messalina, and Their Two Children in What is Known as the
+"Hague Cameo"
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-236">
+Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the Caesars
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-242">
+The Emperor Caligula
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-247">
+Claudius
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-258">
+The Emperor Claudius
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-263">
+Messalina, Third Wife of Claudius
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-269">
+The Philosopher Seneca
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-280">
+The Emperor Nero
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-286">
+Agrippina the Younger, Sister of Caligula and Mother of Nero
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-291">
+Britannicus
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-302">
+Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline Museum, Rome
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-307">
+Agrippina the Younger
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-314">
+The Emperor Nero
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+<A HREF="#img-323">
+The Death of Agrippina
+</A>
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+I
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and
+unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are
+permitted by our customs.  Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed to
+take his wife to a dinner away from home?  Does it happen that the
+mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms
+frequented by strangers and show herself among them?  Not so in Greece:
+there the woman accepts invitations only among families to which she is
+related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner part of the house
+which is called the <I>gynaeceum</I>, where only the nearest relatives are
+admitted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This passage, one of the most significant in all the little work of
+Nepos, draws in a few, clear, telling strokes one of the most marked
+distinctions between the Greco-Asiatic world and the Roman.  Among
+ancient societies, the Roman was probably that in which, at least among
+the better classes, woman enjoyed the greatest social liberty and the
+greatest legal and economic autonomy.  There she most nearly approached
+that condition of moral and civil equality with man which makes her his
+comrade, and not his slave&mdash;that equality in which modern civilization
+sees one of the supreme ends of moral progress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The doctrine held by some philosophers and sociologists, that military
+peoples subordinate woman to a tyrannical régime of domestic servitude,
+is wholly disproved by the history of Rome.  If there was ever a time
+when the Roman woman lived in a state of perennial tutelage, under the
+authority of man from birth to death&mdash;of the husband, if not of the
+father, or, if not of father or husband, of the guardian&mdash;that time
+belongs to remote antiquity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Rome became the master state of the Mediterranean world, and
+especially during the last century of the republic, woman, aside from a
+few slight limitations of form rather than of substance, had already
+acquired legal and economic independence, the condition necessary for
+social and moral equality.  As to marriage, the affianced pair could at
+that time choose between two different legal family régimes: marriage
+with <I>manus</I>, the older form, in which all the goods of the wife passed
+to the ownership of the husband, so that she could no longer possess
+anything in her own name; or marriage without <I>manus</I>, in which only
+the dower became the property of the husband, and the wife remained
+mistress of all her other belongings and all that she might acquire.
+Except in some cases, and for special reasons, in all the families of
+the aristocracy, by common consent, marriages, during the last
+centuries of the republic, were contracted in the later form; so that
+at that time married women directly and openly had gained economic
+independence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the same period, indirectly, and by means of juridical evasions,
+this independence was also won by unmarried women, who, according to
+ancient laws, ought to have remained all their lives under a guardian,
+either selected by the father in his will or appointed by the law in
+default of such selection.  To get around this difficulty, the fertile
+and subtle imagination of the jurists invented first the <I>tutor
+optivus</I>, permitting the father, instead of naming his daughter's
+guardian in his will, to leave her free to choose one general guardian
+or several, according to the business in hand, or even to change that
+official as many times as she wished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To give the woman means to change her legitimate guardian at pleasure,
+if her father had provided none by will, there was invented the <I>tutor
+cessicius</I>, thereby allowing the transmission of a legal guardianship.
+However, though all restrictions imposed upon the liberty of the
+unmarried woman by the institution of tutelage disappeared, one
+limitation continued in force&mdash;she could not make a will.  Yet even
+this was provided for, either by fictitious marriage or by the
+invention of the <I>tutor fiduciarius</I>.  The woman, without contracting
+matrimony, gave herself by <I>coemptio</I> (purchase) into the <I>manus</I> of a
+person of her trust, on the agreement that the <I>coemptionator</I> would
+free her: he became her guardian in the eyes of the law.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-008"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-008.jpg" ALT="A Roman marriage custom." BORDER="2" WIDTH="379" HEIGHT="640">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: A Roman marriage custom.  The picture shows the bride
+entering her new home in the arms of the bridegroom.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+There was, then, at the close of the republic little disparity in legal
+condition between the man and the woman.  As is natural, to this almost
+complete legal equality there was united an analogous moral and social
+equality.  The Romans never had the idea that between the <I>mundus
+muliebris</I> (woman's world) and that of men they must raise walls, dig
+ditches, put up barricades, either material or moral.  They never
+willed, for example, to divide women from men by placing between them
+the ditch of ignorance.  To be sure, the Roman dames of high society
+were for a long time little instructed, but this was because, moreover,
+the men distrusted Greek culture.  When literature, science, and
+Hellenic philosophy were admitted into the great Roman families as
+desired and welcome guests, neither the authority, nor the egoism, nor
+yet the prejudices of the men, sought to deprive women of the joy, the
+comfort, the light, that might come to them from these new studies.  We
+know that many ladies in the last two centuries of the republic not
+only learned to dance and to sing,&mdash;common feminine studies,
+these,&mdash;but even learned Greek, loved literature, and dabbled in
+philosophy, reading its books or meeting with the famous philosophers
+of the Orient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Moreover, in the home the woman was mistress, at the side of and on
+equality with her husband.  The passage I have quoted from Nepos proves
+that she was not segregated, like the Greek woman: she received and
+enjoyed the friends of her husband, was present with them at festivals
+and banquets in the houses of families with whom she had friendly
+relations, although at such banquets she might not, like the man,
+recline, but must, for the sake of greater modesty, sit at table.  In
+short, she was not, like the Greek woman, shut up at home, a veritable
+prisoner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She might go out freely; this she did generally in a litter.  She was
+never excluded from theaters, even though the Roman government tried as
+best it could for a long period to temper in its people the passion for
+spectacular entertainments.  She could frequent public places and have
+recourse directly to the magistrates.  We have record of the assembling
+and of demonstrations made by the richest women of Rome in the Forum
+and other public places, to obtain laws and other provisions from the
+magistrates, like that famous demonstration of women that Livy
+describes as having occurred in the year 195 B.C., to secure the
+abolition of the Oppian Law against luxury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What more?  We have good reason for holding that already under the
+republic there existed at Rome a kind of woman's club, which called
+itself <I>conventus matronarum</I> and gathered together the dames of the
+great families.  Finally, it is certain that many times in critical
+moments the government turned directly and officially to the great
+ladies of Rome for help to overcome the dangers that menaced public
+affairs, by collecting money, or imploring with solemn religious
+ceremonies the favor of the gods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One understands then, how at all times there were at Rome women much
+interested in public affairs.  The fortunes of the powerful families,
+their glory, their dominance, their wealth, depended on the
+vicissitudes of politics and of war.  The heads of these families were
+all statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated
+the wife, and the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the
+absorption with which she must have followed the fortunes of politics,
+domestic and foreign; for with these were bound up many family
+interests, and often even the life of her husband.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-013"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-013.jpg" ALT="Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome." BORDER="2" WIDTH="294" HEIGHT="619">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
+everything like the family of contemporary civilization?  Have we
+returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
+forebears?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No.  If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
+there are also crucial differences.  Although the Roman was disposed to
+allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
+that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
+and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
+civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
+marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
+their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
+characters and aspirations.  The individualistic conception of
+matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
+the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political
+and social point of view.  The purpose of marriage was, so to speak,
+exterior to the pair.  As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical
+spirit as he was unyielding&mdash;at least in action&mdash;to every suggestion of
+the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the
+state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat never regarded
+matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded religion and law,
+as other than instruments for political domination, as means for
+increasing and establishing the power of every great family, and by
+family affiliations to strengthen the association of the aristocracy,
+already bound together by political interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For this reason, although the Roman conceded many privileges and
+recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think
+that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her
+own husband.  Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at
+least in a first marriage.  The choice rested with the fathers, who
+were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys.
+The heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together
+in the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations
+of the Senate.  Did the idea occur to both that their children, if
+affianced then, at seven or eight years of age, might cement more
+closely the union of the two families, then straightway the matter was
+definitely arranged.  The little girl was brought up with the idea that
+some day, as soon as might be, she should marry that boy, just as for
+two centuries in the famous houses of Catholic countries many of the
+daughters were brought up in the expectation that one day they should
+take the veil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Every one held this Roman practice as reasonable, useful, equitable; to
+no one did the idea occur that by it violence was done to the most
+intimate sentiment of liberty and independence that a human being can
+know.  On the contrary, according to the common judgment, the
+well-governing of the state was being wisely provided for, and these
+alliances were destroying the seeds of discord that spontaneously
+germinate in aristocracy and little by little destroy it, like those
+plants sown by no man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and become
+their ruin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is why one knows of every famous Roman personage how many wives he
+had and of what family they were.  The marriage of a Roman noble was a
+political act, and noteworthy; because a youth, or even a mature man,
+connecting himself with certain families, came to assume more or less
+fully the political responsibilities in which, for one cause or
+another, they were involved.  This was particularly true in the last
+centuries of the republic,&mdash;that is, beginning from the Gracchi,&mdash;when
+for the various reasons which I have set forth in my "Greatness and
+Decline of Rome," the Roman aristocracy divided into two inimical
+parties, one of which attempted to rouse against the other the
+interests, the ambitions, and the cupidity, of the middle and lower
+classes.  The two parties then sought to reinforce themselves by
+matrimonial alliances, and these followed the ups and downs of the
+political struggle that covered Rome with blood.  Of this fact the
+story of Julius Caesar is a most curious proof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prime reason for Julius Caesar's becoming the chief of the popular
+party is to be found neither in his ambitions nor in his temperament,
+and even less in his political opinions, but in his relationship to
+Marius.  An aunt of Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest
+bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having entered politics, had become
+the first general of his time, had been elected consul six times, and
+had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutons.  The self-made man
+had become famous and rich, and in the face of an aristocracy proud of
+its ancestors, had tried to ennoble his obscure origin by taking his
+wife from an ancient and most noble, albeit impoverished and decayed,
+patrician family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But when there broke out the revolution in which Marius placed himself
+at the head of the popular party, and the revolution was overcome by
+Sulla, the old aristocracy, which had conquered with Sulla, did not
+forgive the patrician family of the Julii for having connected itself
+with that bitter foe, who had made so much mischief.  Consequently,
+during the period of the reaction, all its members were looked upon
+askance, and were suspected and persecuted, among them young Caesar,
+who was in no way responsible for the deeds of his uncle, since he was
+only a lad during the war between Sulla and Marius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This explains how it was that the first wife of Caesar, Cossutia, was
+the daughter of a knight; that is, of a financier and revenue-farmer.
+For a young man belonging to a family of ancient senatorial nobility,
+this marriage was little short of a <I>mésalliance</I>; but Caesar had been
+engaged to this girl when still a very young man, at the time when, the
+alliance between Marius and the knights being still firm and strong,
+the marriage of a rich knight's daughter would mean to the nephew of
+Marius, not only a considerable fortune, but also the support of the
+social class which at that moment was predominant.  For reasons unknown
+to us, Caesar soon repudiated Cossutia, and before the downfall of the
+democratic party he was married to Cornelia, who was the daughter of
+Cinna, the democratic consul and a most distinguished member of the
+party of Marius.  This second marriage, the causes of which must be
+sought for in the political status of Caesar's family, was the cause of
+his first political reverses.  For Sulla tried to force Caesar to
+repudiate Cornelia, and in consequence of his refusal, he came to be
+considered an enemy by Sulla and his party and was treated accordingly.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-022"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-022.jpg" ALT="The Forum under the Caesars." BORDER="2" WIDTH="595" HEIGHT="420">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The Forum under the Caesars.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+It is known that Cornelia died when still very young, after only a few
+years of married life, and that Caesar's third marriage in the year 68
+B.C., was quite different from his first and second, since the third
+wife, Pompeia, belonged to one of the noblest families of the
+conservative aristocracy&mdash;was, in fact, a niece of Sulla.  How could
+the nephew of Marius, who had escaped as by miracle the proscriptions
+of Sulla, ever have married the latter's niece?  Because in the dozen
+years intervening between 80 and 68, the political situation had
+gradually grown calmer, and a new air of conciliation had begun to blow
+through the city, troubled by so much confusion, burying in oblivion
+the bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into fresh life
+admiration for Marius, that hero who had conquered the Cimbri and the
+Teutons.  In that moment, to be a nephew of Marius was no longer a
+crime among any of the great families; for some, on the contrary, it
+was coming to be the beginning of glory.  But that situation was
+short-lived.  After a brief truce, the two parties again took up a
+bitter war, and for his fourth wife Caesar chose Calpurnia, the
+daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58, and a most
+influential senator of the popular party.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whoever studies the history of the influential personages of Caesar's
+time, will find that their marriages follow the fortunes of the
+political situation.  Where a purely political reason was wanting,
+there was the economic.  A woman could aid powerfully a political
+career in two ways: by ably administering the household and by
+contributing to its expenses her dower or her personal fortune.
+Although the Romans gave their daughters an education relatively
+advanced, they never forgot to inculcate in them the idea that it was
+the duty of a woman, especially if she was nobly born, to know all the
+arts of good housewifery, and especially, as most important, spinning
+and weaving.  The reason for this lay in the fact that for the
+aristocratic families, who were in possession of vast lands and many
+flocks, it was easy to provide themselves from their own estates with
+the wool necessary to clothe all their household, from masters to the
+numerous retinue of slaves.  If the <I>materfamilias</I> knew sufficiently
+well the arts of spinning and weaving to be able to organize in the
+home a small "factory" of slaves engaged in such tasks, and knew how to
+direct and survey them, to make them work with zeal and without theft,
+she could provide the clothing for the whole household, thus saving the
+heavy expense of buying the stuffs from a merchant&mdash;notable economy in
+times when money was scarce and every family tried to make as little
+use of it as possible.  The <I>materfamilias</I> held, then, in every home,
+a prime industrial office, that of clothing the entire household, and
+in proportion to her usefulness in this office was she able to aid or
+injure the family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+More important still were the woman's dower and her personal fortune.
+The Romans not only considered it perfectly honorable, sagacious, and
+praiseworthy for a member of the political aristocracy to marry a rich
+woman for her wealth, the better to maintain the luster of his rank, or
+the more easily to fulfil his particular political and social duties,
+but they also believed there could be no better luck or greater honor
+for a rich woman than for this reason to marry a prominent man.  They
+exacted only that she be of respectable habits, and even in this regard
+it appears that, during certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes shut
+one eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tradition says, for example, that Sulla, born of a noble family, quite
+in ruin, owed his money to the bequest of a Greek woman whose wealth
+had the most impure origin that the possessions of a woman can possibly
+have.  Is this tradition only the invention of the enemies of the
+terrible dictator?  In any event, how people of good standing felt in
+this matter in normal times is shown by the life of Cicero.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cicero was born at Arpino, of a knightly family, highly respectable,
+and well educated, but not rich.  That he was able to pursue his
+brilliant forensic and political career, was chiefly due to his
+marriage to Terentia, who, although not very rich, had more than he,
+and by her fortune enabled him to live at Rome.  But it is well known
+that after long living together happily enough, as far as can be
+judged, Cicero and Terentia, already old, fell into discord and in 46
+B.C. ended by being divorced.  The reasons for the divorce are not
+exactly clear, but from Cicero's letters it appears that financial
+motives and disputes were not wanting.  It seems that during the civil
+wars Terentia refused to help Cicero with her money to the extent he
+desired; that is to say, at some tremendous moment of those turbulent
+years she was unwilling to risk all her patrimony on the uncertain
+political fortune of her husband.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-028"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-028.jpg" ALT="The so-called bust of Cicero." BORDER="2" WIDTH="371" HEIGHT="522">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The so-called bust of Cicero.  All but the head is
+modern.  Now in the Museo Capitolino, it was formerly in the Palazzo
+Barberini.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Cicero's divorce, obliging him to return the dower, reduced him to the
+gravest straits, from which he emerged through another marriage.  He
+was the guardian of an exceedingly rich young woman, named Publilia,
+and one fine day, at the age of sixty-three, he joined hands with this
+seventeen-year-old girl, whose possessions were to rehabilitate the
+great writer.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+This conception of matrimony and of the family may seem unromantic,
+prosaic, materialistic; but we must not suppose that because of it the
+Romans failed to experience the tenderest and sweetest affections of
+the human heart.  The letters of Cicero himself show how tenderly even
+Romans could love wife and children.  Although they distrusted and
+combatted as dangerous to the prosperity and well-being of the state
+those dearest and gentlest personal affections that in our times
+literature, music, religion, philosophy, and custom have educated,
+encouraged, and exalted, as one of the supreme fountains of civil life,
+should we therefore reckon them barbarians?  We must not forget the
+great diversity between our times and theirs.  The confidence which
+modern men repose in love as a principle, in its ultimate wisdom, in
+its beneficial influence or the affairs of the world; in the idea that
+every man has the right to choose for himself the person of the
+opposite sex toward whom the liveliest and strongest personal
+attraction impels him&mdash;these are the supreme blossoms of modern
+individualism, the roots of which have been able to fasten only in the
+rich soil of modern civilization.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The great ease of living that we now enjoy, the lofty intellectual
+development of our day, permit us to relax the severe discipline that
+poorer times and peoples, constrained to lead a harder life, had to
+impose upon themselves.  Although the habit may seem hard and
+barbarous, certainly almost all the great peoples of the past, and the
+majority of those contemporary who live outside our civilization, have
+conceived and practised matrimony not as a right of sentiment, but as a
+duty of reason.  To fulfil it, the young have turned to the sagacity of
+the aged, and these have endeavored to promote the success of marriage
+not merely to the satisfaction of a single passion, usually as brief as
+it is ardent, but according to a calculated equilibrium of qualities,
+tendencies, and material means.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The principles regulating Roman marriage may seem to us at variance
+with human nature, but they are the principles to which all peoples
+wishing to trust the establishment of the family not to passion as
+mobile as the sea, but to reason, have had recourse in times when the
+family was an organism far more essential than it is to-day, because it
+held within itself many functions, educational, industrial, and
+political, now performed by other institutions.  But reason itself is
+not perfect.  Like passion, it has its weakness, and marriage so
+conceived by Rome produced grave inconveniences, which one must know in
+order to understand the story, in many respects tragic, of the women of
+the Caesars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first difficulty was the early age at which marriages took place
+among the aristocracy.  The boys were almost always married at from
+eighteen to twenty; the girls, at from thirteen to fifteen.  This
+disadvantage is to be found in all society in which marriage is
+arranged by the parents, because it would be next to impossible to
+induce young people to yield to the will of their elders in an affair
+in which the passions are readily aroused if they were allowed to reach
+the age when the passions are strongest and the will has become
+independent Hardly out of childhood, the man and the woman are
+naturally more tractable.  On the other hand, it is easy to see how
+many dangers threatened such youthful marriages in a society where
+matrimony gave to the woman wide liberty, placing her in contact with
+other men, opening to her the doors of theaters and public resorts,
+leading her into the midst of all the temptations and illusions of life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other serious disadvantage was the facility of divorce.  For the
+very reason that matrimony was for the nobility a political act, the
+Romans were never willing to allow that it could be indissoluble;
+indeed, even when the woman was in no sense culpable, they reserved to
+the man the right of undoing it at any time he wished, solely because
+that particular marriage did not suit his political interests.  And the
+marriage could be dissolved by the most expeditious means, without
+formality&mdash;by a mere letter!  Nor was that enough.  Fearing that love
+might outweigh reason and calculation in the young, the law granted to
+the father the right to give notice of divorce to the daughter-in-law,
+instead of leaving it to the son; so that the father was able to make
+and unmake the marriages of his sons, as he thought useful and fitting,
+without taking their will into account.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The woman, therefore, although in the home she was of sovereign
+equality with the man and enjoyed a position full of honor, was,
+notwithstanding, never sure of the future.  Neither the affection of
+her husband nor the stainlessness of her life could insure that she
+should close her days in the house whither she had come in her youth as
+a bride.  At any hour the fatalities of politics could, I will not say,
+drive her forth, but gently invite her exit from the house where her
+children were born.  An ordinary letter was enough to annul a marriage.
+So it was that, particularly in the age of Caesar when politics were
+much perturbed and shifting, there were not a few women of the
+aristocracy who had changed husbands three or four times, and that not
+for lightness or caprice or inconstancy of tastes, but because their
+fathers, their brothers, sometimes their sons, had at a certain moment
+besought or constrained them to contract some particular marriage that
+should serve their own political ends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is easy to comprehend how this precariousness discouraged woman from
+austere and rigorous virtues, the very foundation of the family; how it
+was a continuous incitement to frivolity of character, to dissipation,
+to infidelity.  Consequently, the liberty the Romans allowed her must
+have been much more dangerous than the greater freedom she enjoys
+today, since it lacked its modern checks and balances, such as personal
+choice in marriage, the relatively mature age at which marriages are
+nowadays made, the indissolubility of the matrimonial contract, or,
+rather, the many and diverse restrictions placed upon divorce, by which
+it is no longer left to the arbitrary will or the mere fancy of the man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In brief, there was in the constitution of the Roman family a
+contradiction, which must be well apprehended if one would understand
+the history of the great ladies of the imperial era.  Rome desired
+woman in marriage to be the pliable instrument of the interests of the
+family and the state, but did not place her under the despotism of
+customs, of law, and of the will of man in the way done by all other
+states that have exacted from her complete self-abnegation.  Instead,
+it accorded to her almost wholly that liberty, granted with little
+danger by civilizations like ours, in which she may live not only for
+the family, for the state, for the race, but also for herself.  Rome
+was unwilling to treat her as did the Greek and Asiatic world, but it
+did not on this account give up requiring of her the same total
+self-abnegation for the public weal, the utter obliviousness to her own
+aspirations and passions, in behalf of the race.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-037"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-037.jpg" ALT="Julius Caesar" BORDER="2" WIDTH="375" HEIGHT="602">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Julius Caesar]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+This contradiction explains to us one of the fundamental phenomena of
+the history of Rome&mdash;the deep, tenacious, age-long puritanism of high
+Roman society.  Puritanism was the chief expedient by which Rome
+attempted to solve the contradiction.  That coercion which the Oriental
+world had tried to exercise upon woman by segregating her, keeping her
+ignorant, terrorizing her with threats and punishments, Rome sought to
+secure by training.  It inculcated in every way by means of education,
+religion, and opinion the idea that she should be pious, chaste,
+faithful, devoted alone to her husband and children; that luxury,
+prodigality, dissoluteness, were horrible vices, the infamy of which
+hopelessly degraded all that was best and purest in woman.  It tried to
+protect the minds of both men and women from all those influences of
+art, literature, and religion which might tend to arouse the personal
+instinct and the longing for love; and for a long time it distrusted,
+withstood, and almost sought to disguise the mythology, the arts, and
+the literature of Greece, as well as many of the Asiatic religions,
+imbued as they were with an erotic spirit of subtle enticement.
+Puritanism is essentially an intense effort to rouse in the mind the
+liveliest repulsion for certain vices and pleasures, and a violent
+dread of them; and Rome made use of it to check and counterbalance the
+liberty of woman, to impede and render more difficult the abuses of
+such liberty, particularly prodigality and dissoluteness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is therefore easy to understand how this puritanism was a thing
+serious, weighty, and terrible, in Roman life; and how from it could be
+born the tragedies we have to recount.  It was the chief means of
+solving one of the gravest problems that has perplexed all
+civilizations&mdash;the problem of woman and her freedom, a problem earnest,
+difficult, and complex which springs up everywhere out of the
+unobstructed anarchy and the tremendous material prosperity of the
+modern world.  And the difficulty of the problem consists, above all,
+in this: that, although it is a hard, cruel, plainly iniquitous thing
+to deprive a woman of liberty and subject her to a régime of tyranny in
+order to constrain her to live for the race and not for herself, yet
+when liberty is granted her to live for herself, to satisfy her
+personal desires, she abuses that liberty more readily than a man does,
+and more than a man forgets her duties toward the race.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She abuses it more readily for two reasons: because she exercises a
+greater power over man than he over her; and because, in the wealthier
+classes, she is freer from the political and economic responsibilities
+that bind the man.  However unbridled the freedom that man enjoys,
+however vast his egoism, he is always constrained in a certain measure
+to check his selfish instincts by the need of conserving, enlarging,
+and defending against rivals his social, economic, and political
+situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the woman?  If she is freed from family cares, if she is authorized
+to live for her own gratification and for her beauty; if the opinion
+that imposes upon her, on pain of infamy, habits pure and honest,
+weakens; if, instead of infamy, dissoluteness brings her glory, riches,
+homage, what trammel can still restrain in her the selfish instincts
+latent in every human being?  She runs the mighty danger of changing
+into an irresponsible being who will be the more admired and courted
+and possessed of power&mdash;at least as long as her beauty lasts&mdash;the more
+she ignores every duty, subordinating all good sense to her own
+pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is the reason why woman, in periods commanded by strong social
+discipline, is the most beneficent and tenacious among the cohesive
+forces of a nation; and why, in times when social discipline is
+relaxed, she is, instead, through ruinous luxury, dissipation, and
+voluntary sterility, the most terrible force for dissolution.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-043"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-043.jpg" ALT="The sister of M. Nonius Balbus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="288" HEIGHT="622">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The sister of M. Nonius Balbus.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+One of the greatest problems of every epoch and all civilizations is to
+find a balance between the natural aspiration for freedom that is none
+other than the need of personal felicity&mdash;a need as lively and profound
+in the heart of woman as of man&mdash;and the supreme necessity for a
+discipline without which the race, the state, and the family run the
+gravest danger.  Yet this problem to-day, in the unmeasured
+exhilaration with which riches and power intoxicate the
+European-American civilization, is considered with the superficial
+frivolity and the voluble dilettantism that despoil or confuse all the
+great problems of esthetics, philosophy, statesmanship, and morality.
+We live in the midst of what might be called the Saturnalia of the
+world's history; and in the midst of the swift and easy labor, the
+inebriety of our continual festivities, we feel no more the tragic in
+life.  This short history of the women of the Caesars will set before
+the eyes of this pleasure-loving contemporary age tragedies among whose
+ruins our ancestors lived from birth to death, and by which they
+tempered their minds.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+II
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LIVIA AND JULIA
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+In the year 38 B.C. it suddenly became known at Rome that C. Julius
+Caesar Octavianus (afterward the Emperor Augustus), one of the
+triumvirs of the republic, and colleague of Mark Antony and Lepidus in
+the military dictatorship established after the death of Caesar, had
+sent up for decision to the pontifical college, the highest religious
+authority of the state, a curious question.  It was this: Might a
+divorced woman who was expecting to become a mother contract a marriage
+with another man before the birth of her child?  The pontifical college
+replied that if there still was doubt about the fact the new marriage
+would not be permissible; but if it was certain, there would be no
+impediment.  A few days later, it was learned that Octavianus had
+divorced his wife Scribonia and had married Livia, a young woman of
+nineteen.  Livia's physical condition was precisely that concerning
+which the pontiffs had been asked to decide, and in order to enter into
+this marriage she had obtained a divorce from Tiberius Claudius Nero.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two divorces and the new marriage were concluded with unwonted
+haste.  The first husband of Livia, acting the part of a father, gave
+her a dowry for her new alliance and was present at the wedding.  Thus
+Livia suddenly passed into the house of her new husband where, three
+months later, she gave birth to a son, who was called Drusus Claudius
+Nero.  This child Octavianus immediately sent to the house of its
+father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To us, marriage customs of this sort seem brutal, shameless, and almost
+ridiculous.  We should infer that a woman who lent herself to such
+barter and exchange must be a person of light manners and of immoral
+inclinations.  At Rome, however, no one would have been amazed at such
+a marriage or at the procedure adopted, had it not been for the
+extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable
+or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child,
+and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its
+somewhat sophistical consent.  For all were accustomed to seeing the
+marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on
+such bases.  Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded,
+apparently with the consent of all concerned?  Why did they all, Livia
+and Octavianus not less than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impatient
+that everything should be settled with despatch?
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-049"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-049.jpg" ALT="Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a priestess." BORDER="2" WIDTH="309" HEIGHT="557">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a
+priestess.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The legend which then formed about the family of Augustus, a legend
+hostile at almost every point, has interpreted this marriage as a
+tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the dissolute and perverse
+triumvir.  I, too, in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed my
+belief that this haste, at least, was the effect not of political
+motives but of a passionate love inspired in the young triumvir by the
+very beautiful Livia.  A longer reflection upon this episode has
+persuaded me, however, that there is another manner, less poetic
+perhaps, but more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, this famous
+alliance, which was to have so great an importance in the history of
+Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To arrive at the motives of this marriage we must consider who was
+Livia and who was Octavianus.  Livia was a woman of great beauty, as
+her portraits prove.  But this was not all.  She belonged also to two
+of the most ancient and conspicuous families of the Roman nobility.
+Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, was by birth a Claudius,
+adopted by a Livius Drusus.  He was descended from Appius the Blind,
+the famous censor and perhaps the most illustrious personage of the
+ancient republic.  His grandfather, his great-grand-father, and his
+great-great-grandfather had been consuls, and consuls and censors may
+be found in the collateral branches of the family.  A sister of his
+grandfather had been the wife of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his
+father had married Lucullus, the great general.  He came, therefore, of
+one of the most ancient and glorious families.  Not less noble was the
+family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him.  It counted eight
+consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and one dictatorship.
+Thus the father of Livia belonged by birth and adoption to two of those
+ancient, aristocratic families which for a long time and even in the
+midst of the most tremendous revolutions the people had venerated as
+semi-divine and into whose story was interwoven the history of the
+great republic.  Nor had the first husband given to Livia been less
+noble, for Tiberius Claudius Nero was descended like Livia from Appius
+the Blind, though through another son of the great censor.  In Livia
+was concentrated the quintessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she
+was at Rome what in London to-day the daughter of the Duke of
+Westminster or the Duke of Bedford would be, and her noble rank
+explains the rôle which her family had played during the Civil War.  In
+the great revolution which broke out after the death of Caesar, the
+father of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by the triumvirs; he
+had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had died by his own hand after
+Philippi.  In 40, after the Perusinian war and only two years before
+Livia's marriage with Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia had
+been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the vengeance of Octavianus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Who on the other hand was Octavianus?  A parvenu, with a nobility
+altogether too recent!  His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae
+(now Velletri), a financier and a man of affairs; it was only his
+immediate father who succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer
+grandfather in entering the Roman nobility.  He had married a sister of
+Caesar and, though still young when he died, had become a senator and
+pretor.  Octavianus was, therefore, the descendant, as we should
+express it in Europe to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled.
+Although by adopting him in his will Caesar had given him his name,
+that of an ancient patrician family, the modest origin of Octavianus
+and the trade of his grandfather were known to everybody.  In a country
+like Rome where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old nobility was
+still highly venerated by the people and formed a closed caste, jealous
+of its exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of origin was a
+handicap and a danger, especially when Octavianus had as colleagues
+Antony and Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient and illustrious
+origin than his own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We can readily explain, therefore, even without admitting that Livia
+had aroused in him a violent passion, why the future Augustus should
+have been so impatient to marry her in 38 B.C.  The times were stormy
+and uncertain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice of fortune had
+raised to the head of a revolutionary dictatorship, was certainly the
+weakest of the three colleagues, because of his youth, his slighter
+experience, the feebler prestige among his soldiers, and, last of all,
+the greater obscurity of his lineage.  Antony, especially, who had
+fought in so many wars, with Caesar and alone, who belonged to a family
+of really ancient nobility, was much more popular than he among the
+soldiers and had stronger relations with the great families.  He was
+therefore more powerful than Octavianus both in high places and in low.
+A marriage with Livia meant much to the future Augustus.  It would open
+for him a door into the old aristocracy; it would draw him closer to
+those families which, in spite of the revolution, were still so
+influential and venerable; it would be the means of lessening the
+hatred, contempt, and distrust in which these families held him.  It
+was for him what Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise and the
+consequent connection with the imperial family of Austria had been for
+the former Corsican officer, become Emperor of the French.  Since, now,
+a lady who belonged to one of these great families was disposed to
+marry him, it would have been foolish to put obstacles in the way; it
+was necessary to act with despatch; time and fortune might change.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such are the motives that may have induced Augustus to hasten the
+nuptials.  But what were the motives of Livia in accepting this
+marriage, in such stormy times, when the fortunes of the future
+Augustus were still so uncertain?  A passage in Velleius Paterculus
+would lead us to believe that he who devised this historic marriage was
+none other than that same first husband of Livia, Tiberius Claudius
+Nero himself!  According to our ideas it is inconceivable; but not at
+all strange according to the ideas of the Roman.  It is probable that
+Tiberius Claudius Nero, feeling that the triumph of the revolution was
+now assured, had wished by this marriage to attach to the cause of the
+old aristocracy the youngest of the three revolutionary leaders.
+Already well along in years and infirm,&mdash;he was to die shortly
+after,&mdash;Nero, who well knew the intelligence of his young wife, was
+perhaps planning to place her in the house of the man in whom all saw
+one of the future lords of Rome.  Thus he would bind him to the
+interests of the aristocracy.  In the person of Livia there entered
+into the house of Octavianus the old Roman nobility, which, defeated at
+Philippi, was striving to reacquire through the prestige and the
+cleverness of a woman what it had not been able to maintain by arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All her life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact,
+Livia fulfilled her mission.  She succeeded in resolving into the
+admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the
+liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man
+as a duty.  She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that
+lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and
+tempestuous history never ceased to admire.  Even and serene,
+completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with a
+robust will, she accommodated herself without difficulty to all the
+sacrifices which her rank and situation imposed upon her.  She changed
+husbands without repugnance, though her marriage to Octavianus occurred
+but five years after the proscriptions, while he was still red with the
+blood of her family and friends.  Likewise she renounced her two sons,
+the future emperor Tiberius, who had been born before her second
+marriage, as well as the one who had been born after.  So too when, a
+few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their
+guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with
+the most careful motherly solicitude.  To the second husband, whom
+politics had given her, she was a faithful companion.  Scandal imputed
+to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of
+insatiable ambitions and perfidious intrigues.  No one ever dared
+accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct.  The
+great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
+poise of her spirit.  In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
+triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
+from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
+with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
+interests of the world,&mdash;laws and elections, wars and peace,&mdash;she
+preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry.  These
+she had learned as a child in the house of her father,&mdash;a house as much
+more illustrious with inherited glory as it was poorer in wealth than
+that which Victory had prepared for Augustus on the Palatine.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-060"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-060.jpg" ALT="The young Augustus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="253" HEIGHT="405">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The young Augustus.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+We know&mdash;it is Suetonius who tells us&mdash;that this house on the Palatine
+built by Augustus, in which Livia spent the larger part of her life,
+was small and not at all luxurious.  In it there was not a single piece
+of marble nor a precious mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the
+same bedchamber, and the furniture of the house was so simple that in
+the second century of our era it was exhibited to the public as an
+extraordinary curiosity.  The imperial pair had several villas, at
+Lanuvium, at Palestrina, at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious
+and simple.  Nor was there any more pomp and ceremony about the dinners
+to which they invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, the
+dignitaries of the state and the heads of the great families.  Only on
+very special occasions were six courses served; usually there were but
+three.  Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven
+by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands,&mdash;though she
+did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom,&mdash;but by her slaves and
+freed-women.  Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia
+counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms
+which were in the house.  As she carefully parceled out the wool to the
+slaves, watching over them lest they steal or waste it, and frequently
+taking her place among them while they were at work, she felt that she
+too contributed to the prosperity and the glory of the empire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Simplicity, loyalty, industry, an absolute surrender of one's own
+personality to the family and its interests,&mdash;these, in the great
+families, were the traditional feminine virtues which lived again in
+Livia to the admiration of her contemporaries.  But with these virtues
+were associated also the need and the pride of participating in the
+affairs and work of her husband, that interest in politics which had
+been common to the intelligent women of the nobility.  No one at Rome
+was astonished, especially in the upper classes, that Livia should
+occupy herself actively with politics; that Augustus should frequently
+come to her for counsel, or that he should not make any serious
+decision without having consulted her; that, in short, she should at
+the same time attend to her husband's clothes and aid him in governing
+the empire.  For so had done from time immemorial all the great ladies
+of the aristocracy, mindful of their good repute and the prosperity of
+their families.  And Livia must have tried the more earnestly to fulfil
+all that her education had taught her to consider a sacred duty, since
+to a woman of her old-fashioned breeding the times must have appeared
+especially difficult and perilous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The civil wars had greatly reduced in numbers the historic aristocracy
+of Rome, and the peace which followed after so long a time and which
+had been so anxiously invoked, very soon began to threaten the
+prosperity of the remnant of that nobility with a more insidious but
+more inevitable ruin.  About 18 B.C., when Livia was approaching her
+fortieth year, the men of the new generation who had not seen the civil
+wars, for when these ended they were either unborn or only in their
+infancy, were already beginning to come to the front.  They brought
+with them a previously unknown spirit of luxury, of enjoyment, of
+dissipation, of rebellion against discipline, of egotism and fondness
+for the new, which rendered very difficult, not to say impossible, the
+continuation of the aristocratic régime.  Women submitted with more and
+more repugnance to those obligatory marriages, arranged for reasons of
+state, which had formerly been the tradition and the sure bulwark of
+dominion for the aristocracy.  The increase of celibacy was rendering
+sterile the most celebrated stocks; the most lamentable vices and
+disorders became tolerated and common in the most illustrious families,
+and ruinous habits of extravagance spread generally among that
+aristocracy, once so simple and austere.  All this had grown up after
+the conquest of Egypt, which had established more points of contact
+with the East; and it increased in proportion as those industries and
+the commerce in articles of luxury which had flourished at Alexandria
+under the Ptolemies were gradually transplanted to Rome, where the
+merchants hoped to establish among their conquerors the clientele which
+had been lost with the fall of the Kingdom of the Nile.  The ladies
+especially took up with the new oriental customs, and, preferring
+expensive stuffs and jewels, turned from the loom, which Livia had
+wished to preserve as the emblem of womanhood.  Many young men of the
+great families were beginning to show a distaste for the army, for the
+government of the state, for jurisprudence, for all those activities
+which had been the jealous privilege of the nobility of the past.  One
+gave himself up to literary pursuits, another cultivated philosophy,
+another busied himself only with the increase of his inherited fortune,
+while another lived only in pleasure and idleness.  So it happened that
+there began to appear descendants of great houses who refused to be
+senators; every year an effort had to be made to find a sufficient
+number of candidates for the more numerous positions like the
+questorship, and in the army it was no easy matter to fill all the
+posts of the superior officers which were reserved for members of the
+nobility.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-066"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-066.jpg" ALT="The Emperor Augustus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="334" HEIGHT="630">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The Emperor Augustus.  This statue was found in 1910 in
+the Via Labicana, not far from the Colosseum.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The Roman aristocracy then, that glorious Roman aristocracy which had
+escaped the massacres of the proscriptions and of Philippi, ran grave
+danger of dying out through a species of slow suicide, if energetic
+measures were not taken to supply the necessary remedies.  It is
+certain that Livia had a conspicuous part in the policy of restoring
+the aristocracy, to which Augustus was impelled by the old nobility,
+especially toward the year 18 B.C., when with this purpose in view he
+proposed his famous social laws.  The <I>Lex de maritandis ordinibus</I>
+attempted by various penalties and promises to constrain the members of
+the aristocracy to contract marriage and to found a family, thus
+combatting the increasing inclination to celibacy and sterility.  The
+<I>Lex de adulteriis</I> aimed to reestablish order and virtue in the
+family, by threatening the unfaithful wife and her accomplice with
+exile for life and the confiscation of a part of their substance.  It
+obliged the husband to expose the crime to the tribunals; if the
+husband could not or would not make the accusation, it provided that
+the father should do so; and in case both husband and father failed, it
+authorized any citizen to step forth as accuser.  Finally the <I>Lex
+sumptuaria</I> was designed to restrain the extravagance of wealthy
+families, particularly that of the women, prohibiting them from
+spending too large a part of the family fortune in jewels, apparel,
+body slaves, festivities, or buildings, especially in the building of
+sumptuous villas, then a growing fashion.  In short, it was the purpose
+of these laws to bring the ladies of the Roman aristocracy to a course
+of conduct patterned upon the example of Livia.  In the protracted
+discussions concerning these laws, which took place in the senate,
+Augustus on one occasion made a long speech in which he cited Livia as
+a model for the ladies of Rome.  He set forth minutely the details of
+her household administration, telling how she lived, what relations she
+had with outsiders, what amusements she thought proper for a person of
+her rank, how she dressed and at what expense.  And no one in the
+senate judged it unworthy of the greatness of the state or contrary to
+custom thus to introduce the name and person of a great lady into the
+public discussion of so serious a matter of governmental policy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Livia, then, about 18 B.C. personified in the eyes of the Romans the
+perfect type of aristocratic great lady created by long tradition.
+Having been safely preserved by good fortune through the long civil
+wars, this model was now set back again upon a fitting pedestal in the
+most powerful and richest family of the empire.  She was the living
+example of all the virtues which the Romans most cherished, a beloved
+wife and a heeded counselor to the head of the state, honored with that
+veneration which power, virtue, nobility of birth, and the dignified
+beauty of face and figure drew from every one; furthermore, there were
+her two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, both intelligent, handsome, full of
+activity, docile to the traditional education which she sought to give
+them in order that they might be the worthy continuators of the great
+name they bore.  Livia, with all this in her favor, might have been
+expected to live a happy and tranquil life, serenely to fulfil her
+mission amid the admiration of the world.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-071"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-071.jpg" ALT="A silver denarius of the Second Triumvirate." BORDER="2" WIDTH="396" HEIGHT="550">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration (top): A silver denarius of the Second Triumvirate.  The
+portrait at the right (obverse) is of Caesar Octavianus (Augustus),
+with a slight beard to indicate mourning, and at the left (reverse), of
+Mark Antony.  The date is 41 B.C.]
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+[Illustration (bottom): Silver coin bearing the head of Julius Caesar.  This
+coin, a denarius, worth about seventeen cents, represents Caesar as
+Pontifex Maximus.  Together with all the other Roman coins bearing
+Caesar's image, it was struck in the year before his death&mdash;44-45 B.C.
+The fact that Caesar placed his image on these coins may have
+strengthened the suspicion of his enemies that he wished to make
+himself king.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But opposition and difficulties sprang up in her own family.  In 39
+B.C. Augustus had had by Scribonia a daughter, Julia.  Following in the
+government of his family, as in so large a part of his politics, the
+traditions of the old nobility, Augustus gave his daughter in marriage
+when very young,&mdash;she was not yet past seventeen,&mdash;just as he early
+gave wives to Livia's two sons, whose guardian he was.  In each case in
+order to assure within his circle harmony and power, he chose the
+consort in his own family or from among his friends.  To Tiberius he
+gave Agrippina, a daughter of Agrippa, his close friend and most
+faithful collaborator; to Drusus he gave Antonia, the younger daughter
+of Mark Antony and Octavia, sister of Augustus.  To Julia he gave
+Marcellus, his nephew, the son of Octavia and her first husband.  But
+while the marriages of Drusus and Tiberius proved successful and the
+two couples lived lovingly and happily, such was not the case with the
+marriage of Julia and Marcellus.  As a result, disagreeable
+misunderstandings and rancors soon made themselves felt in the family.
+We do not know exactly what were the causes of these disagreements.  It
+seems that Marcellus, under the influence of Julia, assumed a tone
+somewhat too haughty and insolent, such as was not becoming in a youth
+who, although the nephew of Augustus, was still taking his first steps
+in his political career; and it seems too that this conduct of his was
+especially offensive to Agrippa, who, next to Augustus, was the first
+person in the empire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In short, at seventeen, Julia desired that her husband should be the
+second personage of the state in order that she might come immediately
+after Livia or even be placed directly on an equality with her.
+According to the Roman ideas of the family and of its discipline, this
+was a precocious and excessive ambition, unbecoming a matron, much less
+a young girl.  For the duty of the woman was to follow faithfully and
+submissively the ambitions of her lord and not to impart to him her own
+ambitions or make him her tool.  In contrast to Livia, who was so
+docile and placid in her respect for the older traditions of the
+aristocracy, so firm and strong in her observance of the duties, not
+infrequently grievous and difficult, which this tradition imposed,
+Julia represented the woman of that new generation which had grown up
+in the times of peace&mdash;a type more rebellious against tradition, less
+resigned to the serious duties and difficult renunciations of rank;
+much more inclined to enjoy its prerogatives than disposed to bear that
+heavy burden of obligations and sacrifices with which the previous
+generations had balanced privilege.  Beautiful and intelligent, even in
+the early years of her first marriage she showed a great passion for
+studies, and a fine artistic and literary taste, and with these a
+lively inclination toward luxury and display which hardly suited with
+the spirit or the letter of the <I>Lex sumptuaria</I> which her father had
+carried through in that year.  But fraught with greater danger than all
+this was her ardent and passionate temperament, which both in the
+family and in politics was altogether too frequently to drive her to
+desire and to carry through that which, rightly or wrongly, was
+forbidden to a woman by law, custom, and public opinion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a young woman endowed with
+so fiery and ambitious a nature did not become in the hands of Augustus
+as docile a political instrument as Livia.  Julia wished to live for
+herself and for her pleasure, not for the political greatness of her
+father; and indeed, Augustus, who had a fine knowledge of men, was so
+impressed by this first unhappy experiment that when Marcellus, still a
+very young man, died in 23 B.C., he hesitated a long time before
+remarrying the youthful widow.  For a moment, indeed, he did think of
+bestowing her not upon a senator but upon a knight, that is, a person
+outside of the political aristocracy, evidently with the intention of
+stifling her too eager ambitions by taking from her all means and hope
+of satisfying them.  Then he decided upon the opposite expedient, that
+of quieting those ambitions by entirely satisfying them, and so gave
+Julia, in 21 B.C., to Agrippa, who had been the cause of the earlier
+difficulties.  Agrippa was twenty-four years older than she and could
+have been her father, but he was in truth the second person of the
+empire in glory, riches, and power.  Soon after, in 18 B.C., he was to
+become the colleague of Augustus in the presidency of the republic and
+consequently his equal in every way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus Julia suddenly saw her ambitions gratified.  She became at
+twenty-one the next lady of the empire after Livia, and perhaps even
+the first in company with and beside her.  Young, beautiful,
+intelligent, cultured, and loving luxury, she represented at Livia's
+side and in opposition to her, the trend of the new generation in which
+was growing the determination to free itself from tradition.  She
+lavished money generously, and there soon formed about her a sort of
+court, a party, a coterie, in which figured the fairest names of the
+Roman aristocracy.  Her name and her person became popular even among
+the common people of Rome, to whom the name of the Julii was more
+sympathetic than that of the Claudii, which was borne by the sons of
+Livia.  The combined popularity of Augustus and of Agrippa was
+reflected in her.  It may be said, therefore, that toward 18 B.C., the
+younger, more brilliant, and more "modern" Julia began to obscure Livia
+in the popular imagination, except in that little group of old
+conservative nobility which gathered about the wife of Augustus.  So
+true is this that about this time, Augustus, wishing to place himself
+into conformity with his law <I>de maritandis ordinibus</I>, reached a
+significant decision.  Since that law fixed at three the number of
+children which every citizen should have, if he wished to discharge his
+whole duty toward the state, and since Augustus had but a single
+daughter, he decided to adopt Caius and Lucius, the first two sons that
+Julia had borne to Agrippa.  This was a great triumph for her, in so
+far as her sons would henceforth bear the very popular name of Caesar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the difficulties which the first marriage with Marcellus had
+occasioned and which Augustus had hoped to remove by this second
+marriage soon reappeared in another but still more dangerous form, for
+they had their roots in that passionate, imperious, bold, and imprudent
+temperament of Julia.  This temperament the Roman education had not
+succeeded in taming; it was strengthened by the undisciplined spirit of
+the times.  And with it Julia soon began to abuse the fortune, the
+popularity, the prestige, and the power which came to her from being
+the daughter of Augustus and the wife of Agrippa.  Little by little she
+became possessed by the mania of being in Rome the antithesis of Livia,
+of conducting herself in every case in a manner contrary to that
+followed by her stepmother.  If the latter, like Augustus, wore
+garments of wool woven at home, Julia affected silks purchased at great
+price from the oriental merchants.  These the ladies of the older type
+considered a ruinous luxury because of the expense, and an indecency
+because of the prominence which they gave to the figure.  Where Livia
+was sparing, Julia was prodigal.  If Livia preferred to go to the
+theater surrounded by elderly and dignified men, Julia always showed
+herself in public with a retinue of brilliant and elegant youths.  If
+Livia set an example of reserve, Julia dared appear in the provinces in
+public at the side of her husband and receive public homage.  In spite
+of the law which forbade the wives of Roman governors to accompany
+their husbands into the provinces, Julia prevailed upon Agrippa to make
+her his companion when in the year 16 B.C. he made his long journey
+through the East.  Everywhere she appeared at his side, at the great
+receptions, at the courts, in the cities; and she was the first of the
+Latin women to be apotheosized in the Orient.  Paphos called her
+"divine" and set up statues to her; Mitylene called her the New
+Aphrodite, Eressus, Aphrodite Genetrix.  These were bold innovations in
+a state in which tradition was still so powerful; but they could
+scarcely have been of serious danger to Julia, if her passionate
+temperament had not led her to commit a much more serious imprudence.
+Agrippa, compared to her, was old, a simple, unpolished man of obscure
+origin who was frequently absent on affairs of state.  In the circle
+which had formed about Julia there were a number of handsome, elegant,
+pleasing young men; among others one Sempronius Gracchus, a descendant
+of the famous tribunes.  Julia seems toward the close to have had for
+him, even in the lifetime of Agrippa, certain failings which the <I>Lex
+de adulteriis</I> visited with terrible punishments.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-082"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-082.jpg" ALT="The great Paris Cameo." BORDER="2" WIDTH="481" HEIGHT="619">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The great Paris Cameo.  This is the largest ancient
+cameo known, and is said to have been sent from Constantinople by
+Baldwin II. to Louis IX.  It represents the living members of the
+imperial family protected by the deified Augustus.  In the center
+Tiberius is shown seated, as Jupiter, with his mother, Livia, at his
+left, as Ceres.  In front of them stand Germanicus and his mother
+Antonia.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if from this time on there
+should have been fostered between Julia and Livia a half-suppressed
+rivalry.  The fact is, in itself, very probable and several indications
+of it have remained in tradition and in history.  We know also that two
+parties were already beginning to gather about the two women.  One of
+these might be called the party of the Claudii and of the old
+conservative nobility, the other the party of the Julii and of that
+youthful nobility which was following the modern trend.  As long as
+Agrippa lived, Augustus, by holding the balance between the two
+factions, succeeded in maintaining a certain equilibrium.  With the
+death of Agrippa, which occurred in 12 B.C., the situation was changed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Julia was now for the second time a widow, and by the provisions of the
+<I>Lex de maritandis ordinibus</I> should remarry.  Augustus in the
+traditional manner sought a husband for her, and, seeking him only with
+the idea of furthering a political purpose, he found for her Tiberius,
+the elder son of Livia.  Tiberius was the stepbrother of Julia and was
+married to a lady whom he tenderly loved; but these were considerations
+which could hardly give pause to a Roman senator.  In the marriage of
+Tiberius and Julia, Augustus saw a way of snuffing out the incipient
+discord between the Julii and the Claudii, between Julia and Livia,
+between the parties of the new and of the old nobility.  He therefore
+ordered Tiberius to repudiate the young, beautiful, and noble Agrippina
+in order to marry Julia.  For Tiberius the sacrifice was hard; we are
+told that one day after the divorce, having met Agrippina at some
+house, he began to weep so bitterly that Augustus ordered that the
+former husband and wife should never meet again.  But Tiberius, on the
+other hand, had been educated by his mother in the ancient ideas, and
+therefore knew that a Roman nobleman must sacrifice his feelings to the
+public interest.  As for Julia, she celebrated her third wedding
+joyfully; for Tiberius, after the deaths of Agrippa and of his own
+brother Drusus, was the rising man, the hope and the second personage
+of the empire, so that she was not forced to step down from the lofty
+position which the marriage with Agrippa had given her.  Tiberius,
+furthermore, was a very handsome man and for this reason also he seems
+not to have been displeasing to Julia, who in the matter of husbands
+considered not only glory and power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The marriage of Julia and Tiberius began under happy auspices.  Julia
+seemed to love Tiberius and Tiberius did what he could to be a good
+husband.  Julia soon felt that she was once more to become a mother and
+the hope of this other child seemed to cement the union between husband
+and wife.  But the rosy promises of the beginning were soon
+disappointed.  Tiberius was the son of Livia, a true Claudius, the
+worthy heir of two ancient lines, an uncompromising traditionalist,
+therefore a rigid and disdainful aristocrat, and a soldier severe with
+others as with himself.  He wished the aristocracy to set the people an
+example of all the virtues which had made Rome so great in peace and
+war: religious piety, simplicity of customs, frugality, family purity,
+and rigid observance of all the laws.  The luxury and prodigality which
+were becoming more and more wide-spread among the young nobility had no
+fiercer enemy than he.  He held that a man of great lineage who spent
+his substance on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor to his
+country, and no one demanded with greater insistence than he that the
+great laws of the year 18 B.C., the sumptuary law, the laws on marriage
+and adultery, should be enforced with the severest rigor.  Julia, on
+the other hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joyous companies of
+elegant youths, an easy, brilliant life full of amusement.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-087"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-087.jpg" ALT="Octavia, the sister of Augustus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="295" HEIGHT="598">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Octavia, the sister of Augustus.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+For greater misfortune, the son who was born of their union died
+shortly after and discord found its way between Julia and Tiberius.
