llustration: Silver coin bearing the head of Julius Caesar. This
coin, a denarius, worth about seventeen cents, represents Caesar as
Pontifex Maximus. Together with all the other Roman coins bearing
Caesar's image, it was struck in the year before his death--44-45 B.C.
The fact that Caesar placed his image on these coins may have
strengthened the suspicion of his enemies that he wished to make
himself king.]

But opposition and difficulties sprang up in her own family. In 39
B.C. Augustus had had by Scribonia a daughter, Julia. Following in the
government of his family, as in so large a part of his politics, the
traditions of the old nobility, Augustus gave his daughter in marriage
when very young,--she was not yet past seventeen,--just as he early
gave wives to Livia's two sons, whose guardian he was. In each case in
order to assure within his circle harmony and power, he chose the
consort in his own family or from among his friends. To Tiberius he
gave Agrippina, a daughter of Agrippa, his close friend and most
faithful collaborator; to Drusus he gave Antonia, the younger daughter
of Mark Antony and Octavia, sister of Augustus. To Julia he gave
Marcellus, his nephew, the son of Octavia and her first husband. But
while the marriages of Drusus and Tiberius proved successful and the
two couples lived lovingly and happily, such was not the case with the
marriage of Julia and Marcellus. As a result, disagreeable
misunderstandings and rancors soon made themselves felt in the family.
We do not know exactly what were the causes of these disagreements. It
seems that Marcellus, under the influence of Julia, assumed a tone
somewhat too haughty and insolent, such as was not becoming in a youth
who, although the nephew of Augustus, was still taking his first steps
in his political career; and it seems too that this conduct of his was
especially offensive to Agrippa, who, next to Augustus, was the first
person in the empire.

In short, at seventeen, Julia desired that her husband should be the
second personage of the state in order that she might come immediately
after Livia or even be placed directly on an equality with her.
According to the Roman ideas of the family and of its discipline, this
was a precocious and excessive ambition, unbecoming a matron, much less
a young girl. For the duty of the woman was to follow faithfully and
submissively the ambitions of her lord and not to impart to him her own
ambitions or m