Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/492

478 she so loaded them with honours, that the sceptre could not but pass, on the death of Augustus, into the hands of one of them.

"Livia," says M. de Serviez, "had an enlarged and cultivated mind, capable of all the refinements of policy. A quiet understanding, just discernment, delicate and enlightened taste, and a profound penetration, which, in the most difficult situations, always pointed out the best way to pursue; so that Augustus had never any serious conversation with her which he did not insert in his journal. Yet she was lofty, proud, ambitious, and though without the severe virtue of the ancient Roman ladies, kept up the decorum of their manner, softened by the most finished politeness and address.

The unexpected death of Marcellus, the nephew, and Caius and Lucius, the grandsons of Augustus, whose deaths Livia is supposed to have caused by poison, and the exile of Agrippa, their younger brother, did not diminish her favour or her power. Augustus even kept secret from her a voyage which he made to see the latter in his banishment.

But this interview, which was tender and affecting, neither of them long survived. The death of Augustus, as it was supposed, was hastened by Livia, and the other put to death, as she affirmed, by his order.

Some one demanded of Livia the means she made use of to govern so completely the mind of the emperor: "By obeying him blindly," said she, "by not attempting to discover his secrets, and by feigning ignorance of his intrigues." Thus it was the governor or the lord of the world was deluded. He knew not that affection, if it cannot correct, mourns over the vices of those it loves, and that none can see with calmness the misconduct of another, but those who feel for them a portion of contempt. Her