The Historians' History of the World 06

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: