after Livia or even be placed directly on an equality with her.
According to the Roman ideas of the family and of its discipline, this
was a precocious and excessive ambition, unbecoming a matron, much less
a young girl. For the duty of the woman was to follow faithfully and
submissively the ambitions of her lord and not to impart to him her own
ambitions or make him her tool. In contrast to Livia, who was so
docile and placid in her respect for the older traditions of the
aristocracy, so firm and strong in her observance of the duties, not
infrequently grievous and difficult, which this tradition imposed,
Julia represented the woman of that new generation which had grown up
in the times of peace--a type more rebellious against tradition, less
resigned to the serious duties and difficult renunciations of rank;
much more inclined to enjoy its prerogatives than disposed to bear that
heavy burden of obligations and sacrifices with which the previous
generations had balanced privilege. Beautiful and intelligent, even in
the early years of her first marriage she showed a great passion for
studies, and a fine artistic and literary taste, and with these a
lively inclination toward luxury and display which hardly suited with
the spirit or the letter of the _Lex sumptuaria_ which her father had
carried through in that year. But fraught with greater danger than all
this was her ardent and passionate temperament, which both in the
family and in politics was altogether too frequently to drive her to
desire and to carry through that which, rightly or wrongly, was
forbidden to a woman by law, custom, and public opinion.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that a young woman endowed with
so fiery and ambitious a nature did not become in the hands of Augustus
as docile a political instrument as Livia. Julia wished to live for
herself and for her pleasure, not for the political greatness of her
father; and indeed, Augustus, who had a fine knowledge of men, was so