ontemporaries. But with these virtues
were associated also the need and the pride of participating in the
affairs and work of her husband, that interest in politics which had
been common to the intelligent women of the nobility. No one at Rome
was astonished, especially in the upper classes, that Livia should
occupy herself actively with politics; that Augustus should frequently
come to her for counsel, or that he should not make any serious
decision without having consulted her; that, in short, she should at
the same time attend to her husband's clothes and aid him in governing
the empire. For so had done from time immemorial all the great ladies
of the aristocracy, mindful of their good repute and the prosperity of
their families. And Livia must have tried the more earnestly to fulfil
all that her education had taught her to consider a sacred duty, since
to a woman of her old-fashioned breeding the times must have appeared
especially difficult and perilous.

The civil wars had greatly reduced in numbers the historic aristocracy
of Rome, and the peace which followed after so long a time and which
had been so anxiously invoked, very soon began to threaten the
prosperity of the remnant of that nobility with a more insidious but
more inevitable ruin. About 18 B.C., when Livia was approaching her
fortieth year, the men of the new generation who had not seen the civil
wars, for when these ended they were either unborn or only in their
infancy, were already beginning to come to the front. They brought
with them a previously unknown spirit of luxury, of enjoyment, of
dissipation, of rebellion against discipline, of egotism and fondness
for the new, which rendered very difficult, not to say impossible, the
continuation of the aristocratic regime. Women submitted with more and
more repugnance to those obligatory marriages, arranged for reasons of
state, which had formerly been the tradition and the sure bulwark of
dominion for the aristocracy. The increase of celibacy was rendering
sterile the most celebrated stocks; the most lamentable vices and
disorders became tolerated and common in the most illustrious families,
and ruinous habits of extravagance spread generally among that
aristocracy, once so simple and austere. All this had grown up after
the conquest of Egypt, which had established more points of contact
with the East; and it increased in proportion as those industries and
the commerce in articles of luxury wh