All her life long, with constancy, moderation, and wonderful tact,
Livia fulfilled her mission. She succeeded in resolving into the
admirable harmony of a long existence that contradiction between the
liberty conceded to her sex and the self-denial demanded of it by man
as a duty. She was assuredly one of the most perfect models of that
lady of high society whom the Romans in all the years of their long and
tempestuous history never ceased to admire. Even and serene,
completely mistress of herself and of her passions, endowed with a
robust will, she accommodated herself without difficulty to all the
sacrifices which her rank and situation imposed upon her. She changed
husbands without repugnance, though her marriage to Octavianus occurred
but five years after the proscriptions, while he was still red with the
blood of her family and friends. Likewise she renounced her two sons,
the future emperor Tiberius, who had been born before her second
marriage, as well as the one who had been born after. So too when, a
few years later, Tiberius Claudius Nero died, appointing Augustus their
guardian, with equal serenity she took them back and educated them with
the most careful motherly solicitude. To the second husband, whom
politics had given her, she was a faithful companion. Scandal imputed
to her absurd poisonings which she did not commit, and accused her of
insatiable ambitions and perfidious intrigues. No one ever dared
accuse her of infidelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct. The
great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
poise of her spirit. In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
interests of the world,--laws and elections, wars and peace,--she
preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry. These
she had learned as a child in the house of her father,--a house as much