WIVES OF THE (LESARS. 



139 



liance to every alternation of her volatile and ardent nature. Her 

 temperament, however warm, was veiled by the attractive graces of 

 a courteous taste, and the engaging levity of delicate and playful 

 wit; her powers of conversation, various as the wanton purpose of 

 her rnind, conferred on her a spiritual superiority above her sex, as 

 universally admitted as the ascendant of her personal perfections. 

 She was an accomplished mistress of the Greek and Roman learning 

 of her times, fastidious in her taste, correct in judgment, liberal in 

 patronage, enthusiastic in her love of poetry, and munificent in the 

 encouragement of literary merit. The inherent ardour of her pas- 

 sions was disguised or softened by an air of gentleness ; her gay and 

 affable deportment prepossessed all classes of the people, who buried 

 in the admiration of her personal and mental charms the envy 

 vulgarly attached to dignity and splendour. Her external excel- 

 lence, as handed down to us, would awaken the suspicion that its 

 portraiture proceeded from the passion of a lover, or the adulation of 

 a parasite ; but the commendation is too specific and too vivid to be 

 simple flattery ; the concurrence of contemporaries too precise for a 

 fictitious estimate. While poetry, and gallantry, and arms, were 

 daringly enthusiastic in pursuance of her favour, the excesses of her 

 lovers were severally visited with death and exile ; while fascination 

 sung her charms with an inspired and fervid harmony, her vices and 

 delinquency were visited by history, if not with exaggeration, at 

 least with inexorable truth. Let it, however, be remembered that 

 Julia lived at the most decided crisis of voluptuous immorality;* 

 that her marriages were all of them the choice of Caesar all of them 

 objectionable to herself; that Augustus was himself accused, and 

 that on no contemptible authority, of having been an odious instru- 

 ment of her depravement ; that the Roman court was, at the zenith 

 of her beauty, the centre of refinement, gallantry, and sensuality ; 

 that laws accommodated to the vices of the great, were flagrantly em- 

 ployed to qualify their prostitution ; that the obvious rights of wives 

 were sacrificed to the caprice of casual passion ; that the salutary 

 bonds of moral reciprocity were broken and despised ; and that, 



* Horace, speaking of immediate times, has given a severe but vivid picture 

 of their mercenary wantonness. Had the cautious parasite possessed the austere 

 spirit of Juvenal, he might easily have shown that the venality and prurience 

 of Caesar's court had infected, by example, the morals of society at large. 



" Motus doceri gandet lonicos 

 Matura Virgo ; et fingitur artubus 

 Jam nunc, et incestos amores 

 De tenero meditatur ungui ; 

 Mox juniores quserit adulteros 

 Inter mariti vina ; neque eligit 

 Cui donet imperrnissa raptim 

 Gaudia, lurninibus remotis ; 

 Sed, jussacoram, non sine conscio 

 Surgit merito ; seu vocet institor 

 Seu navis Hispanse magister 

 Dedecorum pretiosus emtor." Od. 1. 3. 6. 



Human nature must recoil from the Cameo of Apollonius of Sicyon, whether it 

 commemorates a fact, or embodies the malignant fiction of a traducer. 



