WIVES OF THE C.GSAUS. 149 



honour of his bed, with insolent defiance of his conjugal authority. 

 Tiberius bore his wrongs in helplessness and silence ; the ignominy 

 of his fate sank deep in his morose and savage nature, and rankled 

 in the dark recesses of his heart, till time at length supplied the 

 opportunity of visiting her outrage with the cruel rigour of a keen 

 arid wasting punishment. Disgusted and indignant, he no sooner 

 had withdrawn himself from Julia's bed,* than she enlarged the sphere 

 of her obscene abandonment ; and Tiberius overwhelmed with shame, 

 and shunning the perpetual rumour of her infamy, resolved on his 

 retreat from Rome. Both Livia and Augustus energetically contro- 

 verted his design; the latter, in the senate even uttered his com- 

 plaints that his adopted son had formed the resolution of deserting 

 him. Tiberius was immoveable, and when his perseverance had 

 subdued the opposition of Augustus, with the utmost secresy he 

 quitted Rome for Ostia, and embarked for Rhodes. 



Paterculus, when he relates she secession of Tiberius from the 

 Roman capital, has drawn the character of that extraordinary 

 prince with all the approbation due to his peculiar merit and achieve- 

 ments. Had Tiberius died when he retired to Rhodes, the impar- 

 tial pen of history must of necessity have traced the panegyric, 

 which the vicious sequel of his cruel, dark and dissolute career has 

 rendered apparently absurd and inconsistent with the separate ap- 

 plause of his distinguished youth and early manhood. But the 

 honourable reputation of the politic and valiant chieftain, of the 

 patient and victorious lieutenant of Augustus, was obliterated by his 

 loathsome vices, when the insolent administration of Sejanus dis- 

 pensed to a subservient people the consummate terrors of a cruel 

 and capricious despotism. Paterculust has marred the truth of his 

 eulogium by annexing needless flattery to fact. That any tenderness 

 towards Caius or Lucius Caesar, should have influenced the voluntary 

 exile of Tiberius, is a proposition which it is imposible to credit and 

 would be idle to refute. The austere veracity of Tacitus assigns the 

 real cause of his retirement to the intolerable conduct of his wife, 

 whom he neither dared to criminate or to dismiss. J 



Tiberius, whatever may have been his ultimate depravities, must 

 engage the common sympathy of nature, at this distressful crisis of 

 his fortune. He endured the most degrading curse that can descend 

 on human life ; an insolent and reckless strumpet asserted and pro- 

 faned the privilege of virtue within the precints of his household 



* " Mox dissedit, et aliquanto gravius, ut etiam perpetuo secubaret, inter- 

 cepto communis filii pignore, qui Aquileke natus infans exstinctus est." 

 Sue ton, in Tib. 



f " Hanc causam fuisse Juliam uxorem ; quam neque criminal! aut dimittere 

 auderet, neque ultra perferre posset." Tac. 



$ " Tib. Nero, duobus consulatibus totidemque triumpliis actis, tribunitia; 

 potestatis consortione sequatus Augusto, civium post unum (et hoc, quia vole- 

 bat) eminentissimus, ducum maximus, fama fortunaque celeberrimub, et vere 

 alterum reipublicse lumen et caput, mira quadam et incredibili atque inenarra- 

 bili pietate, cujus causes mox detectce sunt, cum C. Caesar sumpsisset jam virilem 

 togam, Lucius item maturus esset, veritus^ tie fulgor suus orientium juvenum ob- 

 staret initiis, dissimulala causa consilii sui, commeatum ab socero atque eodem vitrico 

 acquiescendi a continuatione laborum pctiit." C. Veil, Patere. 1. 2. c. 99. 



