WIVES OF THE C.ESARS. 153 



scribed, but something more than ordinary adulation is required to 

 frame a case for approbation, where a vengeful persecution has tran- 

 scended the penal visitation of the law.* Julia was repudiated by 

 - Tiberius, by the sanction of her father. She was banished from the 

 sight of her country and her kingdom (such is the language of Pater- 

 culus) to Pandataria, a lonely island opposite to the Campanian 

 coast. She was denied the use of every luxury, whether of the 

 toilet or the table even wine was interdicted by the rigour of 

 Augustus. All visits to the princess were prohibited, unless by the 

 express permission of her father, and every individual so authorised, 

 was previously subjected to the most minute inspection of his person. 

 Scribonia, Julia's mother, was allowed to share and soothe her exile. 

 Tiberius, conscious of the firm determination of Augustus, yet 

 studious of his favour, dissembled grief at his severe decision, and in 

 vain besought him to remit the penalty imposed upon his daughter. 

 The Roman people, actuated more by pity, or perhaps by adulation, 

 than guided by a sense of chastisement, repeatedly implored the 

 pardon of the emperor in Julia's favour The indignant father was 

 inexorable to their prayers. The resistance of Augustus stimulated 

 the entreaties of the people ; and their supplications were at last pro- 

 ductive of a trivial mitigation of her fate : she was removed, after 

 five years' confinement in Pandataria, to the town of Rhegium in 

 Campania. So rigid was her subsequent confinement, that neither 

 accident or stratagem conspired to vary its monotony ; at least, the 

 silence of contemporary and proximate writers implies that no event 

 of interest relieved the languid sameness of her custody. She was 

 gradually but slowly sinking beneath the sorrow of imprisonment 

 and the torment of her passions, when her father's death awakened 

 hopes of her enlargement. But Tiberius, mindful of his wrongs, re- 

 morselessly embraced the opportunity of their retaliation. He reduced 

 the limits of her freedom to her house, deprived her of the sums be- 

 queathed to her by Caesar, and, under the pretext of acquiescing in 

 the dispositions of his will, withdrew from her the pension he allowed 

 her in his lifetime ; for that pension, trivial as it was, was not recited 

 in his testament. What sorrow was unable to accomplish, was 

 achieved by famine ; and Julia, the darling daughter of Augustus 

 she, who was the paragon of Roman wit and beauty she, who had 

 inspired the noblest spirits of the world with reckless enterprise and 

 daring love, expired in abject misery and destitution. Her life com- 

 prised a youth of criminal indulgence, followed in maturer years by 

 penalties inhuman as her infidelities were gross. Sixteen years of 

 exile had impaired her spirit and her person, though patience, like 

 her beauty, lingered to the last. A too susceptible complexion was 

 the source of her misfortunes ; examples of luxuriant vice perhaps 

 the vices of a father infected her with premature depravity j and had 

 Julia, who was tender, intellectual, humane, and generous, enjoyed a 

 purer tutelage, she might have left a character for virtue as distin- 

 guished as the fame of her misdeeds. 



* ^ Culpam inter viros acfseminas vulgatam, gravi nomine laesarurn religionum 

 ac violatse majestatis appellando, clementiam majorum suasque ipse leges egredieba- 

 tuv" Tac. Ann. 3. 24. 



M.M. No. 2. X 



