WIVES OF THE C.ESABS. 591 



cruelty his uniform hypocrisy* the bloodshed of the proscriptions 

 the infamous abandonment of Cicero are facts too stubborn to be 

 wrought, by ingenuity itself, into the shape of virtue ; and they fully 

 sanction the remark of a judicious Commentator, that Augustus, in 

 a well-administered republic, should have expiated by the last of 

 legal penalties the first transgression of his criminal career. 



On his repudiation of Clodia, Octavius became the husband of 

 Scribonia,f a lady of the illustrious family of the Libones, connected 

 with the Largi, the Curiones, and the Drusi. She had been twice a 

 widow ; both her husbands had attained the honors of the consulate ; 

 and her daughter, Cornelia, commemorated by Propertius, was the 

 wife of the Censor, L. JEmilius Paulus. The harshness of Scribonia's 

 manners, and the imperfection of her temper, are assigned by Octa- 

 vius as the cause of their disunion ; but, looking at the indecent 

 eagerness with which he married Livia Drusilla, at the moment preg- 

 nant by a living husband, and the event in which Scribonia was 

 dismissed from Caesar's bed, we must suppose a stronger motive than 

 decorum would allow him to profess.J Scribonia had no sooner made 

 Octavius a father than he divorced the mother of his child ; and the 

 pregnant wife of Nero succeeded to a bed, which hitherto had wit- 

 nessed neither happiness nor constancy. Octavius had recourse to 

 three repudiations before the age of twenty-five ; and though the 

 coldness of a libertine was palpable throughout his early matrimonial 

 character, his connubial intercourse with Livia was affectionate and 

 exemplary to the last. 



When Fulvia roused the party of Mark Antony to arms, the ad- 

 herents of the absent triumvir assembled at Perusia. Tiberius Nero 

 was among them ; but partaking of the consternation with which the 

 growing power of Octavius filled all Italy, he precipitately fled, with 

 the design of joining Antony on the Sicilian coast. Livia, the wife 

 of Tiberius Nero, with their son, the future emperor of Rome, were 

 the companions of his flight. The emissaries of Octavius, apprised 

 of their departure, were thickly stationed on the line of country 

 which the fugitives were likely to pursue; but as their journies were 

 performed at night, and by unknown or unfrequented roads, they 



* Gibbon says concisely of " that subtle tyrant a cool head, an unfeeling 

 heart, and a cowardly disposition prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to as- 

 sume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the 

 same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of 

 Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were arti- 

 ficial, and, according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the 

 enemy, and at last the father of the Roman world."- Decline and Fall, vol. 1, c. 3. 

 f " Scribonia, Lucii Scribonii soror, uxor Augusti ; antea duobus consula- 

 ribus nupta, quorum ex altero, Scipione dicto, Corneliam filiam habuerat." 

 Stemma Caesar illust. Cornelia's illustrious descent is celebrated in the beau- 

 tiful Elegy of Propertius, 1. 4, eleg. 1 1 : 



u Si cui fama fuit per a vita tropsea decori, 

 Afra Numantinos regna loquuntur avos. 

 Altera maternos exsequat turba Libones, 

 Et domus est titulis uti-aque fulta suis." 



$ Dimissam Scriboniam, quia liberius doliusset nimiam potential!! pellicis." 

 SUETON. in Aug. 69. 



