general
corrupting of customs, the current extravagance and dissipation,
beginning its task by imposing upon itself an inexorable
self-discipline. Even though he belonged to the generation of Ovid--to
the generation that had not seen the civil wars--Tiberius, by
singular exception, kept aloof from the undisciplined frivolity of his
contemporaries. He desired the severe application of the social
laws of the year 18, as of all the traditional norms of aristocratic
discipline. His generation therefore soon found him an enemy,
especially after Drusus's death seemed to leave neither doubt nor
choice as to the successor of Augustus. From this contemporary
attitude arises the tacit aversion in the midst of which, after the
lapse of so many centuries, we still feel Tiberius living and working,
an aversion which steadily grows even while he renders the most signal
services to the Empire.

There was between him and his generation irreconcilable discord.
However, it is not likely that this blind and secret hatred alone
could have seriously injured Tiberius, whose power and merits were so
great, if it had not been considerably helped by incidents of various
nature. The first and most important of these was the discord that had
arisen, shortly after the death of Drusus, between Tiberius and his
wife Julia, the daughter of Augustus and the widow of Agrippa.

Tiberius had married her against his will in the year 11, after the
death of Agrippa, by order of Augustus, and had at first tried to
live in accord with her; the attempt was vain, and the spirits of the
husband and wife were soon parted in fatal disagreement. "He lived at
first," writes Suetonius, "in harmony with Julia; but soon grew cool
toward her, and finally the estrangement reached such a point after
the death of their boy born at Aquileia, that Tiberius lived in a
separate apartment"--a separation, as we would call it, in "bed and
board." What was the reason of this discord? No ancient historian has
revealed it; however, we can guess with sufficient probability from
what we know of the characters of the pair and the discord that
divided Roman society. If Tiberius was not the monster of Capri, Julia
was certainly not the miserable Bacchante of the scandalous Roman
chronicle. Macrobius has pictured her in human lights and shadows, a
probable image, describing her as a highly cultured woman, lavish
in tastes and expenditure, fond of beautiful literature, of the
fine arts,