order to secure his cheerful service. But circumstances brought it about that he came to be regarded, if not as the probable successor, yet as something very like it.
As Livia proved unfruitful, Augustus had to look elsewhere for a successor. Within his own family three choices were open to him. Though he had no sons, he might at least have a grandson by the marriage of his daughter Julia. Or he might select his sister's son as his heir and successor. Or he might adopt his Claudian step-children.
His first plan, the marriage of the young Marcellus with Julia, combined two of these courses. The Empire might thus descend through a nephew to grand-children. High hopes were formed of Marcellus, who was attractive and popular and a great favorite of his uncle. The marriage was celebrated in 25 B.C., during the absence of Augustus in Spain, where he suffered from a severe illness, and Agrippa, the brother-in-law of the bridegroom, was called upon to act as the father of the bride. In the following year, Marcellus was elected curule aedile, and a decree of the senate allowed him to stand as candidate for the consulship ten years before the legal age. At the same time Augustus allowed his stepson Tiberius to be elected quaestor, though he was even younger than Marcellus; and this perhaps was a concession to Livia, who may have felt jealous of the son of Octavia and the daughter of Scribonia.
But there was another who certainly felt jealous of the favor shown to Marcellus, and regarded him as an unwelcome rival. This was Agrippa. He had entered, as we have seen, into affinity with the imperial family by his marriage with Marcella; he had been consul, as the Emperor's colleague for two successive years. If Augustus was the Princeps, men were inclined to look upon Agrippa as the second citizen; and in the East, where political facts were often misinterpreted, he was actually thought to be an equal co-regent with the Emperor. He was not popular, like his young brother-in-law, but he was universally respected; his services were recognized, and his abilities were esteemed; and he had every reason to cherish ambitious aspirations. Augustus had left Rome in 27 B.C. in order to devote his attention to the administration of Gaul and Spain. During his absence, which lasted until 24 B.C., there were no disturbances in Rome, although he left no formal representative to take his place. This tranquillity must have been partly due to the personal influence of Agrippa, who lived at Rome during these years, though not filling an official post.
In 23 B.C., the year of his eleventh consulate, Augustus was stricken down by another illness, and he seems to have entertained some idea of abdicating the imperial power. He summoned his colleague, the consul Piso, to his bedside, and gave him a document containing a list of the military forces, and an account of the finances, of the Empire. This act of Augustus displays the constitutional principle, that when the Emperor died, the imperial power passed into the keeping of the senate and the chief magistrates. But Augustus, although he could not appoint, could at least recommend, a successor; and it is to his honor that he did not attempt to forward the interests of his family at the expense of the interests of the state. Marcellus was still very young, and his powers were unproved. Augustus gave his signet-ring to Agrippa, thus making it clear whom he regarded as the one man in the Empire capable of carrying on the work which he had begun. But Augustus was not to die yet. He was healed by the skill of the famous physician Antonius Musa. On his recovery, he learned that his illness had been the occasion of unfriendly collisions between Agrippa and Marcellus. While Marcellus naturally built hopes on his marriage with Julia, Agrippa was elated by the conspicuous mark of confidence which the Emperor had shown in him at such a critical moment. Augustus, therefore, thought it wise to separate them, and he assigned to Agrippa an honorable mission to the eastern provinces of the Empire, for the purpose of regulating important affairs in connection with Armenia. The proconsular imperium was probably conferred on him at this time. Agrippa went as far as Lesbos, but no further, and issued his orders from that island. His friends said that this course was due to his moderation; others suspected that he was sulky, and it is clear that he understood the true meaning of his mission.
But an unexpected and untoward event suddenly frustrated the plan which Augustus had made for the succession, and removed the cause of the jealousy of Agrippa. Towards the end of the same year, Marcellus was attacked by malaria at Baiae, and the skill which cured his father-in-law did not avail for him. He was buried in the great mausoleum which Augustus had erected some years before in the Campus Martius, as a resting-place for his family. The name of Marcellus was preserved in a splendid theatre which his uncle dedicated to his memory; but the lines in Virgil’s Aeneid proved a more lasting monument. The story is told that Octavia fainted when she heard them recited, and that the poet received ten thousand sesterces for each line.
