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Page 10
We can readily explain, therefore, even without admitting that Livia
had aroused in him a violent passion, why the future Augustus should
have been so impatient to marry her in 38 B.C. The times were stormy
and uncertain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice of fortune had
raised to the head of a revolutionary dictatorship, was certainly the
weakest of the three colleagues, because of his youth, his slighter
experience, the feebler prestige among his soldiers, and, last of all,
the greater obscurity of his lineage. Antony, especially, who had
fought in so many wars, with Caesar and alone, who belonged to a family
of really ancient nobility, was much more popular than he among the
soldiers and had stronger relations with the great families. He was
therefore more powerful than Octavianus both in high places and in low.
A marriage with Livia meant much to the future Augustus. It would open
for him a door into the old aristocracy; it would draw him closer to
those families which, in spite of the revolution, were still so
influential and venerable; it would be the means of lessening the
hatred, contempt, and distrust in which these families held him. It
was for him what Napoleon's marriage with Marie Louise and the
consequent connection with the imperial family of Austria had been for
the former Corsican officer, become Emperor of the French. Since, now,
a lady who belonged to one of these great families was disposed to
marry him, it would have been foolish to put obstacles in the way; it
was necessary to act with despatch; time and fortune might change.
Such are the motives that may have induced Augustus to hasten the
nuptials. But what were the motives of Livia in accepting this
marriage, in such stormy times, when the fortunes of the future
Augustus were still so uncertain? A passage in Velleius Paterculus
would lead us to believe that he who devised this historic marriage was
none other than that same first husband of Livia, Tiberius Claudius
Nero himself! According to our ideas it is inconceivable; but not at
all strange according to the ideas of the Roman. It is probable that
Tiberius Claudius Nero, feeling that the triumph of the revolution was
now assured, had wished by this marriage to attach to the cause of the
old aristocracy the youngest of the three revolutionary leaders.
Already well along in years and infirm,--he was to die shortly
after,--Nero, who well knew the intelligence of his young wife, was
perhaps planning to place her in the house of the man in whom all saw
one of the future lords of Rome. Thus he would bind him to the
interests of the aristocracy. In the person of Livia there entered
into the house of Octavianus the old Roman nobility, which, defeated at
Philippi, was striving to reacquire through the prestige and the
cleverness of a woman what it had not been able to maintain by arms.
All her life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact,
Livia fulfilled her mission. She succeeded in resolving into the
admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the
liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man
as a duty. She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that
lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and
tempestuous history never ceased to admire. Even and serene,
completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with a
robust will, she accommodated herself without difficulty to all the
sacrifices which her rank and situation imposed upon her. She changed
husbands without repugnance, though her marriage to Octavianus occurred
but five years after the proscriptions, while he was still red with the
blood of her family and friends. Likewise she renounced her two sons,
the future emperor Tiberius, who had been born before her second
marriage, as well as the one who had been born after. So too when, a
few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their
guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with
the most careful motherly solicitude. To the second husband, whom
politics had given her, she was a faithful companion. Scandal imputed
to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of
insatiable ambitions and perfidious intrigues. No one ever dared
accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct. The
great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
poise of her spirit. In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
interests of the world,--laws and elections, wars and peace,--she
preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry. These
she had learned as a child in the house of her father,--a house as much
more illustrious with inherited glory as it was poorer in wealth than
that which Victory had prepared for Augustus on the Palatine.
[Illustration: The young Augustus.]
We know--it is Suetonius who tells us--that this house on the Palatine
built by Augustus, in which Livia spent the larger part of her life,
was small and not at all luxurious. In it there was not a single piece
of marble nor a precious mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the
same bedchamber, and the furniture of the house was so simple that in
the second century of our era it was exhibited to the public as an
extraordinary curiosity. The imperial pair had several villas, at
Lanuvium, at Palestrina, at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious
and simple. Nor was there any more pomp and ceremony about the dinners
to which they invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, the
dignitaries of the state and the heads of the great families. Only on
very special occasions were six courses served; usually there were but
three. Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven
by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands,--though she
did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom,--but by her slaves and
freed-women. Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia
counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms
which were in the house. As she carefully parceled out the wool to the
slaves, watching over them lest they steal or waste it, and frequently
taking her place among them while they were at work, she felt that she
too contributed to the prosperity and the glory of the empire.
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