(now Velletri), a financier and a man of affairs; it was only his
immediate father who succeeded by dint of the riches of the usurer
grandfather in entering the Roman nobility. He had married a sister of
Caesar and, though still young when he died, had become a senator and
pretor. Octavianus was, therefore, the descendant, as we should
express it in Europe to-day, of rich bourgeois recently ennobled.
Although by adopting him in his will Caesar had given him his name,
that of an ancient patrician family, the modest origin of Octavianus
and the trade of his grandfather were known to everybody. In a country
like Rome where, notwithstanding revolutions, the old nobility was
still highly venerated by the people and formed a closed caste, jealous
of its exclusive pride of ancestry, this obscurity of origin was a
handicap and a danger, especially when Octavianus had as colleagues
Antony and Lepidus, who could boast a much more ancient and illustrious
origin than his own.

We can readily explain, therefore, even without admitting that Livia
had aroused in him a violent passion, why the future Augustus should
have been so impatient to marry her in 38 B.C. The times were stormy
and uncertain; the youthful triumvir, whom a caprice of fortune had
raised to the head of a revolutionary dictatorship, was certainly the
weakest of the three colleagues, because of his youth, his slighter
experience, the feebler prestige among his soldiers, and, last of all,
the greater obscurity of his lineage. Antony, especially, who had
fought in so many wars, with Caesar and alone, who belonged to a family
of really ancient nobility, was much more popular than he among the
soldiers and had stronger relations with the great families. He was
therefore more powerful than Octavianus both in high places and in low.
A marriage with Livia meant much to the future Augustus. It would open
for him a door into the old aristocracy; it would draw him closer to