+Sempronius Gracchus, who knew how to profit by this, reappeared and
+again made advances to Julia.  She again lent her ear to his bland
+words and the domestic disagreement rapidly became embittered.
+Tiberius,&mdash;this is certain,&mdash;soon learned that Julia had resumed her
+relations with Sempronius Gracchus, and a new, intolerable torment was
+added to his already distressed life.  According to the <I>Lex de
+adulteriis</I>, he as husband should have made known the crime of his wife
+to the pretor and have had her punished.  He had been one of those who
+had always most vehemently denounced the nobility for their weakness in
+the enforcement of this law.  Now that his own wife had fallen under
+the provisions of the terrible statute, to which so many other women
+had been forced to submit, the moment had come to give the weak that
+example of unconquerable firmness which he had so often demanded of
+others.  But Julia was the daughter of Augustus.  Could he call down,
+without the consent of Augustus, so terrible a scandal upon the first
+house of the empire, render its daughter infamous, and drive her into
+exile?  Augustus, though he desired his daughter to be more prudent and
+serious, yet loved and protected her; above all, he disliked dangerous
+scandal, and Julia dared to do whatever she wished, knowing herself
+invulnerable under his protection and his love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To this hard and false situation Tiberius, fuming with rage, had to
+adjust himself.  He lived in a separate apartment, keeping up with
+Julia only the relations necessary to save appearances, but he could
+not divorce her, much less publish her guilt.  The situation grew still
+worse when political discontent began to use for its own ends the
+discord between Julia and Tiberius.  Tiberius had many enemies among
+the nobility, especially among the young men of his own age; partly
+because his rapid, brilliant career had aroused much jealousy, partly
+because his conservative, traditionalist tendencies toward authority
+and militarism disturbed many of them.  More and more among the
+nobility there was increasing the desire for a mild and easy-going
+government which should allow them to enjoy their privileges without
+hardship and which should not be too severe in imposing its duties upon
+them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the other hand, Julia was most ambitious.  Since, after the
+disagreements with Tiberius had broken out, she could no longer hope to
+be the powerful wife of the first person of the empire after Augustus,
+she sought compensation.  Thus there formed about Julia a party which
+sought in every way to ruin the lofty position which Tiberius occupied
+in the state, by setting up against him Caius Caesar, the son of Julia
+by Agrippa, whom Augustus had adopted and of whom he was very fond.  In
+6 B.C., Caius Caesar was only fourteen years old, but at that period an
+agitation was set on foot whereby, through a special privilege conceded
+to him by the senate, he was to be named consul for the year of Rome
+754, when Caius should have reached twenty.  This was a manoeuver of
+the Julian party to attract popular attention to the youth, to prepare
+a rival for Tiberius in his quality as principal collaborator of
+Augustus, and to gain a hold upon the future head of the state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The move was altogether very bold; for this nomination of a child
+consul contradicted all the fundamental principles of the Roman
+constitution, and it would probably have been fatal to the party which
+evolved it, had not the indignant rage of Tiberius assured its triumph.
+Tiberius opposed this law, which he took as an offense, and he wished
+Augustus to oppose it, and at the outset Augustus did so.  But then,
+either because Julia was able to bend him to her desires or because in
+the senate there was in truth a strong party which supported it out of
+hatred for Tiberius, Augustus at last yielded, seeking to placate
+Tiberius with other compensations.  But Tiberius was too proud and
+violent an aristocrat to accept compensations and indignantly demanded
+permission to retire to Rhodes, abandoning all the public offices which
+he exercised.  He certainly hoped to make his loss felt, for indeed
+Rome needed him.  But he was mistaken.  This act of Tiberius was
+severely judged by public opinion as a reprisal upon the public for a
+private offense.  Augustus became angry with him and in his absence all
+his enemies took courage and hurled themselves against him.  The honors
+to Caius Caesar were approved amid general enthusiasm and the Julian
+party triumphed all along the line; it reached the height of power and
+popularity, while Tiberius was constrained to content himself with the
+idle life of a private person at Rhodes.
+</P>
+
+
+<A NAME="img-094"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-094.jpg" ALT="A reception at Livia's villa." BORDER="2" WIDTH="379" HEIGHT="609">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration: A reception at Livia's villa.  The scene evidently is at
+Livia's country palace at Prima Porta.  Agrippa is seen descending the
+steps to be received by Augustus and Livia (who are not shown in the
+picture).  The original of the status of Augustus, here shown, was
+found in the ruins of Livia's villa close to the flight of marble steps
+and its base.  The remains of the steps and the base of the statue are
+standing to-day at Prima Porta.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But at Rome Livia still remained.  From that moment began the mortal
+duel between Livia and Julia.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+III
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Tiberius had now broken with Augustus, he had lost the support of
+public opinion, he was hated by the majority of the senate.  At Rhodes
+he soon found himself, therefore, in the awkward position of one who
+through a false move has played into the hands of his enemies and sees
+no way of recovering his position.  It had been easy to leave Rome; to
+reënter it was difficult, and in all probability his fortune would have
+been forever compromised, and he would never have become emperor, had
+it not been for the fact that in the midst of this general defection
+two women remained faithful.  They were his mother, Livia, and his
+sister-in-law, Antonia, the widow of that brother Drusus who, dying in
+his youth, had carried to his grave the hopes of Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Antonia was the daughter of the emperor's sister Octavia and of Mark
+Antony, the famous triumvir whose name remains forever linked in story
+with that of Cleopatra.  This daughter of Antony was certainly the
+noblest and the gentlest of all the women who appear in the lugubrious
+and tragic history of the family of the Caesars.  Serious, modest, and
+even-tempered, she was likewise endowed with beauty and virtue, and she
+brought into the family and into its struggles a spirit of concord,
+serenity of mind, and sweet reasonableness, though they could not
+always prevail against the violent passions and clashing interests of
+those about her.  As long as Drusus lived, Drusus and Antonia had been
+for the Romans the model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their
+tender affection had become proverbial; yet the Roman multitude, always
+given to admiring the descendants of the great families, was even more
+deeply impressed by the beauty, the virtue, the sweetness, the modesty,
+and the reserve of Antonia.  After the death of Drusus, she did not
+wish to marry again, even though the <I>Lex de maritandis ordinibus</I> made
+it a duty.  "Young and beautiful," wrote Valerius Maximus, "she
+withdrew to a life of retirement in the company of Livia, and the same
+bed which had seen the death of the youthful husband saw his faithful
+spouse grow old in an austere widowhood."  Augustus and the people were
+so touched by this supreme proof of fidelity to the memory of the
+ever-cherished husband that by the common consent of public opinion she
+was relieved of the necessity of remarrying; and Augustus himself, who
+had always carefully watched over the observance of the marital law in
+his own family, did not dare insist.  Whether living at her villa of
+Bauli, where she spent the larger part of her year, or at Rome, the
+beautiful widow gave her attention to the bringing up of her three
+children, Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius.  Ever since the death of
+Octavia, she had worshiped Livia as a mother and lived in the closest
+intimacy with her, and, withdrawn from public life, she attempted now
+to bring a spirit of peace into the torn and tragic family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Antonia was very friendly with Tiberius, who, on his side, felt the
+deepest sympathy and respect for his beautiful and virtuous
+sister-in-law.  It cannot be doubted, therefore, that in this crisis
+Antonia, who was bound to Livia by many ties, must have taken sides for
+Livia's son Tiberius.  But Antonia was too gentle and mild to lead a
+faction in the struggle which during these years began between the
+friends and the enemies of Tiberius, and that rôle was assumed by
+Livia, who possessed more strength and more authority.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The situation grew worse and worse.  Public opinion steadily became
+more hostile to Tiberius and more favorable to Julia and her elder son,
+and it was not long before they wished to give to her younger son,
+Lucius, the same honors which had already been bestowed upon his
+brother Caius.  Private interest soon allied itself with the hatred and
+rancor against Tiberius; and scarcely had he departed when the senate
+increased the appropriation for public supplies and public games.  All
+those who profited by these appropriations were naturally interested in
+preventing the return of Tiberius, who was notorious for his opposition
+to all useless expenditures.  Any measure, however dishonest, was
+therefore considered proper, provided only it helped to ruin Tiberius;
+and his enemies had recourse to every art and calumny, among other
+things actually accusing him of conspiracies against Augustus.  Even
+for a woman as able and energetic as Livia it was an arduous task to
+struggle against the inclinations of Augustus, against public opinion,
+against the majority of the senate, against private interest, and
+against Julia and her friends.  Indeed, four years passed during which
+the situation of Tiberius and his party grew steadily worse, while the
+party of Julia increased in power.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally the party of Tiberius resolved to attempt a startlingly bold
+move.  They decided to cripple the opposition by means of a terrible
+scandal in the very person of Julia.  The <I>Lex Julia de adulteriis</I>,
+framed by Augustus in the year 18, authorized any citizen to denounce
+an unfaithful wife before the judges, if the husband and father should
+both refuse to make the accusation.  This law, which was binding upon
+all Roman citizens, was therefore applicable even to the daughter of
+Augustus, the widow of Agrippa, the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar,
+those two youths in whom were centered the hopes of the republic.  She
+had violated the <I>Lex Julia</I> and she had escaped the penalties which
+had been visited on many other ladies of the aristocracy only because
+no one had dared to call down this scandal upon the first family of the
+empire.  The party of Tiberius, protected and guided by Livia, at last
+hazarded this step.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is impossible to say what part Livia played in this terrible
+tragedy.  It is certain that either she or some other influential
+personage succeeded in gaining possession of the proofs of Julia's
+guilt and brought them to Augustus, threatening to lay them before the
+pretor and to institute proceedings if he did not discharge his duty.
+Augustus found himself constrained to apply to himself his own terrible
+law.  He himself had decreed that if the husband, as was then the case
+of Tiberius, could not accuse a faithless woman, the father must do so.
+It was his law, and he had to bow to it in order to avoid scandals and
+worse consequences.  He exiled Julia to the little island of
+Pandataria, and at the age of thirty-seven the brilliant, pleasing, and
+voluptuous young woman who had dazzled Rome for many years was
+compelled to disappear from the metropolis forever and retire to an
+existence on a barren island.  She was cut off by the implacable hatred
+of a hostile party and by the inexorable cruelty of a law framed by her
+own father!
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-103"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-103.jpg" ALT="Mark Antony." BORDER="2" WIDTH="298" HEIGHT="449">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Mark Antony.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The exile of Julia marks the moment when the fortunes of Tiberius and
+Livia, which had been steadily losing ground for four years, began to
+revive, though not so rapidly as Livia and Tiberius had probably
+expected.  Julia preserved, even in her misfortune, many faithful
+friends and a great popularity.  For a long time popular demonstrations
+were held in her favor at Rome, and many busied themselves tenaciously
+to obtain her pardon from Augustus, all of which goes to prove that the
+horrible infamies which were spread about her were the inventions of
+enemies.  Julia had broken the <I>Lex Julia</I>,&mdash;so much is certain,&mdash;but
+even if she had been guilty of an unfortunate act, she was not a
+monster, as her enemies wished to have it believed.  She was a
+beautiful woman, as there had been before, as there are now, and as
+there will be hereafter, touched with human vices and with human
+virtues.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a matter of fact, her party, after it had recovered from the
+terrible shock of the scandal, quickly reorganized.  Firm in its
+intention of having Julia pardoned, it took up the struggle again, and
+tried as far as it could to hinder Tiberius from returning to Rome and
+again taking part in political life, knowing well that if the husband
+once set foot in Rome, all hope of Julia's return would be lost.  Only
+one of them could reënter Rome.  It was either Tiberius or Julia; and
+more furiously than ever the struggle between the two parties was waged
+about Augustus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caius and Lucius Caesar, Julia's two youthful sons, of whom Augustus
+was very fond, were the principal instruments with which the enemies of
+Tiberius fought against the influence of Livia over Augustus.  Every
+effort was made to sow hatred and distrust between the two youths and
+Tiberius, to the end that it might become impossible to have them
+collaborate with him in the government of the empire, and that the
+presence of Julia's sons should of necessity exclude that of her
+husband.  A further ally was soon found in the person of another child
+of Julia and Agrippa, the daughter who has come down into history under
+the name of the Younger Julia.  Augustus had conceived as great a love
+for her as for the two sons, and there was no doubt that she would aid
+with every means in her power the party averse to Tiberius; for her
+mother's instincts of liberty, luxury, and pleasure were also inherent
+in her.  Married to L. Aemilius Paulus, the son of one of the greatest
+Roman families, she had early assumed in Rome a position which made
+her, like her mother, the antithesis of Livia.  She, too, gathered
+about her, as the elder Julia had done, a court of elegant youths, men
+of letters, and poets,&mdash;Ovid was of the number,&mdash;and with this group
+she hoped to be able to hold the balance of power in the government
+against that coterie of aged senators who paid court to Livia.  She,
+too, took advantage of the good-will of her grandfather, just as her
+mother had done, and in the shadow of his protection she displayed an
+extravagance which the laws did not permit, but which, on this account,
+was all the more admired by the enemies of the old Roman Puritanism.
+As though openly to defy the sumptuary law of Augustus, she built
+herself a magnificent villa; and, if we dare believe tradition, it was
+not long before she, too, had violated the very law which had proved
+disastrous to her mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus, even after the departure of Julia, her three children, Caius,
+Lucius, and Julia the Younger, constituted in Rome an alliance which
+was sufficiently powerful to contest every inch of ground with the
+party of Livia; for they had public opinion in their favor, they
+enjoyed the support of the senate, and they played upon the weakness of
+Augustus.  In the year 2 A.D., after four years of exhaustive efforts
+spent in struggle and intrigue, all that Livia had been able to obtain
+was the mere permission that Tiberius might return to Rome, under the
+conditions, however, that he retire to private life, that he give
+himself up to the education of his son, and that he in no wise mingle
+in public affairs.  The condition of the empire was growing worse on
+every side; the finances were disordered, the army was disorganized,
+and the frontiers were threatened, for revolt was raising its head in
+Gaul, in Pannonia, and especially in Germany.  Every day the situation
+seemed to demand the hand of Tiberius, who, now in the prime of life,
+was recognized as one of the leading administrators and the first
+general of the empire.  But, for all Livia's insistence, Augustus
+refused to call Tiberius back into the government.  The Julii were
+masters of the state, and held the Claudii at a distance.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-110"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-110.jpg" ALT="Antony and Cleopatra." BORDER="2" WIDTH="515" HEIGHT="412">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Antony and Cleopatra.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps Tiberius would never have returned to power in Rome had not
+chance aided him in the sudden taking off, in a strange and unforeseen
+manner, of Caius and Lucius Caesar.  The latter died at Marseilles,
+following a brief illness, shortly after the return of Tiberius to
+Rome, August 29, in the year 2 A.D.  It was a great grief to Augustus,
+and, twenty months after, was followed by another still more serious.
+In February of the year 4, Caius also died, in Lycia, of a wound
+received in a skirmish.  These two deaths were so premature, so close
+to each other, and so opportune for Tiberius, that posterity has
+refused to see in them simply one of the many mischances of life.
+Later generations have tried to believe that Livia had a hand in these
+fatalities.  Yet he who understands life at all knows that it is easier
+to imagine and suspect romantic poisonings of this sort than it is to
+carry them out.  Even leaving the character of Livia out of
+consideration, it is difficult to imagine how she would have dared, or
+have been able, to poison the two youths at so great a distance from
+Rome, one in Asia, the other in Gaul, by means of a long train of
+accomplices, and this at a moment when the family of Augustus was
+divided by many hatreds and every member was suspected, spied upon, and
+watched by a hostile party.  Furthermore, it would have been necessary
+to carry this out at a time when the example of Julia proved to all
+that relationship to Augustus was not a sufficient defense against the
+rigors of the law and the severity of public opinion when roused by any
+serious crime.  Besides, it is a recognized fact that people are always
+inclined to suspect a crime whenever a man prominent in the public eye
+dies before his time.  At Turin, for example, there still lives a
+tradition among the people that Cavour was poisoned, some say by the
+order of Napoleon III, others by the Jesuits, simply because his life
+was suddenly cut off, at the age of fifty-two, at the moment when Italy
+had greatest need of him.  Indeed, even to-day we are impressed when we
+see in the family of Augustus so many premature deaths of young men;
+but precisely because these untimely deaths are frequent we come to see
+in them the predestined ruin of a worn-out race in history.  All
+ancient families at a certain moment exhaust themselves.  This is the
+reason why no aristocracy has been able to endure for long unless
+continually renewed, and why all those that have refused to take in new
+blood have failed from the face of the earth.  There is no serious
+reason for attributing so horrible a crime to a woman who was venerated
+by the best men of her time; and the fables which the populace, always
+faithful to Julia, and therefore hostile to Livia, recounted on this
+score, and which the historians of the succeeding age collected, have
+no decisive value.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The deaths of Caius and Lucius Caesar were therefore a great good
+fortune for Tiberius, because it determined his return to power.  The
+situation of the empire was growing worse on every hand; Germany was in
+the midst of revolt, and it was necessary to turn the army over to
+vigorous hands.  Augustus, old and irresolute, still hesitated, fearing
+the dislike which was brewing both in the senate and among the people
+against the too dictatorial Tiberius.  At last, however, he was forced
+to yield.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The more serious, more authoritative, more ancient party of the
+senatorial nobility, in accord with Livia and headed by a nephew of
+Pompey, Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna, forced him to recall Tiberius,
+threatening otherwise to have recourse to some violent measures the
+exact character of which we do not know.  The unpopularity of Tiberius
+was a source of continual misgivings to the aging Augustus, and it was
+only through this threat of a yet greater danger that they finally
+overcame his hesitation.  On June 26, in the fourth year of our era,
+Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son, and had conferred upon him for
+ten years the office of tribune, thus making him his colleague.
+Tiberius returned to power, and, in accordance with the wishes of
+Augustus, adopted as his son Germanicus, the elder son of Drusus and
+Antonia, his faithful friend.  He was an intelligent, active lad of
+whom all entertained the highest hopes.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-115"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-115.jpg" ALT="Tiberius, elder son of Livia and stepson of Augustus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="388" HEIGHT="605">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Tiberius, elder son of Livia and stepson of Augustus.
+Augustus, lacking a male heir, first adopted his younger stepson
+Drusus, who died 9 B.C. owing to a fall from his horse.  In 4 A.D.  he
+adopted Tiberius, and was succeeded by him as Emperor in 14 A.D.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+On his return to power, Tiberius, together with Augustus, took measures
+for reorganizing the army and the state, and sought to bring about by
+means of new marriages and acts of clemency a closer union between the
+Julian and Claudian branches of the family, then bitterly divided by
+the violent struggles of recent years.  The terms of Julia's exile were
+made easier; Germanicus married Agrippina, another daughter of Julia
+and Agrippa, and a sister of Julia the Younger; the widow of Caius
+Caesar, Livilla, sister of Germanicus and daughter of Antonia, was
+given to Drusus, the son of Tiberius, a young man born in the same year
+as Germanicus.  Drusus, despite certain defects, such as irascibility
+and a marked fondness for pleasure, gave evidence that he possessed the
+requisite qualities of a statesman&mdash;firmness, sound judgment, and
+energy.  The policy which dictated these marriages was always the
+same&mdash;to make of the family of Augustus one formidable and united body,
+so that it might constitute the solid base of the entire government of
+the empire.  But, alas! wise as were the intentions, the ferments of
+discord and the unhappiness of the times prevailed against them.  Too
+much had been hoped for in recalling Tiberius to power.  During the ten
+years of senile government, the empire had been reduced to a state of
+utter disorder.  The measures planned by Tiberius for reestablishing
+the finances of the state roused the liveliest discontent among the
+wealthy classes in Italy, and again excited their hatred against him.
+In the year 6 A.D., the great revolt of Pannonia broke out and for a
+moment filled Italy with unspeakable terror.  In an instant of mob
+fury, they even came to fear that the peninsula would be invaded and
+Rome besieged by the barbarians of the Danube.  Tiberius came to the
+rescue, and with patience and coolness put down the insurrection, not
+by facing it in open conflict, but by drawing out the war to such a
+length as to weary the enemy, a method both safe and wise, considering
+the unreliable character of the troops at his command.  But at Rome,
+once the fear had subsided, the long duration of the war became a new
+cause for dissatisfaction and anger, and offered to many a pretext for
+venting their long-cherished hatred against Tiberius, who was accused
+of being afraid, of not knowing how to end the war, and of drawing it
+out for motives of personal ambition.  The party averse to Tiberius
+again raised its head and resorted once more to its former policy&mdash;that
+of urging on Germanicus against Tiberius.  The former was young,
+ambitious, bold, and would have preferred daring strokes and a war
+quickly concluded.  It is certain that there would have risen then and
+there a Germanican and a Tiberian party, if Augustus, on this occasion,
+had not energetically sustained Tiberius from Rome.  But the situation
+again became strained and full of uncertainty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the midst of these conflicts and these fears, a new scandal broke
+out in the family of Augustus.  The Younger Julia, like her mother,
+allowed herself to be caught in violation of the <I>Lex Julia de
+adulteriis</I>, and she also was compelled to take the road of exile.  In
+what manner and at whose instance the scandal was disclosed we do not
+know; we do know, however, that Augustus was very fond of his
+granddaughter, whence we can assume that in this moment of turbid
+agitation, when so much hatred was directed against his family and his
+house, and when so many forces were uniting to overthrow Tiberius
+again, notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the empire, Augustus
+felt that he must a second time submit to his own law.  He did not dare
+contend with the puritanical party, with the more conservative minority
+in the senate,&mdash;the friends of Tiberius,&mdash;over this second victim in
+his family.  Without a doubt everything possible was done to hush up
+the scandal, and there would scarcely have come down to us even a
+summary notice of the exile of the second Julia had it not been that
+among those exiled with her was the poet Ovid, who was to fill twenty
+centuries with his laments and to bring them to the ears of the latest
+generations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ovid's exile is one of those mysteries of history which has most keenly
+excited the curiosity of the ages.  Ovid himself, without knowing it,
+has rendered it more acute by his prudence in not speaking more clearly
+of the cause of his exile, making only rare allusions to it, which may
+be summed up in his famous words, <I>carmen et error</I>.  It is for this
+reason that posterity has for twenty centuries been asking itself what
+was this error which sent the exquisite poet away to die among the
+barbarous Getae on the frozen banks of the Danube; and naturally they
+have never compassed his secret.  But if, therefore, it is impossible
+to say exactly what the error was which cost Ovid so dearly, it is
+possible, on the other hand, to explain that unique and famous episode
+in the history of Rome to which, after all, Ovid owes a great part of
+his immortality.  He was not the victim, as has been too often
+repeated, of a caprice of despotism; and therefore he cannot be
+compared with any of the many Russian writers whom the administration,
+through fear and hatred, deports to Siberia without definite reason.
+Certainly the error of Ovid lay in his having violated some clause of
+the <I>Lex Julia de adulteriis</I>, which, as we know, was so comprehensive
+in its provisions that it considered as accessories to the crime those
+guilty of various acts and deeds which, judged even with modern rigor
+and severity, would seem reprehensible, to be sure, but not deserving
+of such terrible punishment.  Ovid was certainly involved under one of
+these clauses,&mdash;which one we do not, and never shall, know,&mdash;but his
+error, whether serious or light, was not the true cause of his
+condemnation.  It was the pretext used by the more conservative and
+puritanical part of Roman society to vent upon him a long-standing
+grudge the true motives of which lay much deeper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What was the standing of this poet of the gay, frivolous, exquisite
+ladies whom they wished to send into exile?  He was the author of that
+graceful, erotic poetry who, through the themes which he chose for his
+elegant verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward luxury, diversion,
+and the pleasures which had transformed the austere matron of a former
+day into an extravagant and undisciplined creature given to
+voluptuousness; the poet who had gained the admiration of women
+especially by flattering their most dangerous and perverse tendencies.
+The puritanical party hated and combatted this trend of the newer
+generations, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid on account of its
+disastrous effects upon the women, whom it weaned from the virtues most
+prized in former days&mdash;frugality, simplicity, family affection, and
+purity of life.  The Roman aristocracy did not recognize the right of
+absolute literary freedom which is acknowledged by many modern states,
+in which writers and men of letters have acquired a strong political
+influence.  The theory, held by many countries to-day that any
+publication is justifiable, provided it be a work of art, was not
+accepted by the Romans in power.  On the contrary, they were convinced
+that an idea or a sentiment, dangerous in itself, became still more
+harmful when artistically expressed.  Therefore Rome had always known
+the existence of a kind of police supervision of ideas and of literary
+forms, exercised through various means by the ruling aristocracy, and
+especially in reference to women, who constituted that element of
+social life in which virtue and purity of customs are of the greatest
+consequence.  The Roman ladies of the aristocracy, as we have seen,
+received considerable instruction.  They read the poets and
+philosophers, and precisely for this reason there was always at Rome a
+strong aversion to light and immoral literature.  If books had
+circulated among men only, the poetry of Ovid would perhaps not have
+enjoyed the good fortune of a persecution which was to focus upon it
+the attention of posterity.  The greater liberty conceded to women thus
+placed upon society an even greater reserve in the case of its
+literature.  This Ovid learned to his cost when he was driven into
+exile because his books gave too much delight to too many ladies at
+Rome.  By the order of Augustus these books were removed from the
+libraries, which did not hinder their coming down to us entire, while
+many a more serious work&mdash;like Livy's history, for example&mdash;has been
+either entirely or in large part lost.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-126"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-126.jpg" ALT="Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius." BORDER="2" WIDTH="343" HEIGHT="615">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+After the fall of the second Julia up to the time of his death, which
+occurred August 23, in the year 14 A.D., Augustus had no further
+serious griefs over the ladies of his family.  The great misfortune of
+the last years of his government was a public misfortune&mdash;the defeat of
+Varus and the loss of Germany.  But with what sadness must he have
+looked back in the last weeks of his long life upon the history of his
+family!  All those whom he had loved were torn from him before their
+time by a cruel destiny: Drusus, Caius, and Lucius Caesar by death; the
+Julias by the cruelty of the law and by an infamy worse than death.
+The unique grandeur to which he had attained had not brought fortune to
+his family.  He was old, almost alone, a weary survivor among the tombs
+of those dear to him who had been untimely lost through fate, and with
+the still sadder memories of those who had been buried in a living
+grave of infamy.  His only associates were Tiberius, with whom he had
+become reconciled; Antonia, his sweet and highly respected
+daughter-in-law; and Livia, the woman whom destiny had placed at his
+side in one of the most critical moments of his life, the faithful
+companion through fifty-two years of his varied and wonderful fortune.
+We can therefore understand why it was that, as the historians tell us,
+the last words of the old emperor should have been a tender expression
+of gratitude to his faithful wife.  "Farewell, farewell, Livia!
+Remember our long union!"  With these words, rendering homage to the
+wife whom custom and the law had made the faithful and loving
+companion, and not the docile slave, of her husband, he ended his life
+like a true Roman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If the family of Augustus had undergone grievous vicissitudes during
+his life, its situation became even more dangerous after his death.
+The historian who sets out with the preconceived notion that Augustus
+founded a monarchy, and imagines that his family was destined to enjoy
+the privileges which in all monarchies are accorded the sovereign's
+house, will never arrive at a complete understanding of the story of
+the first empire.  His family did, to be sure, always enjoy a
+privileged status, if not at law, at least in fact, and through the
+very force of circumstances; but it was not for naught that Rome had
+been for many centuries an aristocratic republic in which all the
+families of the nobility had considered themselves equal, and had been
+subject to the same laws.  The aristocracy avenged itself upon the
+imperial family for the privileges which the lofty dignity of its head
+assured it by giving it hatred instead of respect.  They suspected and
+calumniated all of its members, and with a malicious joy subjected
+them, whenever possible, to the common laws and even maltreated with
+particular ferocity those who by chance fell under the provisions of
+any statute.  As a compensation for the privileges which the royal
+family enjoyed, they had to assume the risk of receiving the harshest
+penalties of the laws.  If any of them, therefore, fell under the rigor
+of these laws, the senatorial aristocracy especially was ever eager to
+enjoy the atrocious satisfaction of seeing one of the favored tortured
+as much as or more than the ordinary man.  There is no doubt, for
+example, that the two Julias were more severely punished and disgraced
+than other ladies of the aristocracy guilty of the same crime.  And
+Augustus was forced to waive his affection for them in order that it
+might not be said, particularly in the senate, that his relatives
+enjoyed special favors and that Augustus made laws only for others.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-131"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-131.jpg" ALT="Statue of a young Roman woman." BORDER="2" WIDTH="270" HEIGHT="564">
+<H4>
+[Illustration:  Statue of a young Roman woman.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Yet as long as Augustus lived, he was a sufficient protection for his
+relatives.  He was, especially in the last twenty years of his life,
+the object of an almost religious veneration.  The great and stormy
+epoch out of which he had risen, the extraordinary fortune which had
+assisted him, his long reign, the services both real and imaginary
+which he had rendered the empire&mdash;all had conferred upon him such an
+authority that envy laid aside its most poisonous darts before him.
+Out of respect for him even his family was not particularly calumniated
+or maltreated, save now and then in moments of great irritation, as
+when the two Julias were condemned.  But after his death the situation
+grew considerably worse; for Tiberius, although he was a man of great
+capacity and merit, a sagacious administrator and a valiant general,
+did not enjoy the sympathy and respect which had been accorded to
+Augustus.  Rather was he hated by those who had for a long time sided
+with Caius and Lucius Caesar and who formed a considerable portion of
+the senate and the aristocracy.  It was not the spontaneous admiration
+of the senate and of the people, but the exigencies of the situation,
+which had made him master of the government when Augustus died.  The
+empire was at war with the Germans, and the Pannonico-Illyrian
+provinces were in revolt, and it was necessary to place at the head of
+the empire a man who should strike terror to the hearts of the
+barbarians and who on occasion should be able to combat them.
+Tiberius, furthermore, was so well aware that the majority of the
+senate and the Roman people would submit to his government only through
+force, that he had for a long time been in doubt whether to accept the
+empire or not, so completely did he understand that with so many
+enemies it would be difficult to rule.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the government of Tiberius the imperial family was surrounded by
+a much more intense and open hatred than under Augustus.  One couple
+only proved an exception, Germanicus and Agrippina, who were very
+sympathetic to the people.  But right here began the first serious
+difficulties for Tiberius.  Germanicus was twenty-nine years old when
+Tiberius took over the empire, and about him there began to form a
+party which by courting and flattering both him and his wife began to
+set him up against Tiberius.  In this they were unconsciously aided by
+Agrippina.  Unlike her sister Julia, she was a lady of blameless life;
+faithfully in love with her husband; a true Roman matron, such as
+tradition had loved; chaste and fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six
+had already borne nine children, of whom, however, six had died.  But
+Agrippina was to show that in the house of Augustus, in those
+tumultuous, strange times, virtue was not less dangerous than vice,
+though in another way and for different reasons.  She was so proud of
+her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at
+Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and
+increased by her excessive pride in her virtue.  And among these
+defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and
+tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a
+dangerous lack of balance and judgment.  Agrippina was not evil; she
+was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and
+therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what
+seemed expedient.  She had much influence over her husband, whom she
+accompanied upon all his journeys; and out of the great love she bore
+him, in which her own ambition had its part, she urged him on to
+support that hidden movement which was striving to oppose Germanicus to
+the emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that
+Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be
+carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to
+the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia
+was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor.  After his
+divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of
+tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part
+by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law.  No one exercised so
+much influence as Antonia over the diffident and self-centered spirit
+of the emperor.  Whoever wished to obtain a favor from him could do no
+better than to intrust his cause to Antonia.  There is no doubt,
+therefore, that Antonia checked her son, and in his society
+counterbalanced the influence of his wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But even if two parties were not formed, it was not long before other
+difficulties arose.  Discord soon made itself felt between Livia and
+Agrippina.  More serious still was the fact that Germanicus, who, after
+the death of Augustus, had been sent as a legate to Gaul, initiated a
+German policy contrary to the instructions given him by Tiberius.  This
+was due partly to his own impetuous temperament and partly to the
+goadings of his wife and the flatterers who surrounded him.  Tiberius,
+whom the Germans knew from long experience, no longer wished to molest
+them.  The revolt of Arminius proved that when their independence was
+threatened by Rome they were capable of uniting and becoming dangerous;
+when left to themselves they destroyed one another by continual wars.
+It was advisable, therefore, according to Tiberius, not to attack or
+molest them, but at the proper moment to fan the flames of their
+continual dissensions and wars in order that, while destroying
+themselves, they should leave the empire in peace.  This wise and
+prudent policy might please a seasoned soldier like Tiberius, who had
+already won his laurels in many wars and who had risen to the pinnacle
+of glory and power.  It did not please the pushing and eager youth
+Germanicus, who was anxious to distinguish himself by great and
+brilliant exploits, and who had at his side, as a continual stimulus,
+an ambitious and passionate wife, surrounded by a court of flatterers.
+Germanicus, on his own initiative, crossed the Rhine and took up the
+offensive again all along the line, attacking the most powerful of the
+German tribes one after the other in important and successful
+expeditions.  At Rome this bold move was naturally looked upon with
+pleasure, especially by the numerous enemies of Tiberius, either
+because boldness in politics rather than prudence always pleases those
+who have nothing to lose, or because it was felt that the glory which
+accrued to Germanicus might offend the emperor.  And Tiberius, though
+he did disapprove, allowed his adopted son to continue for a time,
+doubtless in order that he might not have to shock public opinion and
+that it might not seem that he wished to deprive the youthful
+Germanicus of the glory which he was gaining for himself.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-138"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-138.jpg" ALT="A Roman girl of the time of the Caesars." BORDER="2" WIDTH="302" HEIGHT="450">
+<H4>
+[Illustration:  A Roman girl of the time of the Caesars.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+He was nevertheless resolved not to allow Germanicus to involve Rome
+too deeply in German affairs, and when it seemed to him that the youth
+had fittingly proved his prowess and had made the enemies of Rome feel
+its power sufficiently, he recalled him and in his stead sent Drusus,
+who was his real, and not his adopted, son.  But this recall did not at
+all please the party of Germanicus, who were loud and bitter in their
+recriminations.  They began to murmur that Tiberius was jealous of
+Germanicus and his popularity; that he had recalled him in order to
+prevent his winning glory by an immortal achievement.  Tiberius so
+little thought of keeping Germanicus from using his brilliant qualities
+in the service of Rome that shortly after, in the year 18 A.D., he sent
+him into the Orient to introduce order into Armenia, which was shaken
+by internal dissensions, and he gave him a command there not less
+important than the one of which he had deprived him.  At the same time
+he was unwilling to intrust things entirely to the judgment of
+Germanicus, in whom he recognized a young man of capacity and valor,
+but, nevertheless, a young man influenced by an imprudent wife and
+incited by an irresponsible court of flatterers.  For this reason he
+placed at his side an older and more experienced man in whom he had the
+fullest confidence&mdash;Cnaeus Piso, a senator who belonged to one of the
+most illustrious families in Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the duty of Cnaeus Piso to counsel, to restrain, and to aid the
+young Germanicus, and doubtless also to keep Tiberius informed of all
+that Germanicus was doing in the East.  When we remember that Tiberius
+was responsible for the empire, no one will deny him the right of
+setting a guard upon the young man of thirty-three, into whose hands
+had been intrusted many and serious interests.  But though this idea
+was warrantable in itself, it became the source of great woe.
+Germanicus was offended, and, driven on by his friends, he broke with
+Piso.  The latter had brought with him his wife Plancina, who was a
+close friend of Livia, just as Germanicus had brought Agrippina.  The
+two wives fell to quarreling no less furiously than their husbands, and
+two parties were formed in the Orient, one for Piso and one for
+Germanicus, who accused each other of illegality, extortion, and
+assuming unwarranted powers; and each thought only of undoing what the
+other had accomplished.  It is difficult to tell which of the two was
+right or in how far either was right or wrong, for the documents are
+too few and the account of Tacitus, clouded by an undiscerning
+antipathy, sheds no light upon this dark secret.  In any case, we are
+sure that Germanicus did not always respect the laws and that he
+occasionally acted with a supreme heedlessness which now and then
+forced Tiberius to intervene personally, as he did on the occasion when
+Germanicus left his province with Agrippina in order that, dressed like
+a Greek philosopher, he might make a tour of Egypt and see that
+country, which then, as now, attracted the attention of persons of
+culture.  But at that time, unlike the present, there was an ordinance
+of Augustus which forbade Roman senators to set foot in Egypt without
+special permission.  As he had paid no attention to this prohibition,
+we need not be astonished if we find that Germanicus did not respect as
+scrupulously as Tiberius wished all the laws which defined his powers
+and set limits to his authority.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However that may be, the dissension between Germanicus and Piso filled
+the entire Orient with confusion and disorder, and it was early echoed
+at Rome, where the party hostile to Tiberius continued to accuse him,
+out of motives of hatred and jealousy, of forever laying new obstacles
+in the way of his adopted son.  Livia, too, now no longer protected by
+Augustus, became a target for the accusations of a malevolent public
+opinion.  It was said that she persecuted Germanicus out of hatred for
+Agrippina.  Tiberius was much embarrassed, being hampered by public
+opinion favorable to Germanicus and at the same time desiring that his
+sons should set an example of obedience to the laws.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sudden catastrophe still further complicated the situation.  In 19
+A.D. Germanicus was taken ill at Antioch.  The malady was long and
+marked by periods of convalescence and relapses, but finally, like his
+father and like his brothers-in-law, Germanicus, too, succumbed to his
+destiny in the fullness of youth.  At thirty-four, when life with her
+most winning smiles seemed to be stretching out her arms to him, he
+died.  This one more untimely death brought to an abrupt end a most
+dangerous political struggle.  Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+people, whose imagination had been aroused, should have begun to murmur
+about poison?  The party of Germanicus was driven to desperation by
+this death, which virtually ended its existence, and destroyed at a
+single stroke all the hopes of those who had seen in Germanicus the
+instrument of their future fortune.  They therefore eagerly collected,
+embellished, and spread these rumors.  Had Agrippina been a woman of
+any judgment or reflection, she would have been the first to see the
+absurdity of this foolish gossip; but as a matter of fact no one placed
+more implicit faith in such reports than she, now that affliction had
+rendered her even more impetuous and violent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not long before every one at Rome had heard it said that
+Germanicus had been poisoned by Piso, acting, so it was intimated in
+whispers, at the bidding of Tiberius and Livia.  Piso had been the tool
+of Tiberius; Plancina, the tool of Livia.  The accusation is absurd; it
+is even recognized as such by Tacitus, who was actuated by a fierce
+hatred against Tiberius.  We know from him how the accusers of Piso
+recounted that the poison had been drunk in a health at a banquet to
+which Piso had been invited by Germanicus and at which he was seated
+several places from his host; he was supposed to have poured the poison
+into his dishes in the presence of all the guests without any one
+having seen him!  Tacitus himself says that every one thought this an
+absurd fable, and such every man of good sense will think it to-day.
+But hatred makes even intelligent persons believe fables even more
+absurd; the people favorable to Germanicus were embittered against Piso
+and would not listen to reason.  All the enemies of Tiberius easily
+persuaded themselves that some atrocious mystery was hidden in this
+death and that, if they instituted proceedings against Piso, they might
+bring to light a scandal which would compromise the emperor himself.
+They even began to repeat that Piso possessed letters from Tiberius
+which contained the order to poison Germanicus.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-147"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-147.jpg" ALT="Costumes of Roman men, women, and children in the procession of a peace festival." BORDER="2" WIDTH="484" HEIGHT="402">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Costumes of Roman men, women, and children in the
+procession of a peace festival.  These reliefs formed part of the outer
+frieze of the right wall of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace), erected by
+Augustus and dedicated 9 B.C.  This and another well-preserved section
+are in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.  One of two other fragments in the
+Villa Medici contains the head and bust of Augustus, and with the
+section here shown completes what is supposed to be a group of the
+family of Augustus.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+At last Agrippina arrived at Rome with the ashes of her husband, and
+she began with her usual vehemence to fill the imperial house, the
+senate, and all Rome with protests, imprecations, and accusations
+against Piso.  The populace, which admired her for her fidelity and
+love for her husband, was even more deeply stirred, and on every hand
+the cry was raised that an exemplary punishment ought to be meted out
+to so execrable a crime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If at first Piso had treated these absurd charges with haughty disdain,
+he soon perceived that the danger was growing serious and that it was
+necessary for him to hasten his return to Rome, where a trial was now
+inevitable.  One of Germanicus's friends had accused him; Agrippina, an
+unwitting tool in the hands of the emperor's enemies, every day stirred
+public opinion to still higher pitches of excitement through her grief
+and her laments; the party of Germanicus worked upon the senate and the
+people, and when Piso arrived at Rome he found that he had been
+abandoned by all.  His hope lay in Tiberius, who knew the truth and who
+certainly desired that these wild notions be driven out of the popular
+mind.  But Tiberius was watched with the most painstaking malevolence.
+Any least action in favor of Piso would have been interpreted as a
+decisive proof that he had been the murderer's accomplice and therefore
+wished to save him.  In fact, it was being reported at Rome with
+ever-increasing insistence that at the trial Piso would show the
+letters of Tiberius.  When the trial began, Livia, in the background,
+cleverly directed her thoughts to the saving of Plancina; but Tiberius
+could do no more for Piso than to recommend to the senate that they
+exercise the most rigorous impartiality.  His noble speech on this
+occasion has been preserved for us by Tacitus.  "Let them judge," he
+said, "without regard either for the imperial family or for the family
+of Piso."  The admonition was useless, for his condemnation was a
+foregone conclusion, despite the absurdity of the charges.  The enemies
+of Tiberius wished to force matters to the uttermost limit in the hope
+that the famous letters would have to be produced; and they acted with
+such frenzied hatred and excited public opinion to such a pitch that
+Piso killed himself before the end of the trial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The violence of Agrippina had sent an innocent victim to follow the
+shade of her young husband.  Despite bitter opposition, the emperor,
+through personal intervention, succeeded in saving the wife, the son,
+and the fortune of Piso, whose enemies had wished to exterminate his
+house root and branch.  Tiberius thus offered a further proof that he
+was one of the few persons at Rome who were capable in that trying and
+troubled time of passing judgment and of reasoning with calm.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+IV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The blackest and most tragic period in the life of Tiberius begins with
+the death of Germanicus and the terrible scandal of the suit against
+Piso.  It was to pass into history as the worst period of the "Tiberian
+tyranny"; for it was at this time that the famous <I>Lex de majestate</I>
+[1] (on high treason), which had not been applied under Augustus, came
+to be frequently invoked, and through its operation atrocious
+accusations, scandalous trials, and frightful condemnations were
+multiplied in Rome, to the terror of all.  Many committed suicide in
+despair, and illustrious families were given over to ruin and infamy.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-154"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-154.jpg" ALT="Tiberius." BORDER="2" WIDTH="284" HEIGHT="387">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Tiberius.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Posterity still holds Tiberius to account for these tragedies; his
+cruel and suspicious tyranny is made responsible for these accusations,
+for the suits which followed, and for the cruel condemnations in which
+they ended.  It is said that every free mind which still remembered
+ancient Roman liberty gave him umbrage and caused him distress, and
+that he could suffer to have about him only slaves and hired assassins.
+But how far this is from the truth!  How poorly the superficial
+judgment of posterity has understood the terrible tragedy of the reign,
+of Tiberius!  We always forget that Tiberius was the next Roman emperor
+after Augustus; the first, that is, who had to bear the weight of the
+immense charge created by its founder, but without the immense prestige
+and respect which Augustus had derived from the extraordinary good
+fortune of his life, from the critical moment in which he had taken
+over the government, from the general opinion that he had ended the
+civil wars, brought peace back to an empire in travail, and saved Rome
+from the imminent ruin with which Egypt and Cleopatra had threatened
+it.  For these reasons, while Augustus lived, the envy, jealousy,
+rivalry, and hatred of the new authority were held in check in his
+presence; but they were ever smoldering in the Roman aristocracy, which
+considered itself robbed of a part of its privileges, and always felt
+itself humiliated by this same authority, even when it was necessary to
+submit to it in cases of supreme political necessity.  But all this
+envy, all these jealousies, all these rivalries,&mdash;I have said it
+before, but it is well to repeat it, since the point is of capital
+importance for the understanding of the whole history of the first
+empire,&mdash;were unleashed when Tiberius was exalted to the imperial
+dignity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What in reality was the situation of Tiberius after the death of
+Germanicus?  We must grasp it well if we wish to understand not only
+the cruelty of the accusations brought under the law of high treason,
+but also the whole family policy followed by the second emperor.  It
+was he who had to bear the burden of the whole state, of the finances,
+of the supplies, of the army, of the home and foreign policies; his was
+the will that propelled, and the mind that regulated, all.  To him
+every portion of the empire and every social class had recourse, and it
+was to him that they looked for redress for every wrong or
+inconvenience or danger.  It was to him that the legions looked for
+their regular stipend, the common people of Rome for abundant grain,
+the senate for the preservation of boundaries and of the internal
+order; the provinces looked to him for justice, and the sovereign
+allies or vassals for the solution of all internal difficulties in
+which they became involved.  These responsibilities were so numerous
+and so great that Tiberius, like Augustus, attempted to induce the
+senate to aid him by assuming its share, according to the ancient
+constitution; but it was in vain, for the senate sought to shield
+itself, and always left to him the heavier portion.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-159"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-159.jpg" ALT="Types of head-dresses worn in the time of the women of the Caesars." BORDER="2" WIDTH="512" HEIGHT="326">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Types of head-dresses worn in the time of the women of
+the Caesars.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Is it conceivable that a man could have discharged so many
+responsibilities in times when the traditions of the government were
+only beginning to take form if he had not possessed a commanding
+personal authority, if he had not been the object of profound and
+general respect?  Augustus would not have been able to govern so great
+an empire for more than forty years with such slight means had it not
+been for the fact, fortunate alike for himself and for the state, that
+he did enjoy this profound, sincere, and general admiration.  Tiberius,
+on the other hand, who was already decidedly unpopular when he came
+into power, had seen this unpopularity increase during the first six
+years of his rule, despite all the efforts he had put forth to govern
+well.  His solicitude about maintaining a certain order within the
+state was described as haughtiness and harshness, his preoccupation
+lest the precarious resources of the government be dissipated in
+useless expenditures was dubbed avarice, and the prudence which had
+impelled him to restrain the rash policy of expansion and aggression
+which Germanicus had tried to initiate beyond the Rhine was construed
+as envy and surly malignity.  Against all considerations of justice,
+logic, or good sense, this accusation was repeated, and now that
+destiny had cut down Germanicus, he was accused <I>sotto voce</I> of being
+responsible for his death by many of the great families of Rome and
+even in senatorial circles.  They treated it as most natural that
+through jealousy he should poison his own nephew, his adopted son, the
+popular descendant of Drusus, the son of that virtuous Antonia who was
+his best and most faithful friend!  But if, after having been accepted
+as true by the great families of Rome who sent it on its rounds, such a
+report had been allowed to circulate through the empire, how much
+authority would have been left to an emperor who was suspected of so
+terrible a crime?  How could he have maintained discipline in the army,
+of which he was the head, and order among the people of Rome, of whom,
+as tribune, he was the great protector?  How could he have directed,
+urged on, or restrained the senate, of which he was, in the language of
+to-day, the president?  The various Italian peoples from whom the army
+was drawn did not yet consider the head of the state a being so
+superior to the laws that it would be permissible for him to commit
+crimes which were branded as disgustingly repulsive to ordinary human
+nature.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No historian who understands the affairs of the world in general, and
+the story of the first century of the empire in particular, will
+attribute to ferocity or to the tyrannical spirit of Tiberius the
+increasingly harsh application of the <I>Lex de majestate</I> which followed
+the death of Germanicus and the trial of Piso.  This harshness was the
+natural reaction against the delirium of atrocious calumnies against
+Tiberius which raged in the aristocracy of that time and especially in
+the house of Agrippina.  For she, in spite of the undeniably virtuous
+character of her private life, was influenced by friends who, for
+motives of political advancement took advantage of her passions and
+inexperience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Too credulous of Tacitus, many writers have severely characterized the
+facility and the severity with which the senate condemned those accused
+under the <I>Lex de majestate</I>: they consider it an indication of ignoble
+servility toward the emperor.  Yet we know very well that the Roman
+senate at that time was not composed merely of adulators and hirelings;
+it still included many men of intelligence and character.  We can
+explain this severity only by admitting that there were many persons in
+the senate who judged that the emperor could not be left defenseless
+against the wild slanders of the great families, since these
+extravagant and insidious calumnies compromised not only the prestige
+and the fame of the ruler, but also the tranquillity, the power, and
+the integrity of the empire.  Undoubtedly the <I>Lex de majestate</I> did
+give rise in time to false accusations, to private reprisals, and to
+unjust sentences of condemnation.  Although it had been devised to
+defend the prestige of the state in the person of the magistrates who
+represented it, the law was frequently invoked by senators who wished
+to vent their fiercest personal hatreds.  Nor can it be denied that
+cupidity was the cause of many iniquitous calumnies directed against
+wealthy persons whose fortunes were coveted by their accusers.  Yet we
+must go slow in accusing Tiberius of these excesses.  Tacitus himself,
+who was averse to the emperor, recounts several incidents which show
+him in the act of intervening in trials of high treason for the benefit
+of the accused precisely for the purpose of hindering these excesses of
+private vengeance.  The accounts which we have of many other trials are
+so brief and so biased that it is not fair for us to hazard a judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We do know, however, that after the death of Germanicus there was
+formed at Rome, in the imperial family and the senate, a party of
+Agrippina, which began an implacable war upon Tiberius, and that
+Tiberius, the so-called tyrant, was at the beginning very weak,
+undecided, and vacillating in his resistance to this new opposition.
+His opponents did not spare his person; they did their best to spread
+the belief that the emperor was a poisoner, and persecuted him
+relentlessly with this calumny; they were already pushing forward Nero,
+the first-born son of Germanicus, though in 21 A.D. he was only
+fourteen years old, in order that he might in time be made the rival of
+Tiberius.  The latter, indeed, tried at first to moderate the charges
+of high treason, his supreme defense; he feigned that he did not know
+or did not see many things, and instead of resisting, he began to make
+long sojourns away from Rome, thus turning over the capital, in which
+the pretorian guard remained, to the calumnies of his enemies.  Of all
+these enemies the most terrible was Agrippina, who, passionate,
+vehement, without judgment, abused in good faith both the relationship
+which protected her and the pity which her misfortune had aroused.  She
+allowed no occasion for taunting Tiberius with his pretended crime to
+escape her, using to this end not only words, but scenes and actions,
+which impressed the public even more strongly than open accusations
+could have done.  A supper to which Tiberius had invited her became
+famous at Rome, for at it she refused obstinately and ostentatiously to
+touch any food or drink whatever, to the astonishment of the guests,
+who understood perfectly what her gestures meant.  And such calumnies
+and such affronts Tiberius answered only with a weary and disdainful
+inertia; at most, when his patience was exhausted, some bitter and
+concise reproof would escape him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I have no doubt that Tiberius had resolved at the beginning to avoid
+all harsh measures as far as possible; for unpopular, misunderstood,
+and detested as he was, he did not dare to use violence against a large
+part of the aristocracy and against his own house.  Furthermore,
+Agrippina was the least intelligent of the women of the family, and her
+senseless opposition could be tolerated as long as Livia and Antonia,
+the two really serious ladies of the family, sided with Tiberius.  But
+it is easy to understand that this situation could not long endure.  A
+power which defends itself weakly against the attacks of its enemies is
+destined to sink rapidly into a decline, and the party of Agrippina
+would therefore quickly have gained favor and power had there not
+arisen, to sustain the vacillating strength of Tiberius, a man whose
+name was to become sadly famous&mdash;Sejanus&mdash;the commander of the
+pretorian guard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sejanus belonged to an obscure family of knights&mdash;to what we should now
+call the <I>bourgeoisie</I>.  He was not a senator, and he held no great
+political position; for his charge as commander of the guard was a
+purely military office.  In ordinary times he would have remained a
+secondary personage, exclusively concerned with the exacting duties of
+his command; but the party of Agrippina with its intrigues, and the
+weakness and uncertainty of Tiberius, made of him, however, for a
+certain time, a formidable power.  It is not difficult to see whence
+this power arose.  The loyalty of the pretorian guard, upon which
+depended the security and the safety of the imperial authority, was one
+of the things which must seriously have preoccupied Tiberius,
+particularly in the face of the persistent and insidious intrigues and
+accusations of the party of Agrippina.  The guard lived at Rome, in
+continual contact with the senate and the imperial house.  Everything
+which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the
+emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and
+the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the
+pretorians.  If the guard could have been persuaded that the emperor
+was a poisoner of his kindred, their loyalty would have been exposed to
+numberless intrigues and attempts at seduction.  In such a condition of
+affairs, a commander of the guard who could inspire Tiberius with a
+complete and absolute trust might easily acquire a great influence over
+him.  Sejanus knew how to inspire this trust.  This was partly by
+reason of his origin, for the equestrian order, on account of its
+ancient rivalry with the senatorial nobility, was more favorably
+inclined than the latter toward the imperial authority; and partly also
+on account of certain reforms which he had succeeded in introducing
+into the pretorian guard.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-170"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-170.jpg" ALT="A Roman feast in the time of the Caesars." BORDER="2" WIDTH="571" HEIGHT="395">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: A Roman feast in the time of the Caesars.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Once he had acquired the emperor's confidence, the ambitious and
+intelligent prefect of the pretorians proceeded to render himself
+indispensable in all things.  The moment was favorable; Tiberius was
+becoming more and more wearied of his many affairs, of his many
+struggles, of his countless responsibilities; more and more disgusted
+with Rome, with its society, with the too frequent contact with the men
+whom it was his fate to govern.  He was in the earlier stages of that
+settled melancholy which grew deeper and deeper in the last ten years
+of his life, and which had grown upon him as the result of long
+antagonisms, of great bitterness, and of continual terrors and
+suspicions; and if it is true that Tiberius was addicted to the vice of
+heavy drinking, as we hear from ancient writers, the abuse of wine may
+also have had its part in producing it.  The tyrant, as historians have
+been pleased to call him, did actually seem to weaken in the fight for
+those ideals in which he had so long and so ardently believed.  He
+tried to please the people by advocating no measures that might seem
+harsh or excessive to them.  He even resisted, in the year 22 A.D., the
+pressure that his own party&mdash;his own puritan party&mdash;brought to bear
+upon him to apply with the utmost severity and discipline the laws
+against the fast increasing luxury of the men and women of his day.
