The Women of the Caesars | Page 9

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 rôle 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.

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