The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
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was preserved in a splendid theatre which his uncle dedicated to his memory; but the lines in Virgil’s Aeneid proved a more lasting monument. The story is told that Octavia fainted when she heard them recited, and that the poet received ten thousand sesterces for each line.
Augustus had now to form another plan, and it might be thought that the influence of Livia would have fixed his choice on one of her sons. But his hopes were bound up in Julia, and he now selected Agrippa as husband for the widow of Marcellus. The fact that Agrippa was married to her sister-in-law Marcella, and had children by this marriage, was no obstacle in the eyes of the man who had so lightly divorced Scribonia. Agrippa had put away his first wife Pomponia to marry the niece of Augustus, and he was not likely to grumble now at having to sacrifice the niece for the sake of the daughter. Augustus set forth in 22 B.C. to visit the eastern provinces. He stayed during the winter in Sicily, and while he was there a sedition broke out in Rome, owing to a struggle between Q. Lepidus and M. Silanus in their candidature for consulship. This incident seems to have determined Augustus to carry out his project of uniting Agrippa and Julia without delay. He recalled Agrippa from the east, caused the marriage to be celebrated, and consigned to him the administration of Rome and the west during his own absence in the east (early in 21 B.C.). It is said that Maecenas advised his master that Agrippa had risen too high, if he did not rise still higher, and that there were only two safe alternatives, his marriage with Julia, or his death.
In October 19 B.C. Augustus returned to Rome, and in the following year received a new grant of the proconsular imperium for five years. At the same time he caused the tribunician power to be conferred for five years on Agrippa, who was thus raised a step nearer the Princeps. The marriage of Julia and Agrippa was fruitful. Two sons and two daughters were born in the lifetime of Agrippa, and another son after his death. In 17 B.C. Augustus adopted Gaius and Lucius, his grandsons, into the family of Caesar, and it seems clear that he regarded Gaius and Lucius Caesar as his successors, and their father Agrippa as no more than their guardian. But if so, it was necessary to strengthen the guardian's hands, and when Agrippa's tribunician power lapsed, it was renewed for another five years.
But Augustus was destined to survive his second son-in-law as he had survived his first. Agrippa died in Campania in 12 B.C. at the age of fifty-one, and was laid like Marcellus in the mausoleum of Augustus. The Emperor's sister Octavia died in the following year.
The death of the consort did not interfere with the plan for the succession, but he was a great loss to Augustus, whose weak health rendered him unequal to bearing the burden of the Empire alone. The tender age of Gaius and Lucius Caesar required a protector in case anything should happen to their grandfather before they had reached man's estate. Augustus accordingly united his elder stepson Tiberius with Julia (11 B.C.), and thus constituted him the natural protector of the two young Caesars. For this purpose Tiberius was obliged, much against his will, to divorce his wife Vipsania Agrippina, by whom he had a son named Drusus. This Agrippina was the daughter of Agrippa by his first wife Pomponia (daughter of Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero). Thus Tiberius put away Agrippa's daughter in order to marry his widow. No statesman perhaps has ever gone further than Augustus in carrying out a cold-blooded method of uniting and divorcing for the sake of dynastic calculations. His younger stepson Drusus had been likewise drawn closer to the imperial family by marriage with Antonia, daughter of Octavia, and niece of the Emperor.
