war than for society life, could not live in peace with this beautiful and vivacious creature, who loved luxury, prodigality, brilliant company. It is not rash to suppose that the lex sumptuaria of the year 18 was the first grave cause of disagreement. Julia, given, as Macrobius describes her, to profuse expenditure and pretentious elegance, could not take this law seriously; while it was the duty of Tiberius, who always protested by deed as by word against the barren pomp of the rich, to see that his wife serve as an example of simplicity to the other matrons of Rome.
Very soon there occurred an accident, not uncommon in unfortunate marriages, but which for special reasons was, in the family of Tiberius, far more than wontedly dangerous. Tacitus tells us that after Julia was out of favour with Tiberius, she contracted a relation with an elegant young aristocrat, one Sempronius Gracchus, of the family of the famous tribunes. Accepting as true the affirmation of Tacitus, in itself likely, we can very well explain the behaviour and acts of Tiberius in these years. The misdoing of Julia offended not only the man and husband, but placed also the statesman, the representative of the traditionalist party, in the gravest perplexity.
According to the lex de adulteriis, made by
