Livia, Wife of Augustus.
From the Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Iulia, b. B.C. 39; ob. A.D. 14.
At first, we are told, the marriage seemed likely to be a happy one. Iulia accompanied her husband on his campaigns in Dalmatia (B.C. 11-10), or at any rate awaited him at Aquileia, where a child was born and died. But from that time forward the breach between them was always widening. Tiberius seems to have remembered certain passages that had passed between them while she was still the wife of Agrippa, and she regarded him as her social inferior, and wrote a violent complaint of his character and habits to Augustus—supposed to have been composed for her by her lover, Sempronius Gracchus, who paid for that service by his life in the first year of the next reign; and when in B.C. 6 Tiberius retired to Rhodes, his motive seems to have been as much to escape her company as to avoid the awkwardness of his political position. Left thus to her own devices in the midst of a corrupt society, she seems soon to have outdone all former excesses. She was beautiful—except that she early had grey hair—witty and wilful: so wilful and capricious that Augustus used to say that he had “two fanciful daughters whom he was obliged to put up with—the state and Iulia.” She drew round her all the rich and extravagant youth. At the amphitheatre, on one occasion, some one pointed out the contrast between the respectable elderly personages who surrounded Livia and the wild youth who formed her own train. “Oh! they will grow old along with me!” she replied. To a graver friend, who suggested that she would do better to imitate the economical habits of her father, she retorted: “He forgets that he is a Cæsar; I remember that I am Cæsar’s daughter.” Once the Emperor entered the room while she was at her toilet and noticed that her tire women had been plucking out her grey hairs. He stayed chatting on all kinds of subjects, and insensibly led the conversation to the subject of old age. “Which would you prefer?” he asked, “to be grey or bald?” “Oh, grey,” she replied. “Then I wonder,” said he, “that you let these women make you bald so soon.” She had at times given him some unpleasant doubts as to her conduct. She came to see him once dressed in a meretricious style, which she knew would vex him. Next day she reappeared dressed with complete decorum. He had said nothing the day before, but now exclaimed, “Isn’t this a style more becoming to a daughter of Augustus?” “Oh,” said she, “I dressed to-day for my father to see, yesterday for my husband.”
He had never liked her mixing in general society as a girl. She and his granddaughters, who lived in his house, were trained to spend their time in women’s work, spinning wool, and the like, and to have no secret conversations or idle talk; and he once wrote to a young noble who had called on her while staying at Baiæ that “he had taken a great liberty.” But in spite of such seclusion she had developed a considerable knowledge of and taste for literature, and her cheerful good nature made her popular at court and in society. Her father watched her career as a married woman, and from time to time gave her half-grave and half-playful hints as to her extravagance in dress and the style of people that surrounded her. But he does not seem to have entertained serious suspicions. Meanwhile she is said by our authorities not only to have been indulging in numerous intrigues, but to have violated all propriety and decency by joining in noisy revelry at night in the streets and forum, and to have been present at parties where men stayed late and drank deep. The crash came at a moment that seemed a culminating one in the Emperor’s career, when a scandal must have been peculiarly trying.
Pater patriæ, B.C. 2.
Since the beginning of B.C. 8 Augustus had been at home. In that year a fresh period of his various powers had been duly renewed by a vote of the Senate, which had also honoured him by naming the month Sextilis after him as “August,” and he had had the gratification of welcoming Tiberius home from Germany victorious, and witnessing his triumph. His young grandson Gaius was designated consul in B.C. 5 for the sixth year from that time, and the next year he himself took that office after an interval of eighteen years, that he might add dignity to the ceremony of Gaius taking the toga virilis. Though vexed at Tiberius’s retirement to Rhodes, he had good reason to hope that in the two young Cæsars the succession was well provided for. In spite of some uneasiness on the German frontier and among the Parthians, there was for the time profound peace. At the beginning of B.C. 2 he was again consul, in order to introduce the second grandson to the forum; and to show their appreciation of his achievements, and their affection for his person, the Senate at length voted to give him the title of “pater patriæ.” It was first offered him by a popular deputation in his villa at Antium. He made some difficulty about accepting it; but the next time he appeared at the theatre or circus he was met by loud shouts, the whole people addressing him by that title, and at the following meeting of the Senate on the 5th of February Valerius Messala was put up to address him formally: “With prayers for your person and your house, Cæsar Augustus—for in offering them we deem ourselves to be praying for the perpetual felicity of the Republic and the prosperity of this city—we, the Senate, in full accord with the Roman people, unanimously salute you as Father of your country.” Augustus, rising with tears in his eyes and voice, could just answer briefly, “My dearest wishes have been fulfilled, Fathers of the Senate, and what is there left for me to ask of the immortal gods except that I may retain this unanimous feeling of yours to the last day of my life?”
Though the title had long been popularly applied to Augustus, this was the first official recognition of it. It had very old historical precedent, from Romulus to Iulius Cæsar. It was meant to be the highest compliment which could be paid, but it conferred no new powers, though in after-times some of the Emperors regarded it as giving them a kind of paternal authority. Augustus was evidently highly gratified. The shows given at his expense this year were of unusual magnificence: gladiators, wild beast hunts, sham sea-fights on the flooded Transtiberine fields, had all roused great enthusiasm, and a special festival in his honour had been held at Naples—in the Greek fashion—as an expression of thanks to him for assistance rendered in the distress caused by a recent earthquake and eruption of Vesuvius. The year thus opened with unusual cheerfulness, and though now past sixty he might feel encouraged by the popular enthusiasm to continue his work with unabated energy.
Detection of Iulia.