Who then were these strange admirers of a child of fourteen, who to make him consul did not hesitate to do violence to tradition, to the laws, to good sense, and, finally, to the adoptive father? It was the opposition to Tiberius, the party of the young nobility and Julia, who were seeking a rule less severe, and, if not the abolition, at least the mitigated application of the great social laws. They aimed to put forward the young Caius, to set him early before public attention, to hasten his political career, in order to oppose a rival to Tiberius; to prepare another collaborator and successor of Augustus, to make Tiberius less indispensable and therefore less powerful. In brief, here was the hope of using against Tiberius at once the maternal pride and affection of Julia, the tenderness of Augustus, and the popularity of the name of Cæsar, which Caius carried. The people had never greatly loved the name of the Claudii, a haughty line of invincible aristocrats, always hard and overbearing with the poor, always opposed to the democratic party. The party against Tiberius hoped that when to a Claudius there should be opposed a Cæsar, the public spirit would revert to the dazzling splendour of the name. Now we understand why Augustus had at first objected. The privileges that he had caused to be conceded to Marcellus, to Drusus, to Tiberius, were all of less consequence than those demanded for Caius and had all been justified either by urgent needs of State, or services already rendered; but how could it be tolerated that without any reason, without the slightest necessity, there should be made consul a lad of fourteen, of whom it would be difficult to predict even whether he would become a man of common sense? Moreover Augustus could not so easily bring himself to offend Tiberius, who would not admit that the chief of the Republic should help his enemies offer him so great an affront. How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and holding in subjection the European provinces, that _jeunesse dorée_ of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child of fourteen?--to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State would not be safe till by the side of this Claudius should be placed a Cæsar, beardless and inexpert, as if the name of the latter outweighed the genius and experience of the former? And Augustus, the head of the Republic, would he have tolerated such an outrage? Tiberius not only resisted the law but exacted the open disapproval of Augustus; in fact, at the beginning, Augustus stood out against it as Tiberius wished; but difficulties grew by the way and became grave.