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398 DARKNESS AND DAWN
as bitter when they saw the elder Agrippina driven to the
same prison by the insatiable malice of Tiberius. I>ut the
case of Octavia was far sadder than that of her noble kinswomen.
The elder Julia was steeped in shame, and had wellnigh
broken the heart of her father. The younger Julia had
also disgraced her high lineage. The wife of Germanicus had
been a Roman matron of the purest stamp, yet her passionate
haughtiness had diminished the sympathy which would otherwise
have been felt with her in her calamities. And, further,
these others had enjoyed their days of superb sunlight and
prosperity. Iluin had not overtaken them till the happiness
and beauty of their youth were past. Not so the pale and
hapless girl who was now embarking. Octavia had known no
joy. Her childhood had been darkened by the three murders
of those whom she best loved. From the first her
husband had hated her. His youthful love had been given,
not to her, but to her freedwoman ;
and now, unprotected by
her own white innocence, she had been smitten to the earth
by a horribly false condemnation. She was still scarcely
twenty years old l
And she was ! being conducted amid
centurions and soldiers to a barren rock, which was haunted
by memories of death and anguish. She was as one dead, but
without the peace of death so :
thought her pagan sympathisers,
and were confirmed in their misgiving that either there
are no gods or they care not for the affairs of men.
And Octavia did not deceive herself. She well knew that
those islets of the Tyrrhene Sea were wet with the blood of
noble exiles ;
and that Caligula, on being told by one who had
been recalled from banishment that the exiles spent their time
in praying for the death of the reigning Emperor, had sent soldiers
round the islands to put all the prisoners to death. She
knew her peril, but she clung to life with the tenacity of youth.
Nero had no child. She thought that his excesses would precipitate
his end, and that some virtuous man might be chosen
by the Senate to succeed. After the death of Narcissus she
had been told the anecdote of the physiognomist who had
prophesied that Titus would one day be Emperor, and she
thought that under her brother's devoted friend there might
be the dawn of brighter days. She therefore wrote a letter to
Nero, before the trireme started, in which she said she would
1
Note 40. Age of Octavia.