ciple itself,-involved from the first to some extent in the claims of Octavian as Cæsar's heir,-had now been tacitly accepted. The Roman system of adoption removed the anxiety which new sovereigns have so often felt about the failure of issue, though at the risk of intrigues and disputes for the succession. Augustus had no son and but one daughter. He was married three times. His first wife was CLODIA, the daughter of the notorious Clodius. In B.C. 40, as we have seen, he married SCRIBONIA, the sister-inlaw of Sextus Pompey, but divorced her in the following year, in order to marry LIVIA DRUSILLA, the daughter of Livius Drusus Claudianus, and wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero,* who was compelled by Augustus to divorce her (B.c. 38). Livia, a woman of high intellect and fascinating manners, retained the affections of Augustus till his death, but she bore him no children. Though still very young when she was married to him, she had some years earlier borne her first husband a son, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO ; and three months after her second marriage she gave birth to another son, who was acknowledged by her first husband, and received the name of Nero Claudius Drusus. † The latter was the father of the famous Germanicus, and the grandfather of the emperor CAIUS CAESAR (nicknamed Caligula). But, besides these two stepsons, Augustus had descendants by his daughter JULIA, to whom his second wife Scribonia gave birth on the very day of her divorce; and there was another branch of his family, descended from his sister OCTAVIA, whose marriage to and divorce by Antony we have already had occasion to relate. By her first husband, C. Marcellus (consul in B.C. 50), she had a son MARCUS MARCELLUS, who was married to the emperor's daughter Julia, when the one was but seventeen, and the other fourteen years old (B.C. 25). Augustus hastened the marriage from a sense of his own weak health; and the popular feeling willingly saw in Marcellus his mother's virtues. But in the very year when Augustus recovered from his second dangerous illness, Marcellus, who was now ædile, fell a victim to the malaria of Rome (B.C. 23). Amidst the pomp of a public funeral, his remains were deposited in the mausoleum of Augustus, in the Campus Martius, beside the Tiber. The funeral oration was pronounced by the emperor, who built a theatre in honour of Marcellus in the Campus Martius; but the lasting monument of the hopes that were buried with him

• He was a Claudius by birth, and adopted into the Livian Gens.

The prænomen of Drusus is unknown: Nero became a prænomen in the Claudian gens.

B.C. 19.]

THE IMPERIAL FAMILY.

325

survives in the pathetic lines which Virgil interpolated in his Æneid, and at the recital of which Octavia is said to have fainted.* The conspiracy of Murena against the emperor's life, though speedily detected and punished, followed so speedily upon the death of Marcellus, as to make Augustus doubly sensitive to the dangers of the future. Nor could he be blind to the fact, that his most trusted friend might prove, by the people's will, if not by his own, his destined successor. Preferring the safety of the state to the gratification of Livia's hopes for her sons, Augustus gave Julia in marriage to Agrippa, at the same time that he committed to him the government of Rome, while he himself departed for the East (B.c. 22). The issue of this marriage were three sons and two daughters. The two eldest sons, Caius and Lucius, born in B.C. 20 and B.C. 17, were adopted by Augustus in the latter year, and, after exciting the fears of the Romans by their arrogant dispositions, both died early, Lucius at Massilia (A.D. 2), and Caius of a wound treacherously inflicted in Armenia (A.D. 4). The third son, Agrippa Postumus, born after his father's death in B.C. 12, was adopted, together with Tiberius, in A.D. 4; but his fierce temper soon caused his banishment to an islet on the coast of Corsica, where he was murdered on the accession of Tiberius; but the guilt of the deed is imputed to Livia, whose son became undisputed heir by the extinction of the male line of Julia and Agrippa. But the blood of Augustus and the name of his great minister were perpetuated in Agrippina, the younger daughter,† whose marriage to Germanicus united the lines of Julia and Livia not only with each other, but with that of Octavia and Antony; for, by a sort of irony of fate, while the four successors of Augustus were all, in the male line, sprung from Livia's first husband, all of them (except Tiberius) traced their descent from the defeated triumvir. It is a curious coincidence that the dynasty of Napoleon should have been continued in a collateral line, united with that of his divorced wife Josephine by her former husband, General Beauharnais. The children of Octavia and Antony were two daughters, both named Antonia. The younger was married to Drusus, the younger son of Livia, and bore two sons, the celebrated GERMANICUS, and the emperor CLAUDIUS. Germanicus married Agrippina, the daughter of Agrippa and Julia, and became the father of three sons and three daughters, of whom Virgil, En. vi. 860-885.

Julia, the elder daughter, was married to L. Æmilius Paulus, and most of their descendants became the victims of Caligula and Nero.

we need only mention the third son, Caius (nicknamed CALIGULA), and his sister, the younger Agrippina, who became as notorious for her vices as her mother was celebrated for her virtue. The elder Antonia, by her marriage with L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, became the mother of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who married the younger Agrippina. Their son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known by his adoptive name as the emperor NERO, was the last of the imperial descendants of Augustus. The relationships, an explanation of which seemed essential to the comprehension of the ensuing history, will be more clearly perceived from the Table on the opposite page. The last six of the "Twelve Cæsars" had no relationship to the Julian house.

