With the death of the two Cæsars the hopes of Tiberius blossomed anew. Hence it is not improbable that they died of poison, administered at the criminal instigations of Livia. Even contemporaries nourished this suspicion. The passionate nature of the empress, who shrank from no crime however heinous, was well known, as was also the revengeful and spiteful temper of her eldest son, who had returned to Rome shortly before the death of Caius, and now did all he could to step into the vacant place. The mother’s intrigues and the son’s flattering arts of dissimulation did actually succeed to some extent in overcoming the emperor’s aversion to his stepson. He received him into favour and graciously acceded to Livia’s proud hopes and desires by adopting him and admitting him into the Julian family. Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus, who resembled her mother in beauty, in wit, as well as in levity and voluptuousness, and the younger Agrippa (styled Postumus, because Julia had brought him into the world after the death of her husband), a turbulent youth of haughty and intractable disposition, rude manners, and violent passions, were no formidable rivals to the artful Livia and her malevolent son.
When Agrippa’s outbreaks of fury were carried so far that neither the emperor nor the empress were spared by them, the latter contrived that the thoughtless and ungovernable youth, though adopted by Augustus at the same time as Tiberius, should be kept under military supervision in the little island of Planasia; where Tiberius had put him out of the way in the first year of his reign by assassins despatched for the purpose, alleging instruction left by the deceased emperor as his excuse. The younger Julia was banished on the pretext of an illicit amour with Decius Silanus, to a desolate island in the neighbourhood of Apulia, and compelled to pass the rest of her days—twenty long years—in exile.
[9-14 A.D.]
Fortune, which had stood by Augustus faithfully throughout his public career and had led him by many thorny paths to the summit of earthly glory, deserted him in his private life and in his domestic circle. Hatred and envy, fanned by female passions, ranged his court in two hostile factions, which employed against each other all the weapons of intrigue and all the arts of treachery and dissimulation, and scared peace and harmony away from the apartments of the imperial palace.
Livia’s ambitious and passionate temper was so notorious that she was actually suspected of having cut her husband’s days short by poison, lest he should restore his grandson Agrippa, to whom he had been reconciled in his island exile a little while before with tears and passionate embraces, to his rights and honours. She was alone with the emperor when death overtook him on a journey, at Nola in Lower Italy, in the seventy-sixth year of his age; and by carefully guarding the house and spreading false reports she concealed the fact of his decease until her son, who for several years had been associated with his adoptive father as coadjutor in the empire, could be summoned from Illyricum. Then the world was startled by the double announcement that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius had assumed the reins of power.
The gorgeous obsequies of his predecessor were the new emperor’s first business. Escorted by the whole body of knights and senators, and accompanied by women, bodyguards, and an innumerable multitude, the corpse was borne to the Field of Mars and there committed to the flames. When the ashes had been collected and interred in the imperial vault the deceased was exalted to a place among the gods by a decree of the senate, and a temple and ritual were assigned to him. Livia, known as Julia Livia since her adoption into the Julian family, was to preside as high priestess over the new college of priests devoted to the deified monarch. She died in the year 29 A.D., at the advanced age of 86.[b]
It is extremely difficult to estimate the character of this celebrated woman. Expression has been given above to various intimations which if justified reveal her in the worst possible light. But it must not be forgotten that evil-minded gossips were very busy in the early days of the empire, and that intrigues and sinister motives of a doubtful character darken the pages of Tacitus, our chief authority. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that Tacitus excels in the invention or the partisan use of bad motives, and his great dramatic and satirical powers give peculiar force to this unfair weapon. Tacitus can be relied on for facts which were publicly known or recorded at the time, but he is far from impartial. It may be, then, that an impartial estimate might soften somewhat the harsh judgment which, thanks to Tacitus, most writers have not hesitated to pass upon Livia. With this qualified estimate let us turn from Livia to consider the character of her famous husband.[a]
THE PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AUGUSTUS
We are indebted to C. Suetonius Tranquillus, who lived at Rome about the close of the first century A.D., for most that we know of the personal characteristics of Augustus, and of his immediate successors. Thanks to him, we are enabled to gain a personal acquaintance, as it were, with the Cæsars; which is very unusual with the great characters of antiquity in general. The biographies of Plutarch and of Cornelius Nepos are about the only other extensive repositories of information concerning the character of celebrities as men rather than as mere historical personalities. We turn now to Suetonius’ estimate of Augustus:
Augustus was slow in forming friendships, but when once they were contracted, he maintained them with great constancy; not only rewarding very handsomely the virtues and good services of his friends, but bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that they were of a venial kind. For amongst all his friends, we scarcely find any who fell into disgrace with him, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he raised to the consulship, and Cornelius Gallus whom he made governor of Egypt, both of them men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged in a design to excite a rebellion, he delivered up to the senate, that he might be condemned; and the other, on account of his ungrateful and malicious temper, he dismissed from his family and the provinces under his government. But when Gallus, by the threats of his accusers, and the votes of the senate against him, was driven to the desperate extremity of laying violent hands upon himself, he commended indeed the attachment of the senate, that had expressed so much indignation on his account; but he shed tears, and lamented his unhappy condition, “that I alone,” said he, “cannot be permitted to be angry with my friends to such a degree as I think proper.” The rest of his friends continued during their whole lives to make a distinguished figure in their several orders, both in power and estate, notwithstanding some occasional incidents of a disagreeable nature. For to say nothing of others, he would sometimes complain of impatience in Agrippa, and of loquacity in Mæcenas: the former, from a suspicion of a coolness in Augustus towards him, and because Marcellus received greater marks of favour, having withdrawn himself from all concern in the government, and retired to Mytilene; and the latter having confidentially imparted to his wife Terentia the discovery of Murena’s conspiracy. He likewise expected from his friends, both living and dying, a mutual proof of their benevolence. For though he was far from coveting their estates (as he never would accept of any legacy left him by a stranger), yet he examined their last sentiments of him, expressed in their wills, with an anxious attention; not being able to conceal his chagrin, if they made but a slight, or no very honourable mention of him, nor his joy on the other hand, if they expressed a grateful sense of his favours and a hearty affection for him. And what was left him by such as had children, he used to restore to the latter, either immediately, or if they were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly habit, or of their marriage, with interest.