THE DAUGHTERS OF AGRIPPA

Tiberius had now broken with Augustus, he had lost the support of
public opinion, he was hated by the majority of the senate. At Rhodes
he soon found himself, therefore, in the awkward position of one who
through a false move has played into the hands of his enemies and sees
no way of recovering his position. It had been easy to leave Rome; to
reënter it was difficult, and in all probability his fortune would have
been forever compromised, and he would never have become emperor, had
it not been for the fact that in the midst of this general defection
two women remained faithful. They were his mother, Livia, and his
sister-in-law, Antonia, the widow of that brother Drusus who, dying in
his youth, had carried to his grave the hopes of Rome.

Antonia was the daughter of the emperor's sister Octavia and of Mark
Antony, the famous triumvir whose name remains forever linked in story
with that of Cleopatra. This daughter of Antony was certainly the
noblest and the gentlest of all the women who appear in the lugubrious
and tragic history of the family of the Caesars. Serious, modest, and
even-tempered, she was likewise endowed with beauty and virtue, and she
brought into the family and into its struggles a spirit of concord,
serenity of mind, and sweet reasonableness, though they could not
always prevail against the violent passions and clashing interests of
those about her. As long as Drusus lived, Drusus and Antonia had been
for the Romans the model of the devoted pair of lovers, and their
tender affection had become proverbial; yet the Roman multitude, always
given to admiring the descendants of the great families, was even more
deeply impressed by the beauty, the virtue, the sweetness, the modesty,
and the reserve of Antonia. After the death of Drusus, she did not
wish to marry again, even though the _Lex de maritandis ordinibus_ made