+His reply to such pressure was a letter to the senate in which he
+deplored, among other things, the passion that so many women were
+showing for jewels and precious stones imported from distant countries.
+He maintained that it was the fault of such women that so much gold
+left the country and pointed out how much more wisely the money could
+be spent in fortifying the boundaries of the empire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In view of all this it is not difficult to understand why the man who
+for many years had done everything for himself, who had never wished to
+have either counselors or confidants about him, now that he was growing
+old needed the support of younger energies and of stronger wills.  But
+in his family he could rely only upon his son Drusus, who had now
+become a serious and trustworthy man, and in the year 22 A.D. he asked
+the senate that it concede to his son the tribunician power; that is,
+that they make him his colleague.  But the son did not suffice, and
+Sejanus therefore succeeded in making himself, together with Drusus, in
+fact, if not in name, the first and most active and influential
+collaborator and counselor of Tiberius.  He was even more active and
+influential than Drusus, for the latter was frequently absent on
+distant military missions to the confines of the empire, while Sejanus,
+as commander of the pretorian guard, was virtually always at Rome,
+where the emperor now appeared less and less frequently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was the origin of the anomalous power of this man, who was not
+even a senator&mdash;a power which was the result of the weakness of
+Tiberius and of the fierce discords which divided the aristocracy; and
+it was a power which must of necessity prove disastrous, especially to
+the party of Agrippina and Germanicus.  Although indications are not
+lacking that there was no great harmony or friendship between Sejanus
+and Drusus, it is evident that Sejanus, as the energetic representative
+of the interests of Tiberius, must have directed all his efforts
+against the friends of Agrippina, who was arousing the fiercest
+opposition to the emperor.  But in the year 23, an unforeseen event
+seemed suddenly to change the situation and to render possible a
+reconciliation between Tiberius and the party of Agrippina.  In this
+year, Drusus also, like so many other members of his family, died
+prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, and on this occasion, for the
+time being, at least, no one raised the cry of poisoning.  This
+unexpected misfortune moved Tiberius profoundly, for he dearly loved
+his son, and it seemed for a moment to determine the triumph of
+Agrippina's party.  Now that his son had been taken from him, where, if
+not among the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, could Tiberius look for
+a successor?  And, as a further proof that Tiberius desired as far as
+possible to avoid conflict in the bosom of his family, he did not
+hesitate a moment, despite all the annoyances and difficulties which he
+had suffered at the hands of Agrippina and her friends.  He officially
+recognized that in the sons of Germanicus were henceforth placed the
+future hopes of his family and of the empire.  Of the two elder, Nero
+was now sixteen and Drusus was somewhat younger, though we do not know
+his exact age.  These he summoned to appear before the senate, and he
+presented them to the assembly with a noble discourse the substance of
+which Tacitus has preserved for us, exhorting the youths and the senate
+to fulfil their respective duties for the greatness and the prosperity
+of the republic.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-175"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-175.jpg" ALT="Depositing the ashes of a member of the imperial family in a Roman columbarium." BORDER="2" WIDTH="378" HEIGHT="619">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Depositing the ashes of a member <BR>of the imperial family
+in a Roman columbarium.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+After the death of Drusus, therefore, a reconciliation became possible
+in the family of the Caesars.  The latent rivalry between the families
+of Tiberius and Germanicus was extinguished.  Indeed, even in the midst
+of the tears shed for the early death of Drusus, a gleam of concord
+seems to have shone down upon the house desolated by many tragedies,
+while Sejanus, whose power depended upon the strife of the factions,
+was for a moment set aside and driven back into the shadows.  But it
+was not to continue long; for soon the flames of discord broke out more
+violently than ever.  Whom shall we blame, Sejanus or Agrippina?
+Tacitus says that it was the fault of Sejanus, whom he accuses of
+having tried to destroy the descendants of Germanicus, in order to
+usurp their place: but he himself is forced to admit in another passage
+(Annals iv., 59) that virtually a little court of freedmen and
+dependents gathered about Nero, the leader of the sons of Germanicus,
+urging him on against Tiberius and Sejanus, and begging him to act
+quickly.  "This," they said, "is the will of the people, the desire of
+the armies.  Nor would Sejanus, who was even then making light of the
+patience of the old man and of the dilatoriness of the youth, have
+dared to resist him."  From such speeches it is only a short step to
+plans for rebellion and conspiracy.  In all probability the blame for
+this later and more bitter dissension must, as usually happens, be
+divided between the two factions.  The party of Agrippina, emboldened
+by its good fortune and by the weakness of Tiberius, was, after the
+death of Drusus, conscious of its own supremacy.  Its members had only
+a single aim; even before it was possible they wished to see Nero, the
+first-born son of Germanicus, in the position of Tiberius.  They
+therefore took up again their struggles and intrigues against Tiberius,
+and attempted to incite Nero against the emperor.  But this time
+Sejanus was blocking their pathway.  The death of Drusus had even
+further increased the trust and affection which the emperor had for his
+assistant, and he was henceforth the only confidant and the only friend
+of the emperor; a war without quarter between him and Agrippina, her
+sons and the party of Germanicus, was inevitable.  And Sejanus opened
+the action by attempting to exclude from the magistracy and from office
+all the friends of Agrippina and all the members of the opposing
+faction.  At this time it was difficult to arrive at any of the more
+important offices without being recommended to the senate by the
+emperor, against whose choice the senate no longer dared to rebel;
+since the emperor was held responsible for the conduct of the
+government, it was only just that he should be allowed to select his
+more important collaborators.  Sejanus was therefore able, by using his
+influence over Tiberius, to lay a thousand difficulties and obstacles
+in the way of even the legitimate ambitions of the most eminent men of
+the opposite faction.  Nor were these the only weapons employed; others
+no less efficacious were called into play, and intrigues, calumnies,
+accusations, and trials were set on foot without scruple and with a
+ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has painted with indelible colors.
+Among these intrigues two matrimonial projects must be mentioned.  In
+the year 25 Sejanus attempted a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife
+Apicata, and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla (Livia), the widow
+of Drusus.  Sejanus had frequented the political aristocracy of the
+empire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only
+their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.
+He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of
+acquiring and consolidating power.  He had therefore disrupted his
+first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have
+redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the
+imperial household.  But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius
+refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was
+afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina.  The
+emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine
+quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the
+Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew's sons.  And what would
+happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing
+hatreds?  <I>Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio</I>?  The reply is
+significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of
+harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina,
+was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both
+factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a
+reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these
+struggles.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-181"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-181.jpg" ALT="The starving Livilla refusing food." BORDER="2" WIDTH="381" HEIGHT="605">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The starving Livilla refusing food.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this refusal was a slight success
+for the party of Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted on
+its own account an analogous move.  Agrippina asked Tiberius for
+permission to remarry.  If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made
+this request on her own initiative, impelled by one of those numerous
+and more or less reasonable caprices which were continually shooting
+through her head.  But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long
+widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any
+<I>arričre-pensée</I> whatever?  Furthermore, if this proposal had been
+merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been
+so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter
+of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs?  It is more
+probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim.  By giving a
+husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give a leader to the
+anti-Tiberian party.  The sons of Germanicus were too young, and
+Agrippina was too violent and tactless, to be able alone to cope
+successfully with Sejanus, supported as he was by Tiberius, by Livia,
+and by Antonia.  We can thus explain why Tiberius opposed and prevented
+the marriage: Agrippina, unassisted, had caused him sufficient trouble;
+it would have been entirely superfluous for him to sanction her taking
+to herself an official counselor in the guise of a husband.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This time Sejanus triumphed over the ill success of his rivals, and the
+struggle continued in this manner between the two parties, but with an
+increasing advantage to Sejanus.  Beginning with the year 26, we see
+numerous indications that the party of Agrippina and Germanicus was no
+longer able to resist the blows and machinations of Sejanus, who
+detached from it, one after another, all the men of any importance.  He
+either won them over to himself through his favors and his promises, or
+he frightened them with his threats; and those who resisted most
+tenaciously, he destroyed with his suits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tiberius was the storm-center of these struggles, and contrary to what
+legend has reported, he attempted as far as he was able to prevent the
+two parties from going to extremes.  But what pain, repugnance, and
+fatigue it must have cost him to make the effort necessary for
+maintaining a last ray of reason and justice among so many evil
+passions, animosities, ambitions, and rivalries!  It must have cost him
+dearly, for he had grown up in the time when the dream of a great
+restoration of the aristocracy was luring the upper classes of Rome
+with its fairest and most luminous smile.  As a young man he had known
+and loved Vergil, Horace, and Livy, the two poets and the historian of
+this great dream; like all the elect spirits of those now distant
+years, he had seen behind this vision a great senate, a glorious and
+terrible army, an austere and revered republic like that which Livy had
+pictured with glowing colors in his immortal pages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instead of all this, he was now forced to take his place at the head of
+this decadent and wretched nobility, which seemed to be interested only
+in rending itself asunder with calumnies, denunciations, suits, and
+scandalous condemnations, and which repaid him for all that he had done
+and was still doing for its safety and the prosperity of the empire by
+directing against his name the most atrocious calumnies, the fiercest
+railleries, and every sort of ridiculous and infamous legend.  He had
+dreamed of victories over the enemies of Rome, and he had to resign
+himself to struggling day and night against the hysterical extravagance
+of Agrippina: he had to be content, even without the sure hope of
+success, if he could convince the majority that he was not a poisoner.
+Authority without glory or respect, power divorced from the means
+sufficient for its exercise&mdash;such was the situation in which the
+successor of Augustus, the second emperor, after twelve years of a
+difficult and trying reign, found himself.  He no longer felt himself
+safe at Rome, where he feared rightly or wrongly that his life was
+being continually threatened, and it is not astonishing that, old,
+wearied, and disgusted, between the years 26 and 27 he should have
+retired definitely to Capri, seeking to hide his misanthropy, his
+weariness, and his disgust with men and things in the wonderful little
+isle which a delightful caprice of nature had set down in the lap of
+the divine Bay of Naples.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But instead of the peace he sought at Capri, Tiberius found the infamy
+of history.  How dark and terrible are the memories of him associated
+with the charming isle, which, violet-tinted, on beautiful sunny days
+emerges from an azure sea against an azure sky!  That fragment of
+paradise fallen upon the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the
+world is said to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce
+cruelties and abominable vices.  Tiberius passed sentence upon himself,
+in the opinion of posterity, when he secluded himself in Capri.  Ought
+we, without a further word, to transcribe this sentence?  There are, to
+be sure, no decisive arguments to prove false the accounts about the
+horrors of Capri which the ancients, and especially Suetonius, have
+transmitted to us; there are some, however, which make us mistrust and
+withhold our judgment.  Above all, we have the right to ask ourselves
+how, from whom, and by access to what sources did Suetonius and the
+other ancients learn so many extraordinary details.  It must be
+remembered that all the great figures in the history of Rome who had
+many enemies, like Sylla, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus himself, were
+accused of having scandalous habits.  Precisely because the puritan
+tradition was strong at Rome, such an accusation did much harm, and for
+this reason, whether true or false, enemies were glad to repeat it
+whenever they wished to discredit a character.  Lastly, all the ancient
+writers, even the most hostile, tell us that up to a ripe age Tiberius
+preserved his exemplary habits.  Is it likely, then, that suddenly,
+when already old, he should have soiled himself with all the vices?  At
+all events, if there is any truth contained in these accounts, we can
+at most conclude that as an old man Tiberius became subject to some
+mental infirmity and that the man who took refuge at Capri was no
+longer entirely sane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Certain it is, in any case, that after his retirement to Capri,
+Tiberius seriously neglected public affairs, and that Sejanus was
+finally looked upon at Rome as the <I>de facto</I> emperor.  The bulletins
+and reports which were sent from the empire and from Rome to the
+emperor passed through his hands, as well as the decisions which
+Tiberius sent back to the state.  At Rome, in all affairs of serious or
+slight importance, the senators turned to Sejanus, and about him, whom
+all fell into the habit of considering as the true emperor, a court and
+party were formed.  In fear of his great power, the senators and the
+old aristocracy suppressed the envy which the dizzy rise of this
+obscure knight had aroused.  Rome suffered without protest that a man
+of obscure birth should rule the empire in the place of a descendant of
+the great Claudian family, and the senators of the most illustrious
+houses grew accustomed to paying him court.  Worse still, virtually all
+of them aided him, either by openly favoring him or by allowing him a
+free hand, to complete the decisive destruction of the party and the
+family of Germanicus,&mdash;of that same Germanicus of whom all had been
+fond and whose memory the people still venerated.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-192"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-192.jpg" ALT="Costume of a chief vestal (virgo vestalis maxima)." BORDER="2" WIDTH="295" HEIGHT="474">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Costume of a chief vestal (virgo vestalis maxima).]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+After the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, all felt that Agrippina and
+her sons were inevitably doomed sooner or later to succumb in the duel
+with the powerful, ambitious, and implacable prefect of the pretorians
+who represented Tiberius at Rome.  Only a few generous idealists
+remained faithful to the conquered, who were now near their
+destruction; such supporters as might possibly ease the misery of ruin,
+but not ward it off or avoid it.  Among these last faithful and heroic
+friends was a certain Titius Sabinus, and the implacable Sejanus
+destroyed him with a suit of which Tacitus has given us an account, a
+horrible story of one of the most abominable judicial machinations
+which human perfidy can imagine.  Dissensions arose to aggravate the
+already serious danger in which Agrippina and her friends had been
+placed.  Nero, the first-born son, and Drusus, the second, became
+hostile at the very moment when they should have united against the
+ruthless adversary who wished to exterminate them all.  A last rock of
+refuge remained to protect the family of Germanicus.  It was Livia, the
+revered old lady who had been present at the birth of the fortunes of
+Augustus and the new imperial authority, and who had held in her arms
+that infant world which had been born in the midst of the convulsions
+of the civil wars, and a little later had watched it try its first
+steps on the pathway of history.  Livia did not much love Agrippina,
+whose hatred and intrigues against Tiberius she had always blamed; but
+she was too wise and too solicitous of the prestige of the family to
+allow Sejanus entirely to destroy the house of Germanicus.  As long as
+she lived, Agrippina and Nero could dwell safely in Rome.  But Livia
+was feeble, and in the beginning of 29, at the age of eighty-six, she
+died.  The catastrophe which had been carefully prepared by Sejanus was
+now consummated; a few months after the death of Livia, Agrippina and
+Nero were subjected to a suit, and, under an accusation of having
+conspired against Tiberius, were condemned to exile by the senate.
+Shortly after his condemnation, Nero committed suicide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The account which Tacitus gives us of this trial is obscure, involved,
+and fragmentary, for the story is broken off at its most important
+point by an unfortunate lacuna in the manuscript.  The other historians
+add but little light with their brief phrases and passing allusions.
+We do not therefore entirely understand either the contents of the
+charges, the reason for the condemnation, the stand taken by the
+accused, or the conduct of Tiberius with regard to the accusation.  It
+seems hardly probable that Agrippina and Nero could have been truly
+guilty of a real conspiracy against Tiberius.  Isolated as they had
+been by Sejanus after the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, they would
+scarcely have been able to set a conspiracy on foot, even if they had
+so desired.  They were paying the penalty for the long war of calumnies
+and slanders which they had waged upon Tiberius, for the aversion and
+the scorn which they had always shown for him.  In this course of
+conduct many senators had encouraged them as long as Tiberius alone had
+not dared to have recourse to violent and cruel measures in order to
+make himself respected by his family.  But such acts of disrespect
+became serious crimes for the unfortunate woman and her hapless son,
+even in the eyes of the senators who had encouraged them to commit
+them, now that Sejanus had reinvigorated the imperial authority with
+his energy, and now that all felt that behind Tiberius and in his name
+and place there was acting a man of decision who knew how to punish his
+enemies and to reward his friends.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trial and condemnation of Agrippina and Nero were certainly the
+machinations of Sejanus, who carried along with him not only the senate
+and the friends of the imperial family, but perhaps even Tiberius
+himself.  They prove how much Sejanus had been able to strengthen
+imperial authority, which had been hesitating and feeble in the last
+decade.  Sejanus had dared to do what Tiberius had never succeeded in
+doing; he had destroyed that center of opposition which gathered about
+Agrippina in the house of Germanicus.  It is therefore scarcely
+necessary to say that the ruin of Agrippina still further increased the
+power of Sejanus.  All bowed trembling before the man who had dared
+humiliate the very family of the Julio-Claudii.  Honors were showered
+upon his head; he was made senator and pontifex; he received the
+proconsular power; there was talk of a marriage between him and the
+widow of Nero; and it was finally proposed that he be named consul for
+five years.  Indeed, in 31, through the will of Tiberius, he actually
+became the colleague of the emperor himself in the consulate.  He
+needed only the tribunician power to make him the official collaborator
+of the emperor and his designated successor.  Every one at Rome,
+furthermore, considered him the future prince.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-198"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-198.jpg" ALT="Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins." BORDER="2" WIDTH="495" HEIGHT="419">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+But having arrived at this height, Sejanus's head was turned, and he
+asked himself why he should exercise the rule and have all its burdens
+and dangers while he left to others the pomp, the honors, and the
+advantages.  Although Tiberius allowed the senate to heap honors upon
+his faithful prefect of the pretorians, and though he himself showed
+his gratitude to him in many ways, even going to the point of being
+willing to give him the widow of Nero in marriage, he never really
+expected to take him as his colleague or to designate him as his
+successor.  Tiberius was a Claudian, and that a knight without ancestry
+should be placed at the head of the Roman aristocracy was to him
+unthinkable; after the exile of Nero he had cast his eyes upon Caius,
+another son of Germanicus, as his possible successor.  Nor had he
+hidden his intention: he had even clearly expressed it in different
+speeches to the senate.  Therefore Sejanus must finally have come to
+the conclusion that if he continued to defend Tiberius and his
+interests, he could no longer hope for anything from him, and might
+even compromise the influence and the popularity which he had already
+acquired.  Tiberius was hated and detested, there was a numerous party
+opposed to him in the senate, and he was extremely unpopular among the
+masses.  Many admired Sejanus through spiteful hatred of Tiberius, for
+it amounted to saying that they preferred to be governed by an obscure
+knight rather than by an old and detested Claudian who had shut himself
+up in Capri.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And thus Sejanus seems to have deluded himself into believing that if
+he succeeded in doing away with the emperor, he could easily take his
+position by setting aside the young son of Germanicus and profiting by
+the popularity which the fall of Tiberius would bring him.  Little by
+little he came to an understanding with the enemies of Tiberius and
+prepared a conspiracy for the final overthrow of the odious government
+of the son of Livia.  Many senators had agreed to this, and certainly
+few conspiracies were ever organized under more favorable auspices.
+Tiberius was old, disgusted with everything and everybody, and alone in
+Capri; he had virtually not a single friend in Rome; what happened in
+the world he knew only through what Sejanus told him.  He was therefore
+entirely in the hands of the man who was preparing to sacrifice him to
+the tenacious hatred of the people and the senatorial aristocracy.
+Young, energetic, and the favorite of fortune, Sejanus had with him a
+formidable party in the senate, he was the commander of the pretorian
+guard,&mdash;that is, of the only military force stationed in Italy,&mdash;and he
+had terrified with his implacable persecutions all those whom he had
+failed to win over through his promises or his favors.  Could the duel
+between this misanthropic old man and this vigorous, energetic,
+ruthless climber end in any other way than with the defeat of the
+former?
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-203"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-203.jpg" ALT="Bust, supposed to be of Antonia&mdash;daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia&mdash;and mother of Germanicus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="326" HEIGHT="512">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Bust, supposed to be of Antonia&mdash;daughter of <BR>Mark Antony
+and Octavia&mdash;and mother of Germanicus.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+But now stepping forward suddenly from the shadows to which she had
+retired, a lady appeared, threw herself between the two contestants,
+and changed the fate of the combat.  It was Antonia, the daughter of
+the famous triumvir, the revered widow of Drusus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the death of Livia, Antonia was the most respected personage of
+the imperial family in Rome.  She still watched, withdrawn but alert,
+over the destiny of the house now virtually destroyed by death,
+dissensions, the cruelty of the laws, and the relentless anger of the
+aristocracy.  It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and
+courageously she informed Tiberius.  The latter, in danger and in
+Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period.  The
+danger was most threatening, especially because Sejanus was the
+commander of the pretorian guard.  Tiberius beguiled him with friendly
+letters, dangling in front of him the hope that he had conceded to him
+the tribunician power.&mdash;that is, that he had made him his
+colleague,&mdash;while at the same time he secretly took measures to appoint
+a successor for him.  Suddenly Sejanus learned that he was no longer
+commander of the guard, and that the emperor had accused him before the
+senate of conspiracy.  In an instant, under this blow, the fortunes of
+Sejanus collapsed.  The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu,
+the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated
+the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and
+the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him.  Sejanus,
+his family, his friends, his accomplices, and those who seemed to be
+his accomplices, were put to death after summary trials by the fury of
+the mob; and in Rome blood flowed in torrents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Antonia might now have enjoyed the satisfaction of having saved through
+her foresight not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when suddenly
+one of the surges of that fierce tempest of ambitions and hatreds tore
+from her side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow of Drusus, and
+cast her as a prey into that sea of blind popular frenzy.  The reader
+has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was
+hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata.
+Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and
+she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in
+which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance
+with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry.  I confess that this accusation
+seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation
+of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it.  Above all, it is
+well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have had of this crime, and
+how she could have procured them even if the crime had been committed.
+Since the two accomplices would have been obliged to hide their
+infamous deed from all, there was no one from whom they would have
+concealed it more carefully than from Apicata.  We must further note
+that it is not probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was in the year
+23, would have thought of committing so serious a crime as that of
+poisoning the son of his protector.  For what reason would he have done
+so?  He did not then think of succeeding Tiberius; by removing Drusus,
+he would merely have improved the situation of the family of
+Germanicus, which at that time was already hostile to him and with
+which he was preparing to struggle.  Instead, might not this accusation
+<I>in extremis</I> be the last vengeance of a repudiated woman against the
+rival who for a moment had threatened to take the position from which
+she herself had been driven?  Apicata did not belong to the
+aristocracy, and, unlike the ladies of the senatorial families, she had
+not therefore been brought up with the idea of having to serve docilely
+as an instrument for the political career of her own husband.  Perhaps
+her denunciation was the revenge of feminine jealousy, of that passion
+which the lower orders of Roman society did not extinguish in the
+hearts of their women as did the aristocracy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This denunciation, however,&mdash;we know this from the pages of ancient
+writers,&mdash;was one of the most terrible griefs of Tiberius's old age.
+He had loved his son tenderly, and the idea of leaving so horrible a
+crime unpunished, in case the accusation was true, drove him to
+desperation.  Yet, on the other hand, Livilla, the presumptive
+criminal, was the daughter of his faithful friend, of that Antonia who
+had saved him from the treacheries of Sejanus.  As for the public, ever
+ready to believe all the infamies which were reported of the imperial
+house, it was firmly convinced that Livilla was an abominable poisoner.
+A great trial was set on foot; many suspects were put to torture, which
+is evidence that they were arriving at no definite conclusions, and
+this was probably because they were seeking for the proofs of an
+imaginary crime.  Livilla, however, did not survive the scandal, the
+accusations, the suspicions of Tiberius, and the distrust of those
+about her.  Because she was the daughter of Drusus and the
+daughter-in-law of Tiberius, because she belonged to the family which
+fortune had placed at the head of the immense empire of Rome, she would
+not be able to persuade any one that she was innocent.  The obscure
+woman, without ancestry, who was accusing her from the grave, would be
+taken at her word by every one; she would convince posterity and
+history; against all reason she would prevail over the greatness of
+Livilla!  So Livilla took refuge in her mother's house and starved
+herself to death, for she was unable to outlive an accusation which it
+was impossible to refute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Tiberius's reign continued for six years after this terrible tragedy,
+but it was only a species of slow death-agony.  The year 33 saw still
+another tragic event&mdash;the suicide of Agrippina and her son Drusus.  Of
+the race of Germanicus there remained alive only one son, Caius (the
+later Emperor Caligula), and three daughters, of whom the eldest,
+Agrippina, the mother of Nero, had been married a few years before to
+the descendant of one of the greatest houses of Rome, Cnaeus Domitius
+Enobarbus.  Tiberius still remained as the last relic of a bygone time
+to represent ideas and aspirations which were henceforth lost causes,
+amid the ruins and the tombs of his friends.  Posterity, following in
+the footsteps of Tacitus, has held him and his dark nature alone
+responsible for this ruin.  We ought to believe instead that he was a
+man born to a loftier and more fortunate destiny, but that he had to
+pay the penalty for the unique eminence to which fortune had exalted
+him.  Like the members of his family who had been driven into exile,
+who had died before their time, who had been driven to suicide in
+despair, he, too, was the victim of a tragic situation full of
+insoluble contradictions; and precisely because he was destined to
+live, he was perhaps the most unfortunate victim of them all.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+[1] There was in the Roman legal system no public prosecutor and
+virtually no police.  Every Roman citizen was supposed to watch over
+the laws and see that they were not infringed.  On his retirement from
+office, any governor or magistrate ran the risk of being impeached by
+some young aspirant to political honors, and not infrequently oratory,
+an art much cultivated by the Romans, triumphed over righteousness.  In
+the earlier period the ground on which charges were usually brought was
+malversation; in the time of the empire they were also frequently
+brought under the above-mentioned law <I>de majestate</I>.  It has been said
+that this common act of accusation, the birthright of the Roman
+citizen, the greatly esteemed palladium of Roman freedom, became the
+most convenient instrument of despotism.  Since he who could bring a
+criminal to justice received a fourth of his possessions and estates,
+and since it brought the accuser into prominence, delation was
+recklessly indulged in by the unscrupulous, both for the sake of gain
+and as a means of venting personal spite.  The vice lay at the very
+heart of the Roman system, and was not the invention of Tiberius.  He
+could hardly have done away with it without overthrowing the whole
+Roman procedure.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+V
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After the death of Tiberius (37 A.D.), the problem of the succession
+presented to the senate was not an easy one.  In his will, Tiberius had
+adopted, and thereby designated to the senate as his successors, Caius
+Caligula, the son of Germanicus, and Tiberius, the son of his own son
+Drusus.  The latter was only seventeen, and too young for such a
+responsibility.  Caligula was twenty-seven, and therefore still very
+young, although by straining a point he might be emperor; yet he did
+not enjoy a good reputation.  If we except him, there was no other
+member of the family old enough to govern except Tiberius Claudius
+Nero, the brother of Germanicus and the only surviving son of Drusus
+and Antonia.  He was generally considered a fool, was the
+laughing-stock of freedmen and women, and such a gawk and clown that it
+had been impossible to put him into the magistracy.  Indeed, he was not
+even a senator when Tiberius died.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-214"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-214.jpg" ALT="Caligula." BORDER="2" WIDTH="340" HEIGHT="529">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Caligula.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+As they could not consider him, there remained only Caligula, unless
+they wished to go outside the family of Augustus, which, if not
+impossible, was at least difficult and dangerous.  For the provinces,
+the German barbarians, and especially the soldiers of the legions, were
+accustomed to look upon this family as the mainstay of the empire.  The
+legions had become specially attached to the memory and to the race of
+Drusus and Germanicus, who still lived in the minds of the soldiers as
+witnesses to their former exploits and virtues.  During the long
+watches of the night, as their names were repeated in speech and story,
+their shades, idealized by death, returned again to revisit the camps
+on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube.  The veneration and affection
+which the armies had once felt for the Roman nobility were now centered
+about the family of Augustus.  In this difficulty, therefore, the
+senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a part of the testament of
+Tiberius, elected Caligula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The death of Tiberius, however, was destined to show the Romans for the
+first time that although it was hard to find an emperor, it might even
+be harder to find an empress.  During the long reign of Augustus, Livia
+had discharged the duties of this difficult position with incomparable
+success.  Tiberius had succeeded Augustus, and after his divorce from
+Julia had never remarried.  There had therefore been a long interregnum
+in the Roman world of feminine society, during which no one had ever
+stopped to think whether it would be easy or difficult to find a woman
+who could with dignity take over the position of Livia.  The problem
+was really presented for the first time with the advent of Caligula;
+for, at twenty-seven, he could not solve it as simply as Tiberius had
+done.  In the first place, it was to be expected that a man of his age
+would have a wife; secondly, the <I>Lex de maritandis ordinibus</I> made
+marriage a necessity for him, as for all the senators; furthermore, the
+head of the state needed to have a woman at his side, if he wished to
+discharge all his social duties.  The celibacy of Tiberius had
+undoubtedly contributed to the social isolation which had been fatal
+both to him and to the state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Therefore in Caligula's time the Roman public became aware that the
+problem confronting it was a most difficult one.  A most exacting
+public opinion, hesitating between the ideals of two epochs, wished to
+see united in the empress the best part, both of the ancient and of the
+modern customs, and was consequently demanding that the second Livia
+should possess virtually every quality.  It was necessary that she
+should be of noble birth; that is, a descendant of one of those great
+Roman families which with every year were becoming less numerous, less
+prolific, less virtuous, and more fiercely divided among themselves by
+irreconcilable hatreds.  This latter was a most serious difficulty; for
+by marrying into one of these lines, the emperor ran the risk of
+antagonizing all those other families which were its enemies.  The
+empress, furthermore, must be the model of all the virtues; fruitful,
+in order to obey the <I>Lex de maritandis ordinibus</I>; religious, chaste,
+and virtuous, that she might not violate the <I>Lex de adulteriis</I>;
+simple and modest, in deference to the <I>Lex sumptuaria</I>.  She must be
+able to rule wisely over the vast household of the emperor, full of his
+slaves and freedmen, and she must aid her husband in the fulfilment of
+all those social duties&mdash;receptions, dinners, entertainments&mdash;which,
+though serious concerns for every Roman nobleman, were even more
+serious for the emperor.  That she should be stupid or ignorant was of
+course out of the question.  In fact, from this time to the downfall of
+Nero the difficulties of the imperial family and its authority arise
+not so much from the emperors as from their wives; so that it may truly
+be said that it was the women who unwittingly dragged down to its ruin
+the great Julio-Claudian house.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-219"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-219.jpg" ALT="A bronze sestertius (slightly enlarged), showing th" BORDER="2" WIDTH="429" HEIGHT="629">
+</CENTER>
+<H4>
+[Illustration (top): A bronze sestertius (slightly enlarged), showing the
+sisters of Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on one
+side and Germanicus on the other side.]
+</H4>
+
+<H4>
+[Illustration (bottom): A bronze sestertius with the head of Agrippina the
+Elder, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, the daughter of Augustus.  She
+was the wife of Germanicus, and their daughter, Agrippina the younger,
+was the mother of the Emperor Nero.]
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+But if the difficulty was serious, there never was a man so little
+fitted and so ill prepared to face it as this young man of twenty-seven
+who had been exalted to the imperial dignity after the death of
+Tiberius.  Four years before his election as emperor, he had married a
+certain Julia Claudilla, a lady who doubtless belonged to one of the
+great Roman families, but about whom we have no definite information.
+We cannot say, therefore, whether or not at the side of a second
+Augustus she might have become a new Livia.  In any case, it is certain
+that Caligula was not a second Augustus.  He was probably not so
+frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was
+certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and
+unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne
+had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time
+when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared.
+For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he
+had continually feared that the fate of his mother and his two brothers
+was likewise waiting for him.  Far from having dreamed that he would be
+raised to the imperial purple, he had merely desired that he might not
+have to end his days as an exile on some desert island in the
+Mediterranean.  So much good fortune after the long persecutions of his
+family profoundly disturbed his mental faculties, which had not
+originally been well balanced, and it fomented in him that delirium of
+grandeur which violently directed his desires toward distant Egypt, in
+the customs of which, rather than in those of Rome, he, in the
+exaltation of power, sought satisfaction for his imperial vanity.  From
+his earliest youth Caligula had shown a great inclination for the
+products and the men of that far country, then greatly admired and
+greatly feared by the Romans.  For instance, we know that all his
+servants were Egyptians, and that Helicon, his most faithful and
+influential freedman, was an Alexandrian.  But shortly after his
+elevation this admiration for the land of the Ptolemies and the
+Pharaohs broke forth into a furor of Egyptian exoticism, which impelled
+him to an attempt to bring his own reign into connection with the
+policies of his great-grandfather Mark Antony.  He sought to introduce
+into Rome the ideas, the customs, the sumptuousness, and the
+institutions of the Pharaoh-Ptolemaic monarchy, to make of his palace a
+court similar to that of Alexandria, and of himself a divine king,
+adored in flesh and blood, as sovereigns were adored on the banks of
+the Nile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caligula was undoubtedly mad, but his madness would have seemed less
+chaotic and incomprehensible, and a thread of sense would have been
+discovered even in his excesses and in the ravings of his unsettled
+mind, if it had been understood that many of his most famous freaks
+were moved and inspired by this Egyptian idea and tendency.  In the
+madness of Caligula, as in the story of Antony and the tragedy of
+Tiberius, there is forever recurring, under a new form, the great
+struggle between Italy and the East, between Rome and Alexandria, which
+can never be divorced from the history of the last century of the
+republic and the first century of the empire.  Whoever carefully sifts
+out the separate actions in the disordered conduct of the third Roman
+emperor will easily rediscover the thread of this idea and the trace of
+this latent conflict.  For instance, we see the new emperor scarcely
+elected before he introduced the worship of Isis among the official
+cults of the Roman state and assigned in the calendar a public festival
+to Isis.  In short, he was favoring those Egyptian cults which
+Tiberius, with his "old-Roman" sympathies, had fiercely combatted.
+Furthermore, we see Caligula prohibiting the festival in commemoration
+of the battle of Actium, which had been celebrated every year for more
+than half a century.  At first sight the idea seems absurd; but it must
+not be considered a caprice; for with this act Caligula was intending
+to initiate the historical rehabilitation of Mark Antony, the man who
+had tried to shift the center of Roman politics from Rome to
+Alexandria.  The emperor meant to make plain to Rome that she was no
+longer to boast of having humiliated Alexandria with arms, since
+Alexandria would henceforth be taken as a model in all things.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-225"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-225.jpg" ALT="Claudius, Messalina, and their two children in what is known as the &quot;Hague Cameo.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="405" HEIGHT="322">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Claudius, Messalina, and their two children <BR>in what is
+known as the "Hague Cameo."]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Just as the dynasty of the Ptolemies had been surrounded by a
+semi-religious veneration, Caligula, inspired as he was by Egyptian and
+Ptolemaic conceptions, sought to have this same veneration bestowed
+upon his entire family&mdash;that family which under Tiberius had been
+persecuted and defamed by suits and decimated by suicides through the
+envy of the aristocracy, which was forever unwilling to forgive its too
+great prestige.  Caligula not only hastened to set out in person to
+gather up the bones of Agrippina, his mother, and of his brother, in
+order to bring them to Rome and deposit them piously in the tomb of
+Augustus,&mdash;that was a natural duty of filial piety,&mdash;but he also
+prohibited any one to name among his ancestors the great Agrippa, the
+builder of the Pantheon, because his very obscure origin seemed a blot
+upon the semi-divine purity of his race.  He had the title of Augusta
+and all the privileges of the vestal virgins bestowed upon his
+grandmother Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and the faithful
+friend of Tiberius; he had these same vestal privileges bestowed upon
+his three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla; he had assigned to
+them a privileged position equal to his own at the games in the circus;
+he even had it decreed that their names should be included in the vows
+which the magistrates and pontiffs offered every year for the
+prosperity of the prince and of his people, and that in the prayers for
+the conservation of his power there should also be included a prayer
+for their felicity.  This was a small revolution from the
+constitutional point of view; for the Romans, though allowing their
+women ample freedom to occupy themselves with politics from the
+retirement of their homes, had never recognized for them any official
+capacity.  Tiberius, faithfully adhering in this also to tradition, had
+gone as far as to prevent the senate, at the time of Livia's death,
+from voting public honors to her memory, which, he thought, might have
+justified the belief that his mother had been, not a matron of the old
+Roman stamp, but a public personage.  Caligula, however, was quite
+indifferent to tradition, and by his expressed will, as if in reaction
+against the persecutions and the humiliations which the imperial family
+had suffered under Tiberius, even the sisters of the emperor acquired a
+sacred character and a privileged position in the state.  For the first
+time the women of the imperial family acquired the character of
+official personages.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It cannot be denied that the transition from atrocious prosecutions to
+divine honors was somewhat sudden, but this is merely a further proof
+that Caligula was endowed with a violent, impulsive, and irreflective
+temperament.  In any case, there was neither scandal nor protest at
+that time.  Caligula during the first months of his rule was popular,
+not for his measures in favor of the women of his family, but for
+reasons of far greater importance.  He had inaugurated a régime which
+promised to be more indulgent, more prodigal, less harsh than that of
+Tiberius.  Extravagance had made rapid strides, especially in the ranks
+of the aristocracy, during the twenty-two years of Tiberius's rule: and
+although the latter, especially toward the end of his life, had ceased
+struggling against this tendency, nevertheless his well-known aversion
+to sumptuous living, and the example of simplicity which he set before
+the eyes of all, had always been a cause of preoccupation to the
+aristocracy&mdash;to men as well as women.  There was no certainty that the
+emperor might not again, some day, try to enforce the sumptuary laws.
+When Caligula therefore began his career, indicating very clearly his
+sympathies with the modernizing party by his eagerness to do away with
+the old Roman simplicity, the young aristocracy of both sexes did not
+conceal their satisfaction.  After a long period of old-fashioned
+traditional policy, enforced by the two preceding emperors, they
+welcomed with joy the young reformer who set out to introduce in the
+imperial government the spirit of the new generations.  No one was
+sorry that all the purveyors of voluptuousness,&mdash;mimes, singers,
+actors, dancers of both sexes, cooks, and puppets,&mdash;should with noisy
+joy break into the imperial palace, which had been official, severe,
+and cold under Tiberius, and bring back pleasure, luxury, and
+festivals.  All hoped that under the rule of this indulgent, youthful
+emperor, life, especially at Rome, would become more pleasant and gay;
+and no one therefore felt disposed to protest against the official
+honors which, contrary to custom, had been bestowed upon the women of
+the imperial family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In truth, if he, still harking back to Egyptian ideas and customs, had
+been content with surrounding his family, especially its women, with a
+respect which would have protected them against the infamous
+accusations and iniquitous persecutions to which many had fallen
+victims, he might have had credit for an action which was good, just,
+and useful to the state.  That strange condition of affairs which had
+been growing up under Tiberius was both absurd and dangerous to the
+country: the emperor was honored with extraordinary powers and made the
+object of a semi-religious veneration; but his family, and especially
+its women, were, as a sort of retribution, set outside the laws and
+fiercely assailed in a thousand insidious ways.  But the lunatic
+Caligula was not the man to keep even a wise proposal within reasonable
+limits.  Power, popularity, and praise quickly aroused all that was
+warped and excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he showed at the
+end of the year 37, he entertained an idea which must have seemed to
+the Romans a horrible impiety.  His wife died soon after he became
+emperor.  Another marriage seemed obligatory, and he decided that he
+would marry his sister Drusilla.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Historians have represented this intention as the perverse delirium of
+an unbridled sensuality.  It was certainly the gross act of a madman,
+but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for
+it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between
+brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the
+Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt.  This oriental custom certainly
+seems a horrible aberration to us, who have been educated according to
+the strict and austere doctrines of Christianity, which, inheriting in
+these matters the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has purified and
+rendered them more rigorous.  But for centuries in Egypt,&mdash;that is, in
+the most ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations,&mdash;this horrible
+aberration was looked upon as a sovereign privilege which brought the
+royal dynasty into relationship with the gods.  By means of it, this
+family preserved the semi-divine purity of its blood; and perchance
+this custom, which had survived up to the fall of the Ptolemies, was
+only the projection of ideas and customs which in most ancient times
+had had a much wider diffusion along the Mediterranean world, for
+traces of it can be found even in Greek mythology.  For were not
+Jupiter and Juno, who constituted the august Olympian couple, at the
+same time also brother and sister?   Gradually restricted through the
+spreading of Greek civilization, this custom was finally eradicated at
+the shores of the Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction of the
+kingdom of the Ptolemies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it into his head to transplant
+this custom to Rome&mdash;to transplant it with all the religious pomp of
+the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform the family of Augustus, which
+up to the present had been merely the most eminent family of the Roman
+aristocracy, into a dynasty of gods and demigods, whose members were to
+be united by marriage among themselves in order not to pollute the
+celestial purity of their blood.  A fraternal and divine pair were to
+rule at Rome, like another Arsinoë and Ptolemy, whom the Alexandrian
+throngs had worshiped on the banks of the Nile.  The idea had already
+matured in his mind at the end of the year 37, and among his three
+sisters he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife.  This is proved
+by a will made at the time of an illness which he contracted in the
+autumn of the first year of his rule.  In this will he appointed
+Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but also of his empire, a wild
+folly from the point of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit women
+to the government; but it proves that Caligula had already thought and
+acted like an Egyptian king.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-236"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-236.jpg" ALT="Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the Caesars." BORDER="2" WIDTH="539" HEIGHT="433">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the
+Caesars.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+It is easy to understand why the peace and harmony which had been
+reestablished for a moment in the troubled imperial family by the
+advent of Caligula should have been of brief duration.  His grandmother
+and his sisters were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and this exotic
+madness of his could inspire in them only an irresistible horror.  This
+brought confusion into the imperial family, and after having suffered
+the persecutions of Sejanus and his party, the unhappy daughters of
+Germanicus found themselves in the toils of the exacting caprices of
+their brother.  In fact, in 38, Caligula had already broken with his
+grandmother, whom the year before he had had proclaimed Augusta; and
+between the years 38 and 39, catastrophes followed one another in the
+family with frightful rapidity.  His sister Drusilla, whom, as
+Suetonius tells us, he already treated as a lawful wife, died suddenly
+of some unknown malady while still very young.  It is not improbable
+that her health may have been ruined by the horror of the wild
+adventure, which was neither human nor Roman, into which her brother
+sought to drag her by marriage.  Caligula suddenly declared her a
+goddess, to whom all the cities must pay honors.  He had a temple built
+for her, and appointed a body of twenty priests, ten men and ten women,
+to celebrate her worship; he decreed that her birthday should be a
+holiday, and he wished the statue of Venus in the Forum to be carved in
+her likeness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But in proportion as Caligula became more and more fervid in this
+adoration of his dead sister, the disagreement between himself and his
+other two sisters became more embittered.  Julia Livilla was exiled in
+38; Agrippina, the wife of Domitius Enobarbus, in 39, and about this
+same time the venerable Antonia died.  It was noised about that
+Caligula had forced her to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and
+Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against the life of the emperor.
+How much truth there may be in these reports it is difficult to say,
+but the reason for all these catastrophes may be affirmed with
+certainty.  Life in the imperial palace was no longer possible,
+especially for women, with this madman who was transforming Rome into
+Alexandria and who wished to marry a sister.  Even Tiberius, the son of
+Drusus and co-heir to the empire with Caligula, was at about this time
+defeated in some obscure suit and disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Caligula therefore remained alone at Rome to represent in the imperial
+palace the family which only ironically can be considered as the most
+fortunate in Rome.  Of three generations, upon whom fate seemed to have
+showered all the gifts of life, there remained at his side only
+Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen,
+whom no one molested because all could make game of him.  A madman and
+an imbecile,&mdash;or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,&mdash;this
+was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after the
+battle of Actium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the divine honors of the Roman
+Olympus, Caligula was reduced to hunting for wives in the families of
+the aristocracy.  But it seems that even there could be found no great
+abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the
+Olympian consorts of so capricious a god.  In three years he married
+and repudiated three&mdash;and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust
+the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves.  The first was Livia
+Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso.  The emperor, who had seen the woman
+at the marriage celebration, became, we are told, so infatuated with
+her that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he then married her,
+and a few days later repudiated her.  Caligula is said to have compared
+himself on this occasion to Romulus who ravished the Sabine woman, and
+to Augustus who raped Livia.  The second was Lollia Paulina, wife of
+Caius Memmius, proconsul of a distant province.  Caligula heard of the
+prodigious beauty of Lollia's grandmother.  The portrayal of her charms
+made him fall in love with her granddaughter, though absent and
+distant.  He gave orders for her immediate recall to Rome, and as soon
+as she could be divorced from her husband he married her.  This union,
+like the former one, lasted only a brief time.  The third wife was
+Milonia Caesonia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, though from
+the accounts of ancient writers she appears to have been much older
+than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he
+first loved her.  It is difficult to determine how much truth there is
+in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his
+frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love&mdash;a passion
+which deranges somewhat even wise men.  It is not strange, therefore,
+that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater
+excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men.  Yet some of
+these accounts seem a little incredible even when ascribed to a madman.
+However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, Milonia Caesonia
+are figures without relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one of
+whom had time enough even to occupy the highest post.  In vain the
+people expected that there would appear in the imperial palace a worthy
+successor to Livia.  Caligula, like all madmen, was by nature solitary,
+and could not live with other human beings: he was to remain alone, a
+prey to his ravings, which became even stranger and more violent.  He
+now wished to impose upon the empire the worship of his own person,
+without considering any opposition or local traditions and
+superstitions.  In doing this he did violence not only to the civic and
+republican sentiment of Italy, which detested this worship of a living
+man as an ignoble oriental adulation, but also to the religious feeling
+of the Hebrews, to whom this cult appeared most horrible and idolatrous.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-242"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-242.jpg" ALT="The Emperor Caligula." BORDER="2" WIDTH="239" HEIGHT="491">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The Emperor Caligula.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and sedition arose in all
+parts of the empire.  The extravagances, the wild expenditures, the
+riotous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula increased the
+discontent and disgust on every hand.  We need not take literally all
+the accounts of his cruelty and violence which ancient writers have
+transmitted to us,&mdash;even Caligula has been blackened,&mdash;but it is
+certain that his government in the last two years of his reign
+degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, violent, and cruel tyranny.
+One day the empire awoke in terror to the fact that the imperial
+family&mdash;that family in which the legions, the provinces, and the
+barbarians saw the keystone of the state&mdash;no longer existed; that in
+the vast imperial palace, empty of women, empty of children, empty of
+hope, there wandered a raging madman of thirty-one, who divorced a wife
+every six months, who foolishly wasted the treasure and the blood of
+his subjects, and who was concerned with no other thought than that of
+having himself worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by all the
+empire.  A conspiracy was formed in the palace itself, and Caligula was
+killed.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The senate was much perplexed when it heard of the death of Caligula.
+What was to be done?  The majority was inclined to restore the former
+republican government by abolishing the imperial authority, and to give
+back to the senate the supreme direction of the state, which little by
+little had passed into the hands of the emperor.  But many recognized
+that this return to the ancient form of government would be neither
+easy nor without danger.  Could the senate, neglected, divided, and
+disregarded as it was, succeed in governing the immense empire?  On the
+other hand, it was not much easier to find an emperor, granted that an
+emperor was henceforth necessary.  In the family of Augustus there was
+only Claudius, too foolish and ridiculous for them to think of making
+him the head of the state.  It seems that some eminent senator offered
+his candidacy, but the senate hesitated in perplexity, on the ground
+that if the authority of the members of the family of Augustus was
+already so uncertain, so debatable, and so darkly threatened, what
+would happen to a new emperor, unknown to the legions and the
+provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors?  While the
+senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered
+Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering
+through fear lest he too be killed.  Recognizing in him the brother of
+Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor.  An act of will is
+always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations: the
+senate yielded to the legions, and recognized Claudius the imbecile as
+emperor.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-247"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-247.jpg" ALT="Claudius." BORDER="2" WIDTH="364" HEIGHT="536">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Claudius.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+But Claudius was not an imbecile, although he appeared such to many.
+Instead, he was, so to speak, a man half-grown, in whom certain parts
+of the mind were highly developed, but whose character had remained
+that of a child, timid, capricious, impulsive, giddy, and incapable of
+self-mastery.  In intellect he was learned, even cultivated; he was
+fond of studies, of history, literature, and archaeology, and spoke and
+wrote well.  But Augustus had been forced to give up the attempt to
+have him enter upon a political career because he had been unable to
+make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary
+dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the
+firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men.
+Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate,
+gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the
+imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his
+slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did with him what
+they wished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not lack the intellectual qualities necessary for governing
+well, but of the moral qualities he had none.  He was intelligent, and
+he looked stupid: he was able to consider the great questions of
+politics, war, and finance with breadth of view, with original and
+acute intelligence, but he never succeeded in having himself taken
+seriously by the persons who surrounded him.  He dared undertake great
+projects, like the conquest of Britain, and he lost his head at the
+wildest fable about conspiracy which one of his intimates told him; he
+had mind sufficient to govern the empire as well as Augustus and
+Tiberius had done, but he could not succeed in getting obedience from
+four or five slaves or from his own wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such a man was destined to turn out a rather odd emperor, at once great
+and ridiculous.  He made important laws, undertook gigantic public
+works and conquests of great moment; but in his own house he was a weak
+husband, incapable of exercising any sort of authority over his wife.
+With these conjugal weaknesses he seriously compromised the imperial
+authority, while at the same time he was consolidating it and rendering
+it illustrious with beautiful and wise achievements, especially in the
+first seven years of his rule, while he lived with Valeria Messalina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+We must admit in his justification that in this matter he had not been
+particularly fortunate; for fate had given him to wife a lady who,
+notwithstanding her illustrious ancestors,&mdash;she belonged to one of the
+greatest families of Rome, related to the family of Augustus,&mdash;was not
+exactly suited to be his companion in the imperial dignity.  Every one
+knows that the name of Valeria Messalina has become in history
+synonymous with all the faults and all the vices of which a woman can
+be guilty.  This, as usual, is the result of envy and malevolence which
+never offered truce to the family of Augustus as long as any of its
+members lived.  Many of the infamies which are attributed to her are
+evidently fables, complacently repeated by Tacitus and Suetonius, and
+easily believed by posterity.  But it is certain that if Messalina was
+not a monster, she was a beautiful woman, capricious, gay, powerful,
+reckless, avid of luxury and of money, who had never scrupled to abuse
+the weakness of her husband in any way either by deceiving him or by
+obliging him to follow her will and her caprice in everything.  She was
+a woman, in short, neither very virtuous nor serious.  There are such
+women at all times and in all social classes, and they are generally
+considered by the majority not as monsters, but as a pleasing, though
+dangerous, variety of the feminine sex.  Under normal conditions,
+nevertheless, when the husband exercises a certain energy and sagacity,
+even the danger which may result from them is relatively slight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But chance had made of Messalina an empress, and Messalina was not a
+sufficiently intelligent or serious woman to understand that if she had
+been able to abuse the weakness of Claudius with impunity while he had
+been the most obscure member of the imperial family, it was a much more
+difficult matter to continue to abuse it after he had become the head
+of the state.  It was from this error that all their difficulties
+arose.  Elated by her new position, Messalina more than ever took
+advantage of her husband's infirmity.  She began by starting new
+dissensions in the imperial family.  Claudius had recalled to Rome the
+two victims of Caligula's Egyptian caprices, Agrippina and Julia
+Livilla; but if the latter no longer found a brother in Rome to
+persecute them, they did find their aunt, and they had gained but
+little by the exchange.  Messalina soon took umbrage at the influence
+which the two sisters acquired over the mind of their weak-willed
+uncle, and it was not long before Julia Livilla was accused under the
+<I>Lex de adulteriis</I>, and exiled with Seneca, the famous philosopher,
+whom they wished rightly or wrongly to pass off as her lover.
+Agrippina, like her mother, was a virtuous woman, as is proved by the
+fact that she could not be attacked with such weapons and was enabled
+to remain in Rome; though she also had to live prudently and beware of
+her enemy, and much the more as she had only recently become a widow
+and could therefore not even count upon the protection of a husband.
+Though Agrippina remained at Rome, she was isolated and reduced to a
+position of helplessness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Messalina alone, together with four or five intelligent and
+unscrupulous freedmen, hedged Claudius about, and there began the
+period of their common government&mdash;a government of incredible waste and
+extortion.  Among these freedmen there were, to be sure, men like
+Narcissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, who did not aim merely
+at putting money into their purses, but who helped Claudius to govern
+the empire properly.  Messalina, on the other hand, thought only of
+acquiring wealth, that she might dissipate it in luxury and pleasures.
