Tiberius was now fifty-six years of age; for ten years he had to all intents and purposes shared the first place in the Empire with Augustus; he had enjoyed his full confidence, none of the things which attract ambitious men had been refused to him. His character was without stain or reproach; the amours which are attributed to Julius Cæsar, and even to the saintly Augustus, are not attributed to him. The idle story that he went to Rhodes to indulge in odious vices was the fabrication of a later age, and was, as we have seen, absurd in itself. He had been a faithful and loving husband to his first wife, Vipsania; the licence of Julia had disgusted him; after his divorce from her he never thought of a fresh marriage, though still a young man. On his campaigns he had shown himself to be simple, and indeed severe, in his personal habits. A story was indeed prevalent that he was given to strong drink, but there is no evidence in its favour except a couple of wildly improbable stories preserved by Suetonius, and a punning nickname given him by the soldiers, who called him Biberius Caldius Mero. The nicknames given by private soldiers and schoolboys to officers and schoolmasters are not evidence, though they sometimes promote, as in this case, the circulation of fictitious stories. The exceptional health which Tiberius is said to have enjoyed to an advanced age does not favour the idea that he was intemperate, and indeed we are told that from the age of thirty onwards he prescribed a regimen for himself without consulting his medical advisers, which was remarkably successful. He was free from the tyranny of the lusts of the flesh, he was equally free from avarice, a point repeatedly insisted on by hostile historians; power in itself and by itself had no attraction for him; he had already on one occasion brusquely rejected it. Thus he was able to consider the question of the succession dispassionately. His personal inclination was rather in the direction of retirement and a private life, and if his judgment was biassed, the disturbing element was a contempt for rather than a love of power. At the death of Augustus, Tiberius was actually in possession of two forms of authority legally conveyed to him by the Senate in constitutional form, which enabled him to carry on the government: he had the tribunician power, which made him superior to all the civil magistrates; he had the proconsular power, which put him at the head of the executive in all the provinces, and especially at the head of the army. In the first character he was the protector of Roman citizens throughout the world; in the second he was master of the provincials. Thus there was no occasion for any plotting on the part of Livia, no premature assumption of responsibility on the part of Tiberius in setting the guard and giving the password when Augustus had breathed his last; these duties necessarily devolved upon him, and he was in fact at the time on active service.