the
latter's appointment a matter beyond dispute. Furthermore, his own career
as the son and heir of Julius Caesar warned him that this heir to the
principate must be found within his own household, and his precarious
health was a constant reminder that he could not await the approach of old
age before settling this problem. And so, from the early years of his
office, he arranged the matrimonial alliances of his kinsfolk in the
interests of the state without regard to their personal preferences, to
the end that in the event of his decease there would be a member of the
Julian house prepared to assume his laborious task. Yet the unexpected
length of his life caused Augustus to outlive many of those whom he from
time to time looked upon as the heirs to his position in the state.

*Marcus Marcellus and Agrippa.* Augustus had one daughter Julia, by his
second wife Scribonia. He had no sons, but Livia Drusilla, whom he took as
his third wife in 36 B. C., brought him two stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus.
Yet not one of these but his nephew, Marcus Marcellus, was his first
choice for a successor. Marcellus received Julia as his wife in 25 B. C.,
the next year at the age of nineteen he was admitted to the Senate, and in
23 B. C., as aedile, he won the favor of the populace by his magnificent
public shows. When Marcellus died in 23 B. C., Augustus turned to his
loyal adherent Agrippa, to whom Julia was now wedded. In 18 B. C. Agrippa
received proconsular _imperium_ and the _tribunicia potestas_ for five
years, powers that were reconferred with those of Augustus in 13 B. C.

*Tiberius.* But in the next year Agrippa died, and Augustus, regarding his
eldest stepson Tiberius, the conqueror of Noricum, as the one best
qualified to succeed himself, forced him to divorce the wife to whom he
was devoted and to marry Julia. At that time he was given the important
Illyrian command and in 6 B. C. the tribunician authority was granted him
for a five year term. But Tiberius, recognizing that he was soon to be set
aside for the two elder sons of Agrippa and Julia, Gaius and Lucius
Caesar, whom Augustus had adopted and taken into his own house, and being
disgusted with the flagrant unfaithfulness of Julia, retired into private
life at Rhodes, thereby incurring the deep enmity of his stepfather.

*Gaius and Lucius Caesar.* Gaius and Lucius Caesar assumed the garb of
manhood (the _toga virilis_) at the age of fifteen in 5 and 2 B. C.,
respectively