By him she had a family of
children, upon whom, if upon any in this world, the wrath of Providence
seems to have rested; for, excepting one, and in spite of all the favors
that earth and heaven could unite to shower upon them, all came to an
early, a violent, and an infamous end. Fifthly, upon the death of Agrippa,
and again upon motives of policy, and in atrocious contempt of all the
ties that nature and the human heart and human laws have hallowed, she was
promised, (if that word may be applied to the violent obtrusion upon a
man's bed of one who was doubly a curse--first, for what she brought, and,
secondly, for what she took away,) and given to Tiberius, the future
emperor. Upon the whole, as far as we can at this day make out the
connection of a man's acts and purposes, which, even to his own age, were
never entirely cleared up, it is probable that, so long as the triumvirate
survived, and so long as the condition of Roman power or intrigues, and
the distribution of Roman influence, were such as to leave a possibility
that any new triumvirate should arise--so long Augustus was secretly
meditating a retreat for himself at some barbarous court, against any
sudden reverse of fortune, by means of a domestic connection, which should
give him the claim of a kinsman.
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