This lord of the universe groaned as often as the
ladies of his house, his daughter and grand-daughter, were mentioned. The
shame which he felt on their account, led him even to unnatural designs,
and to wishes not less so; for at one time he entertained a plan for
putting the elder Julia to death--and at another, upon hearing that Phoebe
(one of the female slaves in his household) had hanged herself, he
exclaimed audibly,--"Would that I had been the father of Phoebe!" It must,
however, be granted, that in this miserable affair he behaved with very
little of his usual discretion. In the first paroxysms of his rage, on
discovering his daughter's criminal conduct, he made a communication of
the whole to the senate. That body could do nothing in such a matter,
either by act or by suggestion; and in a short time, as every body could
have foreseen, he himself repented of his own want of self-command. Upon
the whole, it cannot be denied, that, according to the remark of Jeremy
Taylor, of all the men signally decorated by history, Augustus Caesar is
that one who exemplifies, in the most emphatic terms, the mixed tenor of
human life, and the equitable distribution, even on this earth, of good
and evil fortune.
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