Superstition perhaps disturbed the
one scheme, and policy the other. He married, as is well known, for his
final wife, and the partner of his life through its whole triumphant
stage, Livia Drusilla; compelling her husband, Tiberius Nero, to divorce
her, notwithstanding she was then six months advanced in pregnancy. With
this lady, who was distinguished for her beauty, it is certain that he was
deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the marriage.
It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of
independent writers, that this connection had an oracular sanction--not to
say, suggestion; a circumstance _which was long remembered_, and was
afterwards noticed by the Christian poet Prudentius:
"Idque Deum sortes et Apollinis antra dederunt
Consilium: nunquam melius nam caedere taedas
Responsum est, quam cum praegnans nova nupta jugatur."
His daughter Julia had been promised by turns, and always upon reasons of
state, to a whole muster-roll of suitors; first of all, to a son of Mark
Anthony; secondly, to the barbarous king; thirdly, to her first cousin--
that Marcellus, the son of Octavia, only sister to Augustus, whose early
death, in the midst of great expectations, Virgil has so beautifully
introduced into the vision of Roman grandeurs as yet unborn, which AEneas
beholds in the shades; fourthly, she was promised (and this time the
promise was kept) to the fortunate soldier, Agrippa, whose low birth was
not permitted to obscure his military merits.
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