Tiberius and Drusus had already performed important public services, and gained great military distinction by the subjugation of Raetia and Vindelicia (15 B.C.). In 12 B.C. and the following years they had again opportunity for displaying their unusual abilities, Tiberius in reducing rebellious tribes in Pannonia, and Drusus in warfare with the Germans beyond the Rhine. The death of Drusus in 9 B. was a great blow to Augustus, who had really "paternal feelings" for him but never cared for Tiberius. But he could hardly have found a more capable helper in the administration than his elder stepson. Tiberius was grave and reserved in manner, cautious and discreet from his earliest years, indisposed to conciliate friendship, and compelled to dissemble by the circumstances in which he was placed. But he was an excellent man of business and as a general he was trusted by the soldiers, and always led them to victory. He became consul in 13 B.C., at the age of twenty-nine. Augustus raised him to the same position to which he had raised Agrippa. He granted him the proconsular imperium first (about 9 B.C.), and three years later the tribunician power. In this policy he was doubtless influenced not only by the merits of Tiberius, but by the influence of Livia, to whom he granted the ius trium liberorum in 9 B.C.. On receiving the tribunician power, Tiberius was charged with a special commission to the East, to suppress a revolt which had broken out in Armenia. He had doubtless hoped that his step-father would adopt him. But he saw that he was destined by Augustus to be the guardian of the future Emperors, rather than a future Emperor himself, that he was consort indeed of the Princeps, but was not intended to be the successor. He was too proud to relish this postponement to his step-children, and instead of undertaking the commission, he retired into exile at Rhodes. In the following year C. Caesar assumed the toga virilis. He also became a consul designate. Four years later he received the proconsular imperium and a special commission to Armenia. 1 A.D.. was the year of his consulship.
The succession now seemed safe. L. Caesar had assumed the gown of manhood in 2 B.C. so that the Julian dynasty had two pillars. The Roman knights had proclaimed Gaius and Lucius principes iuventutis, an honour which seemed to mark them out as destined to become principes in a higher sense. From this time forward the title princeps iuventutis came to be formally equivalent to a designation of a successor to the Principate, who was still too young to enter the senate. But fortune was adverse to the plans of Augustus. Lucius died at Massilia in 2 A.D.. and two years later Gaius received a wound at the siege of Artagira and died in Lycia (4 A.D.). Thus the hopes which Augustus had cherished during the past twenty years fell to the ground.
But the death of his grandchildren was not the only misfortune which befell Augustus. The depravity of his daughter was even a more grievous blow. The licentious excesses of Julia were the talk of the city, and were known to all before they reached the ears of her father. She had long been unfaithful to her husband Tiberius, and his retirement to Rhodes—though mainly a manifestation of antagonism between the step-son and the grandsons of the Emperor—may have been partly due to his estrangement from her. But at length her profligacy became so open that it could no longer be hidden from the Emperor. She is even said to have traversed the streets by night in riotous company, and her orgies were performed in the forum or on the rostra. In short, to quote the words of a contemporary, "in lust and luxury she omitted no deed of shame that a woman could do or suffer, and she measured the greatness of her fortune by the licence it afforded for sin". The wrath of Augustus, when he learned the conduct of his daughter, knew no bounds. He formally communicated to the senate an account of her acts. He banished her to the barren island of Pandateria off the coast of Campania (2 B.C.) whither her mother Scribonia voluntarily attended her, and no intercession on the part of the people induced him to forgive her. Her lovers—Claudii, Scipiones, Sempronii, and Quinctii—were exiled; but one of them Julius Antonius (son of M. Antonius and Fulvia), whom Augustus had spared after Actium and always treated with kindness, was put to death, on the charge that he had corrupted the daughter in order to conspire against the father. Rumor said that Livia, scheming in the interests of herself and Tiberius, had a hand in bringing about the misfortunes which fell upon the family of Augustus; but there is no evidence whatever that such was the case.
The other children of Julia and Agrippa could not replace Gaius and Lucius. Agrippa Postumus showed such a bad and forward disposition that Augustus could build few hopes on him. The younger Julia proved a profligate, like her mother. There remained Agrippina, who had married within the imperial family, and did not disgrace it. Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, had wedded the younger Antonia, daughter of Octavia and M. Antonius. Of this marriage Germanicus was born, and Augustus selected him as a husband for Agrippina. The Emperor thus united his grandnephew with his granddaughter, as he had before united his nephew with his daughter.
In deciding the question of the succession Augustus was obliged to have recourse to Tiberius, yet not so as to exclude Germanicus, or even to deprive the young Agrippa of all hopes. After the banishment of Julia, Tiberius had wished, but had not been permitted, to return to Rome. He is said to have spent his time at Rhodes in the study of astrology. In 2 A.D. he was at length