and changed Archelaus’s title of king to the more modest one of ethnarch.  Then new difficulties arose with the Empire of the Parthians.  In short, vaguely, in every part of the Empire and beyond its borders, there began to grow the sense that Rome was again weakening; a sense of doubt due to the decadence of the spirit of tradition and of the party representing it; to the new spirit of the new generation; and finally, to the absence of Tiberius, the one capable general of the time, which gradually disorganised even the western armies, the best in the Empire.

This dissolution of the State naturally fed in the traditionalist party the hope of reconquering.  Tiberius had sincere friends and admirers, especially among the nobility, less numerous than those of Julia, but more serious, because his merits were real.  Many people among the higher classes—­even though, like Augustus, they considered the obduracy of Tiberius excessive—­thought that Rome no more possessed so many examples of illustrious men as to be able to retire its best general at thirty-seven.  Very soon there arose in the circles about Augustus, in the Senate, in the comitia, a bitter contention between Tiberius’s friends and his enemies; this was really a struggle between the traditionalist party, which busied itself conserving, together with the traditions of the old Romanism, the military and political power of Rome, and the party of the young nobility, which, without heeding the external dangers, wished to impel habits, ideas, the public spirit, toward the freer, broader forms of the Oriental civilisation, even at the risk of dissolving the State and the army.  Julia and Tiberius personify the two parties; between them stands Augustus, who ought to decide, and is more uncertain than ever.  Theoretically Augustus always inclined more toward Tiberius, but from disgust at his departure, from solicitude for domestic peace, from his little sympathy with his step-son, he was driven to the opposite party.

In this duel, what was the behaviour and the part of Livia, the mother of Tiberius?  The ancient historians tell us nothing; it is, at all events, hardly probable that Livia remained an inactive witness of the long struggle waged to secure the return of Tiberius and his reinstatement in the brilliant position once his.  Moreover, Suetonius says that during his entire stay at Rodi, Tiberius communicated with Augustus by means of Livia.  At any rate, the party of Tiberius was not long in understanding that he could not re-enter Rome, as long as Julia was popular and most powerful there; that to reopen the gates of Rome to the husband, it was necessary to drive out the wife.  This was a difficult enterprise, because Julia was upheld by the party already dominant; she had the affection of Augustus; she was the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar, the two hopes of the Republic, whose popularity covered her with a respect and a sympathy that made her almost invulnerable.  Tiberius,