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By Root 10025 0

fellow and could be disregarded. Emilius himself provided Livia with grounds for the accusation. He had quarrelled with Julilla and now charged her in the presence of their daughter Emilia with trying to father another man's child on him. He named Decimus, a nobleman of the Silanus family, as the adulterer. Emilia, who was clever enough to realise that her own life and safety depended on keeping in Livia's good books, went straight to her and told what she had heard. Uvia made her repeat the story in Augustus' presence. Augustus then summoned,Emilius ind asked whether it was true that he was not the father of Julia's child. It did not occur to Emilius that Emilia oould have betrayed her mother and himself, so he assumed that the intimacy which he suspected between Julilla and Decimus was a matter of common scandal. He therefore held by his accusation, though it was founded rather on jealousy than on knowledge. Augustus took the child as soon as it was born and had it exposed on the mountainside. Decimus went into voluntary exile and several other men accused of having been Julilla's lovers at one time or another followed him: among them was the poet Ovid whom Augustus, curiously enough, made the principal scapegoat as having also written [many years before] The Art of Love. It was this poem, Augustus said, that had debauched his granddaughter's mind. He ordered all copies of it found to be bumed.

XIII

AUGUSTUS WAS OVER SEVENTY YEARS OF AGE. Until recently nobody had thought of him as an old man. But these new public and private calamities made a great change in him. His temper grew uncertain and he found it increasingly difficult to welcome chance visitors with his usual affability or to keep his patience at public banquets.

He was even inclined to be short-tempered with Livia.

Nevertheless he continued his work conscientiously as ever and even accepted another ten years' instalment of the monarchy. Tiberius and Germanicus when they were in the City undertook many tasks for him that normally he would have undertaken himself, and Livia worked harder than ever. During the Balkan War she had remained at Rome while Augustus was away and, armed with a duplicate seal of his and in close touch with him by dispatch-riders, had managed everything herself. Augustus was becoming more or less reconciled to the prospect of Tiberius' succeeding him. He judged him capable of ruling reasonably well, with Livia's help, and of carrying on his own policies, but he also flattered himself that everyone would miss the Father of the Country when he was dead and would speak of the Augustan Age as they spoke of the Golden Age of King Numa. In spite of his signal services to Rome, Tiberius was personally unpopular and would surely not gain in popularity when he was Emperor. It was a satisfaction to Augustus that Germanicus, being older than Castor, his brother by adoption, was Tiberius’ natural successor, and that Germanicus' infant sons, Nero and Drusus, were his own great-grandsons. Though Fate had decreed against his grandsons succeeding him he would surely one day reign again, as it were, in the persons of his great-grandchildren.

For by this time Augustus had forgotten about the Republic, as almost everybody else had, and accepted the view that his forty years of hard and anxious service on Rome's behalf had earned him the right of appointing his Imperial successors, to the third generation, even, if it so pleased him.

When Germanicus was in Dalmatia I did not write to him about Postumus for fear of some agent of Livia's intercepting my letter, but I told him everything as soon as he returned from the war. He was greatly troubled and said that he did not know what to believe. I should explain that Germanicus' way was always to refuse to think evil of any person until positive proof of such evil should be forced on him, and, on the contrary, to credit everyone with the highest motives. This extreme simplicity was generally of service to him. Most people with whom he came in contact were flattered by his high estimate of their moral