laws.  If any of them, therefore, fell under the rigor of these laws, the senatorial aristocracy especially was ever eager to enjoy the atrocious satisfaction of seeing one of the favored tortured as much as or more than the ordinary man.  There is no doubt, for example, that the two Julias were more severely punished and disgraced than other ladies of the aristocracy guilty of the same crime.  And Augustus was forced to waive his affection for them in order that it might not be said, particularly in the senate, that his relatives enjoyed special favors and that Augustus made laws only for others.

[Illustration:  Statue of a young Roman woman.]

Yet as long as Augustus lived, he was a sufficient protection for his relatives.  He was, especially in the last twenty years of his life, the object of an almost religious veneration.  The great and stormy epoch out of which he had risen, the extraordinary fortune which had assisted him, his long reign, the services both real and imaginary which he had rendered the empire—­all had conferred upon him such an authority that envy laid aside its most poisonous darts before him.  Out of respect for him even his family was not particularly calumniated or maltreated, save now and then in moments of great irritation, as when the two Julias were condemned.  But after his death the situation grew considerably worse; for Tiberius, although he was a man of great capacity and merit, a sagacious administrator and a valiant general, did not enjoy the sympathy and respect which had been accorded to Augustus.  Rather was he hated by those who had for a long time sided with Caius and Lucius Caesar and who formed a considerable portion of the senate and the aristocracy.  It was not the spontaneous admiration of the senate and of the people, but the exigencies of the situation, which had made him master of the government when Augustus died.  The empire was at war with the Germans, and the Pannonico-Illyrian provinces were in revolt, and it was necessary to place at the head of the empire a man who should strike terror to the hearts of the barbarians and who on occasion should be able to combat them.  Tiberius, furthermore, was so well aware that the majority of the senate and the Roman people would submit to his government only through force, that he had for a long time been in doubt whether to accept the empire or not, so completely did he understand that with so many enemies it would be difficult to rule.

Under the government of Tiberius the imperial family was surrounded by a much more intense and open hatred than under Augustus.  One couple only proved an exception, Germanicus and Agrippina, who were very sympathetic to the people.  But right here began the first serious difficulties for Tiberius.  Germanicus was twenty-nine years old when Tiberius took over the empire, and about him there began to form a party which by courting and flattering both him and his wife began to set him up against Tiberius.