Augustus had now to form another plan, and it might be thought that the influence of Livia would have fixed his choice on one of her sons. But his hopes were bound up in Julia, and he now selected Agrippa as husband for the widow of Marcellus. The fact that Agrippa was married to her sister-in-law Marcella, and had children by this marriage, was no obstacle in the eyes of the man who had so lightly divorced Scribonia. Agrippa had put away his first wife Pomponia to marry the niece of Augustus, and he was not likely to grumble now at having to sacrifice the niece for the sake of the daughter. Augustus set forth in 22 B.C. to visit the eastern provinces. He stayed during the winter in Sicily, and while he was there a sedition broke out in Rome, owing to a struggle between Q. Lepidus and M. Silanus in their candidature for consulship. This incident seems to have determined Augustus to carry out his project of uniting Agrippa and Julia without delay. He recalled Agrippa from the east, caused the marriage to be celebrated, and consigned to him the administration of Rome and the west during his own absence in the east (early in 21 B.C.). It is said that Maecenas advised his master that Agrippa had risen too high, if he did not rise still higher, and that there were only two safe alternatives, his marriage with Julia, or his death.
In October 19 B.C. Augustus returned to Rome, and in the following year received a new grant of the proconsular imperium for five years. At the same time he caused the tribunician power to be conferred for five years on Agrippa, who was thus raised a step nearer the Princeps. The marriage of Julia and Agrippa was fruitful. Two sons and two daughters were born in the lifetime of Agrippa, and another son after his death. In 17 B.C. Augustus adopted Gaius and Lucius, his grandsons, into the family of Caesar, and it seems clear that he regarded Gaius and Lucius Caesar as his successors, and their father Agrippa as no more than their guardian. But if so, it was necessary to strengthen the guardian's hands, and when Agrippa's tribunician power lapsed, it was renewed for another five years.
But Augustus was destined to survive his second son-in-law as he had survived his first. Agrippa died in Campania in 12 B.C. at the age of fifty-one, and was laid like Marcellus in the mausoleum of Augustus. The Emperor's sister Octavia died in the following year.
The death of the consort did not interfere with the plan for the succession, but he was a great loss to Augustus, whose weak health rendered him unequal to bearing the burden of the Empire alone. The tender age of Gaius and Lucius Caesar required a protector in case anything should happen to their grandfather before they had reached man's estate. Augustus accordingly united his elder stepson Tiberius with Julia (11 B.C.), and thus constituted him the natural protector of the two young Caesars. For this purpose Tiberius was obliged, much against his will, to divorce his wife Vipsania Agrippina, by whom he had a son named Drusus. This Agrippina was the daughter of Agrippa by his first wife Pomponia (daughter of Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero). Thus Tiberius put away Agrippa's daughter in order to marry his widow. No statesman perhaps has ever gone further than Augustus in carrying out a cold-blooded method of uniting and divorcing for the sake of dynastic calculations. His younger stepson Drusus had been likewise drawn closer to the imperial family by marriage with Antonia, daughter of Octavia, and niece of the Emperor.
Tiberius and Drusus had already performed important public services, and gained great military distinction by the subjugation of Raetia and Vindelicia (15 B.C.). In 12 B.C. and the following years they had again opportunity for displaying their unusual abilities, Tiberius in reducing rebellious tribes in Pannonia, and Drusus in warfare with the Germans beyond the Rhine. The death of Drusus in 9 B. was a great blow to Augustus, who had really "paternal feelings" for him but never cared for Tiberius. But he could hardly have found a more capable helper in the administration than his elder stepson. Tiberius was grave and reserved in manner, cautious and discreet from his earliest years, indisposed to conciliate friendship, and compelled to