adopted by a Livius Drusus. He was descended from Appius the Blind,
the famous censor and perhaps the most illustrious personage of the
ancient republic. His grandfather, his great-grand-father, and his
great-great-grandfather had been consuls, and consuls and censors may
be found in the collateral branches of the family. A sister of his
grandfather had been the wife of Tiberius Gracchus; a cousin of his
father had married Lucullus, the great general. He came, therefore, of
one of the most ancient and glorious families. Not less noble was the
family of the Livii Drusi who had adopted him. It counted eight
consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and one dictatorship.
Thus the father of Livia belonged by birth and adoption to two of those
ancient, aristocratic families which for a long time and even in the
midst of the most tremendous revolutions the people had venerated as
semi-divine and into whose story was interwoven the history of the
great republic. Nor had the first husband given to Livia been less
noble, for Tiberius Claudius Nero was descended like Livia from Appius
the Blind, though through another son of the great censor. In Livia
was concentrated the quintessence of the great Roman aristocracy: she
was at Rome what in London to-day the daughter of the Duke of
Westminster or the Duke of Bedford would be, and her noble rank
explains the rôle which her family had played during the Civil War. In
the great revolution which broke out after the death of Caesar, the
father of Livia in the year 43 had been proscribed by the triumvirs; he
had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had died by his own hand after
Philippi. In 40, after the Perusinian war and only two years before
Livia's marriage with Octavianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia had
been forced to flee from Italy in fear of the vengeance of Octavianus.

Who on the other hand was Octavianus? A parvenu, with a nobility
altogether too recent! His grandfather was a rich usurer of Velitrae