+The wife of the emperor had been selling her influence to the sovereign
+allies and vassals, to all the rich personages of the empire, who
+desired to obtain any sort of favor from the imperial authority; she
+had been seen bartering with the contractors for public works, mingling
+in the financial affairs of the state every time that there was any
+occasion to make money.  And with the money thus amassed she indulged
+in ostentatious displays which violated all the prohibitions of the
+<I>Lex sumptuaria</I>, leading a life of unseemly pleasures, in which it is
+easy to imagine what sort of example of all the finer feminine virtues
+she set.  Claudius either knew nothing of all this or else submitted
+without protest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Messalina then, with her peculiar levity of character and violence of
+temperament, continued to emphasize the modernizing Asiatic tendency
+introduced by Caligula into the state, and was influential in
+destroying the puritanic traditions of Rome and replacing them by the
+corruption and pomp of Asia.  Her rôle was exactly the opposite of that
+of Livia.  The latter had been the embodiment of the conservative
+virtues of traditionalism: the former by her egoism, her extravagance,
+and her wantonness was in a fair way to destroy all such traditions.
+Livia had been almost a vestal in her fight for the puritanism of old
+Rome: Messalina most ardently and violently fought to destroy it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such an empress, however, could hardly please the public.  While those
+who profited by her dissipations greatly admired Messalina, a lively
+movement of protest was soon started among the people, for they, unlike
+many of the aristocrats, who affected modern views and who pretended to
+scorn the traditions of ancient Rome, were faithful to all such
+puritanical traditions and wished to see at their emperor's side a lady
+adorned with all the fairer virtues of the ancient matron&mdash;with those
+virtues, in short, which Livia had personified with such dignity.  How
+could they tolerate this sort of dissipated Bacchante, who should have
+been condemned to infamy and exile with the many other Roman women who
+had been faithless to their husbands; who with the effrontery of her
+unpunished crimes dishonored and rendered ridiculous the imperial
+authority?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To the middle classes the emperor was a semi-sacred magistrate, charged
+with maintaining by law and example the purity of the family, fidelity
+in marital relations, and simplicity of customs.  Now, to their
+amazement, they saw in the person of the empress all the dissipations,
+corruptions, and perversions of the woman who wished to live only for
+her pleasure, to enjoy her beauty, and to have others enjoy it,
+enthroned, to the scandal of all honest minds, in the palace of the
+emperor.  Furthermore, it seemed to every one a scandal that one who
+was an emperor should at the same time be a weak husband; for the
+simple good sense of the Latin would not admit that a man who could
+govern an empire should not be able to command a woman.  It soon became
+the general opinion of all reasonable people that Messalina, in the
+position of Livia upon the Palatine, and with so weak a husband, was
+not only a scandal, but also a continual menace to the public.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-258"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-258.jpg" ALT="The Emperor Claudius." BORDER="2" WIDTH="249" HEIGHT="391">
+<H4>
+[Illustration:  The Emperor Claudius.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless, it would now have been no easy matter, even if the
+emperor had wished it, to convict an empress of infidelity and
+disobedience to one of the great laws of Augustus.  Caligula was a
+madman and had been able to secure three divorces, but a wiser emperor
+would have to think for a long time before rendering public the shame
+and scandals of his family, especially when confronted with an
+aristocracy which was as eager to suspect and calumniate as was the
+aristocracy of Rome.  But the problem became hopeless as soon as the
+emperor did not see or did not wish to see the faults of his wife.
+Would any one dare to step forward and accuse the empress?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The situation gradually became grave and dangerous.  The state,
+governed with intelligence, but without energy, with vast
+contradictions and hesitations, was being strengthened along certain
+lines and was going to pieces along others.  The power and extortions
+of the freedmen were breeding discontent on every hand.  Both through
+what she really did, and what the populace said she had done, Messalina
+was being transformed by the people into a legendary personage whose
+infamous deeds aroused general indignation; but all in vain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It now became quite evident that an empress was virtually invulnerable,
+and that, once enthroned upon the Palatine, there was no effective
+means of protesting against the various ways in which she could abuse
+her lofty position unless the emperor wished to interfere.  In its
+exasperation, the public finally vented upon Claudius the anger which
+the violence and misconduct of Messalina had aroused.  They declared
+that it was his weakness which was responsible for her conduct; and
+intrigues, deeds of violence, conspiracies, and attempts at civil war
+became, as Suetonius says, every-day occurrences at Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sense of insecurity and doubt was spreading throughout the state as a
+result of the indecision of the emperor, and all began to ask
+themselves how long a government could last which was at the mercy of a
+wanton.  The violent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in the
+minds of the people, added to this wide-spread feeling of insecurity
+and alarm.  As Caligula, notwithstanding the pontifical sacredness of
+his person, had been slain, to the apparent satisfaction of everybody,
+in his palace by a handful of his supposed friends and supporters, it
+seemed possible that the tragedy might easily be repeated in the case
+of Claudius.  Could not the whole Claudian government be
+overturned,&mdash;in a single night, perhaps, as that of Caligula had been
+overturned?  All hearts were filled with suspicion, distrust, and
+alarm, and many concluded that since Claudius had not succeeded in
+ridding the empire of Messalina it would be well to rid it of Claudius.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-263"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-263.jpg" ALT="Messalina, third wife of Claudius." BORDER="2" WIDTH="298" HEIGHT="491">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Messalina, third wife of Claudius.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+So for seven years Messalina remained the great weakness of a
+government which possessed signal merits and accomplished great things.
+Of all the emperors in the family of Augustus, Claudius was certainly
+the one whose life was most seriously threatened, especially because of
+his wife.  Such a situation could not endure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It finally resolved itself into a tragic scandal, which, if we could
+believe Suetonius and Tacitus, would certainly have been the most
+monstrous extravagance to which an imagination depraved by power could
+have abandoned itself.  According to these writers, Messalina, at a
+loss for some new form of dissipation, one fine day took it into her
+head to marry Silius, a young man with whom she was very much in love,
+who belonged to a distinguished family, and who was the
+consul-designate.  According to them, for the pleasure of shocking the
+imperial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous union, she actually did
+marry him in Rome, with the most solemn religious rites, while Claudius
+was at Ostia!  But is this credible, at least without admitting that
+Messalina had suddenly gone insane?  To what end and for what reason
+would she have committed such a sacrilege, which struck at the very
+heart of popular sentiment?  Dissolute, cruel, and avaricious Messalina
+certainly was, but mad she was not.  And even if we are willing to
+admit that she had gone mad, is it conceivable that all those who would
+have had to lend her their services in the staging of this revolting
+farce had also gone mad?  It is difficult to suppose that they acted
+through fear, for the empress had no such power in Rome that she could
+constrain conspicuous persons publicly to commit such sacrilege.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This episode would probably be an unfathomable enigma had not Suetonius
+by chance given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud omnem fidem
+excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat,
+tabellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For that which would pass all
+belief is the fact that in the marriage which Messalina contracted with
+the adulterer Silius, he himself [Claudius] should have signed the
+figures for the dowry").  If Claudius himself gave a dowry to the
+bride, he therefore knew that the marriage of Messalina and Silius was
+to take place; and it is precisely this fact which seems so incredible
+to Suetonius.  But we know that in the Roman aristocracy a man could
+give away his own wife in this manner; for have we not recounted in
+this present history how Livia was dowered and given in marriage to
+Augustus by her first husband, the grandfather of Claudius?  The
+deeding of a wife with a dowry was a part of the somewhat bizarre
+marriage customs of the Roman aristocracy, which gradually lost ground
+in the first and second century of our era in proportion as the
+prestige and power of that aristocracy declined, and in proportion as
+the middle classes acquired influence in the state and succeeded in
+imposing upon it their ideas and sentiments.  The passage in Suetonius
+proves to us that he no longer understood this matrimonial custom, and
+it is doubtful whether even Tacitus thoroughly understood it.  Nor is
+it improbable that it should have seemed strange even to many of the
+contemporaries of Claudius.  We could therefore explain how, not really
+understanding what had happened, the historians of the following
+century should have believed that Messalina had married Silius while
+she was still the wife of Claudius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In short, Claudius had been persuaded to divorce Messalina and to marry
+her to Silius.  The passage from Suetonius, if carefully interpreted,
+clearly tells us this.  What means were employed to persuade Claudius
+to consent to this new marriage we do not know.  Suetonius refers to
+this, but he is not clear.  In any case, this point is less important
+than that other question: Why was Messalina, after seven years of
+empire, willing to divorce Claudius and marry Silius?  The problem is
+not an easy one, but after long examination I have decided to accept
+with slight modification the explanation given by Umberto Silvagni in
+his beautiful work, "The Empire and the Women of the Caesars," a book
+which contains many original ideas and much acute observation.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-269"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-269.jpg" ALT="The philosopher Seneca." BORDER="2" WIDTH="295" HEIGHT="408">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The philosopher Seneca.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Silvagni, who is an excellent student of Roman history, has well
+brought out how Silius belonged to a family of the aristocracy famous
+for its devotion to the party of Germanicus and Agrippina.  His father,
+who had been a great friend of Germanicus, had been one of the victims
+of Sejanus, and accused in the time of Tiberius under the law of high
+treason, he had committed suicide.  His mother, Sosia Galla, had been
+condemned to exile on account of her devotion to Agrippina.  Starting
+out with these considerations, and examining acutely the accounts of
+all the ancient historians, Silvagni concluded that behind this
+marriage there lay a conspiracy to ruin Claudius and to put Caius
+Silius in his place.  Messalina must sooner or later have felt that the
+situation was an impossible one, that Claudius was not a sufficiently
+strong or energetic emperor to be able to impose the disorganized
+government of himself and his freedmen upon the empire, and that any
+day he might fall a prey to a plot or an assassination.  What would
+happen, she must have asked herself, if Claudius, like Caligula, should
+some day be despatched by a conspiracy?  The same fate would doubtless
+be waiting for her, for, having killed him, the conspirators would
+certainly murder her also.  Consequently she entertained the idea of
+ruining the emperor herself in order to contribute to the elevation of
+his successor, and thus to preserve at his side the position which she
+had occupied in the court of Claudius.  But once Claudius had been
+slain, there would be no other member of the family of Augustus old
+enough to govern.  She therefore decided to choose him in a family
+famous for its devotion to Germanicus and the more popular branch of
+the house, thus hoping the more easily to win over the legions and the
+pretorians to the cause of the new emperor, Since the descendants of
+Drusus were dead, what other option remained to her than to choose a
+successor in the families of the aristocracy who had shown for them the
+greatest devotion and love?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus, for the first time, a woman was placed at the head of a really
+vast political conspiracy destined to wrest the supreme power from the
+family of Augustus; and this woman proved her sagacity by knowing how
+to organize this great plot so well and so opportunely that the most
+intelligent and influential among the freedmen of Claudius debated for
+a long time whether they would join her or throw in their lot with the
+emperor.  So doubtful seemed the issue of this struggle between the
+weak husband and the energetic, audacious, and unscrupulous wife!  They
+allowed Messalina and Silius to enlist friends and partisans in every
+part of Roman society, to come to an understanding with the prefect of
+the guards, to obtain the divorce from Claudius, even to celebrate
+their marriage, without opening the eyes of the emperor.  Claudius
+would probably have been destroyed if at the last moment Narcissus had
+not decided to rush to the emperor, who was at Ostia, and, by
+terrifying him in some unspeakable way, had not induced him to stamp
+out the conspiracy with a bold and unexpected stroke.  There followed
+one of those periods of judicial murder which for more than thirty
+years had been costing much Roman blood, and in this slaughter
+Messalina, too, was overthrown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the discovery of the conspiracy, Claudius made a harangue to the
+soldiers, in which he told them that as he had not been very successful
+in his marriages he did not intend to take another wife.  The proposal
+was wise, but difficult of execution, for there were many reasons why
+the emperor needed to have a woman at his side.  We very soon find
+Claudius consulting his freedmen on the choice of a new wife.  There
+was much discussion and uncertainty, but the choice finally fell upon
+Agrippina.  That choice was significant.  Agrippina was the niece of
+Claudius, and marriages between uncle and niece, if not exactly
+prohibited, were looked upon by the Romans with a profound revulsion of
+feeling.  Claudius and his freedmen could not have decided to face this
+repugnance except for serious and important reasons.  Among these the
+most serious was probably that after the experience with Messalina, it
+seemed best not to go outside the family.  An empress belonging to the
+family would not be so likely to plot against the descendants of
+Augustus as had been this strange woman, who belonged to one of those
+aristocratic families who deeply hated the imperial house.  Agrippina,
+furthermore, was the daughter of Germanicus.  This was a powerful
+recommendation with the people, the pretorian cohorts, and the legions.
+In addition, she was intelligent, cultured, simple, and economical; she
+had grown up in the midst of political affairs, she knew how the empire
+was governed, and up to this point she had lived a life above reproach.
+She seemed to be the woman above all others destined to make the people
+forget Messalina and to reestablish among the masses respect for the
+family of Augustus, now seriously compromised by many scandals and
+dissensions.  Furthermore, she did not seem to suffer too much by
+comparison with Livia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Claudius asked the senate to authorize marriages between uncles and
+nieces, as he did not dare to assume the responsibility of going
+counter to public sentiment.  And thus the daughter of Germanicus and
+the sister of Caligula became an empress.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+VI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It is possible, as Tacitus says, that marriage with Claudius was the
+height of Agrippina's ambition, but it is also possible that it was an
+act of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of a woman who had been
+educated in the traditions of the Roman aristocracy, and who therefore
+considered herself merely a means to the political advancement of her
+relatives and her children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+I am rather inclined to accept this second explanation.  When she
+married Claudius, Agrippina not only married an uncle who was much
+older than herself, and who must necessarily prove a rather difficult
+and disagreeable husband, but she bound up her fate with that of a weak
+emperor whose life was continually threatened by plots and revolts, and
+whose hesitations and terrors plainly portended that he would one day
+end by precipitating the imperial authority and government into some
+bizarre and terrible catastrophe.  For Agrippina it meant that she was
+blindly staking her life and her honor, and that she would lose them
+both should she fail to compensate for the innumerable deficiencies of
+her strange husband through her own intelligence and strength of will.
+Every one will recognize how difficult was the task which she had
+undertaken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But at the beginning fortune favored Agrippina as she boldly took up
+the work that lay before her.  The wild pranks of Caligula and the
+scandals of Messalina had aroused an immeasurable disgust in Rome and
+Italy.  Every one was out of patience.  The senate as well as the
+people were demanding a stronger, more coherent, and respectable
+government, which would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious personal
+and family quarrels which were dividing Rome.  Agrippina was the
+daughter of Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and she had in her
+veins the blood of the Claudii, with all their pride, their energy,
+their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the
+moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her.  Although she was
+a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
+her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
+maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca.  The fact
+that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
+her downfall under the <I>Lex de adulteriis</I>, proves the unreliability of
+these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
+suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (<I>Nihil
+domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret</I>).  This means that Agrippina
+was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which
+stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that
+both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that
+not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded
+her ruin.  All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw
+this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the
+side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the
+most venerated personages of the family of Augustus.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-280"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-280.jpg" ALT="The Emperor Nero." BORDER="2" WIDTH="288" HEIGHT="401">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
+all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
+operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
+Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
+Agrippina herself.  In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
+great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
+fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
+madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
+reign of Claudius.  All this served to bring back into the state a
+little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
+its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government.  Tacitus
+says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (<I>adductum et quasi
+virile</I>).  This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
+laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
+to a certain order and discipline.  Severity there was, and more often
+haughtiness (<I>palam severitas ac saepius superbia</I>).  The freedmen who
+had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
+is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a check in the
+energy of Agrippina.  The state finances and the fortune of the
+imperial house were reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like all
+the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was an excellent administrator,
+frugal, and ever watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and careful of
+all items of income and expense.  The Roman aristocracy, like all other
+aristocracies, hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches,
+traffickers who had too quickly become wealthy, and all persons whose
+only aim was to amass money.  We know that Agrippina sought to prevent
+as far as possible the malversations of public funds by which the
+powerful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching themselves.  After she
+became empress we hear accounts of numerous suits instituted against
+personages who had been guilty of wasting public treasure, while under
+Messalina no such cases were brought forward.  We know, furthermore,
+that she reestablished the fortune of the imperial family, which in all
+probability had been seriously compromised by the reckless expenditures
+of Messalina.  This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his sentences,
+which, as usual, is colored by his malignity: <I>Cupido auri immensa
+obtentum habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur</I> (She sought to enrich
+the family under the pretext of providing for the needs of the empire).
+What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the contrary, the ancient
+aristocratic conception of wealth, which in the eyes of the great
+families was destined to be a means of government and an instrument of
+power: the family possessed it in order to use it for the benefit of
+the state.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In short, Agrippina attempted to revive the aristocratic traditions of
+government which had inspired the policies of Augustus and Tiberius.
+Not only did she attempt to do this, but, strange as it may seem, she
+succeeded almost without a struggle.  The government of Agrippina was
+from the first a great success.  From the moment when she became
+empress there is discernible in the entire administration a greater
+firmness and consistency of policy.  Claudius no longer seems, as
+formerly, to be at the mercy of his freedmen and the fleeting impulses
+of the moment, and even the dark shadows of the time are lighted up for
+some years.  A certain concord and tranquillity returned to the
+imperial house, to the aristocracy, to the senate, and to the state.
+Although Tacitus accuses Agrippina of having made Claudius commit all
+sorts of cruelties, it is certain that trials, scandals, and suicide
+became much less frequent under her rule.  During the six years that
+Claudius lived after his marriage with Agrippina, scandalous tragedies
+became so rare that Tacitus, being deprived of his favorite materials,
+set down the story of these six years in a single book.  In other
+words, Agrippina encountered virtually no opposition, while Tiberius
+and even Augustus, when they wished to govern according to the
+traditions of the ancient nobility, had to combat the party of the new
+aristocracy, with its modern and oriental tendencies.  This party no
+longer seemed to exist when Agrippina urged Claudius to continue
+resolutely in the policy of his ancestors, for one party only, that of
+the old nobility, seemed with Agrippina to control the state.  This
+must have been the result partly of the disgust for the scandals of the
+previous decade, which had made every one realize the need of restoring
+more serious discipline in the government, and partly of the exhaustion
+which had come upon both parties as the result of so many struggles,
+reprisals, suits, and scandals.  The force of the opposition in the two
+factions gradually diminished.  A greater gentleness induced all to
+accept the direction of the government without resistance, and the
+authority of the emperor and his counselors acquired greater importance
+in proportion as the strength of the opposition in the aristocracy and
+the senate became gradually weaker.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-286"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-286.jpg" ALT="Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of Nero." BORDER="2" WIDTH="291" HEIGHT="539">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of
+Nero.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+In any case, the empire was no longer to have forced upon it the
+ridiculous and scandalous spectacle of such weaknesses and
+incongruities as had seriously compromised the prestige of the highest
+authority in the first period of the reign of Claudius.  But Agrippina
+was not content with merely making provision as best she could for the
+present; she also looked forward to the future.  She had had a son by
+her first husband, and at the time of her marriage with Claudius this
+youth was about eleven years old.  It is in connection with her plans
+for this son that Tacitus brings his most serious charges against
+Agrippina.  According to his story, from the first day of her marriage
+Agrippina attempted to make of her son, the future Emperor Nero, the
+successor of Claudius, thereby excluding Britannicus, the son of
+Messalina, from the throne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To obtain this end, she spared, he says, neither intrigues, fraud, nor
+deceit; she had Seneca recalled from exile and appointed tutor of her
+child.  She removed from office the two commanders of the pretorian
+guard, who were creatures of Messalina, and in their stead she had
+elected one of her own, a certain Afranius Burrhus.  She laid pitfalls
+for Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, and in the year 50, by
+dint of much intrigue and many caresses, she finally succeeded in
+having Claudius adopt her son.  But this whole story is merely a
+complicated and fantastic romance, embroidered about a truth which in
+itself is comparatively simple.  Tacitus himself tells us that
+Agrippina was a most exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older
+Roman type&mdash;in his own words, <I>trux et minax</I>.  She did not follow the
+gentle methods of the newer education, which were gradually being
+introduced into the great families, and she had brought up her son in
+the ancient manner with the greatest simplicity.  It is well to keep in
+mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus nor Nero had any right to
+the throne of Claudius.  The hereditary principle did not yet exist in
+the imperial government: the senate was free to choose whomsoever it
+wished.  To be sure, up to that time the choice had always fallen upon
+a member of the Augustan family; but it had only been because it was
+easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who
+commanded the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who
+had received a certain preparation for the diverse and often difficult
+duties of their office.  And it was precisely for this reason that
+Augustus and Tiberius had always sought to prepare more than one youth
+for the highest office, both in order that the senate might have a
+certain freedom of choice, and also that there might be some one in
+reserve, in case one of these young men should disappoint the hopes of
+the empire or should die prematurely, as so many others had died.  That
+she should have persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not mean,
+therefore, that she wished to set Britannicus aside and give the
+advantage to Nero.  It merely proves that she did not wish the family
+of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and for this reason she intended
+to prepare not only one successor, but two possible successors, to
+Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and
+Tiberius.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-291"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-291.jpg" ALT="Britannicus." BORDER="2" WIDTH="443" HEIGHT="567">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Britannicus.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+In order to understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina
+really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was
+adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine.  As Claudius was already
+sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old
+lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his
+senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the
+reign.  There is a further proof that Agrippina had no thought of
+destroying the race of Claudius and Messalina, for before his adoption
+she had married Nero to Octavia, the daughter of the imperial pair.
+Octavia was a woman possessed of all the virtues which the ancient
+Roman nobility had cherished.  She was chaste, modest, patient, gentle,
+and unselfish, and she would be able to assist in strengthening the
+power of her house.  Agrippina had therefore, in the ancient manner,
+affianced the young pair at an early age, and hoped that she might make
+a couple which would serve as an example to the families of the
+aristocracy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In short, Agrippina, far from seeking to weaken the imperial house by
+destroying the descendants of Messalina, was attempting to bring her
+son into the family precisely for the purpose of giving it strength.
+And, sensible woman that she was, she could hardly have acted
+otherwise.  She had seen the family of Augustus, once so prosperous,
+reduced to a state of exhaustion and virtually destroyed by the fatal
+discord between her mother and Tiberius and the quarrels between her
+brothers.  The state had suffered greatly through the madness of
+Caligula and the reckless hatred of the first Agrippina, and the
+present empress, her daughter, who was not merely fond of her son, but
+endowed in addition with the gift of reflection, sought as far as
+possible to make amends for the evils which had unconsciously been
+wrought.  The hopes of the future were henceforth to abide in
+Britannicus and in Nero.  In Agrippina there reappeared the wisdom of
+her greatest predecessors, and the people were so well satisfied that
+they conferred upon her the very highest honor, such as in her time
+even Livia herself had not received.  She was given the title Augusta;
+she was allowed to ride into the precincts of the Capitol in a gilded
+coach (carpentum), though this was an honor which in old time had been
+conceded only to priests and to the images of the gods.  This last
+descendant of Livia and Drusus, in whom the virtues of a venerated past
+seemed to reappear, was surrounded by a semi-religious adoration.  This
+is an evidence of sincere and profound respect, for though the Romans
+often showered marks of human adulation upon their potentates, it was
+not often that they bestowed honors of so sacred a character.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The unforeseen death of Claudius suddenly cut short the work which
+Agrippina had well under way.  Claudius was sixty-four years old, and
+one night in the month of October of the year 54 he succumbed to some
+mysterious malady after a supper of which, as usual, he had partaken
+inordinately.  Tacitus pretends to know that Agrippina had secretly
+administered poison to Claudius in a plate of mushrooms.  During the
+night, however, fearing lest Claudius would survive, she had called
+Claudius's physician, Xenophon, who was a friend of hers.  The latter,
+while pretending to induce vomiting, had painted his throat with a
+feather dipped in a deadly poison, and had killed him.  This version is
+so strange and improbable that Tacitus himself does not dare affirm it,
+but says that "many believe" that it was in this manner that Claudius
+met his death.  But if there are still people credulous enough to
+believe that the head of a great state can be poisoned in the twinkling
+of an eye by a doctor who brushes his throat with a feather, it is more
+difficult to understand what grounds Agrippina could have had for
+poisoning her husband.  According to Tacitus, it was because she was
+disturbed by the fact that Claudius had for some time shown that he
+preferred Britannicus to Nero; but even if the fact were true, as a
+motive it would be ridiculous.  Augustus was much fonder of Germanicus
+than he was of Tiberius; and yet at his death the senate chose
+Tiberius, and not Germanicus, because at that moment the situation
+clearly called for the former as head of the empire.  When Claudius
+died, Britannicus was thirteen and Nero seventeen years old.  They were
+both, therefore, mere lads, and it was most probable that if the
+imperial seat fell vacant, the senate would choose neither, since they
+were both too young and inexperienced.  This is so true that other
+historians have supposed, on the contrary, that Agrippina had fallen
+out with some one of the more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and seeing
+Claudius waver, had despatched him in order that she herself should not
+end like Messalina.  But this hypothesis also is absurd.  An empress
+was virtually invulnerable.  Messalina had proved this, for she had
+committed every excess and abuse with impunity.  Agrippina, protected
+as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her
+person a virtually sacred character, had nothing to fear either from
+the weak Claudius or from his powerful freedmen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This accusation of poisoning, therefore, seems to be of precisely the
+same sort as, and not a whit more serious than, all those other similar
+accusations which were brought against the members of the Augustan
+family.  Claudius, who was already sixty-four, in all probability died
+a sudden but natural death, and from the point of view of the interests
+of the house of Augustus, which Agrippina had strongly at heart, he
+died much too soon.  It was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the
+Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings commander of the armies
+and emperor, even though they were the only survivors of the race of
+Augustus.  So true is this that Tacitus tells us that Agrippina kept
+the death of Claudius secret for many hours and pretended that the
+physicians were still struggling to save him, when in reality he was
+already dead, <I>dum res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur</I> (while
+matters were being arranged to assure the empire to Nero).
+Consequently, if everything had to be hurried through in confusion at
+the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina herself must have been
+taken by surprise by the illness and death of Claudius.  She therefore
+cannot be held responsible for having caused it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the course of events.  On
+the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after
+Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the
+doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost.  Agrippina
+immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that
+moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office,
+there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the
+supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus.  The only means of
+avoiding this danger was to bring pressure to bear upon the senate
+through the pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to the family of
+Augustus as the senate was hostile.  She must present one of the two
+youths to the guards and have him acclaimed not head of the empire, but
+head of the armies.  The senate would thereby be constrained to
+proclaim him head of the empire, as they had done in the case of
+Claudius.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But which one of the two youths was it best to choose, Claudius's son
+by blood or his son by adoption?  Nero was chosen as the result of the
+unrighteous ambition of Agrippina, so Tacitus says.  It is very
+probable that Agrippina was more eager to see her own son at the head
+of the empire than to see Britannicus there; but this does not seem to
+have been the real reason of her choice, for it could not have been
+otherwise, even if Agrippina had detested Nero and had cherished
+Britannicus with a maternal affection.  Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and therefore he had to be given the preference over the
+latter.  It was a very bold move to propose that the senate make a
+youth of seventeen emperor; it would have been nothing less than folly
+to ask that they accept a thirteen-year-old lad as commander-in-chief
+of the imperial armies of Rome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Through the help of Seneca and Burrhus, the plan developed by Agrippina
+was carried out with rapidity and success.  On the thirteenth of
+October, after matters had been arranged with the troops, the doors of
+the imperial palace were thrown open at noon; Nero, accompanied by
+Burrhus, advanced to the cohort which was on guard.  He was received
+with joyous welcome, placed in a litter, borne to the quarters of the
+pretorians, and acclaimed head of the army.  The senate grudgingly
+confirmed his election.  There resulted in Rome a most extraordinary
+situation: a youth of seventeen, educated in the antique manner, and,
+though already married, still entirely under the tutelage of a strict
+mother, had been elevated to the highest position in the immense
+empire.  He was ignorant of the luxury, pleasure, and elegance which
+were becoming general in the great families; outside of a lively
+disposition and docility toward his mother, he had up to this point
+shown no special quality, and no particular vice.  Only one peculiarity
+had been noticed in him: he had studied with great zest music,
+painting, sculpture, and poetry, and had made himself proficient in
+these arts, which were considered frivolous and useless for a Roman
+noble.  On the contrary, he had neglected oratory, which was held a
+necessary art by an aristocracy like the Roman, whose duty it was to
+use speech at councils, in the tribunals, and in the senate, just as it
+used the sword on the fields of battle.  But the majority believed that
+this was merely a passing caprice of youth.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-302"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-302.jpg" ALT="Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline Museum, Rome." BORDER="2" WIDTH="440" HEIGHT="422">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline
+Museum, Rome.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca and Burrhus, had kept
+the highest office in the state in the family of Augustus, and she had
+done so by a bold move which had not been without its dangers.  She was
+too intelligent not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old emperor could
+have no authority, and that his position would expose him to all sorts
+of envy and intrigue, and to open as well as secret opposition.  She
+succeeded in mitigating this evil and in parrying this danger by
+another very happy suggestion&mdash;the virtually complete restoration of
+the old republican constitution.  After the funeral of Claudius, Nero
+introduced himself to the senate, and in a polished and modest
+discourse, seemingly intended to excuse his youth, he declared that of
+all the powers exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep only the
+command of the armies.  All other civil, judicial, and administrative
+functions he turned over to the senate, as in the times of the republic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This "restoration of the republic" was Agrippina's masterpiece, and
+marks the zenith of her power.  It followed, as a result of her
+decision, that Nero, who was to go down to posterity as the most
+terrible of tyrants, was that one of all the Roman emperors who had the
+most limited power; and furthermore it was likewise the result of her
+activity that the constitution of the empire had never been so close to
+that of the ancient republic as under the government of Nero.  Most
+historians, hallucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and they
+have consequently not recognized that in carrying out this plan
+Agrippina is neither more nor less than the last continuator of the
+great political tradition founded by Augustus.  In the minds of both
+Augustus and Tiberius the empire was to be governed by the aristocracy.
+The emperor was merely the depositary of certain powers of the nobility
+conceded to him for reasons of state.  If these reasons of state should
+disappear, the powers would naturally revert to the nobles.  It was
+therefore expedient at this time to make the senate forget, in the
+presence of a seventeen-year-old emperor, the pressure which had been
+brought to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out the rancor
+against the imperial power which was still dormant in the aristocracy.
+This restoration was not, therefore, a sheer renunciation of privileges
+and powers inherent in the sovereign authority, but an act of political
+sagacity planned by a woman whose knowledge of the art of government
+had been received in the school of Augustus.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-307"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-307.jpg" ALT="Agrippina the Younger." BORDER="2" WIDTH="444" HEIGHT="498">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The move was entirely successful.  The illusion that the imperial
+authority was only a transitory expedient made necessary by the civil
+wars, and that it might one day be entirely abolished, was still deeply
+grounded in the Roman aristocracy.  Every relaxation of authority was
+specially pleasing to the senatorial circles.  The government of Nero
+therefore began under the most favorable auspices, with joyous hope in
+the general promise of concord.  The disaffection which had been felt
+in the last six years of Claudius's government was changed into a
+general and confident optimism, which the first acts of the new
+government and the signs of the future seemed to justify.  Agrippina
+continued to keep Nero subject to her authority, as she had done before
+the election: together with his two masters, Seneca and Burrhus, she
+suggested to him every word and deed.  The senate resumed its ancient
+functions; and governed by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina in
+conjunction with the senate, the empire seemed to be progressing
+wonderfully, and in the eyes of the senators the entire government was
+in a better way than it ever yet had been.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the situation soon changed.  Agrippina, to be sure, had given her
+son a strictly Roman education, and had brought him up with a
+simplicity and rigor long since out of fashion; and though she had
+early given him a wife, she continued to keep him subject to maternal
+authority.  But, with all this, it is doubtful if there ever was a
+temperament which rebelled against this species of education as
+strongly as did Nero's.  His taste for the arts of drawing and singing,
+the indifference which he had shown for the study of oratory from his
+childhood, these were the seeds from which as time went on his raging
+exoticism was to be developed through the use and abuse of power.  His
+was one of those rioting, contrary, and undisciplined temperaments
+which feel that they must do precisely the opposite of what tradition,
+education, and the general opinion of the society in which they live
+have prescribed as necessary and recognized as lawful.  In the case of
+Nero the defects and the dangers in the ancient Roman education were to
+become apparent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first of these dangers declared itself when Nero entered upon one
+of those early marriages of which we have spoken in the first of these
+studies.  Agrippina had early arranged an alliance with a young lady
+who, because of her virtues, nobility of ancestry, and Roman education,
+might have become his worthy companion; but a year after his elevation
+to the imperial dignity, the eighteen-year-old youth made the
+acquaintance of a woman whose beauty inflamed his senses and
+imagination to the point of making him entirely forget Octavia, whom he
+had married from a sense of duty and not for love.  This person was
+Acte, a beautiful Asiatic freedwoman, and the inexperienced, ardent
+youth, already given up to exotic fancies, became so enamoured that he
+one day proposed to repudiate Octavia and to marry Acte.  But a
+marriage between Nero and Acte was not possible.  The <I>Lex de
+maritandis ordinibus</I> prohibited marriages between senators and
+freedwomen.  It was therefore natural that Agrippina should have
+opposed it with all her strength.  She, the great-granddaughter of
+Livia, the granddaughter of Drusus, the daughter of Germanicus,
+educated in the strictest ideas of the old Roman aristocracy, could not
+permit her son to compromise the prestige of the entire nobility in the
+eyes of the lower orders by so scandalous a <I>mésalliance</I>.  But on this
+occasion the youth, carried away by his passion, resisted.  If he did
+not actually repudiate Octavia, he disregarded her, and began to live
+with Acte as if she were his wife.  Agrippina insisted that he give up
+this scandalous relationship; but in vain.  The mother and son
+disagreed, and very shortly after having resisted his mother in the
+case of Acte, Nero began to resist her on other occasions.  With
+increasing energy he shook off maternal authority, which up to that
+time he had accepted with docility.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, however, was a crisis which was sooner or later inevitable.
+Agrippina had certainly made the mistake of attempting to treat Nero
+the emperor too much as she had treated Nero the child; but that the
+crisis should have been reached in this manner as the result of a
+love-affair, and that it should have provoked a misunderstanding
+between the mother and son that was soon to degenerate into hatred, was
+most unfortunate.  Agrippina, though she enjoyed great prestige, had
+also many hidden enemies.  Everybody knew that she represented in the
+government the old aristocratic, conservative, and economical tendency
+of the Claudii,&mdash;of Tiberius and of Drusus,&mdash;that she looked askance
+upon the development of luxurious habits, the relaxation of morals, and
+the increase of public and private expenditures.  They understood that
+she exerted all her influence to prevent wastefulness, the malversation
+of public moneys, and in general all outlays for pleasures either in
+the state or the imperial family.  Her virtues and her stand against
+Messalina had given her a great prestige, and the reverence which the
+emperor had shown for her had for a long time obliged her enemies to
+keep themselves hidden and to hold their peace.  But this ceased to be
+the case after the incipient discord between her and Nero had allowed
+many to foresee the possibility of using Nero against her.  In
+proportion as Nero became attached to Acte he drew away from his
+mother, and in proportion as he withdrew from his mother his
+capricious, fantastic, and rebellious temper was encouraged to show
+itself in its true light.  The party of the new nobility, with its
+modern and oriental tendencies, had for ten years been held in check by
+the preponderating influence of Agrippina.  But gradually, as the
+exotic and anti-Roman inclinations of the emperor declared themselves,
+this party again became bolder.  The memories of the scandals of
+Caligula and Messalina were becoming effaced by time, the rather severe
+and economical government of Agrippina was showing signs of weakening,
+and all minds were beginning to entertain a vague desire for something
+new.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-314"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-314.jpg" ALT="The Emperor Nero." BORDER="2" WIDTH="314" HEIGHT="447">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The two parties which in the times of Augustus had rent Rome asunder
+were now being realined in the imperial house and in the senate&mdash;the
+party of the old nobility, which had Agrippina at its head, and the
+party of the modernizing nobility, which was gathering about the
+emperor and trying to claim him as its own.  Tacitus clearly tells us
+that the older and more respectable families of the Roman nobility were
+with Agrippina; and even if he had neglected to tell us so, we might
+easily have guessed it.  For a moment the old, old struggle which had
+been the cause of so many tragedies in the upper classes of Rome seemed
+once more ready to break forth.  But even though Agrippina was the soul
+of the party of the old nobility, the party needed a man whom it could
+oppose to Nero as a possible and better candidate for the imperial
+dignity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippina, like a true Roman matron of the old type, looked upon the
+family merely as an instrument of political power, and therefore
+subjected her personal affections to the public interest.  She began to
+cast her eyes upon Britannicus, the son of Messalina, who was now
+becoming a young man and who seemed to be more serious-minded than
+Nero.  It was even muttered that she thought of giving her own son's
+place to the son of Messalina, when suddenly, in 55, Britannicus died
+at a dinner at which Nero was present.  Was he poisoned by Nero, as
+Tacitus says?  Although there is no lack of obscurities and
+improbabilities in the account of Tacitus, this time the accusation, if
+it is not true, is at least much more probable than the other
+accusations of the same kind.  It is certain that the report that
+Britannicus had been poisoned was soon current at Rome, and that it was
+believed; and the death of Britannicus was likewise a fatal blow to
+Agrippina and her party.  Tacitus tells us that the death of
+Britannicus caused Agrippina great terror and unspeakable
+consternation, and it is not difficult to divine the reasons.  Nero now
+remained the last and only survivor of the family of Augustus, and it
+was therefore no longer possible to bring any effective opposition to
+bear upon him by setting up some other member of the family who would
+be capable of governing.  The new nobility, with its modern tendencies,
+now rapidly gained strength, and the influence of Agrippina declined
+proportionately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a result of the lofty qualities of genius and character with which
+she had been endowed, Agrippina had been able to hold the balance of
+power in the state as long as she had succeeded in keeping the emperor
+under her influence.  This had been true in the cases of both Claudius
+and Nero.  After Nero escaped from her influence, or, rather, after he
+had turned against her, her prestige and her power rapidly diminished,
+and her party lost greatly in size and in power.  Although personally
+the emperor was youthful and weak, the dignity of his office made him
+more powerful than all the members of his family, however energetic and
+intelligent they might be.  At this period, furthermore, Nero was
+supported by an entire party which was daily increasing in strength and
+in numbers, for, as always happens in eras of prosperity and peace, the
+temper of the time was tending toward a milder, gentler, more liberal
+government, and consequently one which would be less authoritative and
+severe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Agrippina, however, was an energetic woman, not easily discouraged, and
+she continued the struggle.  Consequently for two years longer, even in
+the midst of strife, intrigues, and suspicions, she preserved a
+considerable influence, and was able to check the progress of the
+government in its new direction.  This was either because Nero, though
+no longer exactly obedient to his mother's will, was still too weak,
+too undecided, and too deeply involved in the ideas of his earlier
+education to attempt an open revolt against her, or it was because
+Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate the ultra-conservative
+ideas of the mother with the newer tendencies of the son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The definitive break with his mother and with her political
+ideas,&mdash;that is, with the ideas which had been professed by her
+ancestors,&mdash;came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea Sabina.  The
+latter belonged to one of those great Roman families into which the new
+spirit and the new customs had most deeply penetrated.  Rich,
+beautiful, avaricious of luxuries and pleasures, possessed of an
+unbridled personal ambition, she had attracted Nero to herself, and, in
+order to become empress, gave the uncertain youth the decisive impulse
+which was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and the grandson of
+Germanicus into the prodigal and dissolute emperor of history.  She
+encouraged in him his desire to please the populace, and certainly
+never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted
+finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of
+taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of
+Caligula.  Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his
+simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes.  She held
+up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and
+luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and
+pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility.  Poppaea, in short,
+gave herself up to the task of reshaping the education of Nero and of
+destroying the results of Agrippina's patient labor.  Nor was this all.
+She even became, with her restricted intelligence, his adviser in
+politics.  She persuaded him that the policy of authority and economy
+which his mother had desired was rendering him unpopular, and she
+suggested the idea of a policy of liberality toward the people which
+would win him the affection of the masses.  After he had fallen in love
+with Poppaea Sabina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no
+considerable initiative in affairs of state, elaborated and proposed to
+the senate many revolutionary projects for favoring the populace.  He
+finally proposed that they abolish all the <I>vectigalia</I> of the empire;
+that is, all indirect taxes, all tolls and duties of whatever sort.
+The measure would certainly have been most popular, and there was much
+discussion about it in the senate; but the conservatives showed that
+the finances of the empire would be ruined and persuaded Nero not to
+insist.  Nero, however, wished to bring about some reform which would
+help the masses, and he gave orders in an edict that the rates of all
+the <I>vectigalia</I> be published; that at Rome the pretor, and in the
+provinces the propretor and proconsul, should summarily decide all
+suits against the tax-farmers and that the soldiers should be exempt
+from these same <I>vectigalia</I>.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-323"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-323.jpg" ALT="The death of Agrippina." BORDER="2" WIDTH="367" HEIGHT="643">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: The death of Agrippina.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Though some of these reforms were just, this new policy was also the
+cause of the final rupture with his mother.  Agrippina and Nero, to all
+intents and purposes, no longer saw each other, and Nero, on the few
+visits which he was obliged to pay her in order to save appearances,
+always arranged it so as never to be left alone in her presence.  In
+this manner the influence of Agrippina continued to decline, while the
+popularity of Nero steadily increased as the result of his youth, of
+these first reforms, and of the hopes to which his prodigality had
+given rise.  The public, whose memory is always brief, forgot what
+Agrippina had done and how she had brought back peace to the state, and
+began to expect all sorts of new benefits from Nero.  Poppaea,
+encouraged by the increasing popularity of the emperor, insisted more
+boldly that Nero, in order to make her his wife, should divorce Octavia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Agrippina was not the woman to yield thus easily, and she continued
+the struggle against her son, against his paramour, and against the
+growing coterie which was gathering about the emperor.  She opposed
+particularly the repudiation of Octavia, which, being merely the result
+of a pure caprice, would have caused serious scandal in Rome.  But Nero
+was even now hesitating and uncertain.  He still had too clearly before
+him the memory of the long authority of his mother; he feared her too
+much to dare step forth in open and complete revolt.  At last Poppaea
+understood that she could not become empress so long as the mother
+lived, and from that moment the doom of Agrippina was sealed.  Poppaea
+was goaded on by all the new friends of Nero, who wished to destroy
+forever the influence of Agrippina, and by her words and deeds she
+finally brought him to the point where he decided to kill his mother.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But to murder his mother was both an abominable and dangerous
+undertaking, for it meant killing the daughter of Germanicus&mdash;killing
+that woman whom the people regarded with a semi-religious veneration as
+a portent of fortune; for she was the daughter of a man whom only a
+premature death had prevented from becoming the head of the empire, and
+she had been the sister, the wife, and the mother of emperors.  For
+this reason the manner of her taking-off had been long debated in order
+that it might remain secret; nor would Nero make his decision until a
+seemingly safe means had been discovered for bringing about the
+disappearance of Agrippina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the freedman Anicetus, the commander of the fleet, who, in the
+spring of 59, made the proposal when Nero was with his court at Baiae,
+on the Bay of Naples.  They were to construct a vessel which, as
+Tacitus says, should open artfully on one side.  If Nero could induce
+his mother to embark upon that vessel, Anicetus would see to it that
+she and the secret of her murder would be buried in the depths of the
+sea.  Nero gave his consent to this abominable plan.  He pretended that
+he was anxious to become reconciled with his mother, and invited her to
+come from Antium, where she then was, to Baiae.  He showed her all
+regard and every courtesy, and when Agrippina, reassured by the
+kindness of her son, set out on her return to Antium, Nero accompanied
+her to the fatal vessel and tenderly embraced her.  It was a calm,
+starry night.  Agrippina stood talking with one of her freedwomen about
+the repentance of her son and the reconciliation which had taken place,
+when, after the vessel had drawn some distance away from the shore, the
+plotters tried to carry out their infernal plan.  What happened is not
+very clear.  The seemingly picturesque description of Tacitus is in
+reality vague and confusing.  It appears that the ship did not sink so
+rapidly as the plotters had hoped, and in the confusion which resulted
+on board, the emperor's mother, ready and resolute, succeeded in making
+her escape by casting herself into the sea and swimming away, while the
+hired assassins on the ship killed her freedwoman, mistaking her for
+Agrippina.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In any case, it is certain that Agrippina arrived safely at one of her
+villas along the coast, with the help, it seems, of a vessel which she
+had encountered as she swam, and that she immediately sent one of her
+freedmen to apprise Nero of the danger from which she had escaped
+through the kindness of the gods and his good fortune!  Agrippina had
+guessed the truth, but for this one time she gave up the struggle and
+sent her messenger, that it might be understood, without her saying so,
+that she forgot and pardoned.  Indeed, what means were left her, a
+lonely woman, of coping with an emperor who dared raise his hand
+against his own mother?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, fear prevented Nero from understanding.  No sooner had he
+learned that Agrippina had escaped than he lost his head.  In his
+imagination he saw her hastening to Rome and denouncing the horrible
+matricide to the soldiers and the senate; and beside himself with
+terror, he sent for Seneca and Burrhus in order to take counsel with
+them.  It is easy to imagine what the feelings of the two teachers of
+the youth must have been as they listened to the terrible story.  Even
+they failed to understand that Agrippina recognized and declared
+herself conquered.  They, too, feared that she would provoke the most
+frightful scandal which Rome had yet seen, and not knowing what advice
+to give, or rather seeing only a single way out, which was, however,
+too serious and horrible, they held their peace while Nero begged them
+to save him.  At last Seneca, the humanitarian philosopher, turned to
+Burrhus and asked him what would happen if the pretorians should be
+ordered to kill Agrippina.  Burrhus understood that Seneca, though he
+was the first to give the terrible advice, yet wished to leave to him
+the more serious responsibility of carrying it into execution; for
+Burrhus, as commander of the guards, would have had to give the order
+for the murder.  He therefore hastened to say that the pretorians would
+never kill the daughter of Germanicus, and then added that if they
+really wished to do away with Agrippina, the best plan would be for
+Anicetus to carry out the work which he had begun.  His advice was the
+same as Seneca's, but he turned over to a third person the very grave
+responsibility for its execution.  He had, however, chosen this third
+person more wisely than Seneca, for Anicetus could not refuse.  If
+Agrippina lived, it was he who ran the risk of becoming the scapegoat
+for all this bloody and horrible adventure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a matter of fact, Anicetus accepted.  The freedman whom Agrippina
+had sent to announce her misfortune was imprisoned and put in chains,
+in order to convey the impression that he had been captured carrying
+concealed weapons and in the act of making an attempt upon the
+emperor's life by the order of his mother.  Anicetus then hastened to
+the villa of Agrippina and surrounded it with a body of sailors.  He
+entered the house, and with two officers rushed into the room where
+Agrippina, reclining upon a couch, was talking with a servant, and
+killed her.  Tacitus tells us that when Agrippina saw one of the
+officers unsheathe his sword, she asked him to thrust her through the
+body which had borne her son.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus died the last woman of the house of Augustus, and, with the
+exception of Livia, the most remarkable feminine figure in that family.
+She died like a soldier, on duty and at her post, bravely defending the
+social and political traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the
+time-honored principles of Romanism against the influx of those new
+forces of a later age which were seeking to orientalize the ancient
+Latin republic.  She died for her family, for her caste, and for Rome,
+without even having the reward of being remembered with dutiful regard
+by posterity; for in this struggle she had sacrificed not merely her
+life, but even her honor and her fame.  Such, furthermore, was the
+common destiny of all the members of this family, and if we except
+Livia and Augustus, the privileged pair who founded it, we are at a
+loss to know whether to call it the most fortunate or the most unhappy
+of all the families of the ancient world.  It is impossible for the
+historian who understands this terrible drama, filled with so many
+catastrophes, not to feel a certain impression of horror at the
+vindictive ferocity that Rome showed to this house, which, in order to
+bring back Rome's peace and to preserve her empire, had been fated to
+exalt itself a few degrees above the ordinary level of the ancient
+aristocracy.  Men and women, the young and the old, the knaves and the
+large-hearted, the sages and the fools of the family, alike, all
+without exception, were persecuted and plotted against.  And again, if
+we except the persons of the two founders, and those who, like Drusus
+and Germanicus, had the good fortune to die young, Rome deprived them
+all, deprived even Antonia, of either their life or their greatness or
+their honor, and not infrequently it robbed them of all these three
+together.  Those who, like Tiberius and Agrippina, defended the ancient
+Roman tradition, were hated, hounded, and defamed with a no less angry
+fury than Caligula and Nero, who sought to destroy it.  No one of them,
+whatever his tendencies or intentions, succeeded in making himself
+understood by his times or by posterity; it was their common fate to be
+misunderstood, and therefore horribly calumniated.  The destiny of the
+women was even more tragic than that of the men, for the times demanded
+from them, as a compensation for the great honor of belonging to this
+privileged family, that they possess all the rarest and most difficult
+virtues.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What was the cause of all this? we ask.  How were so many catastrophes
+possible, and how could tradition have erred so grievously?  It is
+almost a crime that posterity should virtually always have studied and
+pondered this immense tragedy of history on the basis of the crude and
+superficial falsification of it which Tacitus has given us.  For few
+episodes in general history impress so powerfully upon the mind the
+fact that the progress of the world is one of the most tragic of its
+phenomena.  Especially is such knowledge necessary to the favored
+generations of prosperous and easy times.  He who has not lived in
+those years when an old world is disappearing and a new one making its
+way cannot realize the tragedy of life, for at such times the old is
+still sufficiently strong to resist the assaults of the new, and the
+latter, though growing, is not yet strong enough to annihilate that
+world on the ruins of which alone it will be able to prosper.  Men are
+then called upon to solve insoluble problems and to attempt enterprises
+which are both necessary and impossible.  There is confusion
+everywhere, in the mind within and in the world without.  Hate often
+separates those who ought to aid one another, since they are tending
+toward the same goal, and sympathy binds men together who are forced to
+do battle with one another.  At such times women generally suffer more
+than men, for every change which occurs in their situation seems more
+dangerous, and it is right that it should be so.  For woman is by
+nature the vestal of our species, and for that reason she must be more
+conservative, more circumspect, and more virtuous than man.  There is
+no state or civilization which has comprehended the highest things in
+life which has not been forced to instil into its women rather than
+into its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the
+stability of the family and the future of the race.  And for every era
+this is a question of life and death.  In such periods when one world
+is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused,
+and all attempts bring forth bizarre results.  He who wishes to
+preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems
+virtue.  Precisely for this reason it is more difficult for a woman
+than for a man to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for she is
+more exposed to the danger of losing her way and of missing her
+particular function; and since she is more likely to fail in realizing
+her natural destiny, she is more likely to be doomed to a life of
+misfortune.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, and such especially was
+the fate of its women.  The strangers who visit Rome often go out on
+Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent music that can be heard in
+a room which is situated in one of the little streets near the Piazza
+del Popolo and which used to be called the Corea.  This hall was built
+over an ancient Roman ruin of circular form which any one can still see
+as he enters.  That ruin is the entrance to the tomb which Augustus
+built on the Flaminian Way for himself and his family.  Nearly all of
+the personages whose story we have told were buried in that mausoleum.
+If any reader who has followed this history should one day find himself
+at Rome, listening to a concert in that old Corea, which has now been
+renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let him give a thought to those
+victims of a terrible story of long ago, and may he remember that here,
+where at the beginning of the twentieth century he listens to the flow
+of rivers of sweet sound&mdash;here only, twenty centuries ago, could the
+members of the family of Augustus find refuge from their tragic fate,
+and after so much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, rest at last
+in peace.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,4809 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Women of the Caesars
+
+Author: Guglielmo Ferrero
+
+Release Date: July 18, 2005 [EBook #16324]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Livia, the wife of Augustus, superintending the weaving
+of robes for her family.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+
+
+BY
+
+GUGLIELMO FERRERO
+
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+MCMXI
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1911, by
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+
+Published, October, 1911
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVINNE PRESS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I  WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
+
+  II  LIVIA AND JULIA
+
+ III  THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
+
+  IV  TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
+
+   V  THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA
+
+  VI  AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Livia, the Wife of Augustus, Superintending the Weaving of Robes for
+her Family . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+A Roman Marriage Custom
+
+Eumachia, a Public Priestess of Ancient Rome
+
+The Forum under the Caesars
+
+The So-called Bust of Cicero
+
+Julius Caesar
+
+The Sister of M. Nonius Balbus
+
+Livia, the Mother of Tiberius, in the Costume of a Priestess
+
+The Young Augustus
+
+The Emperor Augustus
+
+A Silver Denarius of the Second Triumvirate
+
+Silver Coin Bearing the Head of Julius Caesar
+
+The Great Paris Cameo
+
+Octavia, the Sister of Augustus
+
+A Reception at Livia's Villa
+
+Mark Antony
+
+Antony and Cleopatra
+
+Tiberius, Elder Son of Livia and Stepson of Augustus
+
+Drusus, the Younger Brother of Tiberius
+
+Statue of a Young Roman Woman
+
+A Roman Girl of the Time of the Caesars
+
+Costumes of Roman Men, Women, and Children in the Procession of a Peace
+Festival
+
+Bust of Tiberius in the Museo Nazionale, Naples
+
+Types of Head-dresses Worn in the Time of the Women of the Caesars
+
+A Roman Feast in the Time of the Caesars
+
+Depositing the Ashes of a Member of the Imperial Family in a Roman
+Columbarium
+
+The Starving Livilla Refusing Food
+
+Costume of a Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis Maxima)
+
+Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins
+
+Bust, Supposed to be of Antonia, Daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia,
+and Mother of Germanicus, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
+
+Caligula
+
+A Bronze Sestertius (Slightly Enlarged), Showing the Sisters of
+Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on One Side and
+Germanicus on the Other Side
+
+A Bronze Sestertius with the Head of Agrippina the Elder, Daughter of
+Agrippa and Julia, the Daughter of Augustus
+
+Claudius, Messalina, and Their Two Children in What is Known as the
+"Hague Cameo"
+
+Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the Caesars
+
+The Emperor Caligula
+
+Claudius
+
+The Emperor Claudius
+
+Messalina, Third Wife of Claudius
+
+The Philosopher Seneca
+
+The Emperor Nero
+
+Agrippina the Younger, Sister of Caligula and Mother of Nero
+
+Britannicus
+
+Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline Museum, Rome
+
+Agrippina the Younger
+
+The Emperor Nero
+
+The Death of Agrippina
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN OF THE CAESARS
+
+
+I
+
+WOMAN AND MARRIAGE IN ANCIENT ROME
+
+"Many things that among the Greeks are considered improper and
+unfitting," wrote Cornelius Nepos in the preface to his "Lives," "are
+permitted by our customs.  Is there by chance a Roman who is ashamed to
+take his wife to a dinner away from home?  Does it happen that the
+mistress of the house in any family does not enter the anterooms
+frequented by strangers and show herself among them?  Not so in Greece:
+there the woman accepts invitations only among families to which she is
+related, and she remains withdrawn in that inner part of the house
+which is called the _gynaeceum_, where only the nearest relatives are
+admitted."
