The situation grew worse and worse.  Public opinion steadily became more hostile to Tiberius and more favorable to Julia and her elder son, and it was not long before they wished to give to her younger son, Lucius, the same honors which had already been bestowed upon his brother Caius.  Private interest soon allied itself with the hatred and rancor against Tiberius; and scarcely had he departed when the senate increased the appropriation for public supplies and public games.  All those who profited by these appropriations were naturally interested in preventing the return of Tiberius, who was notorious for his opposition to all useless expenditures.  Any measure, however dishonest, was therefore considered proper, provided only it helped to ruin Tiberius; and his enemies had recourse to every art and calumny, among other things actually accusing him of conspiracies against Augustus.  Even for a woman as able and energetic as Livia it was an arduous task to struggle against the inclinations of Augustus, against public opinion, against the majority of the senate, against private interest, and against Julia and her friends.  Indeed, four years passed during which the situation of Tiberius and his party grew steadily worse, while the party of Julia increased in power.

Finally the party of Tiberius resolved to attempt a startlingly bold move.  They decided to cripple the opposition by means of a terrible scandal in the very person of Julia.  The Lex Julia de adulteriis, framed by Augustus in the year 18, authorized any citizen to denounce an unfaithful wife before the judges, if the husband and father should both refuse to make the accusation.  This law, which was binding upon all Roman citizens, was therefore applicable even to the daughter of Augustus, the widow of Agrippa, the mother of Caius and Lucius Caesar, those two youths in whom were centered the hopes of the republic.  She had violated the Lex Julia and she had escaped the penalties which had been visited on many other ladies of the aristocracy only because no one had dared to call down this scandal upon the first family of the empire.  The party of Tiberius, protected and guided by Livia, at last hazarded this step.

It is impossible to say what part Livia played in this terrible tragedy.  It is certain that either she or some other influential personage succeeded in gaining possession of the proofs of Julia’s guilt and brought them to Augustus, threatening to lay them before the pretor and to institute proceedings if he did not discharge his duty.  Augustus found himself constrained to apply to himself his own terrible law.  He himself had decreed that if the husband, as was then the case of Tiberius, could not accuse a faithless woman, the father must do so.  It was his law, and he had to bow to it in order to avoid scandals and worse consequences.  He exiled Julia to the little island of Pandataria, and at the age of thirty-seven the brilliant, pleasing, and voluptuous young woman who had dazzled Rome for many years was compelled to disappear from the metropolis forever and retire to an existence on a barren island.  She was cut off by the implacable hatred of a hostile party and by the inexorable cruelty of a law framed by her own father!