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Page 9
The two divorces and the new marriage were concluded with unwonted
haste. The first husband of Livia, acting the part of a father, gave
her a dowry for her new alliance and was present at the wedding. Thus
Livia suddenly passed into the house of her new husband where, three
months later, she gave birth to a son, who was called Drusus Claudius
Nero. This child Octavianus immediately sent to the house of its
father.
To us, marriage customs of this sort seem brutal, shameless, and almost
ridiculous. We should infer that a woman who lent herself to such
barter and exchange must be a person of light manners and of immoral
inclinations. At Rome, however, no one would have been amazed at such
a marriage or at the procedure adopted, had it not been for the
extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable
or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child,
and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its
somewhat sophistical consent. For all were accustomed to seeing the
marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on
such bases. Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded,
apparently with the consent of all concerned? Why did they all, Livia
and Octavianus not less than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impatient
that everything should be settled with despatch?
[Illustration: Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a
priestess.]
The legend which then formed about the family of Augustus, a legend
hostile at almost every point, has interpreted this marriage as a
tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the dissolute and perverse
triumvir. I, too, in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed my
belief that this haste, at least, was the effect not of political
motives but of a passionate love inspired in the young triumvir by the
very beautiful Livia. A longer reflection upon this episode has
persuaded me, however, that there is another manner, less poetic
perhaps, but more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, this famous
alliance, which was to have so great an importance in the history of
Rome.
To arrive at the motives of this marriage we must consider who was
Livia and who was Octavianus. Livia was a woman of great beauty, as
her portraits prove. But this was not all. She belonged also to two
of the most ancient and conspicuous families of the Roman nobility.
Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, was by birth a Claudius,
adopted by a Livius Drusus. He was descended from Appius the Blind,
the famous censor and perhaps the most illustrious personage of the
ancient republic. His grandfather, his great-grand-father, and his
great-great-grandfather had been consuls, and consuls and censors may
be found in the collateral branches of the family. A sister of his
grandfather had been the wife of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his
father had married Lucullus, the great general. He came, therefore, of
one of the most ancient and glorious families. Not less noble was the
family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him. It counted eight
consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and one dictatorship.
Thus the father of Livia belonged by birth and adoption to two of those
ancient, aristocratic families which for a long time and even in the
midst of the most tremendous revolutions the people had venerated as
semi-divine and into whose story was interwoven the history of the
great republic. Nor had the first husband given to Livia been less
noble, for Tiberius Claudius Nero was descended like Livia from Appius
the Blind, though through another son of the great censor. In Livia
was concentrated the quintessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she
was at Rome what in London to-day the daughter of the Duke of
Westminster or the Duke of Bedford would be, and her noble rank
explains the r�le which her family had played during the Civil War. In
the great revolution which broke out after the death of Caesar, the
father of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by the triumvirs; he
had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had died by his own hand after
Philippi. In 40, after the Perusinian war and only two years before
Livia's marriage with Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia had
been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the vengeance of Octavianus.
Who on the other hand was Octavianus? A parvenu, with a nobility
altogether too recent! His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae
(now Velletri), a financier and a man of affairs; it was only his
immediate father who succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer
grandfather in entering the Roman nobility. He had married a sister of
Caesar and, though still young when he died, had become a senator and
pretor. Octavianus was, therefore, the descendant, as we should
express it in Europe to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled.
Although by adopting him in his will Caesar had given him his name,
that of an ancient patrician family, the modest origin of Octavianus
and the trade of his grandfather were known to everybody. In a country
like Rome where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old nobility was
still highly venerated by the people and formed a closed caste, jealous
of its exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of origin was a
handicap and a danger, especially when Octavianus had as colleagues
Antony and Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient and illustrious
origin than his own.
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