+
+This passage, one of the most significant in all the little work of
+Nepos, draws in a few, clear, telling strokes one of the most marked
+distinctions between the Greco-Asiatic world and the Roman.  Among
+ancient societies, the Roman was probably that in which, at least among
+the better classes, woman enjoyed the greatest social liberty and the
+greatest legal and economic autonomy.  There she most nearly approached
+that condition of moral and civil equality with man which makes her his
+comrade, and not his slave--that equality in which modern civilization
+sees one of the supreme ends of moral progress.
+
+The doctrine held by some philosophers and sociologists, that military
+peoples subordinate woman to a tyrannical regime of domestic servitude,
+is wholly disproved by the history of Rome.  If there was ever a time
+when the Roman woman lived in a state of perennial tutelage, under the
+authority of man from birth to death--of the husband, if not of the
+father, or, if not of father or husband, of the guardian--that time
+belongs to remote antiquity.
+
+When Rome became the master state of the Mediterranean world, and
+especially during the last century of the republic, woman, aside from a
+few slight limitations of form rather than of substance, had already
+acquired legal and economic independence, the condition necessary for
+social and moral equality.  As to marriage, the affianced pair could at
+that time choose between two different legal family regimes: marriage
+with _manus_, the older form, in which all the goods of the wife passed
+to the ownership of the husband, so that she could no longer possess
+anything in her own name; or marriage without _manus_, in which only
+the dower became the property of the husband, and the wife remained
+mistress of all her other belongings and all that she might acquire.
+Except in some cases, and for special reasons, in all the families of
+the aristocracy, by common consent, marriages, during the last
+centuries of the republic, were contracted in the later form; so that
+at that time married women directly and openly had gained economic
+independence.
+
+During the same period, indirectly, and by means of juridical evasions,
+this independence was also won by unmarried women, who, according to
+ancient laws, ought to have remained all their lives under a guardian,
+either selected by the father in his will or appointed by the law in
+default of such selection.  To get around this difficulty, the fertile
+and subtle imagination of the jurists invented first the _tutor
+optivus_, permitting the father, instead of naming his daughter's
+guardian in his will, to leave her free to choose one general guardian
+or several, according to the business in hand, or even to change that
+official as many times as she wished.
+
+To give the woman means to change her legitimate guardian at pleasure,
+if her father had provided none by will, there was invented the _tutor
+cessicius_, thereby allowing the transmission of a legal guardianship.
+However, though all restrictions imposed upon the liberty of the
+unmarried woman by the institution of tutelage disappeared, one
+limitation continued in force--she could not make a will.  Yet even
+this was provided for, either by fictitious marriage or by the
+invention of the _tutor fiduciarius_.  The woman, without contracting
+matrimony, gave herself by _coemptio_ (purchase) into the _manus_ of a
+person of her trust, on the agreement that the _coemptionator_ would
+free her: he became her guardian in the eyes of the law.
+
+[Illustration: A Roman marriage custom.  The picture shows the bride
+entering her new home in the arms of the bridegroom.]
+
+There was, then, at the close of the republic little disparity in legal
+condition between the man and the woman.  As is natural, to this almost
+complete legal equality there was united an analogous moral and social
+equality.  The Romans never had the idea that between the _mundus
+muliebris_ (woman's world) and that of men they must raise walls, dig
+ditches, put up barricades, either material or moral.  They never
+willed, for example, to divide women from men by placing between them
+the ditch of ignorance.  To be sure, the Roman dames of high society
+were for a long time little instructed, but this was because, moreover,
+the men distrusted Greek culture.  When literature, science, and
+Hellenic philosophy were admitted into the great Roman families as
+desired and welcome guests, neither the authority, nor the egoism, nor
+yet the prejudices of the men, sought to deprive women of the joy, the
+comfort, the light, that might come to them from these new studies.  We
+know that many ladies in the last two centuries of the republic not
+only learned to dance and to sing,--common feminine studies,
+these,--but even learned Greek, loved literature, and dabbled in
+philosophy, reading its books or meeting with the famous philosophers
+of the Orient.
+
+Moreover, in the home the woman was mistress, at the side of and on
+equality with her husband.  The passage I have quoted from Nepos proves
+that she was not segregated, like the Greek woman: she received and
+enjoyed the friends of her husband, was present with them at festivals
+and banquets in the houses of families with whom she had friendly
+relations, although at such banquets she might not, like the man,
+recline, but must, for the sake of greater modesty, sit at table.  In
+short, she was not, like the Greek woman, shut up at home, a veritable
+prisoner.
+
+She might go out freely; this she did generally in a litter.  She was
+never excluded from theaters, even though the Roman government tried as
+best it could for a long period to temper in its people the passion for
+spectacular entertainments.  She could frequent public places and have
+recourse directly to the magistrates.  We have record of the assembling
+and of demonstrations made by the richest women of Rome in the Forum
+and other public places, to obtain laws and other provisions from the
+magistrates, like that famous demonstration of women that Livy
+describes as having occurred in the year 195 B.C., to secure the
+abolition of the Oppian Law against luxury.
+
+What more?  We have good reason for holding that already under the
+republic there existed at Rome a kind of woman's club, which called
+itself _conventus matronarum_ and gathered together the dames of the
+great families.  Finally, it is certain that many times in critical
+moments the government turned directly and officially to the great
+ladies of Rome for help to overcome the dangers that menaced public
+affairs, by collecting money, or imploring with solemn religious
+ceremonies the favor of the gods.
+
+One understands then, how at all times there were at Rome women much
+interested in public affairs.  The fortunes of the powerful families,
+their glory, their dominance, their wealth, depended on the
+vicissitudes of politics and of war.  The heads of these families were
+all statesmen, diplomats, warriors; the more intelligent and cultivated
+the wife, and the fonder she was of her husband, the intenser the
+absorption with which she must have followed the fortunes of politics,
+domestic and foreign; for with these were bound up many family
+interests, and often even the life of her husband.
+
+[Illustration: Eumachia, a public priestess of ancient Rome.]
+
+
+Was the Roman family, then, the reader will demand at this point, in
+everything like the family of contemporary civilization?  Have we
+returned upon the long trail to the point reached by our far-away
+forebears?
+
+No.  If there are resemblances between the modern family and the Roman,
+there are also crucial differences.  Although the Roman was disposed to
+allow woman judicial and economic independence, a refined culture, and
+that freedom without which it is impossible to enjoy life in dignified
+and noble fashion, he was never ready to recognize in the way modern
+civilization does more or less openly, as ultimate end and reason for
+marriage, either the personal happiness of the contracting parties or
+their common personal moral development in the unifying of their
+characters and aspirations.  The individualistic conception of
+matrimony and of the family attained by our civilization was alien to
+the Roman mind, which conceived of these from an essentially political
+and social point of view.  The purpose of marriage was, so to speak,
+exterior to the pair.  As untouched by any spark of the metaphysical
+spirit as he was unyielding--at least in action--to every suggestion of
+the philosophic; preoccupied only in enlarging and consolidating the
+state of which he was master, the Roman aristocrat never regarded
+matrimony and the family, just as he never regarded religion and law,
+as other than instruments for political domination, as means for
+increasing and establishing the power of every great family, and by
+family affiliations to strengthen the association of the aristocracy,
+already bound together by political interest.
+
+For this reason, although the Roman conceded many privileges and
+recognized many rights among women, he never went so far as to think
+that a woman of great family could aspire to the right of choosing her
+own husband.  Custom, indeed, much restricted the young man also, at
+least in a first marriage.  The choice rested with the fathers, who
+were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys.
+The heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together
+in the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations
+of the Senate.  Did the idea occur to both that their children, if
+affianced then, at seven or eight years of age, might cement more
+closely the union of the two families, then straightway the matter was
+definitely arranged.  The little girl was brought up with the idea that
+some day, as soon as might be, she should marry that boy, just as for
+two centuries in the famous houses of Catholic countries many of the
+daughters were brought up in the expectation that one day they should
+take the veil.
+
+Every one held this Roman practice as reasonable, useful, equitable; to
+no one did the idea occur that by it violence was done to the most
+intimate sentiment of liberty and independence that a human being can
+know.  On the contrary, according to the common judgment, the
+well-governing of the state was being wisely provided for, and these
+alliances were destroying the seeds of discord that spontaneously
+germinate in aristocracy and little by little destroy it, like those
+plants sown by no man's hand, which thrive upon old walls and become
+their ruin.
+
+This is why one knows of every famous Roman personage how many wives he
+had and of what family they were.  The marriage of a Roman noble was a
+political act, and noteworthy; because a youth, or even a mature man,
+connecting himself with certain families, came to assume more or less
+fully the political responsibilities in which, for one cause or
+another, they were involved.  This was particularly true in the last
+centuries of the republic,--that is, beginning from the Gracchi,--when
+for the various reasons which I have set forth in my "Greatness and
+Decline of Rome," the Roman aristocracy divided into two inimical
+parties, one of which attempted to rouse against the other the
+interests, the ambitions, and the cupidity, of the middle and lower
+classes.  The two parties then sought to reinforce themselves by
+matrimonial alliances, and these followed the ups and downs of the
+political struggle that covered Rome with blood.  Of this fact the
+story of Julius Caesar is a most curious proof.
+
+The prime reason for Julius Caesar's becoming the chief of the popular
+party is to be found neither in his ambitions nor in his temperament,
+and even less in his political opinions, but in his relationship to
+Marius.  An aunt of Caesar had married Caius Marius, the modest
+bankrupt farmer of revenues, who, having entered politics, had become
+the first general of his time, had been elected consul six times, and
+had conquered Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutons.  The self-made man
+had become famous and rich, and in the face of an aristocracy proud of
+its ancestors, had tried to ennoble his obscure origin by taking his
+wife from an ancient and most noble, albeit impoverished and decayed,
+patrician family.
+
+But when there broke out the revolution in which Marius placed himself
+at the head of the popular party, and the revolution was overcome by
+Sulla, the old aristocracy, which had conquered with Sulla, did not
+forgive the patrician family of the Julii for having connected itself
+with that bitter foe, who had made so much mischief.  Consequently,
+during the period of the reaction, all its members were looked upon
+askance, and were suspected and persecuted, among them young Caesar,
+who was in no way responsible for the deeds of his uncle, since he was
+only a lad during the war between Sulla and Marius.
+
+This explains how it was that the first wife of Caesar, Cossutia, was
+the daughter of a knight; that is, of a financier and revenue-farmer.
+For a young man belonging to a family of ancient senatorial nobility,
+this marriage was little short of a _mesalliance_; but Caesar had been
+engaged to this girl when still a very young man, at the time when, the
+alliance between Marius and the knights being still firm and strong,
+the marriage of a rich knight's daughter would mean to the nephew of
+Marius, not only a considerable fortune, but also the support of the
+social class which at that moment was predominant.  For reasons unknown
+to us, Caesar soon repudiated Cossutia, and before the downfall of the
+democratic party he was married to Cornelia, who was the daughter of
+Cinna, the democratic consul and a most distinguished member of the
+party of Marius.  This second marriage, the causes of which must be
+sought for in the political status of Caesar's family, was the cause of
+his first political reverses.  For Sulla tried to force Caesar to
+repudiate Cornelia, and in consequence of his refusal, he came to be
+considered an enemy by Sulla and his party and was treated accordingly.
+
+[Illustration: The Forum under the Caesars.]
+
+It is known that Cornelia died when still very young, after only a few
+years of married life, and that Caesar's third marriage in the year 68
+B.C., was quite different from his first and second, since the third
+wife, Pompeia, belonged to one of the noblest families of the
+conservative aristocracy--was, in fact, a niece of Sulla.  How could
+the nephew of Marius, who had escaped as by miracle the proscriptions
+of Sulla, ever have married the latter's niece?  Because in the dozen
+years intervening between 80 and 68, the political situation had
+gradually grown calmer, and a new air of conciliation had begun to blow
+through the city, troubled by so much confusion, burying in oblivion
+the bloodiest records of the civil war, calling into fresh life
+admiration for Marius, that hero who had conquered the Cimbri and the
+Teutons.  In that moment, to be a nephew of Marius was no longer a
+crime among any of the great families; for some, on the contrary, it
+was coming to be the beginning of glory.  But that situation was
+short-lived.  After a brief truce, the two parties again took up a
+bitter war, and for his fourth wife Caesar chose Calpurnia, the
+daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58, and a most
+influential senator of the popular party.
+
+Whoever studies the history of the influential personages of Caesar's
+time, will find that their marriages follow the fortunes of the
+political situation.  Where a purely political reason was wanting,
+there was the economic.  A woman could aid powerfully a political
+career in two ways: by ably administering the household and by
+contributing to its expenses her dower or her personal fortune.
+Although the Romans gave their daughters an education relatively
+advanced, they never forgot to inculcate in them the idea that it was
+the duty of a woman, especially if she was nobly born, to know all the
+arts of good housewifery, and especially, as most important, spinning
+and weaving.  The reason for this lay in the fact that for the
+aristocratic families, who were in possession of vast lands and many
+flocks, it was easy to provide themselves from their own estates with
+the wool necessary to clothe all their household, from masters to the
+numerous retinue of slaves.  If the _materfamilias_ knew sufficiently
+well the arts of spinning and weaving to be able to organize in the
+home a small "factory" of slaves engaged in such tasks, and knew how to
+direct and survey them, to make them work with zeal and without theft,
+she could provide the clothing for the whole household, thus saving the
+heavy expense of buying the stuffs from a merchant--notable economy in
+times when money was scarce and every family tried to make as little
+use of it as possible.  The _materfamilias_ held, then, in every home,
+a prime industrial office, that of clothing the entire household, and
+in proportion to her usefulness in this office was she able to aid or
+injure the family.
+
+More important still were the woman's dower and her personal fortune.
+The Romans not only considered it perfectly honorable, sagacious, and
+praiseworthy for a member of the political aristocracy to marry a rich
+woman for her wealth, the better to maintain the luster of his rank, or
+the more easily to fulfil his particular political and social duties,
+but they also believed there could be no better luck or greater honor
+for a rich woman than for this reason to marry a prominent man.  They
+exacted only that she be of respectable habits, and even in this regard
+it appears that, during certain tumultuous periods, they sometimes shut
+one eye.
+
+Tradition says, for example, that Sulla, born of a noble family, quite
+in ruin, owed his money to the bequest of a Greek woman whose wealth
+had the most impure origin that the possessions of a woman can possibly
+have.  Is this tradition only the invention of the enemies of the
+terrible dictator?  In any event, how people of good standing felt in
+this matter in normal times is shown by the life of Cicero.
+
+Cicero was born at Arpino, of a knightly family, highly respectable,
+and well educated, but not rich.  That he was able to pursue his
+brilliant forensic and political career, was chiefly due to his
+marriage to Terentia, who, although not very rich, had more than he,
+and by her fortune enabled him to live at Rome.  But it is well known
+that after long living together happily enough, as far as can be
+judged, Cicero and Terentia, already old, fell into discord and in 46
+B.C. ended by being divorced.  The reasons for the divorce are not
+exactly clear, but from Cicero's letters it appears that financial
+motives and disputes were not wanting.  It seems that during the civil
+wars Terentia refused to help Cicero with her money to the extent he
+desired; that is to say, at some tremendous moment of those turbulent
+years she was unwilling to risk all her patrimony on the uncertain
+political fortune of her husband.
+
+[Illustration: The so-called bust of Cicero.  All but the head is
+modern.  Now in the Museo Capitolino, it was formerly in the Palazzo
+Barberini.]
+
+Cicero's divorce, obliging him to return the dower, reduced him to the
+gravest straits, from which he emerged through another marriage.  He
+was the guardian of an exceedingly rich young woman, named Publilia,
+and one fine day, at the age of sixty-three, he joined hands with this
+seventeen-year-old girl, whose possessions were to rehabilitate the
+great writer.
+
+
+This conception of matrimony and of the family may seem unromantic,
+prosaic, materialistic; but we must not suppose that because of it the
+Romans failed to experience the tenderest and sweetest affections of
+the human heart.  The letters of Cicero himself show how tenderly even
+Romans could love wife and children.  Although they distrusted and
+combatted as dangerous to the prosperity and well-being of the state
+those dearest and gentlest personal affections that in our times
+literature, music, religion, philosophy, and custom have educated,
+encouraged, and exalted, as one of the supreme fountains of civil life,
+should we therefore reckon them barbarians?  We must not forget the
+great diversity between our times and theirs.  The confidence which
+modern men repose in love as a principle, in its ultimate wisdom, in
+its beneficial influence or the affairs of the world; in the idea that
+every man has the right to choose for himself the person of the
+opposite sex toward whom the liveliest and strongest personal
+attraction impels him--these are the supreme blossoms of modern
+individualism, the roots of which have been able to fasten only in the
+rich soil of modern civilization.
+
+The great ease of living that we now enjoy, the lofty intellectual
+development of our day, permit us to relax the severe discipline that
+poorer times and peoples, constrained to lead a harder life, had to
+impose upon themselves.  Although the habit may seem hard and
+barbarous, certainly almost all the great peoples of the past, and the
+majority of those contemporary who live outside our civilization, have
+conceived and practised matrimony not as a right of sentiment, but as a
+duty of reason.  To fulfil it, the young have turned to the sagacity of
+the aged, and these have endeavored to promote the success of marriage
+not merely to the satisfaction of a single passion, usually as brief as
+it is ardent, but according to a calculated equilibrium of qualities,
+tendencies, and material means.
+
+The principles regulating Roman marriage may seem to us at variance
+with human nature, but they are the principles to which all peoples
+wishing to trust the establishment of the family not to passion as
+mobile as the sea, but to reason, have had recourse in times when the
+family was an organism far more essential than it is to-day, because it
+held within itself many functions, educational, industrial, and
+political, now performed by other institutions.  But reason itself is
+not perfect.  Like passion, it has its weakness, and marriage so
+conceived by Rome produced grave inconveniences, which one must know in
+order to understand the story, in many respects tragic, of the women of
+the Caesars.
+
+The first difficulty was the early age at which marriages took place
+among the aristocracy.  The boys were almost always married at from
+eighteen to twenty; the girls, at from thirteen to fifteen.  This
+disadvantage is to be found in all society in which marriage is
+arranged by the parents, because it would be next to impossible to
+induce young people to yield to the will of their elders in an affair
+in which the passions are readily aroused if they were allowed to reach
+the age when the passions are strongest and the will has become
+independent Hardly out of childhood, the man and the woman are
+naturally more tractable.  On the other hand, it is easy to see how
+many dangers threatened such youthful marriages in a society where
+matrimony gave to the woman wide liberty, placing her in contact with
+other men, opening to her the doors of theaters and public resorts,
+leading her into the midst of all the temptations and illusions of life.
+
+The other serious disadvantage was the facility of divorce.  For the
+very reason that matrimony was for the nobility a political act, the
+Romans were never willing to allow that it could be indissoluble;
+indeed, even when the woman was in no sense culpable, they reserved to
+the man the right of undoing it at any time he wished, solely because
+that particular marriage did not suit his political interests.  And the
+marriage could be dissolved by the most expeditious means, without
+formality--by a mere letter!  Nor was that enough.  Fearing that love
+might outweigh reason and calculation in the young, the law granted to
+the father the right to give notice of divorce to the daughter-in-law,
+instead of leaving it to the son; so that the father was able to make
+and unmake the marriages of his sons, as he thought useful and fitting,
+without taking their will into account.
+
+The woman, therefore, although in the home she was of sovereign
+equality with the man and enjoyed a position full of honor, was,
+notwithstanding, never sure of the future.  Neither the affection of
+her husband nor the stainlessness of her life could insure that she
+should close her days in the house whither she had come in her youth as
+a bride.  At any hour the fatalities of politics could, I will not say,
+drive her forth, but gently invite her exit from the house where her
+children were born.  An ordinary letter was enough to annul a marriage.
+So it was that, particularly in the age of Caesar when politics were
+much perturbed and shifting, there were not a few women of the
+aristocracy who had changed husbands three or four times, and that not
+for lightness or caprice or inconstancy of tastes, but because their
+fathers, their brothers, sometimes their sons, had at a certain moment
+besought or constrained them to contract some particular marriage that
+should serve their own political ends.
+
+It is easy to comprehend how this precariousness discouraged woman from
+austere and rigorous virtues, the very foundation of the family; how it
+was a continuous incitement to frivolity of character, to dissipation,
+to infidelity.  Consequently, the liberty the Romans allowed her must
+have been much more dangerous than the greater freedom she enjoys
+today, since it lacked its modern checks and balances, such as personal
+choice in marriage, the relatively mature age at which marriages are
+nowadays made, the indissolubility of the matrimonial contract, or,
+rather, the many and diverse restrictions placed upon divorce, by which
+it is no longer left to the arbitrary will or the mere fancy of the man.
+
+In brief, there was in the constitution of the Roman family a
+contradiction, which must be well apprehended if one would understand
+the history of the great ladies of the imperial era.  Rome desired
+woman in marriage to be the pliable instrument of the interests of the
+family and the state, but did not place her under the despotism of
+customs, of law, and of the will of man in the way done by all other
+states that have exacted from her complete self-abnegation.  Instead,
+it accorded to her almost wholly that liberty, granted with little
+danger by civilizations like ours, in which she may live not only for
+the family, for the state, for the race, but also for herself.  Rome
+was unwilling to treat her as did the Greek and Asiatic world, but it
+did not on this account give up requiring of her the same total
+self-abnegation for the public weal, the utter obliviousness to her own
+aspirations and passions, in behalf of the race.
+
+[Illustration: Julius Caesar]
+
+This contradiction explains to us one of the fundamental phenomena of
+the history of Rome--the deep, tenacious, age-long puritanism of high
+Roman society.  Puritanism was the chief expedient by which Rome
+attempted to solve the contradiction.  That coercion which the Oriental
+world had tried to exercise upon woman by segregating her, keeping her
+ignorant, terrorizing her with threats and punishments, Rome sought to
+secure by training.  It inculcated in every way by means of education,
+religion, and opinion the idea that she should be pious, chaste,
+faithful, devoted alone to her husband and children; that luxury,
+prodigality, dissoluteness, were horrible vices, the infamy of which
+hopelessly degraded all that was best and purest in woman.  It tried to
+protect the minds of both men and women from all those influences of
+art, literature, and religion which might tend to arouse the personal
+instinct and the longing for love; and for a long time it distrusted,
+withstood, and almost sought to disguise the mythology, the arts, and
+the literature of Greece, as well as many of the Asiatic religions,
+imbued as they were with an erotic spirit of subtle enticement.
+Puritanism is essentially an intense effort to rouse in the mind the
+liveliest repulsion for certain vices and pleasures, and a violent
+dread of them; and Rome made use of it to check and counterbalance the
+liberty of woman, to impede and render more difficult the abuses of
+such liberty, particularly prodigality and dissoluteness.
+
+It is therefore easy to understand how this puritanism was a thing
+serious, weighty, and terrible, in Roman life; and how from it could be
+born the tragedies we have to recount.  It was the chief means of
+solving one of the gravest problems that has perplexed all
+civilizations--the problem of woman and her freedom, a problem earnest,
+difficult, and complex which springs up everywhere out of the
+unobstructed anarchy and the tremendous material prosperity of the
+modern world.  And the difficulty of the problem consists, above all,
+in this: that, although it is a hard, cruel, plainly iniquitous thing
+to deprive a woman of liberty and subject her to a regime of tyranny in
+order to constrain her to live for the race and not for herself, yet
+when liberty is granted her to live for herself, to satisfy her
+personal desires, she abuses that liberty more readily than a man does,
+and more than a man forgets her duties toward the race.
+
+She abuses it more readily for two reasons: because she exercises a
+greater power over man than he over her; and because, in the wealthier
+classes, she is freer from the political and economic responsibilities
+that bind the man.  However unbridled the freedom that man enjoys,
+however vast his egoism, he is always constrained in a certain measure
+to check his selfish instincts by the need of conserving, enlarging,
+and defending against rivals his social, economic, and political
+situation.
+
+But the woman?  If she is freed from family cares, if she is authorized
+to live for her own gratification and for her beauty; if the opinion
+that imposes upon her, on pain of infamy, habits pure and honest,
+weakens; if, instead of infamy, dissoluteness brings her glory, riches,
+homage, what trammel can still restrain in her the selfish instincts
+latent in every human being?  She runs the mighty danger of changing
+into an irresponsible being who will be the more admired and courted
+and possessed of power--at least as long as her beauty lasts--the more
+she ignores every duty, subordinating all good sense to her own
+pleasure.
+
+This is the reason why woman, in periods commanded by strong social
+discipline, is the most beneficent and tenacious among the cohesive
+forces of a nation; and why, in times when social discipline is
+relaxed, she is, instead, through ruinous luxury, dissipation, and
+voluntary sterility, the most terrible force for dissolution.
+
+[Illustration: The sister of M. Nonius Balbus.]
+
+One of the greatest problems of every epoch and all civilizations is to
+find a balance between the natural aspiration for freedom that is none
+other than the need of personal felicity--a need as lively and profound
+in the heart of woman as of man--and the supreme necessity for a
+discipline without which the race, the state, and the family run the
+gravest danger.  Yet this problem to-day, in the unmeasured
+exhilaration with which riches and power intoxicate the
+European-American civilization, is considered with the superficial
+frivolity and the voluble dilettantism that despoil or confuse all the
+great problems of esthetics, philosophy, statesmanship, and morality.
+We live in the midst of what might be called the Saturnalia of the
+world's history; and in the midst of the swift and easy labor, the
+inebriety of our continual festivities, we feel no more the tragic in
+life.  This short history of the women of the Caesars will set before
+the eyes of this pleasure-loving contemporary age tragedies among whose
+ruins our ancestors lived from birth to death, and by which they
+tempered their minds.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LIVIA AND JULIA
+
+In the year 38 B.C. it suddenly became known at Rome that C. Julius
+Caesar Octavianus (afterward the Emperor Augustus), one of the
+triumvirs of the republic, and colleague of Mark Antony and Lepidus in
+the military dictatorship established after the death of Caesar, had
+sent up for decision to the pontifical college, the highest religious
+authority of the state, a curious question.  It was this: Might a
+divorced woman who was expecting to become a mother contract a marriage
+with another man before the birth of her child?  The pontifical college
+replied that if there still was doubt about the fact the new marriage
+would not be permissible; but if it was certain, there would be no
+impediment.  A few days later, it was learned that Octavianus had
+divorced his wife Scribonia and had married Livia, a young woman of
+nineteen.  Livia's physical condition was precisely that concerning
+which the pontiffs had been asked to decide, and in order to enter into
+this marriage she had obtained a divorce from Tiberius Claudius Nero.
+
+The two divorces and the new marriage were concluded with unwonted
+haste.  The first husband of Livia, acting the part of a father, gave
+her a dowry for her new alliance and was present at the wedding.  Thus
+Livia suddenly passed into the house of her new husband where, three
+months later, she gave birth to a son, who was called Drusus Claudius
+Nero.  This child Octavianus immediately sent to the house of its
+father.
+
+To us, marriage customs of this sort seem brutal, shameless, and almost
+ridiculous.  We should infer that a woman who lent herself to such
+barter and exchange must be a person of light manners and of immoral
+inclinations.  At Rome, however, no one would have been amazed at such
+a marriage or at the procedure adopted, had it not been for the
+extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable
+or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child,
+and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its
+somewhat sophistical consent.  For all were accustomed to seeing the
+marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on
+such bases.  Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded,
+apparently with the consent of all concerned?  Why did they all, Livia
+and Octavianus not less than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impatient
+that everything should be settled with despatch?
+
+[Illustration: Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a
+priestess.]
+
+The legend which then formed about the family of Augustus, a legend
+hostile at almost every point, has interpreted this marriage as a
+tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the dissolute and perverse
+triumvir.  I, too, in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed my
+belief that this haste, at least, was the effect not of political
+motives but of a passionate love inspired in the young triumvir by the
+very beautiful Livia.  A longer reflection upon this episode has
+persuaded me, however, that there is another manner, less poetic
+perhaps, but more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, this famous
+alliance, which was to have so great an importance in the history of
+Rome.
+
+To arrive at the motives of this marriage we must consider who was
+Livia and who was Octavianus.  Livia was a woman of great beauty, as
+her portraits prove.  But this was not all.  She belonged also to two
+of the most ancient and conspicuous families of the Roman nobility.
+Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, was by birth a Claudius,
+adopted by a Livius Drusus.  He was descended from Appius the Blind,
+the famous censor and perhaps the most illustrious personage of the
+ancient republic.  His grandfather, his great-grand-father, and his
+great-great-grandfather had been consuls, and consuls and censors may
+be found in the collateral branches of the family.  A sister of his
+grandfather had been the wife of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his
+father had married Lucullus, the great general.  He came, therefore, of
+one of the most ancient and glorious families.  Not less noble was the
+family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him.  It counted eight
+consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and one dictatorship.
+Thus the father of Livia belonged by birth and adoption to two of those
+ancient, aristocratic families which for a long time and even in the
+midst of the most tremendous revolutions the people had venerated as
+semi-divine and into whose story was interwoven the history of the
+great republic.  Nor had the first husband given to Livia been less
+noble, for Tiberius Claudius Nero was descended like Livia from Appius
+the Blind, though through another son of the great censor.  In Livia
+was concentrated the quintessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she
+was at Rome what in London to-day the daughter of the Duke of
+Westminster or the Duke of Bedford would be, and her noble rank
+explains the role which her family had played during the Civil War.  In
+the great revolution which broke out after the death of Caesar, the
+father of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by the triumvirs; he
+had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had died by his own hand after
+Philippi.  In 40, after the Perusinian war and only two years before
+Livia's marriage with Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia had
+been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the vengeance of Octavianus.
+
+Who on the other hand was Octavianus?  A parvenu, with a nobility
+altogether too recent!  His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae
+(now Velletri), a financier and a man of affairs; it was only his
+immediate father who succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer
+grandfather in entering the Roman nobility.  He had married a sister of
+Caesar and, though still young when he died, had become a senator and
+pretor.  Octavianus was, therefore, the descendant, as we should
+express it in Europe to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled.
+Although by adopting him in his will Caesar had given him his name,
+that of an ancient patrician family, the modest origin of Octavianus
+and the trade of his grandfather were known to everybody.  In a country
+like Rome where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old nobility was
+still highly venerated by the people and formed a closed caste, jealous
+of its exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of origin was a
+handicap and a danger, especially when Octavianus had as colleagues
+Antony and Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient and illustrious
+origin than his own.
+
+We can readily explain, therefore, even without admitting that Livia
+had aroused in him a violent passion, why the future Augustus should
+have been so impatient to marry her in 38 B.C.  The times were stormy
+and uncertain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice of fortune had
+raised to the head of a revolutionary dictatorship, was certainly the
+weakest of the three colleagues, because of his youth, his slighter
+experience, the feebler prestige among his soldiers, and, last of all,
+the greater obscurity of his lineage.  Antony, especially, who had
+fought in so many wars, with Caesar and alone, who belonged to a family
+of really ancient nobility, was much more popular than he among the
+soldiers and had stronger relations with the great families.  He was
+therefore more powerful than Octavianus both in high places and in low.
+A marriage with Livia meant much to the future Augustus.  It would open
+for him a door into the old aristocracy; it would draw him closer to
+those families which, in spite of the revolution, were still so
+influential and venerable; it would be the means of lessening the
+hatred, contempt, and distrust in which these families held him.  It
+was for him what Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise and the
+consequent connection with the imperial family of Austria had been for
+the former Corsican officer, become Emperor of the French.  Since, now,
+a lady who belonged to one of these great families was disposed to
+marry him, it would have been foolish to put obstacles in the way; it
+was necessary to act with despatch; time and fortune might change.
+
+Such are the motives that may have induced Augustus to hasten the
+nuptials.  But what were the motives of Livia in accepting this
+marriage, in such stormy times, when the fortunes of the future
+Augustus were still so uncertain?  A passage in Velleius Paterculus
+would lead us to believe that he who devised this historic marriage was
+none other than that same first husband of Livia, Tiberius Claudius
+Nero himself!  According to our ideas it is inconceivable; but not at
+all strange according to the ideas of the Roman.  It is probable that
+Tiberius Claudius Nero, feeling that the triumph of the revolution was
+now assured, had wished by this marriage to attach to the cause of the
+old aristocracy the youngest of the three revolutionary leaders.
+Already well along in years and infirm,--he was to die shortly
+after,--Nero, who well knew the intelligence of his young wife, was
+perhaps planning to place her in the house of the man in whom all saw
+one of the future lords of Rome.  Thus he would bind him to the
+interests of the aristocracy.  In the person of Livia there entered
+into the house of Octavianus the old Roman nobility, which, defeated at
+Philippi, was striving to reacquire through the prestige and the
+cleverness of a woman what it had not been able to maintain by arms.
+
+All her life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact,
+Livia fulfilled her mission.  She succeeded in resolving into the
+admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the
+liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man
+as a duty.  She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that
+lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and
+tempestuous history never ceased to admire.  Even and serene,
+completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with a
+robust will, she accommodated herself without difficulty to all the
+sacrifices which her rank and situation imposed upon her.  She changed
+husbands without repugnance, though her marriage to Octavianus occurred
+but five years after the proscriptions, while he was still red with the
+blood of her family and friends.  Likewise she renounced her two sons,
+the future emperor Tiberius, who had been born before her second
+marriage, as well as the one who had been born after.  So too when, a
+few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their
+guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with
+the most careful motherly solicitude.  To the second husband, whom
+politics had given her, she was a faithful companion.  Scandal imputed
+to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of
+insatiable ambitions and perfidious intrigues.  No one ever dared
+accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct.  The
+great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
+poise of her spirit.  In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
+triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
+from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
+with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
+interests of the world,--laws and elections, wars and peace,--she
+preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry.  These
+she had learned as a child in the house of her father,--a house as much
+more illustrious with inherited glory as it was poorer in wealth than
+that which Victory had prepared for Augustus on the Palatine.
+
+[Illustration: The young Augustus.]
+
+We know--it is Suetonius who tells us--that this house on the Palatine
+built by Augustus, in which Livia spent the larger part of her life,
+was small and not at all luxurious.  In it there was not a single piece
+of marble nor a precious mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the
+same bedchamber, and the furniture of the house was so simple that in
+the second century of our era it was exhibited to the public as an
+extraordinary curiosity.  The imperial pair had several villas, at
+Lanuvium, at Palestrina, at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious
+and simple.  Nor was there any more pomp and ceremony about the dinners
+to which they invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, the
+dignitaries of the state and the heads of the great families.  Only on
+very special occasions were six courses served; usually there were but
+three.  Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven
+by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands,--though she
+did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom,--but by her slaves and
+freed-women.  Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia
+counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms
+which were in the house.  As she carefully parceled out the wool to the
+slaves, watching over them lest they steal or waste it, and frequently
+taking her place among them while they were at work, she felt that she
+too contributed to the prosperity and the glory of the empire.
+
+Simplicity, loyalty, industry, an absolute surrender of one's own
+personality to the family and its interests,--these, in the great
+families, were the traditional feminine virtues which lived again in
+Livia to the admiration of her contemporaries.  But with these virtues
+were associated also the need and the pride of participating in the
+affairs and work of her husband, that interest in politics which had
+been common to the intelligent women of the nobility.  No one at Rome
+was astonished, especially in the upper classes, that Livia should
+occupy herself actively with politics; that Augustus should frequently
+come to her for counsel, or that he should not make any serious
+decision without having consulted her; that, in short, she should at
+the same time attend to her husband's clothes and aid him in governing
+the empire.  For so had done from time immemorial all the great ladies
+of the aristocracy, mindful of their good repute and the prosperity of
+their families.  And Livia must have tried the more earnestly to fulfil
+all that her education had taught her to consider a sacred duty, since
+to a woman of her old-fashioned breeding the times must have appeared
+especially difficult and perilous.
+
+The civil wars had greatly reduced in numbers the historic aristocracy
+of Rome, and the peace which followed after so long a time and which
+had been so anxiously invoked, very soon began to threaten the
+prosperity of the remnant of that nobility with a more insidious but
+more inevitable ruin.  About 18 B.C., when Livia was approaching her
+fortieth year, the men of the new generation who had not seen the civil
+wars, for when these ended they were either unborn or only in their
+infancy, were already beginning to come to the front.  They brought
+with them a previously unknown spirit of luxury, of enjoyment, of
+dissipation, of rebellion against discipline, of egotism and fondness
+for the new, which rendered very difficult, not to say impossible, the
+continuation of the aristocratic regime.  Women submitted with more and
+more repugnance to those obligatory marriages, arranged for reasons of
+state, which had formerly been the tradition and the sure bulwark of
+dominion for the aristocracy.  The increase of celibacy was rendering
+sterile the most celebrated stocks; the most lamentable vices and
+disorders became tolerated and common in the most illustrious families,
+and ruinous habits of extravagance spread generally among that
+aristocracy, once so simple and austere.  All this had grown up after
+the conquest of Egypt, which had established more points of contact
+with the East; and it increased in proportion as those industries and
+the commerce in articles of luxury which had flourished at Alexandria
+under the Ptolemies were gradually transplanted to Rome, where the
+merchants hoped to establish among their conquerors the clientele which
+had been lost with the fall of the Kingdom of the Nile.  The ladies
+especially took up with the new oriental customs, and, preferring
+expensive stuffs and jewels, turned from the loom, which Livia had
+wished to preserve as the emblem of womanhood.  Many young men of the
+great families were beginning to show a distaste for the army, for the
+government of the state, for jurisprudence, for all those activities
+which had been the jealous privilege of the nobility of the past.  One
+gave himself up to literary pursuits, another cultivated philosophy,
+another busied himself only with the increase of his inherited fortune,
+while another lived only in pleasure and idleness.  So it happened that
+there began to appear descendants of great houses who refused to be
+senators; every year an effort had to be made to find a sufficient
+number of candidates for the more numerous positions like the
+questorship, and in the army it was no easy matter to fill all the
+posts of the superior officers which were reserved for members of the
+nobility.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Augustus.  This statue was found in 1910 in
+the Via Labicana, not far from the Colosseum.]
+
+The Roman aristocracy then, that glorious Roman aristocracy which had
+escaped the massacres of the proscriptions and of Philippi, ran grave
+danger of dying out through a species of slow suicide, if energetic
+measures were not taken to supply the necessary remedies.  It is
+certain that Livia had a conspicuous part in the policy of restoring
+the aristocracy, to which Augustus was impelled by the old nobility,
+especially toward the year 18 B.C., when with this purpose in view he
+proposed his famous social laws.  The _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_
+attempted by various penalties and promises to constrain the members of
+the aristocracy to contract marriage and to found a family, thus
+combatting the increasing inclination to celibacy and sterility.  The
+_Lex de adulteriis_ aimed to reestablish order and virtue in the
+family, by threatening the unfaithful wife and her accomplice with
+exile for life and the confiscation of a part of their substance.  It
+obliged the husband to expose the crime to the tribunals; if the
+husband could not or would not make the accusation, it provided that
+the father should do so; and in case both husband and father failed, it
+authorized any citizen to step forth as accuser.  Finally the _Lex
+sumptuaria_ was designed to restrain the extravagance of wealthy
+families, particularly that of the women, prohibiting them from
+spending too large a part of the family fortune in jewels, apparel,
+body slaves, festivities, or buildings, especially in the building of
+sumptuous villas, then a growing fashion.  In short, it was the purpose
+of these laws to bring the ladies of the Roman aristocracy to a course
+of conduct patterned upon the example of Livia.  In the protracted
+discussions concerning these laws, which took place in the senate,
+Augustus on one occasion made a long speech in which he cited Livia as
+a model for the ladies of Rome.  He set forth minutely the details of
+her household administration, telling how she lived, what relations she
+had with outsiders, what amusements she thought proper for a person of
+her rank, how she dressed and at what expense.  And no one in the
+senate judged it unworthy of the greatness of the state or contrary to
+custom thus to introduce the name and person of a great lady into the
+public discussion of so serious a matter of governmental policy.
+
+Livia, then, about 18 B.C. personified in the eyes of the Romans the
+perfect type of aristocratic great lady created by long tradition.
+Having been safely preserved by good fortune through the long civil
+wars, this model was now set back again upon a fitting pedestal in the
+most powerful and richest family of the empire.  She was the living
+example of all the virtues which the Romans most cherished, a beloved
+wife and a heeded counselor to the head of the state, honored with that
+veneration which power, virtue, nobility of birth, and the dignified
+beauty of face and figure drew from every one; furthermore, there were
+her two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, both intelligent, handsome, full of
+activity, docile to the traditional education which she sought to give
+them in order that they might be the worthy continuators of the great
+name they bore.  Livia, with all this in her favor, might have been
+expected to live a happy and tranquil life, serenely to fulfil her
+mission amid the admiration of the world.
+
+[Illustration: A silver denarius of the Second Triumvirate.  The
+portrait at the right (obverse) is of Caesar Octavianus (Augustus),
+with a slight beard to indicate mourning, and at the left (reverse), of
+Mark Antony.  The date is 41 B.C.]
+
+[Illustration: Silver coin bearing the head of Julius Caesar.  This
+coin, a denarius, worth about seventeen cents, represents Caesar as
+Pontifex Maximus.  Together with all the other Roman coins bearing
+Caesar's image, it was struck in the year before his death--44-45 B.C.
+The fact that Caesar placed his image on these coins may have
+strengthened the suspicion of his enemies that he wished to make
+himself king.]
+
+But opposition and difficulties sprang up in her own family.  In 39
+B.C. Augustus had had by Scribonia a daughter, Julia.  Following in the
+government of his family, as in so large a part of his politics, the
+traditions of the old nobility, Augustus gave his daughter in marriage
+when very young,--she was not yet past seventeen,--just as he early
+gave wives to Livia's two sons, whose guardian he was.  In each case in
+order to assure within his circle harmony and power, he chose the
+consort in his own family or from among his friends.  To Tiberius he
+gave Agrippina, a daughter of Agrippa, his close friend and most
+faithful collaborator; to Drusus he gave Antonia, the younger daughter
+of Mark Antony and Octavia, sister of Augustus.  To Julia he gave
+Marcellus, his nephew, the son of Octavia and her first husband.  But
+while the marriages of Drusus and Tiberius proved successful and the
+two couples lived lovingly and happily, such was not the case with the
+marriage of Julia and Marcellus.  As a result, disagreeable
+misunderstandings and rancors soon made themselves felt in the family.
+We do not know exactly what were the causes of these disagreements.  It
+seems that Marcellus, under the influence of Julia, assumed a tone
+somewhat too haughty and insolent, such as was not becoming in a youth
+who, although the nephew of Augustus, was still taking his first steps
+in his political career; and it seems too that this conduct of his was
+especially offensive to Agrippa, who, next to Augustus, was the first
+person in the empire.
+
+In short, at seventeen, Julia desired that her husband should be the
+second personage of the state in order that she might come immediately
+after Livia or even be placed directly on an equality with her.
+According to the Roman ideas of the family and of its discipline, this
+was a precocious and excessive ambition, unbecoming a matron, much less
+a young girl.  For the duty of the woman was to follow faithfully and
+submissively the ambitions of her lord and not to impart to him her own
+ambitions or make him her tool.  In contrast to Livia, who was so
+docile and placid in her respect for the older traditions of the
+aristocracy, so firm and strong in her observance of the duties, not
+infrequently grievous and difficult, which this tradition imposed,
+Julia represented the woman of that new generation which had grown up
+in the times of peace--a type more rebellious against tradition, less
+resigned to the serious duties and difficult renunciations of rank;
+much more inclined to enjoy its prerogatives than disposed to bear that
+heavy burden of obligations and sacrifices with which the previous
+generations had balanced privilege.  Beautiful and intelligent, even in
+the early years of her first marriage she showed a great passion for
+studies, and a fine artistic and literary taste, and with these a
+lively inclination toward luxury and display which hardly suited with
+the spirit or the letter of the _Lex sumptuaria_ which her father had
+carried through in that year.  But fraught with greater danger than all
+this was her ardent and passionate temperament, which both in the
+family and in politics was altogether too frequently to drive her to
+desire and to carry through that which, rightly or wrongly, was
+forbidden to a woman by law, custom, and public opinion.
+
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a young woman endowed with
+so fiery and ambitious a nature did not become in the hands of Augustus
+as docile a political instrument as Livia.  Julia wished to live for
+herself and for her pleasure, not for the political greatness of her
+father; and indeed, Augustus, who had a fine knowledge of men, was so
+impressed by this first unhappy experiment that when Marcellus, still a
+very young man, died in 23 B.C., he hesitated a long time before
+remarrying the youthful widow.  For a moment, indeed, he did think of
+bestowing her not upon a senator but upon a knight, that is, a person
+outside of the political aristocracy, evidently with the intention of
+stifling her too eager ambitions by taking from her all means and hope
+of satisfying them.  Then he decided upon the opposite expedient, that
+of quieting those ambitions by entirely satisfying them, and so gave
+Julia, in 21 B.C., to Agrippa, who had been the cause of the earlier
+difficulties.  Agrippa was twenty-four years older than she and could
+have been her father, but he was in truth the second person of the
+empire in glory, riches, and power.  Soon after, in 18 B.C., he was to
+become the colleague of Augustus in the presidency of the republic and
+consequently his equal in every way.
+
+Thus Julia suddenly saw her ambitions gratified.  She became at
+twenty-one the next lady of the empire after Livia, and perhaps even
+the first in company with and beside her.  Young, beautiful,
+intelligent, cultured, and loving luxury, she represented at Livia's
+side and in opposition to her, the trend of the new generation in which
+was growing the determination to free itself from tradition.  She
+lavished money generously, and there soon formed about her a sort of
+court, a party, a coterie, in which figured the fairest names of the
+Roman aristocracy.  Her name and her person became popular even among
+the common people of Rome, to whom the name of the Julii was more
+sympathetic than that of the Claudii, which was borne by the sons of
+Livia.  The combined popularity of Augustus and of Agrippa was
+reflected in her.  It may be said, therefore, that toward 18 B.C., the
+younger, more brilliant, and more "modern" Julia began to obscure Livia
+in the popular imagination, except in that little group of old
+conservative nobility which gathered about the wife of Augustus.  So
+true is this that about this time, Augustus, wishing to place himself
+into conformity with his law _de maritandis ordinibus_, reached a
+significant decision.  Since that law fixed at three the number of
+children which every citizen should have, if he wished to discharge his
+whole duty toward the state, and since Augustus had but a single
+daughter, he decided to adopt Caius and Lucius, the first two sons that
+Julia had borne to Agrippa.  This was a great triumph for her, in so
+far as her sons would henceforth bear the very popular name of Caesar.
+
+But the difficulties which the first marriage with Marcellus had
+occasioned and which Augustus had hoped to remove by this second
+marriage soon reappeared in another but still more dangerous form, for
+they had their roots in that passionate, imperious, bold, and imprudent
+temperament of Julia.  This temperament the Roman education had not
+succeeded in taming; it was strengthened by the undisciplined spirit of
+the times.  And with it Julia soon began to abuse the fortune, the
+popularity, the prestige, and the power which came to her from being
+the daughter of Augustus and the wife of Agrippa.  Little by little she
+became possessed by the mania of being in Rome the antithesis of Livia,
+of conducting herself in every case in a manner contrary to that
+followed by her stepmother.  If the latter, like Augustus, wore
+garments of wool woven at home, Julia affected silks purchased at great
+price from the oriental merchants.  These the ladies of the older type
+considered a ruinous luxury because of the expense, and an indecency
+because of the prominence which they gave to the figure.  Where Livia
+was sparing, Julia was prodigal.  If Livia preferred to go to the
+theater surrounded by elderly and dignified men, Julia always showed
+herself in public with a retinue of brilliant and elegant youths.  If
+Livia set an example of reserve, Julia dared appear in the provinces in
+public at the side of her husband and receive public homage.  In spite
+of the law which forbade the wives of Roman governors to accompany
+their husbands into the provinces, Julia prevailed upon Agrippa to make
+her his companion when in the year 16 B.C. he made his long journey
+through the East.  Everywhere she appeared at his side, at the great
+receptions, at the courts, in the cities; and she was the first of the
+Latin women to be apotheosized in the Orient.  Paphos called her
+"divine" and set up statues to her; Mitylene called her the New
+Aphrodite, Eressus, Aphrodite Genetrix.  These were bold innovations in
+a state in which tradition was still so powerful; but they could
+scarcely have been of serious danger to Julia, if her passionate
+temperament had not led her to commit a much more serious imprudence.
+Agrippa, compared to her, was old, a simple, unpolished man of obscure
+origin who was frequently absent on affairs of state.  In the circle
+which had formed about Julia there were a number of handsome, elegant,
+pleasing young men; among others one Sempronius Gracchus, a descendant
+of the famous tribunes.  Julia seems toward the close to have had for
+him, even in the lifetime of Agrippa, certain failings which the _Lex
+de adulteriis_ visited with terrible punishments.
+
+[Illustration: The great Paris Cameo.  This is the largest ancient
+cameo known, and is said to have been sent from Constantinople by
+Baldwin II. to Louis IX.  It represents the living members of the
+imperial family protected by the deified Augustus.  In the center
+Tiberius is shown seated, as Jupiter, with his mother, Livia, at his
+left, as Ceres.  In front of them stand Germanicus and his mother
+Antonia.]
+
+It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if from this time on there
+should have been fostered between Julia and Livia a half-suppressed
+rivalry.  The fact is, in itself, very probable and several indications
+of it have remained in tradition and in history.  We know also that two
+parties were already beginning to gather about the two women.  One of
+these might be called the party of the Claudii and of the old
+conservative nobility, the other the party of the Julii and of that
+youthful nobility which was following the modern trend.  As long as
+Agrippa lived, Augustus, by holding the balance between the two
+factions, succeeded in maintaining a certain equilibrium.  With the
+death of Agrippa, which occurred in 12 B.C., the situation was changed.
+
+Julia was now for the second time a widow, and by the provisions of the
+_Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ should remarry.  Augustus in the
+traditional manner sought a husband for her, and, seeking him only with
+the idea of furthering a political purpose, he found for her Tiberius,
+the elder son of Livia.  Tiberius was the stepbrother of Julia and was
+married to a lady whom he tenderly loved; but these were considerations
+which could hardly give pause to a Roman senator.  In the marriage of
+Tiberius and Julia, Augustus saw a way of snuffing out the incipient
+discord between the Julii and the Claudii, between Julia and Livia,
+between the parties of the new and of the old nobility.  He therefore
+ordered Tiberius to repudiate the young, beautiful, and noble Agrippina
+in order to marry Julia.  For Tiberius the sacrifice was hard; we are
+told that one day after the divorce, having met Agrippina at some
+house, he began to weep so bitterly that Augustus ordered that the
+former husband and wife should never meet again.  But Tiberius, on the
+other hand, had been educated by his mother in the ancient ideas, and
+therefore knew that a Roman nobleman must sacrifice his feelings to the
+public interest.  As for Julia, she celebrated her third wedding
+joyfully; for Tiberius, after the deaths of Agrippa and of his own
+brother Drusus, was the rising man, the hope and the second personage
+of the empire, so that she was not forced to step down from the lofty
+position which the marriage with Agrippa had given her.  Tiberius,
+furthermore, was a very handsome man and for this reason also he seems
+not to have been displeasing to Julia, who in the matter of husbands
+considered not only glory and power.
+
+The marriage of Julia and Tiberius began under happy auspices.  Julia
+seemed to love Tiberius and Tiberius did what he could to be a good
+husband.  Julia soon felt that she was once more to become a mother and
+the hope of this other child seemed to cement the union between husband
+and wife.  But the rosy promises of the beginning were soon
+disappointed.  Tiberius was the son of Livia, a true Claudius, the
+worthy heir of two ancient lines, an uncompromising traditionalist,
+therefore a rigid and disdainful aristocrat, and a soldier severe with
+others as with himself.  He wished the aristocracy to set the people an
+example of all the virtues which had made Rome so great in peace and
+war: religious piety, simplicity of customs, frugality, family purity,
+and rigid observance of all the laws.  The luxury and prodigality which
+were becoming more and more wide-spread among the young nobility had no
+fiercer enemy than he.  He held that a man of great lineage who spent
+his substance on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor to his
+country, and no one demanded with greater insistence than he that the
+great laws of the year 18 B.C., the sumptuary law, the laws on marriage
+and adultery, should be enforced with the severest rigor.  Julia, on
+the other hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joyous companies of
+elegant youths, an easy, brilliant life full of amusement.
