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By Root 10030 0

had no suspicion of her character and I did not dare to tell him of it. Whenever Livilla and I and he were together she used to show me pretended affection, which touched Postumus as much as it angered me. I knew that as soon as he had gone she would begin her spiteful tricks again. Livia got wind of the intrigue between Livilla and Castor and kept a careful watch on them: one night she was rewarded by a message from a trusted servant that Castor had just climbed in at Livilla's window by the balcony. She put an armed guard on the balcony and then knocked at Livilla's door, calling her by name. After a minute or so Livilla opened the door, pretending to have been sound asleep; but Livia went inside and found Castor behind the curtain. She talked very plainly to them and appears to have made them understand that the matter would not be reported to Augustus, who would certainly banish them if it was, only on certain conditions; and that if these same conditions were strictly observed she would even arrange that they should marry. Not long after my betrothal to Emilia, Livia so settled matters with Augustus that Postumus was betrothed, much to his grief, to a girl called Domitia, a first-cousin of mine on my mother's side; and Castor married Livilla. This was the year that Tiberius and Postumus were adopted as Augustus' sons.

Livia considered Julilla and her husband Emilius as a possible obstacle to her designs. She was lucky enough to get evidence that Emilius and Cornelius, a grandson of Pompey the Great, were plotting to remove Augustus from power and to divide up his offices between themselves and certain ex-Consuls, among them Tiberius, though Tiberius had not yet been sounded for his opinion. The plot never gathered much way, because the first ex-Consul whom Emilius and Cornelius approached refused to have anything to do with it. Augustus did not punish either Emilius or Cornelius by death or banishment. It had been welcome proof of the strength of his own position that they could get so little support for their plot, and by sparing them he proved it still stronger. He merely called them to his presence and lectured them on their folly and ingratitude. Cornelius fell at his feet and thanked him abjectly for his clemency; and Augustus begged him not to make a further fool of himself. He was not a tyrant, he said, either to conspire against, or to worship for showing a tyrant's clemency: he was merely a State-official of the Roman Republic who had been temporarily granted wide powers for the better maintenance of order. Emilias had evidently led him astray by misrepresentations. The best cure for this nonsense was for Cornelius to become Consul next year in due course and so satisfy his ambitions by attaining equal honour with himself; for there was no higher rank than Consul in Rome. [Theoretically this was true.]

Emilius was proud and remained standing; and Augustus told him that as his relative by marriage he ought to have shown more decency, and as an ex-Consul he ought to have shown more sense. He thereupon deprived him of all his honours.

An amusing feature of this case was that Livia won all the credit for Augustus' clemency by claiming to have pleaded, with a woman's tenderness, for the lives of the two conspirators; of whom, she said, Augustus had practically decided to make an example. She got his consent to the publication of a little book which she had written called A Pillow Debate on Force and Gentleness, full of intimate touches. Augustus is represented as restless and worried and unable to sleep. Livia begs him prettily to speak his mind and they go together over the question of the proper treatment of Emilius and Cornelius.

Augustus explains that he does not wish to put them to death, yet he fears that he must do so, for if he lets them off it will be thought that he is afraid of them, and others will be tempted to conspire against him. "To be always under the necessity of taking vengeance and inflicting punishments is a very painful position for any honourable man to be in, my dearest wife."

Livia