While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges. Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager; if she had proposed to herself--and there is every reason to suppose that she did so propose--to continue to be the power behind the throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed. While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia, who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt. The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged