idelity to Augustus or of dissolute conduct. The
great fame, power, and wealth of her husband did not disturb the calm
poise of her spirit. In that palace of Augustus, adorned with
triumphal laurel, toward which the eyes of the subjects were turned
from every part of the empire, in that palace where, in little councils
with the most eminent men of the senate, were debated the supreme
interests of the world,--laws and elections, wars and peace,--she
preserved the beautiful traditions of simplicity and industry. These
she had learned as a child in the house of her father,--a house as much
more illustrious with inherited glory as it was poorer in wealth than
that which Victory had prepared for Augustus on the Palatine.

[Illustration: The young Augustus.]

We know--it is Suetonius who tells us--that this house on the Palatine
built by Augustus, in which Livia spent the larger part of her life,
was small and not at all luxurious. In it there was not a single piece
of marble nor a precious mosaic; for forty years Augustus slept in the
same bedchamber, and the furniture of the house was so simple that in
the second century of our era it was exhibited to the public as an
extraordinary curiosity. The imperial pair had several villas, at
Lanuvium, at Palestrina, at Tivoli, but all of them were unpretentious
and simple. Nor was there any more pomp and ceremony about the dinners
to which they invited the conspicuous personages of Rome, the
dignitaries of the state and the heads of the great families. Only on
very special occasions were six courses served; usually there were but
three. Moreover, Augustus never wore any other togas than those woven
by Livia; woven not indeed and altogether by Livia's hands,--though she
did not disdain, now and then, to work the loom,--but by her slaves and
freed-women. Faithful to the traditions of the aristocracy, Livia
counted it among her duties personally to direct the weaving-rooms
which were in the house. As she carefully parceled out the wool to the
slaves, watching over them lest they steal or waste it, and frequently
taking her place among them while they were at work, she felt that she
too contributed to the prosperity and the glory of the empire.

Simplicity, loyalty, industry, an absolute surrender of one's own
personality to the family and its interests,--these, in the great
families, were the traditional feminine virtues which lived again in
Livia to the admiration of her c