However, I will pursue my business where I left it, and carry it
farther than that common observation of the several ages in which
these authors flourished.
When Horace writ his satires, the monarchy of his Caesar was in its
newness, and the government but just made easy to the conquered
people. They could not possibly have forgotten the usurpation of
that prince upon their freedom, nor the violent methods which he had
used in the compassing of that vast design; they yet remembered his
proscriptions, and the slaughter of so many noble Romans their
defenders--amongst the rest, that horrible action of his when he
forced Livia from the arms of her husband (who was constrained to
see her married, as Dion relates the story), and, big with child as
she was, conveyed to the bed of his insulting rival. The same Dion
Cassius gives us another instance of the crime before mentioned--
that Cornelius Sisenna, being reproached in full senate with the
licentious conduct of his wife, returned this answer: that he had
married her by the counsel of Augustus (intimating, says my author,
that Augustus had obliged him to that marriage, that he might under
that covert have the more free access to her).
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