f public opinion when roused by any
serious crime. Besides, it is a recognized fact that people are always
inclined to suspect a crime whenever a man prominent in the public eye
dies before his time. At Turin, for example, there still lives a
tradition among the people that Cavour was poisoned, some say by the
order of Napoleon III, others by the Jesuits, simply because his life
was suddenly cut off, at the age of fifty-two, at the moment when Italy
had greatest need of him. Indeed, even to-day we are impressed when we
see in the family of Augustus so many premature deaths of young men;
but precisely because these untimely deaths are frequent we come to see
in them the predestined ruin of a worn-out race in history. All
ancient families at a certain moment exhaust themselves. This is the
reason why no aristocracy has been able to endure for long unless
continually renewed, and why all those that have refused to take in new
blood have failed from the face of the earth. There is no serious
reason for attributing so horrible a crime to a woman who was venerated
by the best men of her time; and the fables which the populace, always
faithful to Julia, and therefore hostile to Livia, recounted on this
score, and which the historians of the succeeding age collected, have
no decisive value.

The deaths of Caius and Lucius Caesar were therefore a great good
fortune for Tiberius, because it determined his return to power. The
situation of the empire was growing worse on every hand; Germany was in
the midst of revolt, and it was necessary to turn the army over to
vigorous hands. Augustus, old and irresolute, still hesitated, fearing
the dislike which was brewing both in the senate and among the people
against the too dictatorial Tiberius. At last, however, he was forced
to yield.

The more serious, more authoritative, more ancient party of the
senatorial nobility, in accord with Livia and headed by a nephew of
Pompey, Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna, forced him to recall Tiberius,
threatening otherwise to have recourse to some violent measures the
exact character of which we do not know. The unpopularity of Tiberius
was a source of continual misgivings to the aging Augustus, and it was
only through this threat of a yet greater danger that they finally
overcame his hesitation. On June 26, in the fourth year of our era,
Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son, and had conferred upon him for
ten years the office of tribune, thus mak