ined;--as, I say, in the presence of a soul not to be
treated with levity, but always upon a considered plan.

The children grew up, and people began to talk of a successorship
to Augustus in the Principate. It would be, of course, through
Julia, his daughter. He married her to Marcellus, aged
seventeen, his sister Octavia's son, who he adopted. Marcellus
and Julia, then, would succeed him; no one thought of retiring
Tiberius. Marcellus, however, died in a couple of years; and
folk wondered who would step into his place. Augustus gave Julia
to Vipsanius Agrippa, the man who had won so many campaigns for
him. Agrippa was as old as the Princeps, but of much stronger
constitution; and so, likely to outlive him perhaps a long
while. Very appropriate, said Rome: Agrippa will reign next:
an excellent fellow. No one thought of shy Tiberius.--Agrippa,
by the way, was a strong man and a strict disciplinarian,--with
soldiers, at any rate: it might be hoped also with wives. It
was just as well for lady Julia to be under a firm hand.

Ten years later Agrippa died, and the heirship presumptive passed
to his two eldest children by Julia: the princes Caius and
Lucius. Augustus adopted them in due course. Heirship
presumptive means here, that they were the ones Rome presumed
would be the heirs: a presumption which Augustus, without being
too definite, encouraged. The Initiate Leaders and Teachers of
the world do not, as a rule, as far as one can judge, advertise
well beforehand the identity of their successors.--As for
Tiberius;--why, said Rome, his stepfather does not even like
him. Drusus, now, and _his_ children,--ah, that might be
a possibility.

For the marriages of the two brothers told a tale. Drusus had
married into the sacred Julian line: a daughter of Octavia and
Mark Anthony; his son Germanicaus was thus a grand-nephew of
Augustus, and a very great pet. But Tiberius had made a
love-match, with a mere daughter of Agrippa by some former wife:
an alliance that could not advance him in any way. Her name was
Vipsania; the whole intensity of his pent-up nature went into
his feeling for her; he was remarkably happily married;--that
is, for the human, the tender, sensitive, and affectionate
side of him.

Meanwhile both brothers had proved their worth. At twenty-two,
Tiberius set up a kind in Armenia, and managed for Augustus the
Parthian affair, whereby the standards of Crassus were returned.
There were