Livilla

“ Livilla, however, did not survive the scandal, the accusations, the suspicions of Tiberius, and the distrust of those about her. Because she was the daughter of Drusus and the daughter-in-law of Tiberius, because she belonged to the family which fortune had placed at the head of the immense empire of Rome, she would not be able to persuade any one that she was innocent. The obscure woman, without ancestry, who was accusing her from the grave, would be taken at her word by every one; she would convince posterity and history ”

“ To achieve this end, he first seduced Livilla, the wife of the son of Drusus Tiberius; then he procured by her means the death of Drusus and asked Livilla in marriage. This the emperor refused. At length,--not, however, until after Agrippina's sons had been destroyed,--Antonia, the mother of Livilla, was constrained to write to Tiberius of the conspiracy of Sejanus, and by her means he was brought to justice. Livilla was starved to death by the command of her mother.
Livia seems to have been at all times an obedient and submissive wife. She was honored by the confidence of her husband. ”

“ Livilla never married Sejanus, but her attempt to marry him supplies a clue to the labyrinth of plots in the Imperial household. If the principle of heredity was to be recognized, the heirs to the throne were Livilla’s407 son, the younger Tiberius, and Agrippina’s sons, the former representing the Claudians, the latter the Julians, and the situation was repeated which had existed when Tiberius and his brother had represented the Claudians, Caius and Lucius Cæsar the Julians. ”

“ The reader has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata. Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry. I confess that this accusation seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it. ”

“ At first supposing that he had died of disease, due to his bad habits, on finally learning that he had been poisoned by the treachery of his wife Livilla and Sejanus, there was no one whom Tiberius spared from torment and death. Indeed, he gave himself up so utterly for whole days to this investigation and was so wrapped up in it, that when he was told of the arrival of a host of his from Rhodes, whom he had invited to Rome in a friendly letter, he had him put to the torture at once, supposing that someone had come whose testimony was important for the case. ”

“ His mother Antonia often called him "a monster of a man, not finished but merely begun by Dame Nature"; and if she accused anyone of dullness, she used to say that he was "a bigger fool than her son Claudius." His grandmother Augusta always treated him with the utmost contempt, very rarely speaking to him; and when she admonished him, she did so in short, harsh letters, or through messengers. When his sister Livilla heard that he would one day be emperor, she openly and loudly prayed that the Roman people might be spared so cruel and undeserved a fortune. ”

“ Agrippina, the wife of Domitius Enobarbus°, in 39, and about this same time the venerable Antonia died. It was noised about that Caligula had forced her to commit suicide, and that Agrippina and Livilla had taken part in a conspiracy against the life of the emperor. How much truth there may be in these reports it is difficult to say, but the reason for all these catastrophes may be affirmed with certainty. Life in the imperial palace was no longer possible, especially for women, with this madman who was transforming Rome into Alexandria and who wished to marry a sister. ”

“ What the Spaniards, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Carthaginians did not dare to do, this the Ligurian is doing today; he comes up to the Roman rampart and actually surrounds and attacks our camp. And yet, formerly, it was hard to discover him after a close search as he lurked in his trackless hiding-places!" His words were met by a unanimous shout of approval from the soldiers. It was no fault of theirs, they said; no one had given the signal for a sortie; let him give the signal now, he would soon learn that the Romans and the Ligurians were the same that they had always been. ”

“ They had repaired their losses out of that province which, above all others, was eager for fighting, if only plunder and money were to be got out of it, and which, too, abounded in young men. A pitched battle was again fought with the same result for both sides. Over 13,000 of the enemy were killed, more than 2000 made prisoners, 42 standards and 9 elephants were also taken. And now nearly all the tribes of Spain went over to Rome, and the successes gained in Spain that summer were far greater than those in Italy. ”

“ What an extraordinary idea that is of yours to fight where your forces are reduced by one-half and those of the enemy largely augmented, rather than in a country where with two armies you would engage only one, and that, too, exhausted by so many battles, and such long and burdensome service. Just think how different your plan is from your father's. On his election as consul he proceeded to Spain, then left his province and returned to Italy in order to meet Hannibal on his descent from the Alps ”

“ Would then the republic have been interred in my solitary grave? Why even you yourselves, after the defeat and death of my father and my uncle, chose Septimus Marcius to lead you against the Carthaginians, flushed as they were with their recent victory. I am speaking as though Spain would have been left without a general; but would not the sovereignty of the empire have been amply vindicated by M. Silanus, who came into the province invested with the same power and authority as I myself with my brother Lucius and C. Laelius as his lieutenants? ”

“ Only the other day I had placed my camp between your city and the Anio and was advancing my standards against the walls of Rome - here you see me, bereaved of my two brothers, brave soldiers and brilliant generals as they were, in front of the walls of my native place which is all but invested, and begging on behalf of my city that it may be spared the fate with which I have threatened yours. The greater a man's good fortune the less ought he to count upon it. Success attends you and has deserted us, and this will make peace all the more splendid to you who grant it ”

“ In the Spanish provinces too there was trouble: the senate knew that Hither Spain was in arms and that fighting was going on with the Celtiberi; in Further Spain, owing to the long-continued illness of the praetor, military discipline was relaxed by luxury and idleness. Under these circumstances they decided that fresh armies should be raised: four legions for Liguria each numbering 5200 infantry and 200 cavalry, with the addition of 15,000 infantry and 800 cavalry drawn from the Latin allies. ”