+
+[Illustration: Octavia, the sister of Augustus.]
+
+For greater misfortune, the son who was born of their union died
+shortly after and discord found its way between Julia and Tiberius.
+Sempronius Gracchus, who knew how to profit by this, reappeared and
+again made advances to Julia.  She again lent her ear to his bland
+words and the domestic disagreement rapidly became embittered.
+Tiberius,--this is certain,--soon learned that Julia had resumed her
+relations with Sempronius Gracchus, and a new, intolerable torment was
+added to his already distressed life.  According to the _Lex de
+adulteriis_, he as husband should have made known the crime of his wife
+to the pretor and have had her punished.  He had been one of those who
+had always most vehemently denounced the nobility for their weakness in
+the enforcement of this law.  Now that his own wife had fallen under
+the provisions of the terrible statute, to which so many other women
+had been forced to submit, the moment had come to give the weak that
+example of unconquerable firmness which he had so often demanded of
+others.  But Julia was the daughter of Augustus.  Could he call down,
+without the consent of Augustus, so terrible a scandal upon the first
+house of the empire, render its daughter infamous, and drive her into
+exile?  Augustus, though he desired his daughter to be more prudent and
+serious, yet loved and protected her; above all, he disliked dangerous
+scandal, and Julia dared to do whatever she wished, knowing herself
+invulnerable under his protection and his love.
+
+To this hard and false situation Tiberius, fuming with rage, had to
+adjust himself.  He lived in a separate apartment, keeping up with
+Julia only the relations necessary to save appearances, but he could
+not divorce her, much less publish her guilt.  The situation grew still
+worse when political discontent began to use for its own ends the
+discord between Julia and Tiberius.  Tiberius had many enemies among
+the nobility, especially among the young men of his own age; partly
+because his rapid, brilliant career had aroused much jealousy, partly
+because his conservative, traditionalist tendencies toward authority
+and militarism disturbed many of them.  More and more among the
+nobility there was increasing the desire for a mild and easy-going
+government which should allow them to enjoy their privileges without
+hardship and which should not be too severe in imposing its duties upon
+them.
+
+On the other hand, Julia was most ambitious.  Since, after the
+disagreements with Tiberius had broken out, she could no longer hope to
+be the powerful wife of the first person of the empire after Augustus,
+she sought compensation.  Thus there formed about Julia a party which
+sought in every way to ruin the lofty position which Tiberius occupied
+in the state, by setting up against him Caius Caesar, the son of Julia
+by Agrippa, whom Augustus had adopted and of whom he was very fond.  In
+6 B.C., Caius Caesar was only fourteen years old, but at that period an
+agitation was set on foot whereby, through a special privilege conceded
+to him by the senate, he was to be named consul for the year of Rome
+754, when Caius should have reached twenty.  This was a manoeuver of
+the Julian party to attract popular attention to the youth, to prepare
+a rival for Tiberius in his quality as principal collaborator of
+Augustus, and to gain a hold upon the future head of the state.
+
+The move was altogether very bold; for this nomination of a child
+consul contradicted all the fundamental principles of the Roman
+constitution, and it would probably have been fatal to the party which
+evolved it, had not the indignant rage of Tiberius assured its triumph.
+Tiberius opposed this law, which he took as an offense, and he wished
+Augustus to oppose it, and at the outset Augustus did so.  But then,
+either because Julia was able to bend him to her desires or because in
+the senate there was in truth a strong party which supported it out of
+hatred for Tiberius, Augustus at last yielded, seeking to placate
+Tiberius with other compensations.  But Tiberius was too proud and
+violent an aristocrat to accept compensations and indignantly demanded
+permission to retire to Rhodes, abandoning all the public offices which
+he exercised.  He certainly hoped to make his loss felt, for indeed
+Rome needed him.  But he was mistaken.  This act of Tiberius was
+severely judged by public opinion as a reprisal upon the public for a
+private offense.  Augustus became angry with him and in his absence all
+his enemies took courage and hurled themselves against him.  The honors
+to Caius Caesar were approved amid general enthusiasm and the Julian
+party triumphed all along the line; it reached the height of power and
+popularity, while Tiberius was constrained to content himself with the
+idle life of a private person at Rhodes.
+
+[Illustration: A reception at Livia's villa.  The scene evidently is at
+Livia's country palace at Prima Porta.  Agrippa is seen descending the
+steps to be received by Augustus and Livia (who are not shown in the
+picture).  The original of the status of Augustus, here shown, was
+found in the ruins of Livia's villa close to the flight of marble steps
+and its base.  The remains of the steps and the base of the statue are
+standing to-day at Prima Porta.]
+
+But at Rome Livia still remained.  From that moment began the mortal
+duel between Livia and Julia.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA
+
+Tiberius had now broken with Augustus, he had lost the support of
+public opinion, he was hated by the majority of the senate.  At Rhodes
+he soon found himself, therefore, in the awkward position of one who
+through a false move has played into the hands of his enemies and sees
+no way of recovering his position.  It had been easy to leave Rome; to
+reenter it was difficult, and in all probability his fortune would have
+been forever compromised, and he would never have become emperor, had
+it not been for the fact that in the midst of this general defection
+two women remained faithful.  They were his mother, Livia, and his
+sister-in-law, Antonia, the widow of that brother Drusus who, dying in
+his youth, had carried to his grave the hopes of Rome.
+
+Antonia was the daughter of the emperor's sister Octavia and of Mark
+Antony, the famous triumvir whose name remains forever linked in story
+with that of Cleopatra.  This daughter of Antony was certainly the
+noblest and the gentlest of all the women who appear in the lugubrious
+and tragic history of the family of the Caesars.  Serious, modest, and
+even-tempered, she was likewise endowed with beauty and virtue, and she
+brought into the family and into its struggles a spirit of concord,
+serenity of mind, and sweet reasonableness, though they could not
+always prevail against the violent passions and clashing interests of
+those about her.  As long as Drusus lived, Drusus and Antonia had been
+for the Romans the model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their
+tender affection had become proverbial; yet the Roman multitude, always
+given to admiring the descendants of the great families, was even more
+deeply impressed by the beauty, the virtue, the sweetness, the modesty,
+and the reserve of Antonia.  After the death of Drusus, she did not
+wish to marry again, even though the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ made
+it a duty.  "Young and beautiful," wrote Valerius Maximus, "she
+withdrew to a life of retirement in the company of Livia, and the same
+bed which had seen the death of the youthful husband saw his faithful
+spouse grow old in an austere widowhood."  Augustus and the people were
+so touched by this supreme proof of fidelity to the memory of the
+ever-cherished husband that by the common consent of public opinion she
+was relieved of the necessity of remarrying; and Augustus himself, who
+had always carefully watched over the observance of the marital law in
+his own family, did not dare insist.  Whether living at her villa of
+Bauli, where she spent the larger part of her year, or at Rome, the
+beautiful widow gave her attention to the bringing up of her three
+children, Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius.  Ever since the death of
+Octavia, she had worshiped Livia as a mother and lived in the closest
+intimacy with her, and, withdrawn from public life, she attempted now
+to bring a spirit of peace into the torn and tragic family.
+
+Antonia was very friendly with Tiberius, who, on his side, felt the
+deepest sympathy and respect for his beautiful and virtuous
+sister-in-law.  It cannot be doubted, therefore, that in this crisis
+Antonia, who was bound to Livia by many ties, must have taken sides for
+Livia's son Tiberius.  But Antonia was too gentle and mild to lead a
+faction in the struggle which during these years began between the
+friends and the enemies of Tiberius, and that role was assumed by
+Livia, who possessed more strength and more authority.
+
+The situation grew worse and worse.  Public opinion steadily became
+more hostile to Tiberius and more favorable to Julia and her elder son,
+and it was not long before they wished to give to her younger son,
+Lucius, the same honors which had already been bestowed upon his
+brother Caius.  Private interest soon allied itself with the hatred and
+rancor against Tiberius; and scarcely had he departed when the senate
+increased the appropriation for public supplies and public games.  All
+those who profited by these appropriations were naturally interested in
+preventing the return of Tiberius, who was notorious for his opposition
+to all useless expenditures.  Any measure, however dishonest, was
+therefore considered proper, provided only it helped to ruin Tiberius;
+and his enemies had recourse to every art and calumny, among other
+things actually accusing him of conspiracies against Augustus.  Even
+for a woman as able and energetic as Livia it was an arduous task to
+struggle against the inclinations of Augustus, against public opinion,
+against the majority of the senate, against private interest, and
+against Julia and her friends.  Indeed, four years passed during which
+the situation of Tiberius and his party grew steadily worse, while the
+party of Julia increased in power.
+
+Finally the party of Tiberius resolved to attempt a startlingly bold
+move.  They decided to cripple the opposition by means of a terrible
+scandal in the very person of Julia.  The _Lex Julia de adulteriis_,
+framed by Augustus in the year 18, authorized any citizen to denounce
+an unfaithful wife before the judges, if the husband and father should
+both refuse to make the accusation.  This law, which was binding upon
+all Roman citizens, was therefore applicable even to the daughter of
+Augustus, the widow of Agrippa, the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar,
+those two youths in whom were centered the hopes of the republic.  She
+had violated the _Lex Julia_ and she had escaped the penalties which
+had been visited on many other ladies of the aristocracy only because
+no one had dared to call down this scandal upon the first family of the
+empire.  The party of Tiberius, protected and guided by Livia, at last
+hazarded this step.
+
+It is impossible to say what part Livia played in this terrible
+tragedy.  It is certain that either she or some other influential
+personage succeeded in gaining possession of the proofs of Julia's
+guilt and brought them to Augustus, threatening to lay them before the
+pretor and to institute proceedings if he did not discharge his duty.
+Augustus found himself constrained to apply to himself his own terrible
+law.  He himself had decreed that if the husband, as was then the case
+of Tiberius, could not accuse a faithless woman, the father must do so.
+It was his law, and he had to bow to it in order to avoid scandals and
+worse consequences.  He exiled Julia to the little island of
+Pandataria, and at the age of thirty-seven the brilliant, pleasing, and
+voluptuous young woman who had dazzled Rome for many years was
+compelled to disappear from the metropolis forever and retire to an
+existence on a barren island.  She was cut off by the implacable hatred
+of a hostile party and by the inexorable cruelty of a law framed by her
+own father!
+
+[Illustration: Mark Antony.]
+
+The exile of Julia marks the moment when the fortunes of Tiberius and
+Livia, which had been steadily losing ground for four years, began to
+revive, though not so rapidly as Livia and Tiberius had probably
+expected.  Julia preserved, even in her misfortune, many faithful
+friends and a great popularity.  For a long time popular demonstrations
+were held in her favor at Rome, and many busied themselves tenaciously
+to obtain her pardon from Augustus, all of which goes to prove that the
+horrible infamies which were spread about her were the inventions of
+enemies.  Julia had broken the _Lex Julia_,--so much is certain,--but
+even if she had been guilty of an unfortunate act, she was not a
+monster, as her enemies wished to have it believed.  She was a
+beautiful woman, as there had been before, as there are now, and as
+there will be hereafter, touched with human vices and with human
+virtues.
+
+As a matter of fact, her party, after it had recovered from the
+terrible shock of the scandal, quickly reorganized.  Firm in its
+intention of having Julia pardoned, it took up the struggle again, and
+tried as far as it could to hinder Tiberius from returning to Rome and
+again taking part in political life, knowing well that if the husband
+once set foot in Rome, all hope of Julia's return would be lost.  Only
+one of them could reenter Rome.  It was either Tiberius or Julia; and
+more furiously than ever the struggle between the two parties was waged
+about Augustus.
+
+Caius and Lucius Caesar, Julia's two youthful sons, of whom Augustus
+was very fond, were the principal instruments with which the enemies of
+Tiberius fought against the influence of Livia over Augustus.  Every
+effort was made to sow hatred and distrust between the two youths and
+Tiberius, to the end that it might become impossible to have them
+collaborate with him in the government of the empire, and that the
+presence of Julia's sons should of necessity exclude that of her
+husband.  A further ally was soon found in the person of another child
+of Julia and Agrippa, the daughter who has come down into history under
+the name of the Younger Julia.  Augustus had conceived as great a love
+for her as for the two sons, and there was no doubt that she would aid
+with every means in her power the party averse to Tiberius; for her
+mother's instincts of liberty, luxury, and pleasure were also inherent
+in her.  Married to L. Aemilius Paulus, the son of one of the greatest
+Roman families, she had early assumed in Rome a position which made
+her, like her mother, the antithesis of Livia.  She, too, gathered
+about her, as the elder Julia had done, a court of elegant youths, men
+of letters, and poets,--Ovid was of the number,--and with this group
+she hoped to be able to hold the balance of power in the government
+against that coterie of aged senators who paid court to Livia.  She,
+too, took advantage of the good-will of her grandfather, just as her
+mother had done, and in the shadow of his protection she displayed an
+extravagance which the laws did not permit, but which, on this account,
+was all the more admired by the enemies of the old Roman Puritanism.
+As though openly to defy the sumptuary law of Augustus, she built
+herself a magnificent villa; and, if we dare believe tradition, it was
+not long before she, too, had violated the very law which had proved
+disastrous to her mother.
+
+Thus, even after the departure of Julia, her three children, Caius,
+Lucius, and Julia the Younger, constituted in Rome an alliance which
+was sufficiently powerful to contest every inch of ground with the
+party of Livia; for they had public opinion in their favor, they
+enjoyed the support of the senate, and they played upon the weakness of
+Augustus.  In the year 2 A.D., after four years of exhaustive efforts
+spent in struggle and intrigue, all that Livia had been able to obtain
+was the mere permission that Tiberius might return to Rome, under the
+conditions, however, that he retire to private life, that he give
+himself up to the education of his son, and that he in no wise mingle
+in public affairs.  The condition of the empire was growing worse on
+every side; the finances were disordered, the army was disorganized,
+and the frontiers were threatened, for revolt was raising its head in
+Gaul, in Pannonia, and especially in Germany.  Every day the situation
+seemed to demand the hand of Tiberius, who, now in the prime of life,
+was recognized as one of the leading administrators and the first
+general of the empire.  But, for all Livia's insistence, Augustus
+refused to call Tiberius back into the government.  The Julii were
+masters of the state, and held the Claudii at a distance.
+
+[Illustration: Antony and Cleopatra.]
+
+Perhaps Tiberius would never have returned to power in Rome had not
+chance aided him in the sudden taking off, in a strange and unforeseen
+manner, of Caius and Lucius Caesar.  The latter died at Marseilles,
+following a brief illness, shortly after the return of Tiberius to
+Rome, August 29, in the year 2 A.D.  It was a great grief to Augustus,
+and, twenty months after, was followed by another still more serious.
+In February of the year 4, Caius also died, in Lycia, of a wound
+received in a skirmish.  These two deaths were so premature, so close
+to each other, and so opportune for Tiberius, that posterity has
+refused to see in them simply one of the many mischances of life.
+Later generations have tried to believe that Livia had a hand in these
+fatalities.  Yet he who understands life at all knows that it is easier
+to imagine and suspect romantic poisonings of this sort than it is to
+carry them out.  Even leaving the character of Livia out of
+consideration, it is difficult to imagine how she would have dared, or
+have been able, to poison the two youths at so great a distance from
+Rome, one in Asia, the other in Gaul, by means of a long train of
+accomplices, and this at a moment when the family of Augustus was
+divided by many hatreds and every member was suspected, spied upon, and
+watched by a hostile party.  Furthermore, it would have been necessary
+to carry this out at a time when the example of Julia proved to all
+that relationship to Augustus was not a sufficient defense against the
+rigors of the law and the severity of public opinion when roused by any
+serious crime.  Besides, it is a recognized fact that people are always
+inclined to suspect a crime whenever a man prominent in the public eye
+dies before his time.  At Turin, for example, there still lives a
+tradition among the people that Cavour was poisoned, some say by the
+order of Napoleon III, others by the Jesuits, simply because his life
+was suddenly cut off, at the age of fifty-two, at the moment when Italy
+had greatest need of him.  Indeed, even to-day we are impressed when we
+see in the family of Augustus so many premature deaths of young men;
+but precisely because these untimely deaths are frequent we come to see
+in them the predestined ruin of a worn-out race in history.  All
+ancient families at a certain moment exhaust themselves.  This is the
+reason why no aristocracy has been able to endure for long unless
+continually renewed, and why all those that have refused to take in new
+blood have failed from the face of the earth.  There is no serious
+reason for attributing so horrible a crime to a woman who was venerated
+by the best men of her time; and the fables which the populace, always
+faithful to Julia, and therefore hostile to Livia, recounted on this
+score, and which the historians of the succeeding age collected, have
+no decisive value.
+
+The deaths of Caius and Lucius Caesar were therefore a great good
+fortune for Tiberius, because it determined his return to power.  The
+situation of the empire was growing worse on every hand; Germany was in
+the midst of revolt, and it was necessary to turn the army over to
+vigorous hands.  Augustus, old and irresolute, still hesitated, fearing
+the dislike which was brewing both in the senate and among the people
+against the too dictatorial Tiberius.  At last, however, he was forced
+to yield.
+
+The more serious, more authoritative, more ancient party of the
+senatorial nobility, in accord with Livia and headed by a nephew of
+Pompey, Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna, forced him to recall Tiberius,
+threatening otherwise to have recourse to some violent measures the
+exact character of which we do not know.  The unpopularity of Tiberius
+was a source of continual misgivings to the aging Augustus, and it was
+only through this threat of a yet greater danger that they finally
+overcame his hesitation.  On June 26, in the fourth year of our era,
+Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son, and had conferred upon him for
+ten years the office of tribune, thus making him his colleague.
+Tiberius returned to power, and, in accordance with the wishes of
+Augustus, adopted as his son Germanicus, the elder son of Drusus and
+Antonia, his faithful friend.  He was an intelligent, active lad of
+whom all entertained the highest hopes.
+
+[Illustration: Tiberius, elder son of Livia and stepson of Augustus.
+Augustus, lacking a male heir, first adopted his younger stepson
+Drusus, who died 9 B.C. owing to a fall from his horse.  In 4 A.D.  he
+adopted Tiberius, and was succeeded by him as Emperor in 14 A.D.]
+
+On his return to power, Tiberius, together with Augustus, took measures
+for reorganizing the army and the state, and sought to bring about by
+means of new marriages and acts of clemency a closer union between the
+Julian and Claudian branches of the family, then bitterly divided by
+the violent struggles of recent years.  The terms of Julia's exile were
+made easier; Germanicus married Agrippina, another daughter of Julia
+and Agrippa, and a sister of Julia the Younger; the widow of Caius
+Caesar, Livilla, sister of Germanicus and daughter of Antonia, was
+given to Drusus, the son of Tiberius, a young man born in the same year
+as Germanicus.  Drusus, despite certain defects, such as irascibility
+and a marked fondness for pleasure, gave evidence that he possessed the
+requisite qualities of a statesman--firmness, sound judgment, and
+energy.  The policy which dictated these marriages was always the
+same--to make of the family of Augustus one formidable and united body,
+so that it might constitute the solid base of the entire government of
+the empire.  But, alas! wise as were the intentions, the ferments of
+discord and the unhappiness of the times prevailed against them.  Too
+much had been hoped for in recalling Tiberius to power.  During the ten
+years of senile government, the empire had been reduced to a state of
+utter disorder.  The measures planned by Tiberius for reestablishing
+the finances of the state roused the liveliest discontent among the
+wealthy classes in Italy, and again excited their hatred against him.
+In the year 6 A.D., the great revolt of Pannonia broke out and for a
+moment filled Italy with unspeakable terror.  In an instant of mob
+fury, they even came to fear that the peninsula would be invaded and
+Rome besieged by the barbarians of the Danube.  Tiberius came to the
+rescue, and with patience and coolness put down the insurrection, not
+by facing it in open conflict, but by drawing out the war to such a
+length as to weary the enemy, a method both safe and wise, considering
+the unreliable character of the troops at his command.  But at Rome,
+once the fear had subsided, the long duration of the war became a new
+cause for dissatisfaction and anger, and offered to many a pretext for
+venting their long-cherished hatred against Tiberius, who was accused
+of being afraid, of not knowing how to end the war, and of drawing it
+out for motives of personal ambition.  The party averse to Tiberius
+again raised its head and resorted once more to its former policy--that
+of urging on Germanicus against Tiberius.  The former was young,
+ambitious, bold, and would have preferred daring strokes and a war
+quickly concluded.  It is certain that there would have risen then and
+there a Germanican and a Tiberian party, if Augustus, on this occasion,
+had not energetically sustained Tiberius from Rome.  But the situation
+again became strained and full of uncertainty.
+
+In the midst of these conflicts and these fears, a new scandal broke
+out in the family of Augustus.  The Younger Julia, like her mother,
+allowed herself to be caught in violation of the _Lex Julia de
+adulteriis_, and she also was compelled to take the road of exile.  In
+what manner and at whose instance the scandal was disclosed we do not
+know; we do know, however, that Augustus was very fond of his
+granddaughter, whence we can assume that in this moment of turbid
+agitation, when so much hatred was directed against his family and his
+house, and when so many forces were uniting to overthrow Tiberius
+again, notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the empire, Augustus
+felt that he must a second time submit to his own law.  He did not dare
+contend with the puritanical party, with the more conservative minority
+in the senate,--the friends of Tiberius,--over this second victim in
+his family.  Without a doubt everything possible was done to hush up
+the scandal, and there would scarcely have come down to us even a
+summary notice of the exile of the second Julia had it not been that
+among those exiled with her was the poet Ovid, who was to fill twenty
+centuries with his laments and to bring them to the ears of the latest
+generations.
+
+Ovid's exile is one of those mysteries of history which has most keenly
+excited the curiosity of the ages.  Ovid himself, without knowing it,
+has rendered it more acute by his prudence in not speaking more clearly
+of the cause of his exile, making only rare allusions to it, which may
+be summed up in his famous words, _carmen et error_.  It is for this
+reason that posterity has for twenty centuries been asking itself what
+was this error which sent the exquisite poet away to die among the
+barbarous Getae on the frozen banks of the Danube; and naturally they
+have never compassed his secret.  But if, therefore, it is impossible
+to say exactly what the error was which cost Ovid so dearly, it is
+possible, on the other hand, to explain that unique and famous episode
+in the history of Rome to which, after all, Ovid owes a great part of
+his immortality.  He was not the victim, as has been too often
+repeated, of a caprice of despotism; and therefore he cannot be
+compared with any of the many Russian writers whom the administration,
+through fear and hatred, deports to Siberia without definite reason.
+Certainly the error of Ovid lay in his having violated some clause of
+the _Lex Julia de adulteriis_, which, as we know, was so comprehensive
+in its provisions that it considered as accessories to the crime those
+guilty of various acts and deeds which, judged even with modern rigor
+and severity, would seem reprehensible, to be sure, but not deserving
+of such terrible punishment.  Ovid was certainly involved under one of
+these clauses,--which one we do not, and never shall, know,--but his
+error, whether serious or light, was not the true cause of his
+condemnation.  It was the pretext used by the more conservative and
+puritanical part of Roman society to vent upon him a long-standing
+grudge the true motives of which lay much deeper.
+
+What was the standing of this poet of the gay, frivolous, exquisite
+ladies whom they wished to send into exile?  He was the author of that
+graceful, erotic poetry who, through the themes which he chose for his
+elegant verses, had encouraged the tendencies toward luxury, diversion,
+and the pleasures which had transformed the austere matron of a former
+day into an extravagant and undisciplined creature given to
+voluptuousness; the poet who had gained the admiration of women
+especially by flattering their most dangerous and perverse tendencies.
+The puritanical party hated and combatted this trend of the newer
+generations, and therefore, also, the poetry of Ovid on account of its
+disastrous effects upon the women, whom it weaned from the virtues most
+prized in former days--frugality, simplicity, family affection, and
+purity of life.  The Roman aristocracy did not recognize the right of
+absolute literary freedom which is acknowledged by many modern states,
+in which writers and men of letters have acquired a strong political
+influence.  The theory, held by many countries to-day that any
+publication is justifiable, provided it be a work of art, was not
+accepted by the Romans in power.  On the contrary, they were convinced
+that an idea or a sentiment, dangerous in itself, became still more
+harmful when artistically expressed.  Therefore Rome had always known
+the existence of a kind of police supervision of ideas and of literary
+forms, exercised through various means by the ruling aristocracy, and
+especially in reference to women, who constituted that element of
+social life in which virtue and purity of customs are of the greatest
+consequence.  The Roman ladies of the aristocracy, as we have seen,
+received considerable instruction.  They read the poets and
+philosophers, and precisely for this reason there was always at Rome a
+strong aversion to light and immoral literature.  If books had
+circulated among men only, the poetry of Ovid would perhaps not have
+enjoyed the good fortune of a persecution which was to focus upon it
+the attention of posterity.  The greater liberty conceded to women thus
+placed upon society an even greater reserve in the case of its
+literature.  This Ovid learned to his cost when he was driven into
+exile because his books gave too much delight to too many ladies at
+Rome.  By the order of Augustus these books were removed from the
+libraries, which did not hinder their coming down to us entire, while
+many a more serious work--like Livy's history, for example--has been
+either entirely or in large part lost.
+
+[Illustration: Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius.]
+
+
+After the fall of the second Julia up to the time of his death, which
+occurred August 23, in the year 14 A.D., Augustus had no further
+serious griefs over the ladies of his family.  The great misfortune of
+the last years of his government was a public misfortune--the defeat of
+Varus and the loss of Germany.  But with what sadness must he have
+looked back in the last weeks of his long life upon the history of his
+family!  All those whom he had loved were torn from him before their
+time by a cruel destiny: Drusus, Caius, and Lucius Caesar by death; the
+Julias by the cruelty of the law and by an infamy worse than death.
+The unique grandeur to which he had attained had not brought fortune to
+his family.  He was old, almost alone, a weary survivor among the tombs
+of those dear to him who had been untimely lost through fate, and with
+the still sadder memories of those who had been buried in a living
+grave of infamy.  His only associates were Tiberius, with whom he had
+become reconciled; Antonia, his sweet and highly respected
+daughter-in-law; and Livia, the woman whom destiny had placed at his
+side in one of the most critical moments of his life, the faithful
+companion through fifty-two years of his varied and wonderful fortune.
+We can therefore understand why it was that, as the historians tell us,
+the last words of the old emperor should have been a tender expression
+of gratitude to his faithful wife.  "Farewell, farewell, Livia!
+Remember our long union!"  With these words, rendering homage to the
+wife whom custom and the law had made the faithful and loving
+companion, and not the docile slave, of her husband, he ended his life
+like a true Roman.
+
+If the family of Augustus had undergone grievous vicissitudes during
+his life, its situation became even more dangerous after his death.
+The historian who sets out with the preconceived notion that Augustus
+founded a monarchy, and imagines that his family was destined to enjoy
+the privileges which in all monarchies are accorded the sovereign's
+house, will never arrive at a complete understanding of the story of
+the first empire.  His family did, to be sure, always enjoy a
+privileged status, if not at law, at least in fact, and through the
+very force of circumstances; but it was not for naught that Rome had
+been for many centuries an aristocratic republic in which all the
+families of the nobility had considered themselves equal, and had been
+subject to the same laws.  The aristocracy avenged itself upon the
+imperial family for the privileges which the lofty dignity of its head
+assured it by giving it hatred instead of respect.  They suspected and
+calumniated all of its members, and with a malicious joy subjected
+them, whenever possible, to the common laws and even maltreated with
+particular ferocity those who by chance fell under the provisions of
+any statute.  As a compensation for the privileges which the royal
+family enjoyed, they had to assume the risk of receiving the harshest
+penalties of the laws.  If any of them, therefore, fell under the rigor
+of these laws, the senatorial aristocracy especially was ever eager to
+enjoy the atrocious satisfaction of seeing one of the favored tortured
+as much as or more than the ordinary man.  There is no doubt, for
+example, that the two Julias were more severely punished and disgraced
+than other ladies of the aristocracy guilty of the same crime.  And
+Augustus was forced to waive his affection for them in order that it
+might not be said, particularly in the senate, that his relatives
+enjoyed special favors and that Augustus made laws only for others.
+
+[Illustration:  Statue of a young Roman woman.]
+
+Yet as long as Augustus lived, he was a sufficient protection for his
+relatives.  He was, especially in the last twenty years of his life,
+the object of an almost religious veneration.  The great and stormy
+epoch out of which he had risen, the extraordinary fortune which had
+assisted him, his long reign, the services both real and imaginary
+which he had rendered the empire--all had conferred upon him such an
+authority that envy laid aside its most poisonous darts before him.
+Out of respect for him even his family was not particularly calumniated
+or maltreated, save now and then in moments of great irritation, as
+when the two Julias were condemned.  But after his death the situation
+grew considerably worse; for Tiberius, although he was a man of great
+capacity and merit, a sagacious administrator and a valiant general,
+did not enjoy the sympathy and respect which had been accorded to
+Augustus.  Rather was he hated by those who had for a long time sided
+with Caius and Lucius Caesar and who formed a considerable portion of
+the senate and the aristocracy.  It was not the spontaneous admiration
+of the senate and of the people, but the exigencies of the situation,
+which had made him master of the government when Augustus died.  The
+empire was at war with the Germans, and the Pannonico-Illyrian
+provinces were in revolt, and it was necessary to place at the head of
+the empire a man who should strike terror to the hearts of the
+barbarians and who on occasion should be able to combat them.
+Tiberius, furthermore, was so well aware that the majority of the
+senate and the Roman people would submit to his government only through
+force, that he had for a long time been in doubt whether to accept the
+empire or not, so completely did he understand that with so many
+enemies it would be difficult to rule.
+
+Under the government of Tiberius the imperial family was surrounded by
+a much more intense and open hatred than under Augustus.  One couple
+only proved an exception, Germanicus and Agrippina, who were very
+sympathetic to the people.  But right here began the first serious
+difficulties for Tiberius.  Germanicus was twenty-nine years old when
+Tiberius took over the empire, and about him there began to form a
+party which by courting and flattering both him and his wife began to
+set him up against Tiberius.  In this they were unconsciously aided by
+Agrippina.  Unlike her sister Julia, she was a lady of blameless life;
+faithfully in love with her husband; a true Roman matron, such as
+tradition had loved; chaste and fruitful, who at the age of twenty-six
+had already borne nine children, of whom, however, six had died.  But
+Agrippina was to show that in the house of Augustus, in those
+tumultuous, strange times, virtue was not less dangerous than vice,
+though in another way and for different reasons.  She was so proud of
+her fidelity to her husband and of the admiration which she aroused at
+Rome that all the other defects of her character were exaggerated and
+increased by her excessive pride in her virtue.  And among these
+defects should be counted a great ambition, a kind of harum-scarum and
+tumultuous activity, an irreflective impetuosity of passion, and a
+dangerous lack of balance and judgment.  Agrippina was not evil; she
+was ambitious, violent, intriguing, imprudent, and thoughtless, and
+therefore could easily adapt her own feelings and interests to what
+seemed expedient.  She had much influence over her husband, whom she
+accompanied upon all his journeys; and out of the great love she bore
+him, in which her own ambition had its part, she urged him on to
+support that hidden movement which was striving to oppose Germanicus to
+the emperor.
+
+That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that
+Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be
+carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to
+the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia
+was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor.  After his
+divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of
+tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part
+by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law.  No one exercised so
+much influence as Antonia over the diffident and self-centered spirit
+of the emperor.  Whoever wished to obtain a favor from him could do no
+better than to intrust his cause to Antonia.  There is no doubt,
+therefore, that Antonia checked her son, and in his society
+counterbalanced the influence of his wife.
+
+But even if two parties were not formed, it was not long before other
+difficulties arose.  Discord soon made itself felt between Livia and
+Agrippina.  More serious still was the fact that Germanicus, who, after
+the death of Augustus, had been sent as a legate to Gaul, initiated a
+German policy contrary to the instructions given him by Tiberius.  This
+was due partly to his own impetuous temperament and partly to the
+goadings of his wife and the flatterers who surrounded him.  Tiberius,
+whom the Germans knew from long experience, no longer wished to molest
+them.  The revolt of Arminius proved that when their independence was
+threatened by Rome they were capable of uniting and becoming dangerous;
+when left to themselves they destroyed one another by continual wars.
+It was advisable, therefore, according to Tiberius, not to attack or
+molest them, but at the proper moment to fan the flames of their
+continual dissensions and wars in order that, while destroying
+themselves, they should leave the empire in peace.  This wise and
+prudent policy might please a seasoned soldier like Tiberius, who had
+already won his laurels in many wars and who had risen to the pinnacle
+of glory and power.  It did not please the pushing and eager youth
+Germanicus, who was anxious to distinguish himself by great and
+brilliant exploits, and who had at his side, as a continual stimulus,
+an ambitious and passionate wife, surrounded by a court of flatterers.
+Germanicus, on his own initiative, crossed the Rhine and took up the
+offensive again all along the line, attacking the most powerful of the
+German tribes one after the other in important and successful
+expeditions.  At Rome this bold move was naturally looked upon with
+pleasure, especially by the numerous enemies of Tiberius, either
+because boldness in politics rather than prudence always pleases those
+who have nothing to lose, or because it was felt that the glory which
+accrued to Germanicus might offend the emperor.  And Tiberius, though
+he did disapprove, allowed his adopted son to continue for a time,
+doubtless in order that he might not have to shock public opinion and
+that it might not seem that he wished to deprive the youthful
+Germanicus of the glory which he was gaining for himself.
+
+[Illustration:  A Roman girl of the time of the Caesars.]
+
+He was nevertheless resolved not to allow Germanicus to involve Rome
+too deeply in German affairs, and when it seemed to him that the youth
+had fittingly proved his prowess and had made the enemies of Rome feel
+its power sufficiently, he recalled him and in his stead sent Drusus,
+who was his real, and not his adopted, son.  But this recall did not at
+all please the party of Germanicus, who were loud and bitter in their
+recriminations.  They began to murmur that Tiberius was jealous of
+Germanicus and his popularity; that he had recalled him in order to
+prevent his winning glory by an immortal achievement.  Tiberius so
+little thought of keeping Germanicus from using his brilliant qualities
+in the service of Rome that shortly after, in the year 18 A.D., he sent
+him into the Orient to introduce order into Armenia, which was shaken
+by internal dissensions, and he gave him a command there not less
+important than the one of which he had deprived him.  At the same time
+he was unwilling to intrust things entirely to the judgment of
+Germanicus, in whom he recognized a young man of capacity and valor,
+but, nevertheless, a young man influenced by an imprudent wife and
+incited by an irresponsible court of flatterers.  For this reason he
+placed at his side an older and more experienced man in whom he had the
+fullest confidence--Cnaeus Piso, a senator who belonged to one of the
+most illustrious families in Rome.
+
+It was the duty of Cnaeus Piso to counsel, to restrain, and to aid the
+young Germanicus, and doubtless also to keep Tiberius informed of all
+that Germanicus was doing in the East.  When we remember that Tiberius
+was responsible for the empire, no one will deny him the right of
+setting a guard upon the young man of thirty-three, into whose hands
+had been intrusted many and serious interests.  But though this idea
+was warrantable in itself, it became the source of great woe.
+Germanicus was offended, and, driven on by his friends, he broke with
+Piso.  The latter had brought with him his wife Plancina, who was a
+close friend of Livia, just as Germanicus had brought Agrippina.  The
+two wives fell to quarreling no less furiously than their husbands, and
+two parties were formed in the Orient, one for Piso and one for
+Germanicus, who accused each other of illegality, extortion, and
+assuming unwarranted powers; and each thought only of undoing what the
+other had accomplished.  It is difficult to tell which of the two was
+right or in how far either was right or wrong, for the documents are
+too few and the account of Tacitus, clouded by an undiscerning
+antipathy, sheds no light upon this dark secret.  In any case, we are
+sure that Germanicus did not always respect the laws and that he
+occasionally acted with a supreme heedlessness which now and then
+forced Tiberius to intervene personally, as he did on the occasion when
+Germanicus left his province with Agrippina in order that, dressed like
+a Greek philosopher, he might make a tour of Egypt and see that
+country, which then, as now, attracted the attention of persons of
+culture.  But at that time, unlike the present, there was an ordinance
+of Augustus which forbade Roman senators to set foot in Egypt without
+special permission.  As he had paid no attention to this prohibition,
+we need not be astonished if we find that Germanicus did not respect as
+scrupulously as Tiberius wished all the laws which defined his powers
+and set limits to his authority.
+
+However that may be, the dissension between Germanicus and Piso filled
+the entire Orient with confusion and disorder, and it was early echoed
+at Rome, where the party hostile to Tiberius continued to accuse him,
+out of motives of hatred and jealousy, of forever laying new obstacles
+in the way of his adopted son.  Livia, too, now no longer protected by
+Augustus, became a target for the accusations of a malevolent public
+opinion.  It was said that she persecuted Germanicus out of hatred for
+Agrippina.  Tiberius was much embarrassed, being hampered by public
+opinion favorable to Germanicus and at the same time desiring that his
+sons should set an example of obedience to the laws.
+
+A sudden catastrophe still further complicated the situation.  In 19
+A.D. Germanicus was taken ill at Antioch.  The malady was long and
+marked by periods of convalescence and relapses, but finally, like his
+father and like his brothers-in-law, Germanicus, too, succumbed to his
+destiny in the fullness of youth.  At thirty-four, when life with her
+most winning smiles seemed to be stretching out her arms to him, he
+died.  This one more untimely death brought to an abrupt end a most
+dangerous political struggle.  Is it to be wondered at, then, that the
+people, whose imagination had been aroused, should have begun to murmur
+about poison?  The party of Germanicus was driven to desperation by
+this death, which virtually ended its existence, and destroyed at a
+single stroke all the hopes of those who had seen in Germanicus the
+instrument of their future fortune.  They therefore eagerly collected,
+embellished, and spread these rumors.  Had Agrippina been a woman of
+any judgment or reflection, she would have been the first to see the
+absurdity of this foolish gossip; but as a matter of fact no one placed
+more implicit faith in such reports than she, now that affliction had
+rendered her even more impetuous and violent.
+
+It was not long before every one at Rome had heard it said that
+Germanicus had been poisoned by Piso, acting, so it was intimated in
+whispers, at the bidding of Tiberius and Livia.  Piso had been the tool
+of Tiberius; Plancina, the tool of Livia.  The accusation is absurd; it
+is even recognized as such by Tacitus, who was actuated by a fierce
+hatred against Tiberius.  We know from him how the accusers of Piso
+recounted that the poison had been drunk in a health at a banquet to
+which Piso had been invited by Germanicus and at which he was seated
+several places from his host; he was supposed to have poured the poison
+into his dishes in the presence of all the guests without any one
+having seen him!  Tacitus himself says that every one thought this an
+absurd fable, and such every man of good sense will think it to-day.
+But hatred makes even intelligent persons believe fables even more
+absurd; the people favorable to Germanicus were embittered against Piso
+and would not listen to reason.  All the enemies of Tiberius easily
+persuaded themselves that some atrocious mystery was hidden in this
+death and that, if they instituted proceedings against Piso, they might
+bring to light a scandal which would compromise the emperor himself.
+They even began to repeat that Piso possessed letters from Tiberius
+which contained the order to poison Germanicus.
+
+[Illustration: Costumes of Roman men, women, and children in the
+procession of a peace festival.  These reliefs formed part of the outer
+frieze of the right wall of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace), erected by
+Augustus and dedicated 9 B.C.  This and another well-preserved section
+are in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.  One of two other fragments in the
+Villa Medici contains the head and bust of Augustus, and with the
+section here shown completes what is supposed to be a group of the
+family of Augustus.]
+
+At last Agrippina arrived at Rome with the ashes of her husband, and
+she began with her usual vehemence to fill the imperial house, the
+senate, and all Rome with protests, imprecations, and accusations
+against Piso.  The populace, which admired her for her fidelity and
+love for her husband, was even more deeply stirred, and on every hand
+the cry was raised that an exemplary punishment ought to be meted out
+to so execrable a crime.
+
+If at first Piso had treated these absurd charges with haughty disdain,
+he soon perceived that the danger was growing serious and that it was
+necessary for him to hasten his return to Rome, where a trial was now
+inevitable.  One of Germanicus's friends had accused him; Agrippina, an
+unwitting tool in the hands of the emperor's enemies, every day stirred
+public opinion to still higher pitches of excitement through her grief
+and her laments; the party of Germanicus worked upon the senate and the
+people, and when Piso arrived at Rome he found that he had been
+abandoned by all.  His hope lay in Tiberius, who knew the truth and who
+certainly desired that these wild notions be driven out of the popular
+mind.  But Tiberius was watched with the most painstaking malevolence.
+Any least action in favor of Piso would have been interpreted as a
+decisive proof that he had been the murderer's accomplice and therefore
+wished to save him.  In fact, it was being reported at Rome with
+ever-increasing insistence that at the trial Piso would show the
+letters of Tiberius.  When the trial began, Livia, in the background,
+cleverly directed her thoughts to the saving of Plancina; but Tiberius
+could do no more for Piso than to recommend to the senate that they
+exercise the most rigorous impartiality.  His noble speech on this
+occasion has been preserved for us by Tacitus.  "Let them judge," he
+said, "without regard either for the imperial family or for the family
+of Piso."  The admonition was useless, for his condemnation was a
+foregone conclusion, despite the absurdity of the charges.  The enemies
+of Tiberius wished to force matters to the uttermost limit in the hope
+that the famous letters would have to be produced; and they acted with
+such frenzied hatred and excited public opinion to such a pitch that
+Piso killed himself before the end of the trial.
+
+The violence of Agrippina had sent an innocent victim to follow the
+shade of her young husband.  Despite bitter opposition, the emperor,
+through personal intervention, succeeded in saving the wife, the son,
+and the fortune of Piso, whose enemies had wished to exterminate his
+house root and branch.  Tiberius thus offered a further proof that he
+was one of the few persons at Rome who were capable in that trying and
+troubled time of passing judgment and of reasoning with calm.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+TIBERIUS AND AGRIPPINA
+
+The blackest and most tragic period in the life of Tiberius begins with
+the death of Germanicus and the terrible scandal of the suit against
+Piso.  It was to pass into history as the worst period of the "Tiberian
+tyranny"; for it was at this time that the famous _Lex de majestate_
+[1] (on high treason), which had not been applied under Augustus, came
+to be frequently invoked, and through its operation atrocious
+accusations, scandalous trials, and frightful condemnations were
+multiplied in Rome, to the terror of all.  Many committed suicide in
+despair, and illustrious families were given over to ruin and infamy.
+
+[Illustration: Tiberius.]
+
+Posterity still holds Tiberius to account for these tragedies; his
+cruel and suspicious tyranny is made responsible for these accusations,
+for the suits which followed, and for the cruel condemnations in which
+they ended.  It is said that every free mind which still remembered
+ancient Roman liberty gave him umbrage and caused him distress, and
+that he could suffer to have about him only slaves and hired assassins.
+But how far this is from the truth!  How poorly the superficial
+judgment of posterity has understood the terrible tragedy of the reign,
+of Tiberius!  We always forget that Tiberius was the next Roman emperor
+after Augustus; the first, that is, who had to bear the weight of the
+immense charge created by its founder, but without the immense prestige
+and respect which Augustus had derived from the extraordinary good
+fortune of his life, from the critical moment in which he had taken
+over the government, from the general opinion that he had ended the
+civil wars, brought peace back to an empire in travail, and saved Rome
+from the imminent ruin with which Egypt and Cleopatra had threatened
+it.  For these reasons, while Augustus lived, the envy, jealousy,
+rivalry, and hatred of the new authority were held in check in his
+presence; but they were ever smoldering in the Roman aristocracy, which
+considered itself robbed of a part of its privileges, and always felt
+itself humiliated by this same authority, even when it was necessary to
+submit to it in cases of supreme political necessity.  But all this
+envy, all these jealousies, all these rivalries,--I have said it
+before, but it is well to repeat it, since the point is of capital
+importance for the understanding of the whole history of the first
+empire,--were unleashed when Tiberius was exalted to the imperial
+dignity.
+
+What in reality was the situation of Tiberius after the death of
+Germanicus?  We must grasp it well if we wish to understand not only
+the cruelty of the accusations brought under the law of high treason,
+but also the whole family policy followed by the second emperor.  It
+was he who had to bear the burden of the whole state, of the finances,
+of the supplies, of the army, of the home and foreign policies; his was
+the will that propelled, and the mind that regulated, all.  To him
+every portion of the empire and every social class had recourse, and it
+was to him that they looked for redress for every wrong or
+inconvenience or danger.  It was to him that the legions looked for
+their regular stipend, the common people of Rome for abundant grain,
+the senate for the preservation of boundaries and of the internal
+order; the provinces looked to him for justice, and the sovereign
+allies or vassals for the solution of all internal difficulties in
+which they became involved.  These responsibilities were so numerous
+and so great that Tiberius, like Augustus, attempted to induce the
+senate to aid him by assuming its share, according to the ancient
+constitution; but it was in vain, for the senate sought to shield
+itself, and always left to him the heavier portion.
+
+[Illustration: Types of head-dresses worn in the time of the women of
+the Caesars.]
+
+Is it conceivable that a man could have discharged so many
+responsibilities in times when the traditions of the government were
+only beginning to take form if he had not possessed a commanding
+personal authority, if he had not been the object of profound and
+general respect?  Augustus would not have been able to govern so great
+an empire for more than forty years with such slight means had it not
+been for the fact, fortunate alike for himself and for the state, that
+he did enjoy this profound, sincere, and general admiration.  Tiberius,
+on the other hand, who was already decidedly unpopular when he came
+into power, had seen this unpopularity increase during the first six
+years of his rule, despite all the efforts he had put forth to govern
+well.  His solicitude about maintaining a certain order within the
+state was described as haughtiness and harshness, his preoccupation
+lest the precarious resources of the government be dissipated in
+useless expenditures was dubbed avarice, and the prudence which had
+impelled him to restrain the rash policy of expansion and aggression
+which Germanicus had tried to initiate beyond the Rhine was construed
+as envy and surly malignity.  Against all considerations of justice,
+logic, or good sense, this accusation was repeated, and now that
+destiny had cut down Germanicus, he was accused _sotto voce_ of being
+responsible for his death by many of the great families of Rome and
+even in senatorial circles.  They treated it as most natural that
+through jealousy he should poison his own nephew, his adopted son, the
+popular descendant of Drusus, the son of that virtuous Antonia who was
+his best and most faithful friend!  But if, after having been accepted
+as true by the great families of Rome who sent it on its rounds, such a
+report had been allowed to circulate through the empire, how much
+authority would have been left to an emperor who was suspected of so
+terrible a crime?  How could he have maintained discipline in the army,
+of which he was the head, and order among the people of Rome, of whom,
+as tribune, he was the great protector?  How could he have directed,
+urged on, or restrained the senate, of which he was, in the language of
+to-day, the president?  The various Italian peoples from whom the army
+was drawn did not yet consider the head of the state a being so
+superior to the laws that it would be permissible for him to commit
+crimes which were branded as disgustingly repulsive to ordinary human
+nature.
+
+No historian who understands the affairs of the world in general, and
+the story of the first century of the empire in particular, will
+attribute to ferocity or to the tyrannical spirit of Tiberius the
+increasingly harsh application of the _Lex de majestate_ which followed
+the death of Germanicus and the trial of Piso.  This harshness was the
+natural reaction against the delirium of atrocious calumnies against
+Tiberius which raged in the aristocracy of that time and especially in
+the house of Agrippina.  For she, in spite of the undeniably virtuous
+character of her private life, was influenced by friends who, for
+motives of political advancement took advantage of her passions and
+inexperience.
+
+Too credulous of Tacitus, many writers have severely characterized the
+facility and the severity with which the senate condemned those accused
+under the _Lex de majestate_: they consider it an indication of ignoble
+servility toward the emperor.  Yet we know very well that the Roman
+senate at that time was not composed merely of adulators and hirelings;
+it still included many men of intelligence and character.  We can
+explain this severity only by admitting that there were many persons in
+the senate who judged that the emperor could not be left defenseless
+against the wild slanders of the great families, since these
+extravagant and insidious calumnies compromised not only the prestige
+and the fame of the ruler, but also the tranquillity, the power, and
+the integrity of the empire.  Undoubtedly the _Lex de majestate_ did
+give rise in time to false accusations, to private reprisals, and to
+unjust sentences of condemnation.  Although it had been devised to
+defend the prestige of the state in the person of the magistrates who
+represented it, the law was frequently invoked by senators who wished
+to vent their fiercest personal hatreds.  Nor can it be denied that
+cupidity was the cause of many iniquitous calumnies directed against
+wealthy persons whose fortunes were coveted by their accusers.  Yet we
+must go slow in accusing Tiberius of these excesses.  Tacitus himself,
+who was averse to the emperor, recounts several incidents which show
+him in the act of intervening in trials of high treason for the benefit
+of the accused precisely for the purpose of hindering these excesses of
+private vengeance.  The accounts which we have of many other trials are
+so brief and so biased that it is not fair for us to hazard a judgment.
+
+We do know, however, that after the death of Germanicus there was
+formed at Rome, in the imperial family and the senate, a party of
+Agrippina, which began an implacable war upon Tiberius, and that
+Tiberius, the so-called tyrant, was at the beginning very weak,
+undecided, and vacillating in his resistance to this new opposition.
+His opponents did not spare his person; they did their best to spread
+the belief that the emperor was a poisoner, and persecuted him
+relentlessly with this calumny; they were already pushing forward Nero,
+the first-born son of Germanicus, though in 21 A.D. he was only
+fourteen years old, in order that he might in time be made the rival of
+Tiberius.  The latter, indeed, tried at first to moderate the charges
+of high treason, his supreme defense; he feigned that he did not know
+or did not see many things, and instead of resisting, he began to make
+long sojourns away from Rome, thus turning over the capital, in which
+the pretorian guard remained, to the calumnies of his enemies.  Of all
+these enemies the most terrible was Agrippina, who, passionate,
+vehement, without judgment, abused in good faith both the relationship
+which protected her and the pity which her misfortune had aroused.  She
+allowed no occasion for taunting Tiberius with his pretended crime to
+escape her, using to this end not only words, but scenes and actions,
+which impressed the public even more strongly than open accusations
+could have done.  A supper to which Tiberius had invited her became
+famous at Rome, for at it she refused obstinately and ostentatiously to
+touch any food or drink whatever, to the astonishment of the guests,
+who understood perfectly what her gestures meant.  And such calumnies
+and such affronts Tiberius answered only with a weary and disdainful
+inertia; at most, when his patience was exhausted, some bitter and
+concise reproof would escape him.
+
+I have no doubt that Tiberius had resolved at the beginning to avoid
+all harsh measures as far as possible; for unpopular, misunderstood,
+and detested as he was, he did not dare to use violence against a large
+part of the aristocracy and against his own house.  Furthermore,
+Agrippina was the least intelligent of the women of the family, and her
+senseless opposition could be tolerated as long as Livia and Antonia,
+the two really serious ladies of the family, sided with Tiberius.  But
+it is easy to understand that this situation could not long endure.  A
+power which defends itself weakly against the attacks of its enemies is
+destined to sink rapidly into a decline, and the party of Agrippina
+would therefore quickly have gained favor and power had there not
+arisen, to sustain the vacillating strength of Tiberius, a man whose
+name was to become sadly famous--Sejanus--the commander of the
+pretorian guard.
+
+Sejanus belonged to an obscure family of knights--to what we should now
+call the _bourgeoisie_.  He was not a senator, and he held no great
+political position; for his charge as commander of the guard was a
+purely military office.  In ordinary times he would have remained a
+secondary personage, exclusively concerned with the exacting duties of
+his command; but the party of Agrippina with its intrigues, and the
+weakness and uncertainty of Tiberius, made of him, however, for a
+certain time, a formidable power.  It is not difficult to see whence
+this power arose.  The loyalty of the pretorian guard, upon which
+depended the security and the safety of the imperial authority, was one
+of the things which must seriously have preoccupied Tiberius,
+particularly in the face of the persistent and insidious intrigues and
+accusations of the party of Agrippina.  The guard lived at Rome, in
+continual contact with the senate and the imperial house.  Everything
+which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the
+emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and
+the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the
+pretorians.  If the guard could have been persuaded that the emperor
+was a poisoner of his kindred, their loyalty would have been exposed to
+numberless intrigues and attempts at seduction.  In such a condition of
+affairs, a commander of the guard who could inspire Tiberius with a
+complete and absolute trust might easily acquire a great influence over
+him.  Sejanus knew how to inspire this trust.  This was partly by
+reason of his origin, for the equestrian order, on account of its
+ancient rivalry with the senatorial nobility, was more favorably
+inclined than the latter toward the imperial authority; and partly also
+on account of certain reforms which he had succeeded in introducing
+into the pretorian guard.
+
+[Illustration: A Roman feast in the time of the Caesars.]
