Tiberius matured his plan secretly. Nobody outside his family knew that he had definitely left Rome till he was already sailing down the coast of Italy. A fast galley was sent after him, with letters imploring him to return, and not to desert the Emperor in his old age; it overtook him before he had passed the Straits of Messina, but the messengers were abruptly dismissed. No further attempt was made to recall him till after he had arrived at Rhodes, his ultimate destination, though he seems to have lingered on his way, and to have spent some time at Athens, long enough to enable him to be the first Roman who sent a chariot to compete at the Olympic games. It was not long before the real cause of his departure became known to Augustus. Julia’s extravagant conduct was so notorious that it could no longer be concealed from her father. Livia is credited with having engineered the ultimate discovery, and even aided and abetted the grievous misconduct with ulterior motives. Augustus, in the name of Tiberius, wrote a bill of divorcement, and banished his daughter to the island of Pandateria off the coast of Campania. The list of corespondents was a long one. Julius Antonius, the son of Marcus Antonius, and stepson of Octavia, was among them; he committed suicide on the discovery of the scandal. After him Paterculus mentions Quintius Crispinus, Appius Claudius, Sempronius Gracchus, Scipio, a relative of Julia through her mother, “and other men of less reputation of both orders.” It was a comprehensive list, and inclines us to suspect that Tacitus is right in saying that something more alarming than mere adultery had taken place, and that Julia had allowed herself to be involved in a plot against her husband and father. It is curious that Paterculus should confine the list of nameless admirers to members of the Senatorial and Equestrian Orders. If Julia had been merely a licentious woman, we should expect to find slaves and gladiators among the company of her lovers. Amorous intrigues in the atmosphere of Rome were apt to end in more dangerous conspiracies, and though the self-esteem of the pious and patriarchal Augustus must have been deeply wounded by his daughter’s guilt, the punishment of exile awarded to her, and of death to her gallants, strikes us as disproportionate. It is most probable that there really was a conspiracy in which Julia allowed herself to be used, prompted by a desire to settle up accounts with that veteran intriguer Livia, and that this was the concluding scene of the first act in the long drama of the feud between the Julians and Claudians in the Imperial household.