extraordinary haste, which seemed to indicate that it was undesirable
or impossible to wait until Livia should have given birth to her child,
and which made it necessary to trouble the pontifical college for its
somewhat sophistical consent. For all were accustomed to seeing the
marriages of great personages made and unmade in this manner and on
such bases. Why, then, were these nuptials so precipitately concluded,
apparently with the consent of all concerned? Why did they all, Livia
and Octavianus not less than Tiberius Claudius Nero, seem so impatient
that everything should be settled with despatch?

[Illustration: Livia, the mother of Tiberius, in the costume of a
priestess.]

The legend which then formed about the family of Augustus, a legend
hostile at almost every point, has interpreted this marriage as a
tyrannical act, virtually an abduction, by the dissolute and perverse
triumvir. I, too, in my "Greatness and Decline of Rome" expressed my
belief that this haste, at least, was the effect not of political
motives but of a passionate love inspired in the young triumvir by the
very beautiful Livia. A longer reflection upon this episode has
persuaded me, however, that there is another manner, less poetic
perhaps, but more Roman, of explaining, at least in part, this famous
alliance, which was to have so great an importance in the history of
Rome.

To arrive at the motives of this marriage we must consider who was
Livia and who was Octavianus. Livia was a woman of great beauty, as
her portraits prove. But this was not all. She belonged also to two
of the most ancient and conspicuous families of the Roman nobility.
Her father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, was by birth a Claudius,