The Historians' History of the World 06

But this brilliant position was fated to be the ruin of the young princes. It not only filled their own hearts with presumption and self-conceit; Livia and Tiberius turned eyes of envy and hatred upon the favoured pair. When Augustus, who was not blind to their sentiments, attempted to remove his stepson from the capital by giving him the honourable task of conducting a campaign in Armenia, the latter declined the proffered honour out of mortified pride, and begged leave to spend some years in learned leisure in the island of Rhodes. The leave was granted, and extended even beyond his desires. For seven years he stayed in the Greek island; busy with philosophical and mathematical studies, and observing the constellations in the night hours under the guidance of Thrasyllus, to draw auguries for the future from their position. His absence was at first associated with demonstrations of honour, through the splendour of the tribunician office which Augustus had conferred on him before his departure; but in course of time it assumed more and more the character of an exile, and Julia took advantage of it to increase her father’s aversion for the husband she abhorred.

Frivolous, vain, and wanton, the emperor’s daughter had caused him many a heartache by the levity of her conduct and her fondness for amusement; but she had always been able to propitiate his wrath and regain her ascendency by her amiability, her talent for witty and delightful conversation, her culture, and her art of delicate flattery. He shut his eyes when she violated the outward propriety and decorum which he endeavoured to diffuse over the private life of the imperial family, or when she showed herself in public surrounded by a swarm of aristocratic young men of lax morals. If he were annoyed at some too wanton attire of hers, she would presently appear in the decorous garb of a Roman matron and enliven her father by some jesting observation. The circle of blooming grandchildren with which she had surrounded his throne, and by which she seemed to have ensured his line in the possession of the monarchy, inclined him to judge her leniently and to make allowances for her.

But Livia’s intriguing temper found ways and means to destroy this bond and to extinguish in the father’s heart the long-cherished belief in his daughter’s innocence. She contrived to arouse in him the dark suspicion that Julia was not only disgracing the honour of the imperial house by a licentious way of life, but that she and her lovers had actually conceived hostile designs against his person and the security of the empire. For by this alone can we explain the harsh measures adopted by Augustus, who had his daughter suddenly banished without trial to the little island of Pandataria off the Campanian coast, and informed the senate that through shameless wantonness she had so far erred as to make the Forum and tribune the scene of nocturnal orgies and the witness of her gallantries. Her accomplices, real or supposed, who were for the most part opponents of Tiberius, shared the same fate of exile, or suffered the penalty of death, like the gifted and cultured son of the triumvir, Julus Antonius, eminent both as a statesman and a soldier. The sympathy and compassion of the people accompanied the emperor’s daughter (then thirty-eight years of age) into her place of punishment. Her guilt and transgression were her portion in the life of a degenerate age and city steeped in pleasures and vices, her penance was the outcome of the envy and malignity of an intriguing stepmother.

Her life in exile, which was voluntarily shared by her mother Scribonia, was rich in deeds of benevolence and charity. She died at Rhegium soon after her father, full of sorrows and weary of life. The gifted and eloquent Sempronius Gracchus, who had enjoyed her favour and love in happier days and had consequently been banished to the African island of Cercina, died about the same time by the hands of assassins sent by Tiberius to despatch him; showing himself by his fortitude in death not unworthy of the Sempronian name which in his life he had brought to shame.

[1 B.C.-9 A.D.]