Opening from the peristyle was the triclinium, or dining hall. It was here that the extravagance of the Romans was especially exhibited. In La Palais de Scaurus, by Mazois, there is a pen picture of a triclinium, every detail of which is authenticated by ancient authorities. It reveals a luxury and a disregard of expense to which our day furnishes no parallel. But the banquet hall of the Augustan house was not equipped in so costly a fashion; there was still cherished some remembrance of the ancient Sabine simplicity.
In addition to the apartments mentioned, there were spacious halls and salons used for such purpose as that of a picture gallery or a library. The bed chambers were usually placed between the outer walls of the house and the more important rooms; the only remarkable features about them were their smallness and inconvenience. There was an upper story, which was used principally for sleeping apartments, and probably there were no windows opening to the street except on this second floor. The rear part of the house was given up to the kitchen, the bakery, and the mill for grinding flour. Above all, in a literal and also commendatory sense of the word, was the solarium. This was a delightful retreat on the roof, furnished with plants, flowers, and fountains.
It was to such an abode as this that Livia came, and there brought her influence to bear on one of the most brilliant epochs of the world's history. After her repudiation by Antony, Octavia and her children also came to reside at the Domus Augustana; and there lived also the little Julia, the daughter of Scribonia and Octavius.
How early in her career Livia commenced laying her plans for the succession of her son to the imperial rule, we do not know; nor is there any certainty as to the extent of her culpability in carrying them out. It is most likely that her hope that she might bear a son to Augustus who would have an indisputable claim to the heritage allowed her at first to view with complacency the already existing putative but more removed successors. Time wore on, and her expectations failed of realization. Her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, were growing up, and both were manifesting those qualities which showed them worthy of taking the reins of government. The habit of exercising an influence in the affairs of State, through the confidence placed in her by her husband, made the prospect of having to relinquish that power, in the event of the death of Augustus, constantly more intolerable; but the woman who was called "a female Ulysses" was likely to win her way.
Julia, though the only child born in the purple, might not inherit the imperial sceptre, being a woman. But Octavia had a son of her first marriage, named Marcellus, of whom Augustus was especially fond. While he was but a youth of seventeen, Julia, then fourteen years old, was given to him in marriage; and thus it was hoped the succession would be continued by means of the union of the daughter and the nephew of the emperor. These anticipations were doomed to disappointment, as Marcellus died shortly after the marriage. One historian, Dion Cassius, informs us that it was whispered about that Livia was responsible for the death of Julia's husband, being jealous because Cæsar heaped upon him favors which were denied to her own sons; but, while relating this, the historian claims that it was a groundless accusation. However, we have it on the authority of so trustworthy a witness as Seneca that Octavia, in this sad bereavement, for once was unworthy of herself. He says that "she turned to hate all mothers, and the angry passion of her sorrow was directed principally against Livia, because that now the hope and prospects that had belonged to her own son were transferred to the son of Livia." Such unreasoning grief in this otherwise noble woman was a mark of common human frailty; but it does not present so pleasing a picture as that memorable scene in which Virgil, at the command of Augustus, read before Octavia the sixth book of his Æneid, in which he has commemorated Marcellus. Grief-stricken and dejected as she was, Octavia probably gave but little attention to the opening lines; but her interest was aroused as the poet proceeded to describe Æneas's visit to the under world, where dwelt those who had been dearest to her, and whither she knew herself to be rapidly tending. When she heard the lines--
"This youth, the blissful vision of a day,
Shall just be shown on earth, then snatched away,"
she was startled by the description of her own son, and, hiding her face, she burst into tears; and when the poet uttered the words "Tu Marcellus eris," which he had wisely withheld to the end of the passage, she could endure no more and swooned because of the intensity of her sorrowful emotion. The information that she ordered Virgil to be presented with ten thousand sesterces for every line of the passage relating to her son is interesting, but does not add particularly to the beauty of the scene. Shortly after this, occurred her death. Augustus caused certain public buildings which he was at this time erecting to be dedicated in honor of his sister.
Now that Julia was married, she was freed to some extent from that severe discipline in which Augustus deemed it necessary to bring up the girls of his family. Her training had been very strict. She had even been obliged, at a time when other girls of far inferior birth were perfecting themselves in more fashionable accomplishments, to assist her aunt and her stepmother in spinning wool for her father's clothes. She was denied any freedom of intercourse with the youths of her own age. Augustus once wrote to a young nobleman: "You have not behaved with proper respect in paying a visit to my daughter at Baiæ." But natural inclination, always stronger than discipline in determining the direction of a moral career, led Julia into evil courses. For many years, however, her father saw nothing less innocent in her conduct than that wit and gayety of spirit which he easily condoned. She well knew how to turn the edge of the mild rebukes of a fond parent. On one occasion, seeing her surrounded at a public exhibition by a number of the young fashionables of the city, and noticing that she did not maintain that dignity of deportment which he thought becoming in the daughter of an emperor, Augustus wrote her a letter expressing his displeasure and holding up before her the example of Livia, who encouraged in her company none but "grave and reverend signiors." Julia had a ready reply; this was the note scribbled on a tablet and sent back to her father: "These young men will also have become old fogies by the time I am an old woman." One day, later in her life, her father found a slave engaged in plucking the gray hairs from his daughter's head. This operation suddenly ceased on his entrance, and he feigned not to have noticed it. Then he asked abruptly: "Julia, which would you rather be--gray or bald?" "Why, father, gray, of course," "You little liar," replied Augustus, "see here," and he held up some of the gray hairs which had fallen on her dressing gown.
Shortly after the death of Marcellus, Julia was again married, this time to the great warrior Agrippa, the staunch friend of her father. This also was distinctly a political marriage. Julia was eighteen, Agrippa was forty-two, while at the time of betrothal he was already wedded to Marcella, the daughter of Octavia. The usual divorce severed these bonds, and Marcella was given to Antonius, the son of the triumvir. Both Octavia and Scribonia were desirous of this matrimonial readjustment. They probably saw that Julia needed a firm disciplinarian like Agrippa to keep the questionable proclivities of her character from attaining too exuberant a freedom. It is also likely that they hoped that this union would result in heirs who would frustrate the expectations of Livia and her sons. But to their check thus played, Livia, in due time, answered with a decisive mate. To Julia and Agrippa there were born three sons and one daughter, named respectively Lucius, Caius, Agrippa Posthumus, and Julia. Thus Tacitus relates the dénouement: "Augustus had adopted Lucius and Caius into the Cæsarian family; and although they had not yet laid aside the puerile garment, his ambition was strong to see them declared princes of the Roman youth, and even mentioned for the consulship; at the same time, he affected to decline these honors for them. Upon the death of Agrippa, they were cut off, either by a decease premature but natural, or by the arts of their stepmother Livia: Lucius on his journey to the armies in Spain, Caius on his return from Armenia, ill of a wound. And as Drusus had been long since dead, Tiberius Nero was the only surviving stepson. On him every honor was accumulated, he was adopted by Augustus as his son and a colleague in the Empire ... and this was brought about, not by the secret machinations of his mother, as heretofore, but at her open suit. For over Augustus, now aged, she had obtained such absolute sway that he had banished his only surviving grandson, Agrippa Posthumus, a person of clownish brutality, with great bodily strength, but convicted of no heinous offence."