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In the circle which had formed about Julia there were a number of handsome, elegant, pleasing young men; among others one Sempronius Gracchus, a descendant of the famous tribunes. Julia seems toward the close to have had for him, even in the lifetime of Agrippa, certain failings which the Lex de adulteriis visited with terrible punishments.
The lex de maritandis ordinibus aimed with a thousand vexatious restrictions to constrain the nobility to marry and have children; the lex sumptuaria studied to restrain extravagance; the lex de adulteriis proclaimed martial law in the family, menacing an unfaithful wife and her accomplice with exile for life and the confiscation of half their substance; legislation of the harshest, this, which should scourge Rome to blood, to keep her from falling anew into the inveterate vices from which the civil wars were born.
The Lex de adulteriis aimed to reestablish order and virtue in the family, by threatening the unfaithful wife and her accomplice with exile for life and the confiscation of a part of their substance.
According to the Lex de adulteriis, he as husband should have made known the crime of his wife to the pretor and have had her punished. He had been one of those who had always most vehemently denounced the nobility for their weakness in the enforcement of this law.
On the other hand, did not he, the intransigeant traditionalist, who kept continually reproving the nobility for their laxity in self-discipline, merit rebuke, for allowing this thing to go on, not applying the law? The difficulty was serious; the lex de adulteriis began to be a torment to its creators.
The Younger Julia, like her mother, allowed herself to be caught in violation of the Lex Julia de adulteriis, and she also was compelled to take the road of exile.
To understand what this book really was when it was published, one must remember that it was written, read, and what is more, admired, ten years after the promulgation of the lex de maritandis ordinibus and of the lex de adulteriis; it should be read with what remains of the text of those laws in hand.
To understand well the tragic situation in which Augustus was placed by these revelations, one must remember various things: first that the lex de adulteriis, proposed by Augustus himself, obliged the father when the husband could not, or would not to punish the guilty daughter, or to denounce her to the prætor, if he had not the courage to punish her himself; second, that this law arranged that if the father and the husband failed to fulfil their proper duty, any one whoever, the first comer, might in the name of public morals make the denunciation to the prætor and stand to accuse the woman and her accomplice.
People naturally fell into the habit of designating all the offences enumerated in one law by the first name on the list, which doubtless gave its style to the Law Court deputed to try them all. All the offences tried by the Quæstio De Adulteriis would thus be called Adultery.
Exasperated by the growing disfavour of public opinion, the party of Tiberius decided on a desperate expedient to which Tiberius himself would not have dared set hand; that is, since Julia had a paramour, to adopt against her the weapon supplied by the lex Julia de adulteriis, made by her father, and so provoke the terrible scandal that until then every one had avoided in fear.
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