+
+Once he had acquired the emperor's confidence, the ambitious and
+intelligent prefect of the pretorians proceeded to render himself
+indispensable in all things.  The moment was favorable; Tiberius was
+becoming more and more wearied of his many affairs, of his many
+struggles, of his countless responsibilities; more and more disgusted
+with Rome, with its society, with the too frequent contact with the men
+whom it was his fate to govern.  He was in the earlier stages of that
+settled melancholy which grew deeper and deeper in the last ten years
+of his life, and which had grown upon him as the result of long
+antagonisms, of great bitterness, and of continual terrors and
+suspicions; and if it is true that Tiberius was addicted to the vice of
+heavy drinking, as we hear from ancient writers, the abuse of wine may
+also have had its part in producing it.  The tyrant, as historians have
+been pleased to call him, did actually seem to weaken in the fight for
+those ideals in which he had so long and so ardently believed.  He
+tried to please the people by advocating no measures that might seem
+harsh or excessive to them.  He even resisted, in the year 22 A.D., the
+pressure that his own party--his own puritan party--brought to bear
+upon him to apply with the utmost severity and discipline the laws
+against the fast increasing luxury of the men and women of his day.
+His reply to such pressure was a letter to the senate in which he
+deplored, among other things, the passion that so many women were
+showing for jewels and precious stones imported from distant countries.
+He maintained that it was the fault of such women that so much gold
+left the country and pointed out how much more wisely the money could
+be spent in fortifying the boundaries of the empire.
+
+In view of all this it is not difficult to understand why the man who
+for many years had done everything for himself, who had never wished to
+have either counselors or confidants about him, now that he was growing
+old needed the support of younger energies and of stronger wills.  But
+in his family he could rely only upon his son Drusus, who had now
+become a serious and trustworthy man, and in the year 22 A.D. he asked
+the senate that it concede to his son the tribunician power; that is,
+that they make him his colleague.  But the son did not suffice, and
+Sejanus therefore succeeded in making himself, together with Drusus, in
+fact, if not in name, the first and most active and influential
+collaborator and counselor of Tiberius.  He was even more active and
+influential than Drusus, for the latter was frequently absent on
+distant military missions to the confines of the empire, while Sejanus,
+as commander of the pretorian guard, was virtually always at Rome,
+where the emperor now appeared less and less frequently.
+
+Such was the origin of the anomalous power of this man, who was not
+even a senator--a power which was the result of the weakness of
+Tiberius and of the fierce discords which divided the aristocracy; and
+it was a power which must of necessity prove disastrous, especially to
+the party of Agrippina and Germanicus.  Although indications are not
+lacking that there was no great harmony or friendship between Sejanus
+and Drusus, it is evident that Sejanus, as the energetic representative
+of the interests of Tiberius, must have directed all his efforts
+against the friends of Agrippina, who was arousing the fiercest
+opposition to the emperor.  But in the year 23, an unforeseen event
+seemed suddenly to change the situation and to render possible a
+reconciliation between Tiberius and the party of Agrippina.  In this
+year, Drusus also, like so many other members of his family, died
+prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, and on this occasion, for the
+time being, at least, no one raised the cry of poisoning.  This
+unexpected misfortune moved Tiberius profoundly, for he dearly loved
+his son, and it seemed for a moment to determine the triumph of
+Agrippina's party.  Now that his son had been taken from him, where, if
+not among the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, could Tiberius look for
+a successor?  And, as a further proof that Tiberius desired as far as
+possible to avoid conflict in the bosom of his family, he did not
+hesitate a moment, despite all the annoyances and difficulties which he
+had suffered at the hands of Agrippina and her friends.  He officially
+recognized that in the sons of Germanicus were henceforth placed the
+future hopes of his family and of the empire.  Of the two elder, Nero
+was now sixteen and Drusus was somewhat younger, though we do not know
+his exact age.  These he summoned to appear before the senate, and he
+presented them to the assembly with a noble discourse the substance of
+which Tacitus has preserved for us, exhorting the youths and the senate
+to fulfil their respective duties for the greatness and the prosperity
+of the republic.
+
+[Illustration: Depositing the ashes of a member of the imperial family
+in a Roman columbarium.]
+
+After the death of Drusus, therefore, a reconciliation became possible
+in the family of the Caesars.  The latent rivalry between the families
+of Tiberius and Germanicus was extinguished.  Indeed, even in the midst
+of the tears shed for the early death of Drusus, a gleam of concord
+seems to have shone down upon the house desolated by many tragedies,
+while Sejanus, whose power depended upon the strife of the factions,
+was for a moment set aside and driven back into the shadows.  But it
+was not to continue long; for soon the flames of discord broke out more
+violently than ever.  Whom shall we blame, Sejanus or Agrippina?
+Tacitus says that it was the fault of Sejanus, whom he accuses of
+having tried to destroy the descendants of Germanicus, in order to
+usurp their place: but he himself is forced to admit in another passage
+(Annals iv., 59) that virtually a little court of freedmen and
+dependents gathered about Nero, the leader of the sons of Germanicus,
+urging him on against Tiberius and Sejanus, and begging him to act
+quickly.  "This," they said, "is the will of the people, the desire of
+the armies.  Nor would Sejanus, who was even then making light of the
+patience of the old man and of the dilatoriness of the youth, have
+dared to resist him."  From such speeches it is only a short step to
+plans for rebellion and conspiracy.  In all probability the blame for
+this later and more bitter dissension must, as usually happens, be
+divided between the two factions.  The party of Agrippina, emboldened
+by its good fortune and by the weakness of Tiberius, was, after the
+death of Drusus, conscious of its own supremacy.  Its members had only
+a single aim; even before it was possible they wished to see Nero, the
+first-born son of Germanicus, in the position of Tiberius.  They
+therefore took up again their struggles and intrigues against Tiberius,
+and attempted to incite Nero against the emperor.  But this time
+Sejanus was blocking their pathway.  The death of Drusus had even
+further increased the trust and affection which the emperor had for his
+assistant, and he was henceforth the only confidant and the only friend
+of the emperor; a war without quarter between him and Agrippina, her
+sons and the party of Germanicus, was inevitable.  And Sejanus opened
+the action by attempting to exclude from the magistracy and from office
+all the friends of Agrippina and all the members of the opposing
+faction.  At this time it was difficult to arrive at any of the more
+important offices without being recommended to the senate by the
+emperor, against whose choice the senate no longer dared to rebel;
+since the emperor was held responsible for the conduct of the
+government, it was only just that he should be allowed to select his
+more important collaborators.  Sejanus was therefore able, by using his
+influence over Tiberius, to lay a thousand difficulties and obstacles
+in the way of even the legitimate ambitions of the most eminent men of
+the opposite faction.  Nor were these the only weapons employed; others
+no less efficacious were called into play, and intrigues, calumnies,
+accusations, and trials were set on foot without scruple and with a
+ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has painted with indelible colors.
+Among these intrigues two matrimonial projects must be mentioned.  In
+the year 25 Sejanus attempted a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife
+Apicata, and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla (Livia), the widow
+of Drusus.  Sejanus had frequented the political aristocracy of the
+empire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only
+their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.
+He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of
+acquiring and consolidating power.  He had therefore disrupted his
+first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have
+redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the
+imperial household.  But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius
+refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was
+afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina.  The
+emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine
+quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the
+Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew's sons.  And what would
+happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing
+hatreds?  _Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio_?  The reply is
+significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of
+harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina,
+was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both
+factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a
+reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these
+struggles.
+
+[Illustration: The starving Livilla refusing food.]
+
+In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this refusal was a slight success
+for the party of Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted on
+its own account an analogous move.  Agrippina asked Tiberius for
+permission to remarry.  If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made
+this request on her own initiative, impelled by one of those numerous
+and more or less reasonable caprices which were continually shooting
+through her head.  But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long
+widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any
+_arriere-pensee_ whatever?  Furthermore, if this proposal had been
+merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been
+so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter
+of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs?  It is more
+probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim.  By giving a
+husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give a leader to the
+anti-Tiberian party.  The sons of Germanicus were too young, and
+Agrippina was too violent and tactless, to be able alone to cope
+successfully with Sejanus, supported as he was by Tiberius, by Livia,
+and by Antonia.  We can thus explain why Tiberius opposed and prevented
+the marriage: Agrippina, unassisted, had caused him sufficient trouble;
+it would have been entirely superfluous for him to sanction her taking
+to herself an official counselor in the guise of a husband.
+
+This time Sejanus triumphed over the ill success of his rivals, and the
+struggle continued in this manner between the two parties, but with an
+increasing advantage to Sejanus.  Beginning with the year 26, we see
+numerous indications that the party of Agrippina and Germanicus was no
+longer able to resist the blows and machinations of Sejanus, who
+detached from it, one after another, all the men of any importance.  He
+either won them over to himself through his favors and his promises, or
+he frightened them with his threats; and those who resisted most
+tenaciously, he destroyed with his suits.
+
+Tiberius was the storm-center of these struggles, and contrary to what
+legend has reported, he attempted as far as he was able to prevent the
+two parties from going to extremes.  But what pain, repugnance, and
+fatigue it must have cost him to make the effort necessary for
+maintaining a last ray of reason and justice among so many evil
+passions, animosities, ambitions, and rivalries!  It must have cost him
+dearly, for he had grown up in the time when the dream of a great
+restoration of the aristocracy was luring the upper classes of Rome
+with its fairest and most luminous smile.  As a young man he had known
+and loved Vergil, Horace, and Livy, the two poets and the historian of
+this great dream; like all the elect spirits of those now distant
+years, he had seen behind this vision a great senate, a glorious and
+terrible army, an austere and revered republic like that which Livy had
+pictured with glowing colors in his immortal pages.
+
+Instead of all this, he was now forced to take his place at the head of
+this decadent and wretched nobility, which seemed to be interested only
+in rending itself asunder with calumnies, denunciations, suits, and
+scandalous condemnations, and which repaid him for all that he had done
+and was still doing for its safety and the prosperity of the empire by
+directing against his name the most atrocious calumnies, the fiercest
+railleries, and every sort of ridiculous and infamous legend.  He had
+dreamed of victories over the enemies of Rome, and he had to resign
+himself to struggling day and night against the hysterical extravagance
+of Agrippina: he had to be content, even without the sure hope of
+success, if he could convince the majority that he was not a poisoner.
+Authority without glory or respect, power divorced from the means
+sufficient for its exercise--such was the situation in which the
+successor of Augustus, the second emperor, after twelve years of a
+difficult and trying reign, found himself.  He no longer felt himself
+safe at Rome, where he feared rightly or wrongly that his life was
+being continually threatened, and it is not astonishing that, old,
+wearied, and disgusted, between the years 26 and 27 he should have
+retired definitely to Capri, seeking to hide his misanthropy, his
+weariness, and his disgust with men and things in the wonderful little
+isle which a delightful caprice of nature had set down in the lap of
+the divine Bay of Naples.
+
+But instead of the peace he sought at Capri, Tiberius found the infamy
+of history.  How dark and terrible are the memories of him associated
+with the charming isle, which, violet-tinted, on beautiful sunny days
+emerges from an azure sea against an azure sky!  That fragment of
+paradise fallen upon the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the
+world is said to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce
+cruelties and abominable vices.  Tiberius passed sentence upon himself,
+in the opinion of posterity, when he secluded himself in Capri.  Ought
+we, without a further word, to transcribe this sentence?  There are, to
+be sure, no decisive arguments to prove false the accounts about the
+horrors of Capri which the ancients, and especially Suetonius, have
+transmitted to us; there are some, however, which make us mistrust and
+withhold our judgment.  Above all, we have the right to ask ourselves
+how, from whom, and by access to what sources did Suetonius and the
+other ancients learn so many extraordinary details.  It must be
+remembered that all the great figures in the history of Rome who had
+many enemies, like Sylla, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus himself, were
+accused of having scandalous habits.  Precisely because the puritan
+tradition was strong at Rome, such an accusation did much harm, and for
+this reason, whether true or false, enemies were glad to repeat it
+whenever they wished to discredit a character.  Lastly, all the ancient
+writers, even the most hostile, tell us that up to a ripe age Tiberius
+preserved his exemplary habits.  Is it likely, then, that suddenly,
+when already old, he should have soiled himself with all the vices?  At
+all events, if there is any truth contained in these accounts, we can
+at most conclude that as an old man Tiberius became subject to some
+mental infirmity and that the man who took refuge at Capri was no
+longer entirely sane.
+
+Certain it is, in any case, that after his retirement to Capri,
+Tiberius seriously neglected public affairs, and that Sejanus was
+finally looked upon at Rome as the _de facto_ emperor.  The bulletins
+and reports which were sent from the empire and from Rome to the
+emperor passed through his hands, as well as the decisions which
+Tiberius sent back to the state.  At Rome, in all affairs of serious or
+slight importance, the senators turned to Sejanus, and about him, whom
+all fell into the habit of considering as the true emperor, a court and
+party were formed.  In fear of his great power, the senators and the
+old aristocracy suppressed the envy which the dizzy rise of this
+obscure knight had aroused.  Rome suffered without protest that a man
+of obscure birth should rule the empire in the place of a descendant of
+the great Claudian family, and the senators of the most illustrious
+houses grew accustomed to paying him court.  Worse still, virtually all
+of them aided him, either by openly favoring him or by allowing him a
+free hand, to complete the decisive destruction of the party and the
+family of Germanicus,--of that same Germanicus of whom all had been
+fond and whose memory the people still venerated.
+
+[Illustration: Costume of a chief vestal (virgo vestalis maxima).]
+
+After the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, all felt that Agrippina and
+her sons were inevitably doomed sooner or later to succumb in the duel
+with the powerful, ambitious, and implacable prefect of the pretorians
+who represented Tiberius at Rome.  Only a few generous idealists
+remained faithful to the conquered, who were now near their
+destruction; such supporters as might possibly ease the misery of ruin,
+but not ward it off or avoid it.  Among these last faithful and heroic
+friends was a certain Titius Sabinus, and the implacable Sejanus
+destroyed him with a suit of which Tacitus has given us an account, a
+horrible story of one of the most abominable judicial machinations
+which human perfidy can imagine.  Dissensions arose to aggravate the
+already serious danger in which Agrippina and her friends had been
+placed.  Nero, the first-born son, and Drusus, the second, became
+hostile at the very moment when they should have united against the
+ruthless adversary who wished to exterminate them all.  A last rock of
+refuge remained to protect the family of Germanicus.  It was Livia, the
+revered old lady who had been present at the birth of the fortunes of
+Augustus and the new imperial authority, and who had held in her arms
+that infant world which had been born in the midst of the convulsions
+of the civil wars, and a little later had watched it try its first
+steps on the pathway of history.  Livia did not much love Agrippina,
+whose hatred and intrigues against Tiberius she had always blamed; but
+she was too wise and too solicitous of the prestige of the family to
+allow Sejanus entirely to destroy the house of Germanicus.  As long as
+she lived, Agrippina and Nero could dwell safely in Rome.  But Livia
+was feeble, and in the beginning of 29, at the age of eighty-six, she
+died.  The catastrophe which had been carefully prepared by Sejanus was
+now consummated; a few months after the death of Livia, Agrippina and
+Nero were subjected to a suit, and, under an accusation of having
+conspired against Tiberius, were condemned to exile by the senate.
+Shortly after his condemnation, Nero committed suicide.
+
+The account which Tacitus gives us of this trial is obscure, involved,
+and fragmentary, for the story is broken off at its most important
+point by an unfortunate lacuna in the manuscript.  The other historians
+add but little light with their brief phrases and passing allusions.
+We do not therefore entirely understand either the contents of the
+charges, the reason for the condemnation, the stand taken by the
+accused, or the conduct of Tiberius with regard to the accusation.  It
+seems hardly probable that Agrippina and Nero could have been truly
+guilty of a real conspiracy against Tiberius.  Isolated as they had
+been by Sejanus after the retirement of Tiberius to Capri, they would
+scarcely have been able to set a conspiracy on foot, even if they had
+so desired.  They were paying the penalty for the long war of calumnies
+and slanders which they had waged upon Tiberius, for the aversion and
+the scorn which they had always shown for him.  In this course of
+conduct many senators had encouraged them as long as Tiberius alone had
+not dared to have recourse to violent and cruel measures in order to
+make himself respected by his family.  But such acts of disrespect
+became serious crimes for the unfortunate woman and her hapless son,
+even in the eyes of the senators who had encouraged them to commit
+them, now that Sejanus had reinvigorated the imperial authority with
+his energy, and now that all felt that behind Tiberius and in his name
+and place there was acting a man of decision who knew how to punish his
+enemies and to reward his friends.
+
+The trial and condemnation of Agrippina and Nero were certainly the
+machinations of Sejanus, who carried along with him not only the senate
+and the friends of the imperial family, but perhaps even Tiberius
+himself.  They prove how much Sejanus had been able to strengthen
+imperial authority, which had been hesitating and feeble in the last
+decade.  Sejanus had dared to do what Tiberius had never succeeded in
+doing; he had destroyed that center of opposition which gathered about
+Agrippina in the house of Germanicus.  It is therefore scarcely
+necessary to say that the ruin of Agrippina still further increased the
+power of Sejanus.  All bowed trembling before the man who had dared
+humiliate the very family of the Julio-Claudii.  Honors were showered
+upon his head; he was made senator and pontifex; he received the
+proconsular power; there was talk of a marriage between him and the
+widow of Nero; and it was finally proposed that he be named consul for
+five years.  Indeed, in 31, through the will of Tiberius, he actually
+became the colleague of the emperor himself in the consulate.  He
+needed only the tribunician power to make him the official collaborator
+of the emperor and his designated successor.  Every one at Rome,
+furthermore, considered him the future prince.
+
+[Illustration: Remains of the House of the Vestal Virgins.]
+
+But having arrived at this height, Sejanus's head was turned, and he
+asked himself why he should exercise the rule and have all its burdens
+and dangers while he left to others the pomp, the honors, and the
+advantages.  Although Tiberius allowed the senate to heap honors upon
+his faithful prefect of the pretorians, and though he himself showed
+his gratitude to him in many ways, even going to the point of being
+willing to give him the widow of Nero in marriage, he never really
+expected to take him as his colleague or to designate him as his
+successor.  Tiberius was a Claudian, and that a knight without ancestry
+should be placed at the head of the Roman aristocracy was to him
+unthinkable; after the exile of Nero he had cast his eyes upon Caius,
+another son of Germanicus, as his possible successor.  Nor had he
+hidden his intention: he had even clearly expressed it in different
+speeches to the senate.  Therefore Sejanus must finally have come to
+the conclusion that if he continued to defend Tiberius and his
+interests, he could no longer hope for anything from him, and might
+even compromise the influence and the popularity which he had already
+acquired.  Tiberius was hated and detested, there was a numerous party
+opposed to him in the senate, and he was extremely unpopular among the
+masses.  Many admired Sejanus through spiteful hatred of Tiberius, for
+it amounted to saying that they preferred to be governed by an obscure
+knight rather than by an old and detested Claudian who had shut himself
+up in Capri.
+
+And thus Sejanus seems to have deluded himself into believing that if
+he succeeded in doing away with the emperor, he could easily take his
+position by setting aside the young son of Germanicus and profiting by
+the popularity which the fall of Tiberius would bring him.  Little by
+little he came to an understanding with the enemies of Tiberius and
+prepared a conspiracy for the final overthrow of the odious government
+of the son of Livia.  Many senators had agreed to this, and certainly
+few conspiracies were ever organized under more favorable auspices.
+Tiberius was old, disgusted with everything and everybody, and alone in
+Capri; he had virtually not a single friend in Rome; what happened in
+the world he knew only through what Sejanus told him.  He was therefore
+entirely in the hands of the man who was preparing to sacrifice him to
+the tenacious hatred of the people and the senatorial aristocracy.
+Young, energetic, and the favorite of fortune, Sejanus had with him a
+formidable party in the senate, he was the commander of the pretorian
+guard,--that is, of the only military force stationed in Italy,--and he
+had terrified with his implacable persecutions all those whom he had
+failed to win over through his promises or his favors.  Could the duel
+between this misanthropic old man and this vigorous, energetic,
+ruthless climber end in any other way than with the defeat of the
+former?
+
+[Illustration: Bust, supposed to be of Antonia--daughter of Mark Antony
+and Octavia--and mother of Germanicus.]
+
+But now stepping forward suddenly from the shadows to which she had
+retired, a lady appeared, threw herself between the two contestants,
+and changed the fate of the combat.  It was Antonia, the daughter of
+the famous triumvir, the revered widow of Drusus.
+
+After the death of Livia, Antonia was the most respected personage of
+the imperial family in Rome.  She still watched, withdrawn but alert,
+over the destiny of the house now virtually destroyed by death,
+dissensions, the cruelty of the laws, and the relentless anger of the
+aristocracy.  It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and
+courageously she informed Tiberius.  The latter, in danger and in
+Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period.  The
+danger was most threatening, especially because Sejanus was the
+commander of the pretorian guard.  Tiberius beguiled him with friendly
+letters, dangling in front of him the hope that he had conceded to him
+the tribunician power.--that is, that he had made him his
+colleague,--while at the same time he secretly took measures to appoint
+a successor for him.  Suddenly Sejanus learned that he was no longer
+commander of the guard, and that the emperor had accused him before the
+senate of conspiracy.  In an instant, under this blow, the fortunes of
+Sejanus collapsed.  The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu,
+the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated
+the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and
+the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him.  Sejanus,
+his family, his friends, his accomplices, and those who seemed to be
+his accomplices, were put to death after summary trials by the fury of
+the mob; and in Rome blood flowed in torrents.
+
+Antonia might now have enjoyed the satisfaction of having saved through
+her foresight not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when suddenly
+one of the surges of that fierce tempest of ambitions and hatreds tore
+from her side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow of Drusus, and
+cast her as a prey into that sea of blind popular frenzy.  The reader
+has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was
+hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata.
+Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and
+she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in
+which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance
+with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry.  I confess that this accusation
+seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation
+of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it.  Above all, it is
+well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have had of this crime, and
+how she could have procured them even if the crime had been committed.
+Since the two accomplices would have been obliged to hide their
+infamous deed from all, there was no one from whom they would have
+concealed it more carefully than from Apicata.  We must further note
+that it is not probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was in the year
+23, would have thought of committing so serious a crime as that of
+poisoning the son of his protector.  For what reason would he have done
+so?  He did not then think of succeeding Tiberius; by removing Drusus,
+he would merely have improved the situation of the family of
+Germanicus, which at that time was already hostile to him and with
+which he was preparing to struggle.  Instead, might not this accusation
+_in extremis_ be the last vengeance of a repudiated woman against the
+rival who for a moment had threatened to take the position from which
+she herself had been driven?  Apicata did not belong to the
+aristocracy, and, unlike the ladies of the senatorial families, she had
+not therefore been brought up with the idea of having to serve docilely
+as an instrument for the political career of her own husband.  Perhaps
+her denunciation was the revenge of feminine jealousy, of that passion
+which the lower orders of Roman society did not extinguish in the
+hearts of their women as did the aristocracy.
+
+This denunciation, however,--we know this from the pages of ancient
+writers,--was one of the most terrible griefs of Tiberius's old age.
+He had loved his son tenderly, and the idea of leaving so horrible a
+crime unpunished, in case the accusation was true, drove him to
+desperation.  Yet, on the other hand, Livilla, the presumptive
+criminal, was the daughter of his faithful friend, of that Antonia who
+had saved him from the treacheries of Sejanus.  As for the public, ever
+ready to believe all the infamies which were reported of the imperial
+house, it was firmly convinced that Livilla was an abominable poisoner.
+A great trial was set on foot; many suspects were put to torture, which
+is evidence that they were arriving at no definite conclusions, and
+this was probably because they were seeking for the proofs of an
+imaginary crime.  Livilla, however, did not survive the scandal, the
+accusations, the suspicions of Tiberius, and the distrust of those
+about her.  Because she was the daughter of Drusus and the
+daughter-in-law of Tiberius, because she belonged to the family which
+fortune had placed at the head of the immense empire of Rome, she would
+not be able to persuade any one that she was innocent.  The obscure
+woman, without ancestry, who was accusing her from the grave, would be
+taken at her word by every one; she would convince posterity and
+history; against all reason she would prevail over the greatness of
+Livilla!  So Livilla took refuge in her mother's house and starved
+herself to death, for she was unable to outlive an accusation which it
+was impossible to refute.
+
+Tiberius's reign continued for six years after this terrible tragedy,
+but it was only a species of slow death-agony.  The year 33 saw still
+another tragic event--the suicide of Agrippina and her son Drusus.  Of
+the race of Germanicus there remained alive only one son, Caius (the
+later Emperor Caligula), and three daughters, of whom the eldest,
+Agrippina, the mother of Nero, had been married a few years before to
+the descendant of one of the greatest houses of Rome, Cnaeus Domitius
+Enobarbus.  Tiberius still remained as the last relic of a bygone time
+to represent ideas and aspirations which were henceforth lost causes,
+amid the ruins and the tombs of his friends.  Posterity, following in
+the footsteps of Tacitus, has held him and his dark nature alone
+responsible for this ruin.  We ought to believe instead that he was a
+man born to a loftier and more fortunate destiny, but that he had to
+pay the penalty for the unique eminence to which fortune had exalted
+him.  Like the members of his family who had been driven into exile,
+who had died before their time, who had been driven to suicide in
+despair, he, too, was the victim of a tragic situation full of
+insoluble contradictions; and precisely because he was destined to
+live, he was perhaps the most unfortunate victim of them all.
+
+
+[1] There was in the Roman legal system no public prosecutor and
+virtually no police.  Every Roman citizen was supposed to watch over
+the laws and see that they were not infringed.  On his retirement from
+office, any governor or magistrate ran the risk of being impeached by
+some young aspirant to political honors, and not infrequently oratory,
+an art much cultivated by the Romans, triumphed over righteousness.  In
+the earlier period the ground on which charges were usually brought was
+malversation; in the time of the empire they were also frequently
+brought under the above-mentioned law _de majestate_.  It has been said
+that this common act of accusation, the birthright of the Roman
+citizen, the greatly esteemed palladium of Roman freedom, became the
+most convenient instrument of despotism.  Since he who could bring a
+criminal to justice received a fourth of his possessions and estates,
+and since it brought the accuser into prominence, delation was
+recklessly indulged in by the unscrupulous, both for the sake of gain
+and as a means of venting personal spite.  The vice lay at the very
+heart of the Roman system, and was not the invention of Tiberius.  He
+could hardly have done away with it without overthrowing the whole
+Roman procedure.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE SISTERS OF CALIGULA AND THE MARRIAGE OF MESSALINA
+
+After the death of Tiberius (37 A.D.), the problem of the succession
+presented to the senate was not an easy one.  In his will, Tiberius had
+adopted, and thereby designated to the senate as his successors, Caius
+Caligula, the son of Germanicus, and Tiberius, the son of his own son
+Drusus.  The latter was only seventeen, and too young for such a
+responsibility.  Caligula was twenty-seven, and therefore still very
+young, although by straining a point he might be emperor; yet he did
+not enjoy a good reputation.  If we except him, there was no other
+member of the family old enough to govern except Tiberius Claudius
+Nero, the brother of Germanicus and the only surviving son of Drusus
+and Antonia.  He was generally considered a fool, was the
+laughing-stock of freedmen and women, and such a gawk and clown that it
+had been impossible to put him into the magistracy.  Indeed, he was not
+even a senator when Tiberius died.
+
+[Illustration: Caligula.]
+
+As they could not consider him, there remained only Caligula, unless
+they wished to go outside the family of Augustus, which, if not
+impossible, was at least difficult and dangerous.  For the provinces,
+the German barbarians, and especially the soldiers of the legions, were
+accustomed to look upon this family as the mainstay of the empire.  The
+legions had become specially attached to the memory and to the race of
+Drusus and Germanicus, who still lived in the minds of the soldiers as
+witnesses to their former exploits and virtues.  During the long
+watches of the night, as their names were repeated in speech and story,
+their shades, idealized by death, returned again to revisit the camps
+on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube.  The veneration and affection
+which the armies had once felt for the Roman nobility were now centered
+about the family of Augustus.  In this difficulty, therefore, the
+senate chose the lesser evil, and, annulling a part of the testament of
+Tiberius, elected Caligula, the son of Germanicus, as their emperor.
+
+The death of Tiberius, however, was destined to show the Romans for the
+first time that although it was hard to find an emperor, it might even
+be harder to find an empress.  During the long reign of Augustus, Livia
+had discharged the duties of this difficult position with incomparable
+success.  Tiberius had succeeded Augustus, and after his divorce from
+Julia had never remarried.  There had therefore been a long interregnum
+in the Roman world of feminine society, during which no one had ever
+stopped to think whether it would be easy or difficult to find a woman
+who could with dignity take over the position of Livia.  The problem
+was really presented for the first time with the advent of Caligula;
+for, at twenty-seven, he could not solve it as simply as Tiberius had
+done.  In the first place, it was to be expected that a man of his age
+would have a wife; secondly, the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ made
+marriage a necessity for him, as for all the senators; furthermore, the
+head of the state needed to have a woman at his side, if he wished to
+discharge all his social duties.  The celibacy of Tiberius had
+undoubtedly contributed to the social isolation which had been fatal
+both to him and to the state.
+
+Therefore in Caligula's time the Roman public became aware that the
+problem confronting it was a most difficult one.  A most exacting
+public opinion, hesitating between the ideals of two epochs, wished to
+see united in the empress the best part, both of the ancient and of the
+modern customs, and was consequently demanding that the second Livia
+should possess virtually every quality.  It was necessary that she
+should be of noble birth; that is, a descendant of one of those great
+Roman families which with every year were becoming less numerous, less
+prolific, less virtuous, and more fiercely divided among themselves by
+irreconcilable hatreds.  This latter was a most serious difficulty; for
+by marrying into one of these lines, the emperor ran the risk of
+antagonizing all those other families which were its enemies.  The
+empress, furthermore, must be the model of all the virtues; fruitful,
+in order to obey the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_; religious, chaste,
+and virtuous, that she might not violate the _Lex de adulteriis_;
+simple and modest, in deference to the _Lex sumptuaria_.  She must be
+able to rule wisely over the vast household of the emperor, full of his
+slaves and freedmen, and she must aid her husband in the fulfilment of
+all those social duties--receptions, dinners, entertainments--which,
+though serious concerns for every Roman nobleman, were even more
+serious for the emperor.  That she should be stupid or ignorant was of
+course out of the question.  In fact, from this time to the downfall of
+Nero the difficulties of the imperial family and its authority arise
+not so much from the emperors as from their wives; so that it may truly
+be said that it was the women who unwittingly dragged down to its ruin
+the great Julio-Claudian house.
+
+[Illustration: A bronze sestertius (slightly enlarged), showing the
+sisters of Caligula (Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia Livilla) on one
+side and Germanicus on the other side.]
+
+[Illustration: A bronze sestertius with the head of Agrippina the
+Elder, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, the daughter of Augustus.  She
+was the wife of Germanicus, and their daughter, Agrippina the younger,
+was the mother of the Emperor Nero.]
+
+But if the difficulty was serious, there never was a man so little
+fitted and so ill prepared to face it as this young man of twenty-seven
+who had been exalted to the imperial dignity after the death of
+Tiberius.  Four years before his election as emperor, he had married a
+certain Julia Claudilla, a lady who doubtless belonged to one of the
+great Roman families, but about whom we have no definite information.
+We cannot say, therefore, whether or not at the side of a second
+Augustus she might have become a new Livia.  In any case, it is certain
+that Caligula was not a second Augustus.  He was probably not so
+frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was
+certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and
+unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne
+had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time
+when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared.
+For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he
+had continually feared that the fate of his mother and his two brothers
+was likewise waiting for him.  Far from having dreamed that he would be
+raised to the imperial purple, he had merely desired that he might not
+have to end his days as an exile on some desert island in the
+Mediterranean.  So much good fortune after the long persecutions of his
+family profoundly disturbed his mental faculties, which had not
+originally been well balanced, and it fomented in him that delirium of
+grandeur which violently directed his desires toward distant Egypt, in
+the customs of which, rather than in those of Rome, he, in the
+exaltation of power, sought satisfaction for his imperial vanity.  From
+his earliest youth Caligula had shown a great inclination for the
+products and the men of that far country, then greatly admired and
+greatly feared by the Romans.  For instance, we know that all his
+servants were Egyptians, and that Helicon, his most faithful and
+influential freedman, was an Alexandrian.  But shortly after his
+elevation this admiration for the land of the Ptolemies and the
+Pharaohs broke forth into a furor of Egyptian exoticism, which impelled
+him to an attempt to bring his own reign into connection with the
+policies of his great-grandfather Mark Antony.  He sought to introduce
+into Rome the ideas, the customs, the sumptuousness, and the
+institutions of the Pharaoh-Ptolemaic monarchy, to make of his palace a
+court similar to that of Alexandria, and of himself a divine king,
+adored in flesh and blood, as sovereigns were adored on the banks of
+the Nile.
+
+Caligula was undoubtedly mad, but his madness would have seemed less
+chaotic and incomprehensible, and a thread of sense would have been
+discovered even in his excesses and in the ravings of his unsettled
+mind, if it had been understood that many of his most famous freaks
+were moved and inspired by this Egyptian idea and tendency.  In the
+madness of Caligula, as in the story of Antony and the tragedy of
+Tiberius, there is forever recurring, under a new form, the great
+struggle between Italy and the East, between Rome and Alexandria, which
+can never be divorced from the history of the last century of the
+republic and the first century of the empire.  Whoever carefully sifts
+out the separate actions in the disordered conduct of the third Roman
+emperor will easily rediscover the thread of this idea and the trace of
+this latent conflict.  For instance, we see the new emperor scarcely
+elected before he introduced the worship of Isis among the official
+cults of the Roman state and assigned in the calendar a public festival
+to Isis.  In short, he was favoring those Egyptian cults which
+Tiberius, with his "old-Roman" sympathies, had fiercely combatted.
+Furthermore, we see Caligula prohibiting the festival in commemoration
+of the battle of Actium, which had been celebrated every year for more
+than half a century.  At first sight the idea seems absurd; but it must
+not be considered a caprice; for with this act Caligula was intending
+to initiate the historical rehabilitation of Mark Antony, the man who
+had tried to shift the center of Roman politics from Rome to
+Alexandria.  The emperor meant to make plain to Rome that she was no
+longer to boast of having humiliated Alexandria with arms, since
+Alexandria would henceforth be taken as a model in all things.
+
+[Illustration: Claudius, Messalina, and their two children in what is
+known as the "Hague Cameo."]
+
+Just as the dynasty of the Ptolemies had been surrounded by a
+semi-religious veneration, Caligula, inspired as he was by Egyptian and
+Ptolemaic conceptions, sought to have this same veneration bestowed
+upon his entire family--that family which under Tiberius had been
+persecuted and defamed by suits and decimated by suicides through the
+envy of the aristocracy, which was forever unwilling to forgive its too
+great prestige.  Caligula not only hastened to set out in person to
+gather up the bones of Agrippina, his mother, and of his brother, in
+order to bring them to Rome and deposit them piously in the tomb of
+Augustus,--that was a natural duty of filial piety,--but he also
+prohibited any one to name among his ancestors the great Agrippa, the
+builder of the Pantheon, because his very obscure origin seemed a blot
+upon the semi-divine purity of his race.  He had the title of Augusta
+and all the privileges of the vestal virgins bestowed upon his
+grandmother Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and the faithful
+friend of Tiberius; he had these same vestal privileges bestowed upon
+his three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla; he had assigned to
+them a privileged position equal to his own at the games in the circus;
+he even had it decreed that their names should be included in the vows
+which the magistrates and pontiffs offered every year for the
+prosperity of the prince and of his people, and that in the prayers for
+the conservation of his power there should also be included a prayer
+for their felicity.  This was a small revolution from the
+constitutional point of view; for the Romans, though allowing their
+women ample freedom to occupy themselves with politics from the
+retirement of their homes, had never recognized for them any official
+capacity.  Tiberius, faithfully adhering in this also to tradition, had
+gone as far as to prevent the senate, at the time of Livia's death,
+from voting public honors to her memory, which, he thought, might have
+justified the belief that his mother had been, not a matron of the old
+Roman stamp, but a public personage.  Caligula, however, was quite
+indifferent to tradition, and by his expressed will, as if in reaction
+against the persecutions and the humiliations which the imperial family
+had suffered under Tiberius, even the sisters of the emperor acquired a
+sacred character and a privileged position in the state.  For the first
+time the women of the imperial family acquired the character of
+official personages.
+
+It cannot be denied that the transition from atrocious prosecutions to
+divine honors was somewhat sudden, but this is merely a further proof
+that Caligula was endowed with a violent, impulsive, and irreflective
+temperament.  In any case, there was neither scandal nor protest at
+that time.  Caligula during the first months of his rule was popular,
+not for his measures in favor of the women of his family, but for
+reasons of far greater importance.  He had inaugurated a regime which
+promised to be more indulgent, more prodigal, less harsh than that of
+Tiberius.  Extravagance had made rapid strides, especially in the ranks
+of the aristocracy, during the twenty-two years of Tiberius's rule: and
+although the latter, especially toward the end of his life, had ceased
+struggling against this tendency, nevertheless his well-known aversion
+to sumptuous living, and the example of simplicity which he set before
+the eyes of all, had always been a cause of preoccupation to the
+aristocracy--to men as well as women.  There was no certainty that the
+emperor might not again, some day, try to enforce the sumptuary laws.
+When Caligula therefore began his career, indicating very clearly his
+sympathies with the modernizing party by his eagerness to do away with
+the old Roman simplicity, the young aristocracy of both sexes did not
+conceal their satisfaction.  After a long period of old-fashioned
+traditional policy, enforced by the two preceding emperors, they
+welcomed with joy the young reformer who set out to introduce in the
+imperial government the spirit of the new generations.  No one was
+sorry that all the purveyors of voluptuousness,--mimes, singers,
+actors, dancers of both sexes, cooks, and puppets,--should with noisy
+joy break into the imperial palace, which had been official, severe,
+and cold under Tiberius, and bring back pleasure, luxury, and
+festivals.  All hoped that under the rule of this indulgent, youthful
+emperor, life, especially at Rome, would become more pleasant and gay;
+and no one therefore felt disposed to protest against the official
+honors which, contrary to custom, had been bestowed upon the women of
+the imperial family.
+
+In truth, if he, still harking back to Egyptian ideas and customs, had
+been content with surrounding his family, especially its women, with a
+respect which would have protected them against the infamous
+accusations and iniquitous persecutions to which many had fallen
+victims, he might have had credit for an action which was good, just,
+and useful to the state.  That strange condition of affairs which had
+been growing up under Tiberius was both absurd and dangerous to the
+country: the emperor was honored with extraordinary powers and made the
+object of a semi-religious veneration; but his family, and especially
+its women, were, as a sort of retribution, set outside the laws and
+fiercely assailed in a thousand insidious ways.  But the lunatic
+Caligula was not the man to keep even a wise proposal within reasonable
+limits.  Power, popularity, and praise quickly aroused all that was
+warped and excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he showed at the
+end of the year 37, he entertained an idea which must have seemed to
+the Romans a horrible impiety.  His wife died soon after he became
+emperor.  Another marriage seemed obligatory, and he decided that he
+would marry his sister Drusilla.
+
+Historians have represented this intention as the perverse delirium of
+an unbridled sensuality.  It was certainly the gross act of a madman,
+but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for
+it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between
+brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the
+Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt.  This oriental custom certainly
+seems a horrible aberration to us, who have been educated according to
+the strict and austere doctrines of Christianity, which, inheriting in
+these matters the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has purified and
+rendered them more rigorous.  But for centuries in Egypt,--that is, in
+the most ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations,--this horrible
+aberration was looked upon as a sovereign privilege which brought the
+royal dynasty into relationship with the gods.  By means of it, this
+family preserved the semi-divine purity of its blood; and perchance
+this custom, which had survived up to the fall of the Ptolemies, was
+only the projection of ideas and customs which in most ancient times
+had had a much wider diffusion along the Mediterranean world, for
+traces of it can be found even in Greek mythology.  For were not
+Jupiter and Juno, who constituted the august Olympian couple, at the
+same time also brother and sister?   Gradually restricted through the
+spreading of Greek civilization, this custom was finally eradicated at
+the shores of the Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction of the
+kingdom of the Ptolemies.
+
+The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it into his head to transplant
+this custom to Rome--to transplant it with all the religious pomp of
+the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform the family of Augustus, which
+up to the present had been merely the most eminent family of the Roman
+aristocracy, into a dynasty of gods and demigods, whose members were to
+be united by marriage among themselves in order not to pollute the
+celestial purity of their blood.  A fraternal and divine pair were to
+rule at Rome, like another Arsinoe and Ptolemy, whom the Alexandrian
+throngs had worshiped on the banks of the Nile.  The idea had already
+matured in his mind at the end of the year 37, and among his three
+sisters he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife.  This is proved
+by a will made at the time of an illness which he contracted in the
+autumn of the first year of his rule.  In this will he appointed
+Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but also of his empire, a wild
+folly from the point of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit women
+to the government; but it proves that Caligula had already thought and
+acted like an Egyptian king.
+
+[Illustration: Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the
+Caesars.]
+
+It is easy to understand why the peace and harmony which had been
+reestablished for a moment in the troubled imperial family by the
+advent of Caligula should have been of brief duration.  His grandmother
+and his sisters were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and this exotic
+madness of his could inspire in them only an irresistible horror.  This
+brought confusion into the imperial family, and after having suffered
+the persecutions of Sejanus and his party, the unhappy daughters of
+Germanicus found themselves in the toils of the exacting caprices of
+their brother.  In fact, in 38, Caligula had already broken with his
+grandmother, whom the year before he had had proclaimed Augusta; and
+between the years 38 and 39, catastrophes followed one another in the
+family with frightful rapidity.  His sister Drusilla, whom, as
+Suetonius tells us, he already treated as a lawful wife, died suddenly
+of some unknown malady while still very young.  It is not improbable
+that her health may have been ruined by the horror of the wild
+adventure, which was neither human nor Roman, into which her brother
+sought to drag her by marriage.  Caligula suddenly declared her a
+goddess, to whom all the cities must pay honors.  He had a temple built
+for her, and appointed a body of twenty priests, ten men and ten women,
+to celebrate her worship; he decreed that her birthday should be a
+holiday, and he wished the statue of Venus in the Forum to be carved in
+her likeness.
+
+But in proportion as Caligula became more and more fervid in this
+adoration of his dead sister, the disagreement between himself and his
+other two sisters became more embittered.  Julia Livilla was exiled in
+38; Agrippina, the wife of Domitius Enobarbus, in 39, and about this
+same time the venerable Antonia died.  It was noised about that
+Caligula had forced her to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and
+Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against the life of the emperor.
+How much truth there may be in these reports it is difficult to say,
+but the reason for all these catastrophes may be affirmed with
+certainty.  Life in the imperial palace was no longer possible,
+especially for women, with this madman who was transforming Rome into
+Alexandria and who wished to marry a sister.  Even Tiberius, the son of
+Drusus and co-heir to the empire with Caligula, was at about this time
+defeated in some obscure suit and disappeared.
+
+Caligula therefore remained alone at Rome to represent in the imperial
+palace the family which only ironically can be considered as the most
+fortunate in Rome.  Of three generations, upon whom fate seemed to have
+showered all the gifts of life, there remained at his side only
+Claudius, the clownish old man, the plaything of slaves and freedmen,
+whom no one molested because all could make game of him.  A madman and
+an imbecile,--or at least one who was reputed such by everybody,--this
+was all that remained of the family of Augustus seventy years after the
+battle of Actium.
+
+Alone, with no sisters now to elevate to the divine honors of the Roman
+Olympus, Caligula was reduced to hunting for wives in the families of
+the aristocracy.  But it seems that even there could be found no great
+abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the
+Olympian consorts of so capricious a god.  In three years he married
+and repudiated three--and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust
+the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves.  The first was Livia
+Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso.  The emperor, who had seen the woman
+at the marriage celebration, became, we are told, so infatuated with
+her that he obliged the husband to divorce her; he then married her,
+and a few days later repudiated her.  Caligula is said to have compared
+himself on this occasion to Romulus who ravished the Sabine woman, and
+to Augustus who raped Livia.  The second was Lollia Paulina, wife of
+Caius Memmius, proconsul of a distant province.  Caligula heard of the
+prodigious beauty of Lollia's grandmother.  The portrayal of her charms
+made him fall in love with her granddaughter, though absent and
+distant.  He gave orders for her immediate recall to Rome, and as soon
+as she could be divorced from her husband he married her.  This union,
+like the former one, lasted only a brief time.  The third wife was
+Milonia Caesonia, and to her Caligula was more faithful, though from
+the accounts of ancient writers she appears to have been much older
+than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he
+first loved her.  It is difficult to determine how much truth there is
+in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his
+frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love--a passion
+which deranges somewhat even wise men.  It is not strange, therefore,
+that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater
+excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men.  Yet some of
+these accounts seem a little incredible even when ascribed to a madman.
+However that may be, Livia Orestilla, Lollia Paulina, Milonia Caesonia
+are figures without relief, shades and ghosts of empresses, no one of
+whom had time enough even to occupy the highest post.  In vain the
+people expected that there would appear in the imperial palace a worthy
+successor to Livia.  Caligula, like all madmen, was by nature solitary,
+and could not live with other human beings: he was to remain alone, a
+prey to his ravings, which became even stranger and more violent.  He
+now wished to impose upon the empire the worship of his own person,
+without considering any opposition or local traditions and
+superstitions.  In doing this he did violence not only to the civic and
+republican sentiment of Italy, which detested this worship of a living
+man as an ignoble oriental adulation, but also to the religious feeling
+of the Hebrews, to whom this cult appeared most horrible and idolatrous.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Caligula.]
+
+In this way difficulties, dissatisfaction, and sedition arose in all
+parts of the empire.  The extravagances, the wild expenditures, the
+riotous pleasures, and the cruelties of Caligula increased the
+discontent and disgust on every hand.  We need not take literally all
+the accounts of his cruelty and violence which ancient writers have
+transmitted to us,--even Caligula has been blackened,--but it is
+certain that his government in the last two years of his reign
+degenerated into a reckless, extravagant, violent, and cruel tyranny.
+One day the empire awoke in terror to the fact that the imperial
+family--that family in which the legions, the provinces, and the
+barbarians saw the keystone of the state--no longer existed; that in
+the vast imperial palace, empty of women, empty of children, empty of
+hope, there wandered a raging madman of thirty-one, who divorced a wife
+every six months, who foolishly wasted the treasure and the blood of
+his subjects, and who was concerned with no other thought than that of
+having himself worshiped like a god in flesh and blood by all the
+empire.  A conspiracy was formed in the palace itself, and Caligula was
+killed.
+
+
+The senate was much perplexed when it heard of the death of Caligula.
+What was to be done?  The majority was inclined to restore the former
+republican government by abolishing the imperial authority, and to give
+back to the senate the supreme direction of the state, which little by
+little had passed into the hands of the emperor.  But many recognized
+that this return to the ancient form of government would be neither
+easy nor without danger.  Could the senate, neglected, divided, and
+disregarded as it was, succeed in governing the immense empire?  On the
+other hand, it was not much easier to find an emperor, granted that an
+emperor was henceforth necessary.  In the family of Augustus there was
+only Claudius, too foolish and ridiculous for them to think of making
+him the head of the state.  It seems that some eminent senator offered
+his candidacy, but the senate hesitated in perplexity, on the ground
+that if the authority of the members of the family of Augustus was
+already so uncertain, so debatable, and so darkly threatened, what
+would happen to a new emperor, unknown to the legions and the
+provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors?  While the
+senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered
+Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering
+through fear lest he too be killed.  Recognizing in him the brother of
+Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor.  An act of will is
+always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations: the
+senate yielded to the legions, and recognized Claudius the imbecile as
+emperor.
+
+[Illustration: Claudius.]
+
+But Claudius was not an imbecile, although he appeared such to many.
+Instead, he was, so to speak, a man half-grown, in whom certain parts
+of the mind were highly developed, but whose character had remained
+that of a child, timid, capricious, impulsive, giddy, and incapable of
+self-mastery.  In intellect he was learned, even cultivated; he was
+fond of studies, of history, literature, and archaeology, and spoke and
+wrote well.  But Augustus had been forced to give up the attempt to
+have him enter upon a political career because he had been unable to
+make him acquire even that exterior bearing which confers the necessary
+dignity upon him who exercises great power, to say nothing of the
+firmness, precision, and force of will required in governing men.
+Credulous, timorous, impressionable, and at the same time obstinate,
+gluttonous, and sensual, this erudite, overgrown boy had become in the
+imperial palace a kind of plaything for everybody, especially for his
+slaves, who, knowing his defects and his weaknesses, did with him what
+they wished.
+
+He did not lack the intellectual qualities necessary for governing
+well, but of the moral qualities he had none.  He was intelligent, and
+he looked stupid: he was able to consider the great questions of
+politics, war, and finance with breadth of view, with original and
+acute intelligence, but he never succeeded in having himself taken
+seriously by the persons who surrounded him.  He dared undertake great
+projects, like the conquest of Britain, and he lost his head at the
+wildest fable about conspiracy which one of his intimates told him; he
+had mind sufficient to govern the empire as well as Augustus and
+Tiberius had done, but he could not succeed in getting obedience from
+four or five slaves or from his own wife.
+
+Such a man was destined to turn out a rather odd emperor, at once great
+and ridiculous.  He made important laws, undertook gigantic public
+works and conquests of great moment; but in his own house he was a weak
+husband, incapable of exercising any sort of authority over his wife.
+With these conjugal weaknesses he seriously compromised the imperial
+authority, while at the same time he was consolidating it and rendering
+it illustrious with beautiful and wise achievements, especially in the
+first seven years of his rule, while he lived with Valeria Messalina.
+
+We must admit in his justification that in this matter he had not been
+particularly fortunate; for fate had given him to wife a lady who,
+notwithstanding her illustrious ancestors,--she belonged to one of the
+greatest families of Rome, related to the family of Augustus,--was not
+exactly suited to be his companion in the imperial dignity.  Every one
+knows that the name of Valeria Messalina has become in history
+synonymous with all the faults and all the vices of which a woman can
+be guilty.  This, as usual, is the result of envy and malevolence which
+never offered truce to the family of Augustus as long as any of its
+members lived.  Many of the infamies which are attributed to her are
+evidently fables, complacently repeated by Tacitus and Suetonius, and
+easily believed by posterity.  But it is certain that if Messalina was
+not a monster, she was a beautiful woman, capricious, gay, powerful,
+reckless, avid of luxury and of money, who had never scrupled to abuse
+the weakness of her husband in any way either by deceiving him or by
+obliging him to follow her will and her caprice in everything.  She was
+a woman, in short, neither very virtuous nor serious.  There are such
+women at all times and in all social classes, and they are generally
+considered by the majority not as monsters, but as a pleasing, though
+dangerous, variety of the feminine sex.  Under normal conditions,
+nevertheless, when the husband exercises a certain energy and sagacity,
+even the danger which may result from them is relatively slight.
+
+But chance had made of Messalina an empress, and Messalina was not a
+sufficiently intelligent or serious woman to understand that if she had
+been able to abuse the weakness of Claudius with impunity while he had
+been the most obscure member of the imperial family, it was a much more
+difficult matter to continue to abuse it after he had become the head
+of the state.  It was from this error that all their difficulties
+arose.  Elated by her new position, Messalina more than ever took
+advantage of her husband's infirmity.  She began by starting new
+dissensions in the imperial family.  Claudius had recalled to Rome the
+two victims of Caligula's Egyptian caprices, Agrippina and Julia
+Livilla; but if the latter no longer found a brother in Rome to
+persecute them, they did find their aunt, and they had gained but
+little by the exchange.  Messalina soon took umbrage at the influence
+which the two sisters acquired over the mind of their weak-willed
+uncle, and it was not long before Julia Livilla was accused under the
+_Lex de adulteriis_, and exiled with Seneca, the famous philosopher,
+whom they wished rightly or wrongly to pass off as her lover.
+Agrippina, like her mother, was a virtuous woman, as is proved by the
+fact that she could not be attacked with such weapons and was enabled
+to remain in Rome; though she also had to live prudently and beware of
+her enemy, and much the more as she had only recently become a widow
+and could therefore not even count upon the protection of a husband.
+Though Agrippina remained at Rome, she was isolated and reduced to a
+position of helplessness.
+
+Messalina alone, together with four or five intelligent and
+unscrupulous freedmen, hedged Claudius about, and there began the
+period of their common government--a government of incredible waste and
+extortion.  Among these freedmen there were, to be sure, men like
+Narcissus and Pallas, intelligent and sagacious, who did not aim merely
+at putting money into their purses, but who helped Claudius to govern
+the empire properly.  Messalina, on the other hand, thought only of
+acquiring wealth, that she might dissipate it in luxury and pleasures.
+The wife of the emperor had been selling her influence to the sovereign
+allies and vassals, to all the rich personages of the empire, who
+desired to obtain any sort of favor from the imperial authority; she
+had been seen bartering with the contractors for public works, mingling
+in the financial affairs of the state every time that there was any
+occasion to make money.  And with the money thus amassed she indulged
+in ostentatious displays which violated all the prohibitions of the
+_Lex sumptuaria_, leading a life of unseemly pleasures, in which it is
+easy to imagine what sort of example of all the finer feminine virtues
+she set.  Claudius either knew nothing of all this or else submitted
+without protest.
+
+Messalina then, with her peculiar levity of character and violence of
+temperament, continued to emphasize the modernizing Asiatic tendency
+introduced by Caligula into the state, and was influential in
+destroying the puritanic traditions of Rome and replacing them by the
+corruption and pomp of Asia.  Her role was exactly the opposite of that
+of Livia.  The latter had been the embodiment of the conservative
+virtues of traditionalism: the former by her egoism, her extravagance,
+and her wantonness was in a fair way to destroy all such traditions.
