The flight of Tiberius to Rhodes, and his determination to abandon his public career just at the moment when his position as second man in the State was established on a sure foundation, have naturally excited the wonder of modern no less than of contemporary writers. An English historian, equally learned and delightful, speaks of the event as the freak of a moody and irritable man, and declares that such conduct summarily disposes of the claim which has been advanced for Tiberius of having been an astute statesman. His contemporaries, who are followed by the grave Tacitus and the garrulous Suetonius, found an easier explanation; to them the motive for retirement was simply the wish to indulge in licentious excesses too hideous for the starched morality and glaring daylight of Rome; but the same unfriendly or careless writers allow that he was probably disgusted by the wanton conduct of Julia, adding that he was also jealous of the advancement of his stepsons, the young Cæsars, now respectively fourteen and nine years of age. That Julia had forfeited all claims not only to affection, but even to respect, is an undisputed fact. Soon after his marriage Tiberius had been obliged to take the field, and his wars had been waged in localities not likely to be attractive to a lady who lived in the gallant circles of the poet Ovid. War upon the Illyrian or German frontier did not involve complete absence from home, and the Roman generals were in the habit of returning from their campaigns to the capital when the winter weather made it impossible to take the field. We do not know whether Tiberius followed this custom, or whether he took a more rigorous view of his duties and spent the winter season in winter quarters, but he was certainly much away from home. Some disillusionment as to the depth of Julia’s affection for him, annoying domestic difficulties caused by the ill-advised indulgence of her children by their grandfather, may well have contributed already to make him feel more at home in the camp than in the splendid house in the Carinæ. Julia too may have had her own disappointments; the playfellow of her youth turned out to be another “Colonel Grave Airs,” no less absorbed in military matters than Agrippa, inclined to spend his leisure in the society of a learned and serious circle, and averse to dissipating his time by passing long hours at the great public pageants in which the Romans delighted. So far there had been nothing worse than an amicable estrangement between husband and wife. Julia went her own way, chose her own friends, and lived the life which pleased her best. Tiberius in the same way pursued the studies which were agreeable to him, and made the best of a maimed life. Doubtless he recognized that his private happiness had been wrecked, but there was still duty, and if he could not meet Vipsania in the street without emotion, he at least gave the scandalmongers of the city no opportunity.