Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/491

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The father of Livia was L. D. Calidianus, originally of the family of the Claudii, but adopted into that of the Livii. After the battle of Philippi he destroyed himself, to avoid falling into the hands of the triumvirs, to whose party he was adverse.

The husband of Livia was afterward of the side of Antony against Augustus, and with his wife and son, in the midst of a civil war, fled from Rome to join him in Sicily, where they ran a thousand dangers. On the marriage of Antony to Octavia, and their consequent reconciliation, Tiberius and his family returned to Rome, where the superior beauty and qualifications of Livia captivated the heart of Augustus; and not long after, though she was pregnant, and he already married, she became his wife; for Tiberius dared not deny Cæsar any thing, and the latter divorced Scribonia on the day in which she became the mother of Julia. Livia was proclaimed Augusta, and mother of her country. The Romans even pursued their flattery so far as to erect temples in her honour, and Augustus saw them with pleasure exalt to a divinity a woman whom he loved, who, always equal in her temper, shut her eyes on his irregular conduct, and as much as she could, consistent with that dignity she was tenaciously preserving, mixed in the pleasures he had provided for others. By this conduct she not only secured the affection, but ruled the mind of her husband. Despairing to have children by her, he adopted those she had had by Tiberius; and she