Given, a woman with the sensual, dominating inheritance of the Cæsars and the pride of a new race that knows no law but its own will, without the pride of character which serves always as a balance-wheel to the passions; imagine her a widow at seventeen, and married again, with no choice, to a plain but distinguished soldier, nearly thrice her age, whose lack of patrician birth humiliated her, and whose _bourgeois_ habits were not to her liking; surround her with idle and conscienceless men who make love a pursuit and the arts of flattery a study--and we have already the elements of a tragedy. This hard-headed husband wearied her; his ways were foreign to her; his world of interest was not hers. Even the public spirit which led him to give so many fine temples and works of art to the city that honored him annoyed her. She had the tastes of a dilettante, but she believed firmly in the divine right of emperors and emperors’ daughters to command all things for themselves. Nor did this petted child like any better the provincial notions of her old-fashioned father. It did not suit her to sew and spin with her stepmother, whose staid decorum irritated her. She belonged to the pleasure-loving set of an age in which luxury was uppermost and vice was a fine art. Fatal hour in any age when fashion laughs at morals and glories in the _cachet_ of would-be elegant sin! “If my father forgets that he is Cæsar, I who am his daughter have the right to remember it,” said Julia, by way of comment on his democratic ways. One day at the theater he noticed the contrast between the dignified Livia, simply attired, but surrounded by grave statesmen and men of distinction, and the gaily dressed Julia with her train of gilded, dissolute youth. After his usual fashion of writing little notes when he had anything to say, he sent the latter a line of reproof. “Do not blame my young friends,” was her ready answer; “they will grow old with me.” On another occasion, after he had found fault with her showy appearance, she presented herself the next day in a plain and modest costume. To his compliment on the becoming change, she replied: “To-day I am dressed for my father; yesterday it was for my husband.” The subtle satire in this remark was only apparent to those who knew that she dressed for all the world rather than for either.