In the marriage of Tiberius and Julia, Augustus saw a way of snuffing out the incipient discord between the Julii and the Claudii, between Julia and Livia, between the parties of the new and of the old nobility.  He therefore ordered Tiberius to repudiate the young, beautiful, and noble Agrippina in order to marry Julia.  For Tiberius the sacrifice was hard; we are told that one day after the divorce, having met Agrippina at some house, he began to weep so bitterly that Augustus ordered that the former husband and wife should never meet again.  But Tiberius, on the other hand, had been educated by his mother in the ancient ideas, and therefore knew that a Roman nobleman must sacrifice his feelings to the public interest.  As for Julia, she celebrated her third wedding joyfully; for Tiberius, after the deaths of Agrippa and of his own brother Drusus, was the rising man, the hope and the second personage of the empire, so that she was not forced to step down from the lofty position which the marriage with Agrippa had given her.  Tiberius, furthermore, was a very handsome man and for this reason also he seems not to have been displeasing to Julia, who in the matter of husbands considered not only glory and power.

The marriage of Julia and Tiberius began under happy auspices.  Julia seemed to love Tiberius and Tiberius did what he could to be a good husband.  Julia soon felt that she was once more to become a mother and the hope of this other child seemed to cement the union between husband and wife.  But the rosy promises of the beginning were soon disappointed.  Tiberius was the son of Livia, a true Claudius, the worthy heir of two ancient lines, an uncompromising traditionalist, therefore a rigid and disdainful aristocrat, and a soldier severe with others as with himself.  He wished the aristocracy to set the people an example of all the virtues which had made Rome so great in peace and war:  religious piety, simplicity of customs, frugality, family purity, and rigid observance of all the laws.  The luxury and prodigality which were becoming more and more wide-spread among the young nobility had no fiercer enemy than he.  He held that a man of great lineage who spent his substance on jewels, on dress, and on revels was a traitor to his country, and no one demanded with greater insistence than he that the great laws of the year 18 B.C., the sumptuary law, the laws on marriage and adultery, should be enforced with the severest rigor.  Julia, on the other hand, loved extravagance, festivals, joyous companies of elegant youths, an easy, brilliant life full of amusement.

[Illustration:  Octavia, the sister of Augustus.]