Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/803

LIVIA. Intter. There was only one subject which occa- sioned any dissension between them, and that was the succession. Augustus naturally wislied to secure it for his own family, but Livia resolved to obtain it for her own children ; and, according to the common opinion at Rome, she did not scruple to employ foul means to remove out of the way the family of her husband. Hence she was said to be " gravis in rempublicam mater, gravis domui Caesarum noverca." (Tac. Ann. i. 10.) The pre- mature death of Marcellus was attributed by many to her machinations, because he had been prefeired to her sons as the husband of Julia, the daughter of Augustus. (Dion Cass. liii. 33.) But for this there seems little ground. The opportune death both of C. Caesar and L. Caesar seems much more suspicious. These young men were the children of Julia by her marriage with Agrippa ; and being the grandchildren of Augustus, they presented, as long as they lived, an insuperable obstacle to the accession of Tiberius, the son of Livia. But Lu- cius died suddenly at Massilia in a. d. 2, and Caius in Lycia a. d. 4, of a wound, which was not con- f^idered at all dangerous. It was generally sus- pected that they had both been poisoned, by the secret orders of Livia and Tiberius. She was even suspected of having hastened the death of Augustus in A. D. 1 4. Augustus left Livia and Tiberius as his heirs ; and by his testament adopted her into the Julia gens, in consequence of which she received the name of Julia Augusta. By the accession of her son to the imperial throne, Livia had now attained the long-cherished object of her ambition, and by means of her son thought to reign over the Roman world. But this the jealous temper of Tiberius would not brook. At first all public documents were signed by her as well as by Tiberius, and letters on public business were addressed to her as well as to the emperor ; and with the exception of her not appearing in person in the senate or the assemblies of the array and the people, she acted as if she were the sovereign. She openly said that it was she who had procured the empire for Tiberius , and to gratify her the senate proposed to confer upon her various extraordinary honours. Thereupon Tiberius, perceiving that he was be- coming a mere cypher in the state, forbade all these honours, and commanded her to retire altogether from public affairs ; but she had gained such an ascendancy over him, that he did not feel himself his own master as long as he was in her neighbour- hood, and accordingly removed his residence from Rome to Capreae. Such was the return she was destined to receive for all the toil she had sustained and the crimes she had probably committed, in order to secure the empire for her son. Tiberius no longer disguised the hatred he felt for his mother, and for the space of three years he only spoke to her once. When she was on her death- bed, he even refused to visit her. She died in A. D. 29, after suffering from repeated attacks of illness, at a very advanced age, eighty-two according to Pliny (//. A^. xiv. 8), eighty-six according to Dion Cassias (Iviii. 2), Tiberius did not attempt to dissemble the joy which he felt at her death. He took no part in the funeral rites, and forbade her consecration, which had been proposed by the senate, on the ground that she had not wished it Jierself. Her funeral oration was delivered by her great-grandson, C. Caesar, subsequertly the era- LIVIUS. 789 peror Caligula ; but Tiberius would not allow her testament to be carried into effect. The legacies which she had left were not fully paid till the ac- cession of Caliguln ; and her consecration did not take place till the reign of Claudius. (Tac. Ann. i. 3, 5, 8, 10, 14, V. 1,2; Dion Cass. Ivii. 12, Iviii. 2, lix. 1, 2, Ix. 5 ; Suet. Tib. 50, 51.) COIN OP LIVIA. 3. Livia or Livilla, the daughter of Drusus senior and Antonia, and the sister of Germanicu3 and the emperor Claudius. [See the genealogical table, Vol. I. p. 1076.] In her eleventh year B.C. 1, she was betrothed to C. Caesar, the son of Agrippa and Julia, and the grandson of Augustus. She was subsequently married to her first cousin, Drusus junior, the son of the emperor Tiberius, but was seduced by Sejanus, who both feared and hated Drusus, and who persuaded her to poison her husband, which she accordingly did in a. d. 2.'J. Her guilt was not discovered till the fall of Sejauus, eight years afterwards, a. d. 31, when it was re- vealed to Tiberius by Apicata, the wife of Sejanus. According to some statements Livia was put to death by Tiberius, but according to others she was spared by the emperor on account of her mother, Antonia, who, however, caused her to be starved to death. Such is the account of Dion Cassius (Iviii. 11) ; but from Tacitus saying (A7in. vi, 2) that in a. d. 32 the statues of Livia were destroyed and her memory cursed, because her crimes had not yet been punished, it would appear as if he supposed that she had died before the fall of Se- janus. (Suet. Claud. 1 ; Tac. Ann. ii. 43, 84, iv 1, 40, vi. 2 ; Dion Cass. Ivii. 22, Iviii. 11.) 4. Julia Livilla, the daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina. [Julia, No. 8.J LI' VIA GENS, plebeian, but one of the most illustrious houses among the Roman nobility. Suetonius says {Tib. 3) that the Livii had obtained eight consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, a dictatorship, and a mastership of the horse. The first member of the gens who obtained the consul- ship was M. Livius Denter, b. c. 302 ; and it at length rose to the imperial dignity by the marriage of Livia with Augustus, whose son Tiberius by a fonner husband succeeded the latter in the govern- ment of the Roman world. The cognomens in tins gens are Dbnter, Drusus, Libo, Macatus, and Salinator. LIVINEIUS. The name Livineius seems to belong to the family of the Reguli itself, originally at least a branch of the Gens Atilia. In Cicero (ad Att iii. 17, ad Fam. xiii. 60) it is the appel- lation of two freedmen of the brothers M. and L. Regulus, one of whom, L. Livineius Trypho, Cicero commends to C. INIunatius, as having befriended when others deserted him {ad Fam. i.e.); compare Tac. Ann. iii. 11, xiv. 17. [Regulus.] [W.B.D.] M. LI'VIUS, tribune of the plebs, b.c. 320, opposed the proposition for annulling the treaty 3k 3