+Livia had been almost a vestal in her fight for the puritanism of old
+Rome: Messalina most ardently and violently fought to destroy it.
+
+Such an empress, however, could hardly please the public.  While those
+who profited by her dissipations greatly admired Messalina, a lively
+movement of protest was soon started among the people, for they, unlike
+many of the aristocrats, who affected modern views and who pretended to
+scorn the traditions of ancient Rome, were faithful to all such
+puritanical traditions and wished to see at their emperor's side a lady
+adorned with all the fairer virtues of the ancient matron--with those
+virtues, in short, which Livia had personified with such dignity.  How
+could they tolerate this sort of dissipated Bacchante, who should have
+been condemned to infamy and exile with the many other Roman women who
+had been faithless to their husbands; who with the effrontery of her
+unpunished crimes dishonored and rendered ridiculous the imperial
+authority?
+
+To the middle classes the emperor was a semi-sacred magistrate, charged
+with maintaining by law and example the purity of the family, fidelity
+in marital relations, and simplicity of customs.  Now, to their
+amazement, they saw in the person of the empress all the dissipations,
+corruptions, and perversions of the woman who wished to live only for
+her pleasure, to enjoy her beauty, and to have others enjoy it,
+enthroned, to the scandal of all honest minds, in the palace of the
+emperor.  Furthermore, it seemed to every one a scandal that one who
+was an emperor should at the same time be a weak husband; for the
+simple good sense of the Latin would not admit that a man who could
+govern an empire should not be able to command a woman.  It soon became
+the general opinion of all reasonable people that Messalina, in the
+position of Livia upon the Palatine, and with so weak a husband, was
+not only a scandal, but also a continual menace to the public.
+
+[Illustration:  The Emperor Claudius.]
+
+Nevertheless, it would now have been no easy matter, even if the
+emperor had wished it, to convict an empress of infidelity and
+disobedience to one of the great laws of Augustus.  Caligula was a
+madman and had been able to secure three divorces, but a wiser emperor
+would have to think for a long time before rendering public the shame
+and scandals of his family, especially when confronted with an
+aristocracy which was as eager to suspect and calumniate as was the
+aristocracy of Rome.  But the problem became hopeless as soon as the
+emperor did not see or did not wish to see the faults of his wife.
+Would any one dare to step forward and accuse the empress?
+
+The situation gradually became grave and dangerous.  The state,
+governed with intelligence, but without energy, with vast
+contradictions and hesitations, was being strengthened along certain
+lines and was going to pieces along others.  The power and extortions
+of the freedmen were breeding discontent on every hand.  Both through
+what she really did, and what the populace said she had done, Messalina
+was being transformed by the people into a legendary personage whose
+infamous deeds aroused general indignation; but all in vain.
+
+It now became quite evident that an empress was virtually invulnerable,
+and that, once enthroned upon the Palatine, there was no effective
+means of protesting against the various ways in which she could abuse
+her lofty position unless the emperor wished to interfere.  In its
+exasperation, the public finally vented upon Claudius the anger which
+the violence and misconduct of Messalina had aroused.  They declared
+that it was his weakness which was responsible for her conduct; and
+intrigues, deeds of violence, conspiracies, and attempts at civil war
+became, as Suetonius says, every-day occurrences at Rome.
+
+A sense of insecurity and doubt was spreading throughout the state as a
+result of the indecision of the emperor, and all began to ask
+themselves how long a government could last which was at the mercy of a
+wanton.  The violent death of Caligula, which was still fresh in the
+minds of the people, added to this wide-spread feeling of insecurity
+and alarm.  As Caligula, notwithstanding the pontifical sacredness of
+his person, had been slain, to the apparent satisfaction of everybody,
+in his palace by a handful of his supposed friends and supporters, it
+seemed possible that the tragedy might easily be repeated in the case
+of Claudius.  Could not the whole Claudian government be
+overturned,--in a single night, perhaps, as that of Caligula had been
+overturned?  All hearts were filled with suspicion, distrust, and
+alarm, and many concluded that since Claudius had not succeeded in
+ridding the empire of Messalina it would be well to rid it of Claudius.
+
+[Illustration: Messalina, third wife of Claudius.]
+
+So for seven years Messalina remained the great weakness of a
+government which possessed signal merits and accomplished great things.
+Of all the emperors in the family of Augustus, Claudius was certainly
+the one whose life was most seriously threatened, especially because of
+his wife.  Such a situation could not endure.
+
+It finally resolved itself into a tragic scandal, which, if we could
+believe Suetonius and Tacitus, would certainly have been the most
+monstrous extravagance to which an imagination depraved by power could
+have abandoned itself.  According to these writers, Messalina, at a
+loss for some new form of dissipation, one fine day took it into her
+head to marry Silius, a young man with whom she was very much in love,
+who belonged to a distinguished family, and who was the
+consul-designate.  According to them, for the pleasure of shocking the
+imperial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous union, she actually did
+marry him in Rome, with the most solemn religious rites, while Claudius
+was at Ostia!  But is this credible, at least without admitting that
+Messalina had suddenly gone insane?  To what end and for what reason
+would she have committed such a sacrilege, which struck at the very
+heart of popular sentiment?  Dissolute, cruel, and avaricious Messalina
+certainly was, but mad she was not.  And even if we are willing to
+admit that she had gone mad, is it conceivable that all those who would
+have had to lend her their services in the staging of this revolting
+farce had also gone mad?  It is difficult to suppose that they acted
+through fear, for the empress had no such power in Rome that she could
+constrain conspicuous persons publicly to commit such sacrilege.
+
+This episode would probably be an unfathomable enigma had not Suetonius
+by chance given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud omnem fidem
+excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat,
+tabellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For that which would pass all
+belief is the fact that in the marriage which Messalina contracted with
+the adulterer Silius, he himself [Claudius] should have signed the
+figures for the dowry").  If Claudius himself gave a dowry to the
+bride, he therefore knew that the marriage of Messalina and Silius was
+to take place; and it is precisely this fact which seems so incredible
+to Suetonius.  But we know that in the Roman aristocracy a man could
+give away his own wife in this manner; for have we not recounted in
+this present history how Livia was dowered and given in marriage to
+Augustus by her first husband, the grandfather of Claudius?  The
+deeding of a wife with a dowry was a part of the somewhat bizarre
+marriage customs of the Roman aristocracy, which gradually lost ground
+in the first and second century of our era in proportion as the
+prestige and power of that aristocracy declined, and in proportion as
+the middle classes acquired influence in the state and succeeded in
+imposing upon it their ideas and sentiments.  The passage in Suetonius
+proves to us that he no longer understood this matrimonial custom, and
+it is doubtful whether even Tacitus thoroughly understood it.  Nor is
+it improbable that it should have seemed strange even to many of the
+contemporaries of Claudius.  We could therefore explain how, not really
+understanding what had happened, the historians of the following
+century should have believed that Messalina had married Silius while
+she was still the wife of Claudius.
+
+In short, Claudius had been persuaded to divorce Messalina and to marry
+her to Silius.  The passage from Suetonius, if carefully interpreted,
+clearly tells us this.  What means were employed to persuade Claudius
+to consent to this new marriage we do not know.  Suetonius refers to
+this, but he is not clear.  In any case, this point is less important
+than that other question: Why was Messalina, after seven years of
+empire, willing to divorce Claudius and marry Silius?  The problem is
+not an easy one, but after long examination I have decided to accept
+with slight modification the explanation given by Umberto Silvagni in
+his beautiful work, "The Empire and the Women of the Caesars," a book
+which contains many original ideas and much acute observation.
+
+[Illustration: The philosopher Seneca.]
+
+Silvagni, who is an excellent student of Roman history, has well
+brought out how Silius belonged to a family of the aristocracy famous
+for its devotion to the party of Germanicus and Agrippina.  His father,
+who had been a great friend of Germanicus, had been one of the victims
+of Sejanus, and accused in the time of Tiberius under the law of high
+treason, he had committed suicide.  His mother, Sosia Galla, had been
+condemned to exile on account of her devotion to Agrippina.  Starting
+out with these considerations, and examining acutely the accounts of
+all the ancient historians, Silvagni concluded that behind this
+marriage there lay a conspiracy to ruin Claudius and to put Caius
+Silius in his place.  Messalina must sooner or later have felt that the
+situation was an impossible one, that Claudius was not a sufficiently
+strong or energetic emperor to be able to impose the disorganized
+government of himself and his freedmen upon the empire, and that any
+day he might fall a prey to a plot or an assassination.  What would
+happen, she must have asked herself, if Claudius, like Caligula, should
+some day be despatched by a conspiracy?  The same fate would doubtless
+be waiting for her, for, having killed him, the conspirators would
+certainly murder her also.  Consequently she entertained the idea of
+ruining the emperor herself in order to contribute to the elevation of
+his successor, and thus to preserve at his side the position which she
+had occupied in the court of Claudius.  But once Claudius had been
+slain, there would be no other member of the family of Augustus old
+enough to govern.  She therefore decided to choose him in a family
+famous for its devotion to Germanicus and the more popular branch of
+the house, thus hoping the more easily to win over the legions and the
+pretorians to the cause of the new emperor, Since the descendants of
+Drusus were dead, what other option remained to her than to choose a
+successor in the families of the aristocracy who had shown for them the
+greatest devotion and love?
+
+Thus, for the first time, a woman was placed at the head of a really
+vast political conspiracy destined to wrest the supreme power from the
+family of Augustus; and this woman proved her sagacity by knowing how
+to organize this great plot so well and so opportunely that the most
+intelligent and influential among the freedmen of Claudius debated for
+a long time whether they would join her or throw in their lot with the
+emperor.  So doubtful seemed the issue of this struggle between the
+weak husband and the energetic, audacious, and unscrupulous wife!  They
+allowed Messalina and Silius to enlist friends and partisans in every
+part of Roman society, to come to an understanding with the prefect of
+the guards, to obtain the divorce from Claudius, even to celebrate
+their marriage, without opening the eyes of the emperor.  Claudius
+would probably have been destroyed if at the last moment Narcissus had
+not decided to rush to the emperor, who was at Ostia, and, by
+terrifying him in some unspeakable way, had not induced him to stamp
+out the conspiracy with a bold and unexpected stroke.  There followed
+one of those periods of judicial murder which for more than thirty
+years had been costing much Roman blood, and in this slaughter
+Messalina, too, was overthrown.
+
+After the discovery of the conspiracy, Claudius made a harangue to the
+soldiers, in which he told them that as he had not been very successful
+in his marriages he did not intend to take another wife.  The proposal
+was wise, but difficult of execution, for there were many reasons why
+the emperor needed to have a woman at his side.  We very soon find
+Claudius consulting his freedmen on the choice of a new wife.  There
+was much discussion and uncertainty, but the choice finally fell upon
+Agrippina.  That choice was significant.  Agrippina was the niece of
+Claudius, and marriages between uncle and niece, if not exactly
+prohibited, were looked upon by the Romans with a profound revulsion of
+feeling.  Claudius and his freedmen could not have decided to face this
+repugnance except for serious and important reasons.  Among these the
+most serious was probably that after the experience with Messalina, it
+seemed best not to go outside the family.  An empress belonging to the
+family would not be so likely to plot against the descendants of
+Augustus as had been this strange woman, who belonged to one of those
+aristocratic families who deeply hated the imperial house.  Agrippina,
+furthermore, was the daughter of Germanicus.  This was a powerful
+recommendation with the people, the pretorian cohorts, and the legions.
+In addition, she was intelligent, cultured, simple, and economical; she
+had grown up in the midst of political affairs, she knew how the empire
+was governed, and up to this point she had lived a life above reproach.
+She seemed to be the woman above all others destined to make the people
+forget Messalina and to reestablish among the masses respect for the
+family of Augustus, now seriously compromised by many scandals and
+dissensions.  Furthermore, she did not seem to suffer too much by
+comparison with Livia.
+
+Claudius asked the senate to authorize marriages between uncles and
+nieces, as he did not dare to assume the responsibility of going
+counter to public sentiment.  And thus the daughter of Germanicus and
+the sister of Caligula became an empress.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO
+
+It is possible, as Tacitus says, that marriage with Claudius was the
+height of Agrippina's ambition, but it is also possible that it was an
+act of supreme self-sacrifice on the part of a woman who had been
+educated in the traditions of the Roman aristocracy, and who therefore
+considered herself merely a means to the political advancement of her
+relatives and her children.
+
+I am rather inclined to accept this second explanation.  When she
+married Claudius, Agrippina not only married an uncle who was much
+older than herself, and who must necessarily prove a rather difficult
+and disagreeable husband, but she bound up her fate with that of a weak
+emperor whose life was continually threatened by plots and revolts, and
+whose hesitations and terrors plainly portended that he would one day
+end by precipitating the imperial authority and government into some
+bizarre and terrible catastrophe.  For Agrippina it meant that she was
+blindly staking her life and her honor, and that she would lose them
+both should she fail to compensate for the innumerable deficiencies of
+her strange husband through her own intelligence and strength of will.
+Every one will recognize how difficult was the task which she had
+undertaken.
+
+But at the beginning fortune favored Agrippina as she boldly took up
+the work that lay before her.  The wild pranks of Caligula and the
+scandals of Messalina had aroused an immeasurable disgust in Rome and
+Italy.  Every one was out of patience.  The senate as well as the
+people were demanding a stronger, more coherent, and respectable
+government, which would end the scandals, suits, and atrocious personal
+and family quarrels which were dividing Rome.  Agrippina was the
+daughter of Germanicus, the granddaughter of Drusus, and she had in her
+veins the blood of the Claudii, with all their pride, their energy,
+their puritanical, conservative, and aristocratic spirit, and the
+moment she appeared, all hopes were centered in her.  Although she was
+a sort of feminine Tiberius, and in the purity of her life resembled
+her mother and her great-grandmother Livia, Tacitus nevertheless
+maligns her for her relationships with Pallas and Seneca.  The fact
+that Messalina, even with her implacable hatred, failed to bring about
+her downfall under the _Lex de adulteriis_, proves the unreliability of
+these statements, and Tacitus proves it himself when he says that she
+suffered no departure from chastity unless it helped her power (_Nihil
+domi impudicum nisi dominationi expediret_).  This means that Agrippina
+was a lady of irreproachable life; for if there is one thing which
+stands out clearly in the history of this remarkable woman, it is that
+both her rise and her fall depended upon causes of such a nature that
+not even her womanly charms could have increased her power or retarded
+her ruin.  All hearts were therefore filled with hope when they saw
+this respectable, active, and energetic woman take her place at the
+side of Claudius the weakling, for she brought back the memory of the
+most venerated personages of the family of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+
+The new empress, encouraged by this show of favor, applied herself with
+all the strength of her impassioned nature to the task of again making
+operative in the state those traditional ideas of the nobility in which
+Livia had educated first Tiberius and Drusus, then Germanicus, and then
+Agrippina herself.  In this descendant of hers the spirit of the
+great-grandmother finally reappeared, for it had been eclipsed by the
+fatal and terrible struggle between Tiberius and Agrippina, by the
+madness of Caligula, and the comic scandals of the first part of the
+reign of Claudius.  All this served to bring back into the state a
+little of that authoritative vigor which the nobility in the time of
+its splendor had considered the highest ideal of government.  Tacitus
+says of her rule that it was as rigid as if a man's (_adductum et quasi
+virile_).  This signifies that under the influence of Agrippina the
+laxity and disorder of the first years of Claudius's reign gave place
+to a certain order and discipline.  Severity there was, and more often
+haughtiness (_palam severitas ac saepius superbia_).  The freedmen who
+had formerly been so powerful and aggressive, now stepped aside, which
+is an evident sign that their petulance had now found a check in the
+energy of Agrippina.  The state finances and the fortune of the
+imperial house were reorganized, for Agrippina, like Livia and like all
+the ladies of the great Roman nobility, was an excellent administrator,
+frugal, and ever watchful of her slaves and freedmen, and careful of
+all items of income and expense.  The Roman aristocracy, like all other
+aristocracies, hated the parvenus, the men of sudden riches,
+traffickers who had too quickly become wealthy, and all persons whose
+only aim was to amass money.  We know that Agrippina sought to prevent
+as far as possible the malversations of public funds by which the
+powerful freedmen of Claudius had been enriching themselves.  After she
+became empress we hear accounts of numerous suits instituted against
+personages who had been guilty of wasting public treasure, while under
+Messalina no such cases were brought forward.  We know, furthermore,
+that she reestablished the fortune of the imperial family, which in all
+probability had been seriously compromised by the reckless expenditures
+of Messalina.  This is what Tacitus refers to in one of his sentences,
+which, as usual, is colored by his malignity: _Cupido auri immensa
+obtentum habebat quasi subsidium regno pararetur_ (She sought to enrich
+the family under the pretext of providing for the needs of the empire).
+What Tacitus calls a "pretext" was, on the contrary, the ancient
+aristocratic conception of wealth, which in the eyes of the great
+families was destined to be a means of government and an instrument of
+power: the family possessed it in order to use it for the benefit of
+the state.
+
+In short, Agrippina attempted to revive the aristocratic traditions of
+government which had inspired the policies of Augustus and Tiberius.
+Not only did she attempt to do this, but, strange as it may seem, she
+succeeded almost without a struggle.  The government of Agrippina was
+from the first a great success.  From the moment when she became
+empress there is discernible in the entire administration a greater
+firmness and consistency of policy.  Claudius no longer seems, as
+formerly, to be at the mercy of his freedmen and the fleeting impulses
+of the moment, and even the dark shadows of the time are lighted up for
+some years.  A certain concord and tranquillity returned to the
+imperial house, to the aristocracy, to the senate, and to the state.
+Although Tacitus accuses Agrippina of having made Claudius commit all
+sorts of cruelties, it is certain that trials, scandals, and suicide
+became much less frequent under her rule.  During the six years that
+Claudius lived after his marriage with Agrippina, scandalous tragedies
+became so rare that Tacitus, being deprived of his favorite materials,
+set down the story of these six years in a single book.  In other
+words, Agrippina encountered virtually no opposition, while Tiberius
+and even Augustus, when they wished to govern according to the
+traditions of the ancient nobility, had to combat the party of the new
+aristocracy, with its modern and oriental tendencies.  This party no
+longer seemed to exist when Agrippina urged Claudius to continue
+resolutely in the policy of his ancestors, for one party only, that of
+the old nobility, seemed with Agrippina to control the state.  This
+must have been the result partly of the disgust for the scandals of the
+previous decade, which had made every one realize the need of restoring
+more serious discipline in the government, and partly of the exhaustion
+which had come upon both parties as the result of so many struggles,
+reprisals, suits, and scandals.  The force of the opposition in the two
+factions gradually diminished.  A greater gentleness induced all to
+accept the direction of the government without resistance, and the
+authority of the emperor and his counselors acquired greater importance
+in proportion as the strength of the opposition in the aristocracy and
+the senate became gradually weaker.
+
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula and mother of
+Nero.]
+
+In any case, the empire was no longer to have forced upon it the
+ridiculous and scandalous spectacle of such weaknesses and
+incongruities as had seriously compromised the prestige of the highest
+authority in the first period of the reign of Claudius.  But Agrippina
+was not content with merely making provision as best she could for the
+present; she also looked forward to the future.  She had had a son by
+her first husband, and at the time of her marriage with Claudius this
+youth was about eleven years old.  It is in connection with her plans
+for this son that Tacitus brings his most serious charges against
+Agrippina.  According to his story, from the first day of her marriage
+Agrippina attempted to make of her son, the future Emperor Nero, the
+successor of Claudius, thereby excluding Britannicus, the son of
+Messalina, from the throne.
+
+To obtain this end, she spared, he says, neither intrigues, fraud, nor
+deceit; she had Seneca recalled from exile and appointed tutor of her
+child.  She removed from office the two commanders of the pretorian
+guard, who were creatures of Messalina, and in their stead she had
+elected one of her own, a certain Afranius Burrhus.  She laid pitfalls
+for Britannicus and surrounded him with spies, and in the year 50, by
+dint of much intrigue and many caresses, she finally succeeded in
+having Claudius adopt her son.  But this whole story is merely a
+complicated and fantastic romance, embroidered about a truth which in
+itself is comparatively simple.  Tacitus himself tells us that
+Agrippina was a most exacting mother; that is, a mother of the older
+Roman type--in his own words, _trux et minax_.  She did not follow the
+gentle methods of the newer education, which were gradually being
+introduced into the great families, and she had brought up her son in
+the ancient manner with the greatest simplicity.  It is well to keep in
+mind, furthermore, that neither Britannicus nor Nero had any right to
+the throne of Claudius.  The hereditary principle did not yet exist in
+the imperial government: the senate was free to choose whomsoever it
+wished.  To be sure, up to that time the choice had always fallen upon
+a member of the Augustan family; but it had only been because it was
+easier to find there persons who were known and respected, who
+commanded the admiration of the soldiers in distant regions, and who
+had received a certain preparation for the diverse and often difficult
+duties of their office.  And it was precisely for this reason that
+Augustus and Tiberius had always sought to prepare more than one youth
+for the highest office, both in order that the senate might have a
+certain freedom of choice, and also that there might be some one in
+reserve, in case one of these young men should disappoint the hopes of
+the empire or should die prematurely, as so many others had died.  That
+she should have persuaded Claudius to adopt her son does not mean,
+therefore, that she wished to set Britannicus aside and give the
+advantage to Nero.  It merely proves that she did not wish the family
+of Augustus to lose the supreme power, and for this reason she intended
+to prepare not only one successor, but two possible successors, to
+Claudius, just as Augustus had for a long time trained both Drusus and
+Tiberius.
+
+[Illustration: Britannicus.]
+
+In order to understand how wise and reasonable the conduct of Agrippina
+really was, we must also remember that Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and that, therefore, in the year 50, when Nero was
+adopted, Britannicus was a mere lad of nine.  As Claudius was already
+sixty, it would have been most imprudent to designate a nine-year-old
+lad as his only possible successor, when Nero, who was four years his
+senior, would have been better prepared than Britannicus to take up the
+reign.  There is a further proof that Agrippina had no thought of
+destroying the race of Claudius and Messalina, for before his adoption
+she had married Nero to Octavia, the daughter of the imperial pair.
+Octavia was a woman possessed of all the virtues which the ancient
+Roman nobility had cherished.  She was chaste, modest, patient, gentle,
+and unselfish, and she would be able to assist in strengthening the
+power of her house.  Agrippina had therefore, in the ancient manner,
+affianced the young pair at an early age, and hoped that she might make
+a couple which would serve as an example to the families of the
+aristocracy.
+
+In short, Agrippina, far from seeking to weaken the imperial house by
+destroying the descendants of Messalina, was attempting to bring her
+son into the family precisely for the purpose of giving it strength.
+And, sensible woman that she was, she could hardly have acted
+otherwise.  She had seen the family of Augustus, once so prosperous,
+reduced to a state of exhaustion and virtually destroyed by the fatal
+discord between her mother and Tiberius and the quarrels between her
+brothers.  The state had suffered greatly through the madness of
+Caligula and the reckless hatred of the first Agrippina, and the
+present empress, her daughter, who was not merely fond of her son, but
+endowed in addition with the gift of reflection, sought as far as
+possible to make amends for the evils which had unconsciously been
+wrought.  The hopes of the future were henceforth to abide in
+Britannicus and in Nero.  In Agrippina there reappeared the wisdom of
+her greatest predecessors, and the people were so well satisfied that
+they conferred upon her the very highest honor, such as in her time
+even Livia herself had not received.  She was given the title Augusta;
+she was allowed to ride into the precincts of the Capitol in a gilded
+coach (carpentum), though this was an honor which in old time had been
+conceded only to priests and to the images of the gods.  This last
+descendant of Livia and Drusus, in whom the virtues of a venerated past
+seemed to reappear, was surrounded by a semi-religious adoration.  This
+is an evidence of sincere and profound respect, for though the Romans
+often showered marks of human adulation upon their potentates, it was
+not often that they bestowed honors of so sacred a character.
+
+The unforeseen death of Claudius suddenly cut short the work which
+Agrippina had well under way.  Claudius was sixty-four years old, and
+one night in the month of October of the year 54 he succumbed to some
+mysterious malady after a supper of which, as usual, he had partaken
+inordinately.  Tacitus pretends to know that Agrippina had secretly
+administered poison to Claudius in a plate of mushrooms.  During the
+night, however, fearing lest Claudius would survive, she had called
+Claudius's physician, Xenophon, who was a friend of hers.  The latter,
+while pretending to induce vomiting, had painted his throat with a
+feather dipped in a deadly poison, and had killed him.  This version is
+so strange and improbable that Tacitus himself does not dare affirm it,
+but says that "many believe" that it was in this manner that Claudius
+met his death.  But if there are still people credulous enough to
+believe that the head of a great state can be poisoned in the twinkling
+of an eye by a doctor who brushes his throat with a feather, it is more
+difficult to understand what grounds Agrippina could have had for
+poisoning her husband.  According to Tacitus, it was because she was
+disturbed by the fact that Claudius had for some time shown that he
+preferred Britannicus to Nero; but even if the fact were true, as a
+motive it would be ridiculous.  Augustus was much fonder of Germanicus
+than he was of Tiberius; and yet at his death the senate chose
+Tiberius, and not Germanicus, because at that moment the situation
+clearly called for the former as head of the empire.  When Claudius
+died, Britannicus was thirteen and Nero seventeen years old.  They were
+both, therefore, mere lads, and it was most probable that if the
+imperial seat fell vacant, the senate would choose neither, since they
+were both too young and inexperienced.  This is so true that other
+historians have supposed, on the contrary, that Agrippina had fallen
+out with some one of the more powerful freedmen of Claudius, and seeing
+Claudius waver, had despatched him in order that she herself should not
+end like Messalina.  But this hypothesis also is absurd.  An empress
+was virtually invulnerable.  Messalina had proved this, for she had
+committed every excess and abuse with impunity.  Agrippina, protected
+as she was by the respect of all, invested with honors that gave her
+person a virtually sacred character, had nothing to fear either from
+the weak Claudius or from his powerful freedmen.
+
+This accusation of poisoning, therefore, seems to be of precisely the
+same sort as, and not a whit more serious than, all those other similar
+accusations which were brought against the members of the Augustan
+family.  Claudius, who was already sixty-four, in all probability died
+a sudden but natural death, and from the point of view of the interests
+of the house of Augustus, which Agrippina had strongly at heart, he
+died much too soon.  It was a dangerous and difficult matter to ask the
+Roman senate to appoint one of these striplings commander of the armies
+and emperor, even though they were the only survivors of the race of
+Augustus.  So true is this that Tacitus tells us that Agrippina kept
+the death of Claudius secret for many hours and pretended that the
+physicians were still struggling to save him, when in reality he was
+already dead, _dum res firmando Neronis imperio componuntur_ (while
+matters were being arranged to assure the empire to Nero).
+Consequently, if everything had to be hurried through in confusion at
+the last moment, it is plain that Agrippina herself must have been
+taken by surprise by the illness and death of Claudius.  She therefore
+cannot be held responsible for having caused it.
+
+It is not, however, difficult to reconstruct the course of events.  On
+the nights of the twelfth and thirteenth of October, soon after
+Claudius had been suddenly stricken down by his violent malady, the
+doctors announced to Agrippina that the emperor was lost.  Agrippina
+immediately understood that since the family of Augustus could at that
+moment present no full-grown man as candidate for the imperial office,
+there was grave danger that the senate might refuse to confer the
+supreme power either upon Nero or Britannicus.  The only means of
+avoiding this danger was to bring pressure to bear upon the senate
+through the pretorian cohorts, which were as friendly to the family of
+Augustus as the senate was hostile.  She must present one of the two
+youths to the guards and have him acclaimed not head of the empire, but
+head of the armies.  The senate would thereby be constrained to
+proclaim him head of the empire, as they had done in the case of
+Claudius.
+
+But which one of the two youths was it best to choose, Claudius's son
+by blood or his son by adoption?  Nero was chosen as the result of the
+unrighteous ambition of Agrippina, so Tacitus says.  It is very
+probable that Agrippina was more eager to see her own son at the head
+of the empire than to see Britannicus there; but this does not seem to
+have been the real reason of her choice, for it could not have been
+otherwise, even if Agrippina had detested Nero and had cherished
+Britannicus with a maternal affection.  Nero was four years older than
+Britannicus, and therefore he had to be given the preference over the
+latter.  It was a very bold move to propose that the senate make a
+youth of seventeen emperor; it would have been nothing less than folly
+to ask that they accept a thirteen-year-old lad as commander-in-chief
+of the imperial armies of Rome.
+
+Through the help of Seneca and Burrhus, the plan developed by Agrippina
+was carried out with rapidity and success.  On the thirteenth of
+October, after matters had been arranged with the troops, the doors of
+the imperial palace were thrown open at noon; Nero, accompanied by
+Burrhus, advanced to the cohort which was on guard.  He was received
+with joyous welcome, placed in a litter, borne to the quarters of the
+pretorians, and acclaimed head of the army.  The senate grudgingly
+confirmed his election.  There resulted in Rome a most extraordinary
+situation: a youth of seventeen, educated in the antique manner, and,
+though already married, still entirely under the tutelage of a strict
+mother, had been elevated to the highest position in the immense
+empire.  He was ignorant of the luxury, pleasure, and elegance which
+were becoming general in the great families; outside of a lively
+disposition and docility toward his mother, he had up to this point
+shown no special quality, and no particular vice.  Only one peculiarity
+had been noticed in him: he had studied with great zest music,
+painting, sculpture, and poetry, and had made himself proficient in
+these arts, which were considered frivolous and useless for a Roman
+noble.  On the contrary, he had neglected oratory, which was held a
+necessary art by an aristocracy like the Roman, whose duty it was to
+use speech at councils, in the tribunals, and in the senate, just as it
+used the sword on the fields of battle.  But the majority believed that
+this was merely a passing caprice of youth.
+
+[Illustration: Statue of Agrippina the Younger, in the Capitoline
+Museum, Rome.]
+
+
+Agrippina, then, with the assistance of Seneca and Burrhus, had kept
+the highest office in the state in the family of Augustus, and she had
+done so by a bold move which had not been without its dangers.  She was
+too intelligent not to foresee that a seventeen-year-old emperor could
+have no authority, and that his position would expose him to all sorts
+of envy and intrigue, and to open as well as secret opposition.  She
+succeeded in mitigating this evil and in parrying this danger by
+another very happy suggestion--the virtually complete restoration of
+the old republican constitution.  After the funeral of Claudius, Nero
+introduced himself to the senate, and in a polished and modest
+discourse, seemingly intended to excuse his youth, he declared that of
+all the powers exercised by his predecessors he wished to keep only the
+command of the armies.  All other civil, judicial, and administrative
+functions he turned over to the senate, as in the times of the republic.
+
+This "restoration of the republic" was Agrippina's masterpiece, and
+marks the zenith of her power.  It followed, as a result of her
+decision, that Nero, who was to go down to posterity as the most
+terrible of tyrants, was that one of all the Roman emperors who had the
+most limited power; and furthermore it was likewise the result of her
+activity that the constitution of the empire had never been so close to
+that of the ancient republic as under the government of Nero.  Most
+historians, hallucinated by Tacitus, have not noticed this, and they
+have consequently not recognized that in carrying out this plan
+Agrippina is neither more nor less than the last continuator of the
+great political tradition founded by Augustus.  In the minds of both
+Augustus and Tiberius the empire was to be governed by the aristocracy.
+The emperor was merely the depositary of certain powers of the nobility
+conceded to him for reasons of state.  If these reasons of state should
+disappear, the powers would naturally revert to the nobles.  It was
+therefore expedient at this time to make the senate forget, in the
+presence of a seventeen-year-old emperor, the pressure which had been
+brought to bear upon it by the cohorts, and to wipe out the rancor
+against the imperial power which was still dormant in the aristocracy.
+This restoration was not, therefore, a sheer renunciation of privileges
+and powers inherent in the sovereign authority, but an act of political
+sagacity planned by a woman whose knowledge of the art of government
+had been received in the school of Augustus.
+
+[Illustration: Agrippina the Younger.]
+
+The move was entirely successful.  The illusion that the imperial
+authority was only a transitory expedient made necessary by the civil
+wars, and that it might one day be entirely abolished, was still deeply
+grounded in the Roman aristocracy.  Every relaxation of authority was
+specially pleasing to the senatorial circles.  The government of Nero
+therefore began under the most favorable auspices, with joyous hope in
+the general promise of concord.  The disaffection which had been felt
+in the last six years of Claudius's government was changed into a
+general and confident optimism, which the first acts of the new
+government and the signs of the future seemed to justify.  Agrippina
+continued to keep Nero subject to her authority, as she had done before
+the election: together with his two masters, Seneca and Burrhus, she
+suggested to him every word and deed.  The senate resumed its ancient
+functions; and governed by Seneca, Burrhus, and Agrippina in
+conjunction with the senate, the empire seemed to be progressing
+wonderfully, and in the eyes of the senators the entire government was
+in a better way than it ever yet had been.
+
+But the situation soon changed.  Agrippina, to be sure, had given her
+son a strictly Roman education, and had brought him up with a
+simplicity and rigor long since out of fashion; and though she had
+early given him a wife, she continued to keep him subject to maternal
+authority.  But, with all this, it is doubtful if there ever was a
+temperament which rebelled against this species of education as
+strongly as did Nero's.  His taste for the arts of drawing and singing,
+the indifference which he had shown for the study of oratory from his
+childhood, these were the seeds from which as time went on his raging
+exoticism was to be developed through the use and abuse of power.  His
+was one of those rioting, contrary, and undisciplined temperaments
+which feel that they must do precisely the opposite of what tradition,
+education, and the general opinion of the society in which they live
+have prescribed as necessary and recognized as lawful.  In the case of
+Nero the defects and the dangers in the ancient Roman education were to
+become apparent.
+
+The first of these dangers declared itself when Nero entered upon one
+of those early marriages of which we have spoken in the first of these
+studies.  Agrippina had early arranged an alliance with a young lady
+who, because of her virtues, nobility of ancestry, and Roman education,
+might have become his worthy companion; but a year after his elevation
+to the imperial dignity, the eighteen-year-old youth made the
+acquaintance of a woman whose beauty inflamed his senses and
+imagination to the point of making him entirely forget Octavia, whom he
+had married from a sense of duty and not for love.  This person was
+Acte, a beautiful Asiatic freedwoman, and the inexperienced, ardent
+youth, already given up to exotic fancies, became so enamoured that he
+one day proposed to repudiate Octavia and to marry Acte.  But a
+marriage between Nero and Acte was not possible.  The _Lex de
+maritandis ordinibus_ prohibited marriages between senators and
+freedwomen.  It was therefore natural that Agrippina should have
+opposed it with all her strength.  She, the great-granddaughter of
+Livia, the granddaughter of Drusus, the daughter of Germanicus,
+educated in the strictest ideas of the old Roman aristocracy, could not
+permit her son to compromise the prestige of the entire nobility in the
+eyes of the lower orders by so scandalous a _mesalliance_.  But on this
+occasion the youth, carried away by his passion, resisted.  If he did
+not actually repudiate Octavia, he disregarded her, and began to live
+with Acte as if she were his wife.  Agrippina insisted that he give up
+this scandalous relationship; but in vain.  The mother and son
+disagreed, and very shortly after having resisted his mother in the
+case of Acte, Nero began to resist her on other occasions.  With
+increasing energy he shook off maternal authority, which up to that
+time he had accepted with docility.
+
+This, however, was a crisis which was sooner or later inevitable.
+Agrippina had certainly made the mistake of attempting to treat Nero
+the emperor too much as she had treated Nero the child; but that the
+crisis should have been reached in this manner as the result of a
+love-affair, and that it should have provoked a misunderstanding
+between the mother and son that was soon to degenerate into hatred, was
+most unfortunate.  Agrippina, though she enjoyed great prestige, had
+also many hidden enemies.  Everybody knew that she represented in the
+government the old aristocratic, conservative, and economical tendency
+of the Claudii,--of Tiberius and of Drusus,--that she looked askance
+upon the development of luxurious habits, the relaxation of morals, and
+the increase of public and private expenditures.  They understood that
+she exerted all her influence to prevent wastefulness, the malversation
+of public moneys, and in general all outlays for pleasures either in
+the state or the imperial family.  Her virtues and her stand against
+Messalina had given her a great prestige, and the reverence which the
+emperor had shown for her had for a long time obliged her enemies to
+keep themselves hidden and to hold their peace.  But this ceased to be
+the case after the incipient discord between her and Nero had allowed
+many to foresee the possibility of using Nero against her.  In
+proportion as Nero became attached to Acte he drew away from his
+mother, and in proportion as he withdrew from his mother his
+capricious, fantastic, and rebellious temper was encouraged to show
+itself in its true light.  The party of the new nobility, with its
+modern and oriental tendencies, had for ten years been held in check by
+the preponderating influence of Agrippina.  But gradually, as the
+exotic and anti-Roman inclinations of the emperor declared themselves,
+this party again became bolder.  The memories of the scandals of
+Caligula and Messalina were becoming effaced by time, the rather severe
+and economical government of Agrippina was showing signs of weakening,
+and all minds were beginning to entertain a vague desire for something
+new.
+
+[Illustration: The Emperor Nero.]
+
+The two parties which in the times of Augustus had rent Rome asunder
+were now being realined in the imperial house and in the senate--the
+party of the old nobility, which had Agrippina at its head, and the
+party of the modernizing nobility, which was gathering about the
+emperor and trying to claim him as its own.  Tacitus clearly tells us
+that the older and more respectable families of the Roman nobility were
+with Agrippina; and even if he had neglected to tell us so, we might
+easily have guessed it.  For a moment the old, old struggle which had
+been the cause of so many tragedies in the upper classes of Rome seemed
+once more ready to break forth.  But even though Agrippina was the soul
+of the party of the old nobility, the party needed a man whom it could
+oppose to Nero as a possible and better candidate for the imperial
+dignity.
+
+Agrippina, like a true Roman matron of the old type, looked upon the
+family merely as an instrument of political power, and therefore
+subjected her personal affections to the public interest.  She began to
+cast her eyes upon Britannicus, the son of Messalina, who was now
+becoming a young man and who seemed to be more serious-minded than
+Nero.  It was even muttered that she thought of giving her own son's
+place to the son of Messalina, when suddenly, in 55, Britannicus died
+at a dinner at which Nero was present.  Was he poisoned by Nero, as
+Tacitus says?  Although there is no lack of obscurities and
+improbabilities in the account of Tacitus, this time the accusation, if
+it is not true, is at least much more probable than the other
+accusations of the same kind.  It is certain that the report that
+Britannicus had been poisoned was soon current at Rome, and that it was
+believed; and the death of Britannicus was likewise a fatal blow to
+Agrippina and her party.  Tacitus tells us that the death of
+Britannicus caused Agrippina great terror and unspeakable
+consternation, and it is not difficult to divine the reasons.  Nero now
+remained the last and only survivor of the family of Augustus, and it
+was therefore no longer possible to bring any effective opposition to
+bear upon him by setting up some other member of the family who would
+be capable of governing.  The new nobility, with its modern tendencies,
+now rapidly gained strength, and the influence of Agrippina declined
+proportionately.
+
+As a result of the lofty qualities of genius and character with which
+she had been endowed, Agrippina had been able to hold the balance of
+power in the state as long as she had succeeded in keeping the emperor
+under her influence.  This had been true in the cases of both Claudius
+and Nero.  After Nero escaped from her influence, or, rather, after he
+had turned against her, her prestige and her power rapidly diminished,
+and her party lost greatly in size and in power.  Although personally
+the emperor was youthful and weak, the dignity of his office made him
+more powerful than all the members of his family, however energetic and
+intelligent they might be.  At this period, furthermore, Nero was
+supported by an entire party which was daily increasing in strength and
+in numbers, for, as always happens in eras of prosperity and peace, the
+temper of the time was tending toward a milder, gentler, more liberal
+government, and consequently one which would be less authoritative and
+severe.
+
+Agrippina, however, was an energetic woman, not easily discouraged, and
+she continued the struggle.  Consequently for two years longer, even in
+the midst of strife, intrigues, and suspicions, she preserved a
+considerable influence, and was able to check the progress of the
+government in its new direction.  This was either because Nero, though
+no longer exactly obedient to his mother's will, was still too weak,
+too undecided, and too deeply involved in the ideas of his earlier
+education to attempt an open revolt against her, or it was because
+Seneca and Burrhus wisely sought to conciliate the ultra-conservative
+ideas of the mother with the newer tendencies of the son.
+
+The definitive break with his mother and with her political
+ideas,--that is, with the ideas which had been professed by her
+ancestors,--came in 58, when Nero forgot Acte for Poppaea Sabina.  The
+latter belonged to one of those great Roman families into which the new
+spirit and the new customs had most deeply penetrated.  Rich,
+beautiful, avaricious of luxuries and pleasures, possessed of an
+unbridled personal ambition, she had attracted Nero to herself, and, in
+order to become empress, gave the uncertain youth the decisive impulse
+which was to transform the disciple of Agrippina and the grandson of
+Germanicus into the prodigal and dissolute emperor of history.  She
+encouraged in him his desire to please the populace, and certainly
+never checked his love for Greece and the Orient, which resulted
+finally in his mania of everywhere imitating the example of Asia and of
+taking up again, though to be sure less wildly, the policies of
+Caligula.  Tacitus tells us that she continually reproved Nero for his
+simple customs, his inelegant manners, and his rude tastes.  She held
+up to him, both as an example and as a reproach, the elegance and
+luxury of her husband, who was indeed one of the most refined and
+pompous members of the degenerate Roman nobility.  Poppaea, in short,
+gave herself up to the task of reshaping the education of Nero and of
+destroying the results of Agrippina's patient labor.  Nor was this all.
+She even became, with her restricted intelligence, his adviser in
+politics.  She persuaded him that the policy of authority and economy
+which his mother had desired was rendering him unpopular, and she
+suggested the idea of a policy of liberality toward the people which
+would win him the affection of the masses.  After he had fallen in love
+with Poppaea Sabina, Nero, who up to that time had shown no
+considerable initiative in affairs of state, elaborated and proposed to
+the senate many revolutionary projects for favoring the populace.  He
+finally proposed that they abolish all the _vectigalia_ of the empire;
+that is, all indirect taxes, all tolls and duties of whatever sort.
+The measure would certainly have been most popular, and there was much
+discussion about it in the senate; but the conservatives showed that
+the finances of the empire would be ruined and persuaded Nero not to
+insist.  Nero, however, wished to bring about some reform which would
+help the masses, and he gave orders in an edict that the rates of all
+the _vectigalia_ be published; that at Rome the pretor, and in the
+provinces the propretor and proconsul, should summarily decide all
+suits against the tax-farmers and that the soldiers should be exempt
+from these same _vectigalia_.
+
+[Illustration: The death of Agrippina.]
+
+Though some of these reforms were just, this new policy was also the
+cause of the final rupture with his mother.  Agrippina and Nero, to all
+intents and purposes, no longer saw each other, and Nero, on the few
+visits which he was obliged to pay her in order to save appearances,
+always arranged it so as never to be left alone in her presence.  In
+this manner the influence of Agrippina continued to decline, while the
+popularity of Nero steadily increased as the result of his youth, of
+these first reforms, and of the hopes to which his prodigality had
+given rise.  The public, whose memory is always brief, forgot what
+Agrippina had done and how she had brought back peace to the state, and
+began to expect all sorts of new benefits from Nero.  Poppaea,
+encouraged by the increasing popularity of the emperor, insisted more
+boldly that Nero, in order to make her his wife, should divorce Octavia.
+
+But Agrippina was not the woman to yield thus easily, and she continued
+the struggle against her son, against his paramour, and against the
+growing coterie which was gathering about the emperor.  She opposed
+particularly the repudiation of Octavia, which, being merely the result
+of a pure caprice, would have caused serious scandal in Rome.  But Nero
+was even now hesitating and uncertain.  He still had too clearly before
+him the memory of the long authority of his mother; he feared her too
+much to dare step forth in open and complete revolt.  At last Poppaea
+understood that she could not become empress so long as the mother
+lived, and from that moment the doom of Agrippina was sealed.  Poppaea
+was goaded on by all the new friends of Nero, who wished to destroy
+forever the influence of Agrippina, and by her words and deeds she
+finally brought him to the point where he decided to kill his mother.
+
+But to murder his mother was both an abominable and dangerous
+undertaking, for it meant killing the daughter of Germanicus--killing
+that woman whom the people regarded with a semi-religious veneration as
+a portent of fortune; for she was the daughter of a man whom only a
+premature death had prevented from becoming the head of the empire, and
+she had been the sister, the wife, and the mother of emperors.  For
+this reason the manner of her taking-off had been long debated in order
+that it might remain secret; nor would Nero make his decision until a
+seemingly safe means had been discovered for bringing about the
+disappearance of Agrippina.
+
+It was the freedman Anicetus, the commander of the fleet, who, in the
+spring of 59, made the proposal when Nero was with his court at Baiae,
+on the Bay of Naples.  They were to construct a vessel which, as
+Tacitus says, should open artfully on one side.  If Nero could induce
+his mother to embark upon that vessel, Anicetus would see to it that
+she and the secret of her murder would be buried in the depths of the
+sea.  Nero gave his consent to this abominable plan.  He pretended that
+he was anxious to become reconciled with his mother, and invited her to
+come from Antium, where she then was, to Baiae.  He showed her all
+regard and every courtesy, and when Agrippina, reassured by the
+kindness of her son, set out on her return to Antium, Nero accompanied
+her to the fatal vessel and tenderly embraced her.  It was a calm,
+starry night.  Agrippina stood talking with one of her freedwomen about
+the repentance of her son and the reconciliation which had taken place,
+when, after the vessel had drawn some distance away from the shore, the
+plotters tried to carry out their infernal plan.  What happened is not
+very clear.  The seemingly picturesque description of Tacitus is in
+reality vague and confusing.  It appears that the ship did not sink so
+rapidly as the plotters had hoped, and in the confusion which resulted
+on board, the emperor's mother, ready and resolute, succeeded in making
+her escape by casting herself into the sea and swimming away, while the
+hired assassins on the ship killed her freedwoman, mistaking her for
+Agrippina.
+
+In any case, it is certain that Agrippina arrived safely at one of her
+villas along the coast, with the help, it seems, of a vessel which she
+had encountered as she swam, and that she immediately sent one of her
+freedmen to apprise Nero of the danger from which she had escaped
+through the kindness of the gods and his good fortune!  Agrippina had
+guessed the truth, but for this one time she gave up the struggle and
+sent her messenger, that it might be understood, without her saying so,
+that she forgot and pardoned.  Indeed, what means were left her, a
+lonely woman, of coping with an emperor who dared raise his hand
+against his own mother?
+
+However, fear prevented Nero from understanding.  No sooner had he
+learned that Agrippina had escaped than he lost his head.  In his
+imagination he saw her hastening to Rome and denouncing the horrible
+matricide to the soldiers and the senate; and beside himself with
+terror, he sent for Seneca and Burrhus in order to take counsel with
+them.  It is easy to imagine what the feelings of the two teachers of
+the youth must have been as they listened to the terrible story.  Even
+they failed to understand that Agrippina recognized and declared
+herself conquered.  They, too, feared that she would provoke the most
+frightful scandal which Rome had yet seen, and not knowing what advice
+to give, or rather seeing only a single way out, which was, however,
+too serious and horrible, they held their peace while Nero begged them
+to save him.  At last Seneca, the humanitarian philosopher, turned to
+Burrhus and asked him what would happen if the pretorians should be
+ordered to kill Agrippina.  Burrhus understood that Seneca, though he
+was the first to give the terrible advice, yet wished to leave to him
+the more serious responsibility of carrying it into execution; for
+Burrhus, as commander of the guards, would have had to give the order
+for the murder.  He therefore hastened to say that the pretorians would
+never kill the daughter of Germanicus, and then added that if they
+really wished to do away with Agrippina, the best plan would be for
+Anicetus to carry out the work which he had begun.  His advice was the
+same as Seneca's, but he turned over to a third person the very grave
+responsibility for its execution.  He had, however, chosen this third
+person more wisely than Seneca, for Anicetus could not refuse.  If
+Agrippina lived, it was he who ran the risk of becoming the scapegoat
+for all this bloody and horrible adventure.
+
+As a matter of fact, Anicetus accepted.  The freedman whom Agrippina
+had sent to announce her misfortune was imprisoned and put in chains,
+in order to convey the impression that he had been captured carrying
+concealed weapons and in the act of making an attempt upon the
+emperor's life by the order of his mother.  Anicetus then hastened to
+the villa of Agrippina and surrounded it with a body of sailors.  He
+entered the house, and with two officers rushed into the room where
+Agrippina, reclining upon a couch, was talking with a servant, and
+killed her.  Tacitus tells us that when Agrippina saw one of the
+officers unsheathe his sword, she asked him to thrust her through the
+body which had borne her son.
+
+Thus died the last woman of the house of Augustus, and, with the
+exception of Livia, the most remarkable feminine figure in that family.
+She died like a soldier, on duty and at her post, bravely defending the
+social and political traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the
+time-honored principles of Romanism against the influx of those new
+forces of a later age which were seeking to orientalize the ancient
+Latin republic.  She died for her family, for her caste, and for Rome,
+without even having the reward of being remembered with dutiful regard
+by posterity; for in this struggle she had sacrificed not merely her
+life, but even her honor and her fame.  Such, furthermore, was the
+common destiny of all the members of this family, and if we except
+Livia and Augustus, the privileged pair who founded it, we are at a
+loss to know whether to call it the most fortunate or the most unhappy
+of all the families of the ancient world.  It is impossible for the
+historian who understands this terrible drama, filled with so many
+catastrophes, not to feel a certain impression of horror at the
+vindictive ferocity that Rome showed to this house, which, in order to
+bring back Rome's peace and to preserve her empire, had been fated to
+exalt itself a few degrees above the ordinary level of the ancient
+aristocracy.  Men and women, the young and the old, the knaves and the
+large-hearted, the sages and the fools of the family, alike, all
+without exception, were persecuted and plotted against.  And again, if
+we except the persons of the two founders, and those who, like Drusus
+and Germanicus, had the good fortune to die young, Rome deprived them
+all, deprived even Antonia, of either their life or their greatness or
+their honor, and not infrequently it robbed them of all these three
+together.  Those who, like Tiberius and Agrippina, defended the ancient
+Roman tradition, were hated, hounded, and defamed with a no less angry
+fury than Caligula and Nero, who sought to destroy it.  No one of them,
+whatever his tendencies or intentions, succeeded in making himself
+understood by his times or by posterity; it was their common fate to be
+misunderstood, and therefore horribly calumniated.  The destiny of the
+women was even more tragic than that of the men, for the times demanded
+from them, as a compensation for the great honor of belonging to this
+privileged family, that they possess all the rarest and most difficult
+virtues.
+
+What was the cause of all this? we ask.  How were so many catastrophes
+possible, and how could tradition have erred so grievously?  It is
+almost a crime that posterity should virtually always have studied and
+pondered this immense tragedy of history on the basis of the crude and
+superficial falsification of it which Tacitus has given us.  For few
+episodes in general history impress so powerfully upon the mind the
+fact that the progress of the world is one of the most tragic of its
+phenomena.  Especially is such knowledge necessary to the favored
+generations of prosperous and easy times.  He who has not lived in
+those years when an old world is disappearing and a new one making its
+way cannot realize the tragedy of life, for at such times the old is
+still sufficiently strong to resist the assaults of the new, and the
+latter, though growing, is not yet strong enough to annihilate that
+world on the ruins of which alone it will be able to prosper.  Men are
+then called upon to solve insoluble problems and to attempt enterprises
+which are both necessary and impossible.  There is confusion
+everywhere, in the mind within and in the world without.  Hate often
+separates those who ought to aid one another, since they are tending
+toward the same goal, and sympathy binds men together who are forced to
+do battle with one another.  At such times women generally suffer more
+than men, for every change which occurs in their situation seems more
+dangerous, and it is right that it should be so.  For woman is by
+nature the vestal of our species, and for that reason she must be more
+conservative, more circumspect, and more virtuous than man.  There is
+no state or civilization which has comprehended the highest things in
+life which has not been forced to instil into its women rather than
+into its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the
+stability of the family and the future of the race.  And for every era
+this is a question of life and death.  In such periods when one world
+is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused,
+and all attempts bring forth bizarre results.  He who wishes to
+preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems
+virtue.  Precisely for this reason it is more difficult for a woman
+than for a man to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for she is
+more exposed to the danger of losing her way and of missing her
+particular function; and since she is more likely to fail in realizing
+her natural destiny, she is more likely to be doomed to a life of
+misfortune.
+
+Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, and such especially was
+the fate of its women.  The strangers who visit Rome often go out on
+Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent music that can be heard in
+a room which is situated in one of the little streets near the Piazza
+del Popolo and which used to be called the Corea.  This hall was built
+over an ancient Roman ruin of circular form which any one can still see
+as he enters.  That ruin is the entrance to the tomb which Augustus
+built on the Flaminian Way for himself and his family.  Nearly all of
+the personages whose story we have told were buried in that mausoleum.
+If any reader who has followed this history should one day find himself
+at Rome, listening to a concert in that old Corea, which has now been
+renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let him give a thought to those
+victims of a terrible story of long ago, and may he remember that here,
+where at the beginning of the twentieth century he listens to the flow
+of rivers of sweet sound--here only, twenty centuries ago, could the
+members of the family of Augustus find refuge from their tragic fate,
+and after so much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, rest at last
+in peace.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Women of the Caesars, by Guglielmo Ferrero
+
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