This review of the Empire as founded by Augustus has naturally claimed our attention at the epoch of the emperor's return to Rome from the East (B.c. 19).* He brought back the standards taken from Crassus by the Parthians, which Phraates had surrendered to him, as the price of the restoration of his youngest son, whom his rival Tiridates had carried off to Augustus in Syria. Moreover, by giving up four of his sons with their wives and children as hostages, the king of Parthia seemed to confess himself the vassal of Rome. The recovered standards were received with unbounded joy, and Augustus was welcomed home from his bloodless victory with more than the enthusiasm of a triumph, though, as usual, he avoided a public demonstration by entering the city in the night. He afterwards led in his army with the forms of an ovation, and suspended the recovered standards in the temple of Mars the Avenger. The festival of the Augustalia was appointed for the 12th of October in every year, to commemorate his return to Rome. Of the renewed offers of extraordinary prerogatives, he contented himself, as we have seen, with accepting the consular power, and he shared his tribunitian privileges with Agrippa, who returned in the same year victorious over the Cantabri in Spain. The birth of Caius Cæsar, the son of Agrippa and Julia (B.c. 20), appeared to cement the alliance between the emperor and his minister, and to secure the succession. With the year B.C. 19 expired the decennial period for which Augustus had accepted the imperium, which he caused to be renewed by the Senate for five

*This year is also marked as an epoch in the literary history of the Augustan age by the death of Virgil, who had left Rome, on his journey to Asia. At Athens he met Augustus, and being taken ill, returned with him to Brundisium, and there died at the age of 51. Tibullus died in the following year.

Scribonia II. C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus Livia Drusilla Tib. Claudius Nero.

C. Claudius Marcellus. OCTAVIA M. ANTONIUS.

years only; for he was still careful to disguise his monarchy under the appearance of temporary power (B.c. 18). He celebrated the epoch of his confirmed sovereignty by the great Secular Games which marked a new birth-year of the state; and it was for this occasion that Horace composed the noblest work of his lyric muse, the Carmen Seculare, which was sung in the atrium of Apollo on the Palatine by a double chorus of noble youths and maidens (B.C. 17). The good omens of this year were crowned by the birth of a second son, Lucius, to Julia and Agrippa; and the child was adopted, with his elder brother, by Augustus.†

*

The foundations of his power being thus laid afresh, Augustus was perhaps not sorry once more to invest its working with the mystery of his personal absence; and the state of the frontiers did not yet permit the policy of peaceful contentment with the limits of the empire. The position of Maecenas was now fully established as the minister of Augustus for civil affairs; ‡ and under him the capital could be left to the nominal government of the consuls. Agrippa, with all jealousy removed by the honours conferred upon his infant sons, departed for the East to keep watch over Parthia and the dependent kingdoms; and he formed that friendship with Herod, which led to the close connection between the imperial house and the family of the Jewish king (B.c. 17). The disturbed frontier of the Eastern Alps offered a field of prowess to the youthful sons of Livia. For himself Augustus chose the post of the most imminent danger in Transalpine Gaul.

In this ode Horace almost attains, after the imperfect efforts of his earlier odes, to the majestic rhythm of the Sapphic Hymn, which is as unlike as possible to the jingle of Canning's celebrated parody. See the article Sappho in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.

+ In speaking of Caius and Lucius Cæsar, Mr. Merivale has a note (vol. iv. p. 195), which we gladly quote for the information it gives about those prænomina, which have occurred so constantly in our pages :—“ Caius, Lucius, and occasionally Sextus, are the only prænomens of the Julian family that occur in the Fasti. Every Gens had its proper prænomens, which it repeated from one generation to another, and abstained not less carefully from others. Thus the CORNELII were mostly Caii, Lucii, and Publii; they have no Titus or Quintus. The CLAUDII have no Titus or Quintus; the EMILII no Titus. It may be interesting to remark how these prænomens bore reference originally to nobility of birth. Thus CAIUS and CNÆUS= gnavus, 'well-born ;' Titus and Lucius are the Sabine and Etruscan words for 'noble' (compare Titius and Tatius on the one hand; and on the other, Lucumo, Luceres). Marcus='warrior' (compare Mamercus, Martius). SPURIUS='high-born.' Aulus is cognate with Augustus, &c. = 'noble.' From Marcus, Lucius, and Publius, we have the gentile names, MARCIUS, LUCILIUS, and PUBLILIUS; as from Quintus, Sextus, and Decimus are formed QUINCTIUS, SEXTIUS, and perhaps DECIUS."

On the present position of Maecenas in politics and literature, see the excellent remarks of Mr. Merivale, vol. iv. p. 190.