In brief, here was the hope of using against Tiberius at once the maternal pride and affection of Julia, the tenderness of Augustus, and the popularity of the name of Caesar, which Caius carried.  The people had never greatly loved the name of the Claudii, a haughty line of invincible aristocrats, always hard and overbearing with the poor, always opposed to the democratic party.  The party against Tiberius hoped that when to a Claudius there should be opposed a Caesar, the public spirit would revert to the dazzling splendour of the name.

Now we understand why Augustus had at first objected.  The privileges that he had caused to be conceded to Marcellus, to Drusus, to Tiberius, were all of less consequence than those demanded for Caius and had all been justified either by urgent needs of State, or services already rendered; but how could it be tolerated that without any reason, without the slightest necessity, there should be made consul a lad of fourteen, of whom it would be difficult to predict even whether he would become a man of common sense?  Moreover Augustus could not so easily bring himself to offend Tiberius, who would not admit that the chief of the Republic should help his enemies offer him so great an affront.  How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and holding in subjection the European provinces, that jeunesse doree of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child of fourteen?—­to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State would not be safe till by the side of this Claudius should be placed a Caesar, beardless and inexpert, as if the name of the latter outweighed the genius and experience of the former?  And Augustus, the head of the Republic, would he have tolerated such an outrage?  Tiberius not only resisted the law but exacted the open disapproval of Augustus; in fact, at the beginning, Augustus stood out against it as Tiberius wished; but difficulties grew by the way and became grave.

Julia and her friends knew how to dispose public opinion ably in their own favour, to intrigue in the Senate, to exploit the increasing unpopularity of the social laws, of the spreading aversion to Tiberius and the admiration for other members of Augustus’s family.  The proposal to make Caius consul became in a short time so popular for one or another of these reasons, and as the symbol of a future government less severe and traditionalistic, that Augustus felt less and less able to withstand the current.  On the other hand, to yield meant mortally to offend Tiberius.  Finally, as was his wont, this astute politician thought to extricate himself from the difficulty by a transaction and an expedient.  Dion, shortly after having said that Augustus finally yielded to the popular will, adds that, to make Caius more modest, he gave Tiberius the tribunician power for five years and charged him with subduing the revolt in Armenia.  Augustus’s idea is clear:  he was trying to please everybody—­the partisans of Caius Caesar by not opposing the law, and Tiberius, by giving the most splendid compensation, making him his colleague in place of Agrippa.