“ So great was the fame of Livy in his own life-time, that people came from the extremity of Spain and Gaul, for the purpose only of beholding so celebrated a historian, who was regarded, for his abilities, as a prodigy. This affords a strong proof, not only of the literary taste which then prevailed over the most extensive of the Roman provinces, but of the extraordinary pains with which so great a work must have been propagated, when the art of printing was unknown. ”

“ LIVY [Titus Livius] (59 B.C.–A.D. 17) , Roman historian, was born at Patavium (Padua) . The ancient connexion between his native city and Rome helped to turn his attention to the study which became the work of his life. For Padua claimed, like Rome, a Trojan origin, and Livy is careful to place its founder Antenor side by side with Aeneas. A more real bond of union was found in the dangers to which both had been exposed from the assaults of the Celts (Livy x. 2) , and Padua must have been drawn to Rome as the conqueror of her hereditary foes. ”

“ Spain exacts of her taxes to the amount of 30,000 francs, and gives her nothing in return—neither a post office, nor telegraph, nor roads. The post office has to be kept up by the citizens, so also the roads till they reach the frontier. Llivia was a Roman town founded in honour of the wife of Augustus, and some remains of the Roman walls exist. It is a poor, decayed place. A castle in ruins occupies the highest point of the hill on which it is built ”

“ They sent ambassadors to Rome to complain of those proceedings, who being introduced to an audience of the senate, by the prætor Caius Valerius, represented that “in consequence of a redundancy of people in Gaul they had been compelled by the want of land, and indeed of every thing, to cross the Alps in quest of a settlement: that they had settled in those lands which they found waste and uncultivated without doing injury to any. They had likewise begun to build a town, which was a proof that they did not come to ravage either city or lands. ”

“ The fame of this victory made matters more tranquil in Spain. In the same year, on the third day before the calends of January, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, Marcus Atilius Serranus, and Lucius Valerius Tappo, triumvirs, settled a Latin colony at Bononia, according to a decree of the senate. Three thousand men were led to that place. Seventy acres were given to each horseman, fifty to each of the other colonists. The land had been taken from the Boian Gauls, who had formerly expelled the Tuscans. ”

“ Men realised that the republic had two wars on its hands simultaneously; they recalled the disasters which followed upon Hannibal's appearance in Italy, and wondered what gods would be so propitious to the City and the empire as to grant victory over two enemies at once in widely distant fields. Up till now heaven had preserved it by balancing victories against defeats. When the cause of Rome had been brought to the ground in Italy at Thrasymenus and at Cannae, the successes in Spain raised it up once more ”

“ These triumphal rejoicings were marred by gloomy news from Spain. Six thousand men of the Roman army, under the command of the proconsul L. Aemilius, had fallen in an unsuccessful battle against the Lusitanians near the town of Lyco; the survivors fled to their camp, which they had difficulty in defending, and finally retreated by forced marches, as though fleeing from the enemy, into friendly territory. Such was the report received from Spain. A deputation arrived from Placentia and Cremona in Gaul, and were introduced to the senate by L. Aurunculeius. They complained of the scarcity of men ”

“ In his portraits of the typical Romans of the old style, such as Q. Fabius Maximus, in his descriptions of the unshaken firmness and calm courage shown by the fathers of the state in the hour of trial, Livy is at his best; and he is so largely in virtue of his genuine appreciation of character as a powerful force in the affairs of men.
This enthusiasm for Rome and for Roman virtues is, moreover, saved from degenerating into gross partiality by the genuine candour of Livy’s mind and by his wide sympathies with every thing great and good. ”

“ ITS STORY Valladolid, a thriving, bustling place, as Spanish cities go, stands on the rivers Pisuerga and Esgueva, a few miles above the confluence of their united streams with the Duero. All round spreads the vast, dreary plain of Castile, interrupted within sight of the town by a ring of low hills. Trains thunder past from north, south, and west, keeping Valladolid in close touch with Madrid, with France, with Portugal, and with the rest of the world. The natural centre, this, of the old kingdom of Leon and Castile, of which it was for a long time the political capital. ”

“ While they were engaged, the fifth legion came up, and afterwards the rest of the troops joined them with all the speed they could. The Spaniards were cut to pieces in all parts of the camp; not more than four thousand men made their escape. Of these about three thousand, who kept their arms, took possession of a mountain in the neighbourhood, and one thousand, who were in general but half armed, dispersed through the country. This army of the enemy had contained thirty-five thousand men, of whom that very small number survived the battle. One hundred and thirty-three standards were taken. ”

“ The first ten books of Livy were being written about the same time as the Aeneid; both Vergil and Livy had the same patriotic purpose, ‘to celebrate the growth, in accordance with a divine dispensation, of the Roman Empire and Roman civilisation.’—Nettleship. Livy, however, brought into greater prominence the moral causes which contributed to the growth of the Empire. In his preface to Book I, § 9, he asks his readers to consider what have been the life and habits of the Romans, by aid of what men and by what talents at home and in the field their Empire has been gained and extended. ”

“ Our inn, the Fonda Ingles, looked out on the square before the Cathedral, a windy spot, where the gusts from the mountains seized and tossed the men's long capes. Like Burgos and Salamanca, Avila is on the truncated mountain of central Spain, and one is reminded of its 3,500 feet of altitude by the bitter cold. Nothing can pierce so sharply as the wind of the Castile plains. Each day we crossed the gusty plaza to the church and so grew to know it with the heart-affection Spanish cathedrals win. ”