and of the company of handsome and elegant young men. She
belonged to the new generation of which Ovid was spokesman and poet;
while Tiberius represented archaic traditionalism, the spirit of a
past generation.

It is easy to understand how these two persons, incarnating the
irreconcilable opposition of two epochs, two _morales_, two societies,
of Roman militarism and of Oriental culture, could not live together.
A man like Tiberius, severe, simple, who detested frivolous pleasures,
caring more for war than for society life, could not live in peace
with this beautiful and vivacious creature, who loved luxury,
prodigality, brilliant company. It is not rash to suppose that
the _lex sumptuaria_ of the year 18 was the first grave cause of
disagreement. Julia, given, as Macrobius describes her, to profuse
expenditure and pretentious elegance, could not take this law
seriously; while it was the duty of Tiberius, who always protested by
deed as by word against the barren pomp of the rich, to see that his
wife serve as an example of simplicity to the other matrons of Rome.

Very soon there occurred an accident, not uncommon in unfortunate
marriages, but which for special reasons was, in the family of
Tiberius, far more than wontedly dangerous. Tacitus tells us that
after Julia was out of favour with Tiberius, she contracted a relation
with an elegant young aristocrat, one Sempronius Gracchus, of the
family of the famous tribunes. Accepting as true the affirmation of
Tacitus, in itself likely, we can very well explain the behaviour and
acts of Tiberius in these years. The misdoing of Julia offended
not only the man and husband, but placed also the statesman, the
representative of the traditionalist party, in the gravest perplexity.

According to the _lex de adulteriis_, made by Augustus in the year
18, the husband ought either to punish the unfaithful wife himself or
denounce her to the praetor. Could he, Tiberius, provoke so frightful
a scandal in the house of the "First Citizen of the Republic"; drive
from Rome, defamed, the daughter of Augustus, the most noted lady of
Rome, who had so many friends in all circles of its society? Suetonius
speaks of the disgust of Tiberius for Julia, "_quam neque criminari
aut demittere auderet_"--whom he dared neither incriminate nor
repudiate. On the other hand, did not he, the intransigeant
traditionalist, who kept continually reproving the nobility for their
laxity in self-discipline, m