legitimate ambitions of the most eminent men of the opposite faction.  Nor were these the only weapons employed; others no less efficacious were called into play, and intrigues, calumnies, accusations, and trials were set on foot without scruple and with a ferocity the horror of which Tacitus has painted with indelible colors.  Among these intrigues two matrimonial projects must be mentioned.  In the year 25 Sejanus attempted a bold stroke; he repudiated his wife Apicata, and asked Tiberius for the hand of Livilla (Livia), the widow of Drusus.  Sejanus had frequented the political aristocracy of the empire, and, despite his equestrian origin, was quick to adopt not only their ambitions and their manners, but also their ideas on marriage.  He, too, considered it as simply a political instrument, a means of acquiring and consolidating power.  He had therefore disrupted his first family in order to contract this marriage, which would have redoubled his power and his influence and have introduced him into the imperial household.  But his bold stroke failed, because Tiberius refused; and he refused, Tacitus tells us, above all because he was afraid that this marriage would still further irritate Agrippina.  The emperor is supposed to have told Sejanus that too many feminine quarrels were already disturbing and agitating the house of the Caesars, to the serious detriment of his nephew’s sons.  And what would happen, he asked, if this marriage should still further foment existing hatreds? Quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio?  The reply is significant, because it proves to us that Tiberius, who is accused of harboring a fierce hate against the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, was still seeking, two years after the death of Drusus, to appease both factions, attempting not to irritate his adversaries and to preserve a reasonable equanimity in the midst of these animosities and these struggles.

[Illustration:  The starving Livilla refusing food.]

In any case, Sejanus was refused, and this refusal was a slight success for the party of Agrippina, which, a year later, in 26, attempted on its own account an analogous move.  Agrippina asked Tiberius for permission to remarry.  If we are to believe Tacitus, Agrippina made this request on her own initiative, impelled by one of those numerous and more or less reasonable caprices which were continually shooting through her head.  But are we to suppose that suddenly, after a long widowhood, Agrippina put forth so strange a proposal without any arriere-pensee whatever?  Furthermore, if this proposal had been merely the momentary caprice of a whimsical woman, would it have been so seriously debated in the imperial household, and would the daughter of Agrippina have recounted the episode in her memoirs?  It is more probable that this marriage, too, had a political aim.  By giving a husband to Agrippina, they were also seeking to give a leader to the anti-Tiberian party.