The person, however, who most strongly influenced Tiberius in his fatal decision was possibly Vipsania herself. From both parents she inherited businesslike qualities, cool common sense. Neither of them is credited with having been sentimental at any period of his or her career, and though Tiberius was devoted to her, it is quite possible that she herself regarded her marriage dispassionately as an excellent business arrangement, and that, while she fulfilled all the duties of a wife with scrupulous observance, she was prepared to be equally careful of the interests and honour of any husband with whom she was provided by the higher powers of the family council. She had abundant precedent for taking such a line, and Asinius Gallus, the aspirant proposed to her, was in every way a desirable match. She may have been really indifferent, and have wounded Tiberius by her cool acquiescence in the new arrangement; or again, on this side too there may have been a great renunciation, and the unhappy woman, partly terrified by obscure menaces from Livia, partly persuaded by the kindly urgency of Augustus, may have affected an indifference which she did not feel, and deliberately wounded the man whom she loved for his own good, as she was led to believe. If Vipsania thus hurt the sensitive Tiberius, and shook his faith in his previous happiness, there was Julia ready to heal the wound; was he not the man whom she had always really loved? Her first and second marriages had been no real marriages: she and Marcellus had been mere children, and as for Agrippa, worthy man though he was, he could not feel with a wife so much younger than himself; he had always preferred the society of men who talked of bridges and aqueducts, or planned campaigns against the Sarmatians, to his wife and children; he had been good according to his lights, but it had been a dull life, and she had been driven to find relief in foolish though innocent dissipations by which her good name had suffered, and which she now sincerely regretted. If Tiberius would but take pity on her forlorn condition, and do his best to love his old playfellow, she for her part could conceive no greater happiness than to be the partner of his joys and sorrows; she loved him, she had always loved him, and the careless indifference of years had not weakened her attachment. Whatever the arguments and allurements by which Tiberius was induced to take the fatal step, he unquestionably did so. At first he lived happily with Julia; they had one son, who died in infancy; and then his official duties took the husband from his home; he was placed in charge of a harassing campaign against a mobile enemy in difficult country along the south of the Danube and in Dalmatia, while his brother Drusus was similarly engaged in frontier wars along the Rhine. At this time a serious misfortune fell upon Tiberius; he lost his brother.