WIVES OF THE CA'SARS. 



tavius ; and no sooner was the divine and human sanction known 

 than Tiberius Nero, acting as the father of his wife, bestowed her on 

 his anxious supplanter, who celebrated his alliance by a sumptuous 

 feast. Before the expiration of three months the bride of Caesar was 

 delivered of a son, called Claudius Drusus Nero. Octavius had been 

 long suspected as the father of this child, and hoped to silence the 

 conjecture by transferring it, as soon as circumstances would permit, 

 to the protection of Tiberius. But this precaution was inadequate to 

 quell the rumours of the city ; and malice, artfully involved in adu- 

 lation, impeached the virtue, while it gratified the vanity of the re- 

 puted parent. It was said, the progeny of a religious prince dis- 

 claimed the common laws of nature, and that the blessing of Ilithyia 

 had matured in three auspicious months the ordinary growth of nine ; 

 a fulsome yet sarcastic compliment, which impugned the chastity of 

 Livia, and clothed the eager wantonness of Caesar with a flattering 

 absurdity. 



There was at least indelicacy in the marriage of Octavius, if the 

 received opinions of his time did not regard it as an act of irreligion. 

 But if the offences of a prince may be justified by precedents, the 

 union ofLivia and Octavius was capable of that defence. Mark An- 

 tony had recently espoused Octavia, while pregnant by Marcellus. 

 The marriage of Pompey with jiEmilia was a case in point. She was 

 pregnant by another when Pompey took her to his home. At the 

 same time he repudiated Antistia, overwhelmed with sorrow for the 

 murder of her father, who had fallen a victim to his zeal in Pompey's 

 cause.* Again, too, though the instance of Hortensius and Cato Uti- 

 censis had been partially extenuated, the facts remained unalterably 

 fixed.t 



While Livia gloried in her elevation, her fears were roused by the 

 reverses of Octavius in his war with Sextus Pompey. The rupture 

 of these chiefs renewed the violence and cruelty of civil discord. The 

 military operations of Octavius at the onset were eminently unsuccess- 

 ful. His naval armament, the work of care and an immense expen- 

 diture, was twice destroyed. He had reason to mistrust the truth of 

 Lepidus, whom he had vainly summoned to his aid. To crown the 



The story is replete with tragical events ; and Christian piety would see the 

 retributions of offended Providence in the calamities which compose it. The 

 mother of Antistia, impatient of the dishonour of her daughter, terminated her 

 existence ; and the unfortunate ./Emilia expired in child-birth in the house of 

 Pompey. 



f It is needless to investigate the casuistry used to qualify an action recom- 

 mended to the unreflecting by the lustre of a noble name. And though Ter- 

 tullian in his generous disgust has confounded Cato Uticensis with the censor 

 of that name, his satire is abundantly complete and applicable, if the pander and 

 philosopher appear in one. <; O sapientise Atticse et Rornanse gravitatis exem- 

 plum ! lerio est philosophus et censor." That Cato consulted Philip, the father 

 of his wife, on the question of her transfer to Hortensius, is surely no exonera- 

 tion from a shameless acquiescence, when the love or spirit of a husband should 

 have indignantly repelled the overtures of lewd effrontery. The approbation of 

 the father fills the picture of philosophic infamy ; and Cato's consultation of the 

 parent, far from palliating his fault, extends the error of his feeling, whilst it 

 adds another agent in disgrace, the last that should be found on earth, a father 

 as a willing partner in his daughter's shame. 



