The fortunes of the Imperial family during the last twenty years of Augustus' life are of absorbing interest. The death of Marcus Agrippa in 12 B.C. had again left the question of the succession open. Augustus, indeed, had formally adopted Agrippa's two eldest sons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, but Gaius was a mere child of eight, and the care of the Roman Empire could not devolve upon a boy. Agrippa had also left two daughters, Julia and Agrippina, and a third son, subsequently known as Agrippa Postumus, was born a few months later. Augustus had thus five grandchildren in the direct line, but he needed an heir who might, in case of his sudden demise, succeed at once. The death of Agrippa, therefore, enhanced the already brilliant prospects of the two sons of Livia, Tiberius and Drusus. The elder, Tiberius, had been quaestor and praetor, and had accompanied the Emperor into Gaul. He was married to Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa by his first wife, Pomponia, and to her he was devotedly attached. Augustus now commanded him to divorce her and marry the widowed Julia, who was thus for the third time forced into a matrimonial alliance for reasons of state. Tiberius unwillingly complied — "with great anguish of mind," says Suetonius, because he loved Vipsania, and disapproved of the character of Julia; and for the next few years he and his brother Drusus stood next the throne. They had already displayed their military capacity by adding Rhaetia, Vindelicia, and Noricum to the Empire, and Drusus in Germany and Tiberius in Pannonia continued to win new laurels for themselves and for Augustus. Drusus was perhaps the more popular of the two, for even in his early manhood there was noted in Tiberius that quality of moroseness which grew upon him in later life. Yet in capacity they were both adequate to any command which might be entrusted to them, and the loss of Marcus Agrippa, the most capable man of his time, was scarcely felt, thanks to the genius displayed by the two crown princes. But in 9 B.C. Drusus succumbed to the effects of a fall from his horse in Germany at the age of thirty, leaving behind him, as a child of but twelve months, the young Germanicus. His brother Tiberius hurried up to Germany to take over the vacant command, enjoyed in 7 B.C. the honor of a triumph, and in the following year received the tribunicia potestas for five years.
This, as we have seen in the case of Agrippa, was the highest distinction which Augustus could bestow, yet no sooner was it granted than Tiberius withdrew from public life. He had, indeed, good reason to be dissatisfied with a position which must have been intensely galling to one who inherited a full measure of the Claudian pride. He detested the wife who had been thrust upon him. Suetonius narrates how, some time after his marriage with Julia, he happened to encounter Vipsania and gazed after her with tears in his eyes, and how Augustus took precautions that they might never meet again. Naturally, therefore, Tiberius' relations with Julia were none of the happiest, and, after she had borne him a child who died in infancy, they ceased to live together. From this time forward, Julia cast discretion to the winds, and the irregularities of her conduct were the common talk and scandal of Rome. They were known to everyone except her father, to whom she was still the apple of his eye. Augustus was intensely proud of her beauty and of her winning, fascinating ways. He had bestowed unusual pains over her education, and Julia possessed, in addition to remarkable natural wit, all the accomplishments of the day. She had been brought up on the stern ancient model, under the care of the Empress Livia, and it was well known in Rome how the consort and the daughter of Augustus wove in their own apartments the woollen garments worn by the Emperor. Augustus had hoped that Julia would develop into a Roman matron distinguished for her gravity and reserve, and emulating in domestic virtues the patterns of Roman perfection. Save for dynastic reasons, nothing would have pleased him better than for Julia to have become a Vestal Virgin, dedicating her life to the religious service of the State. But this accomplished and high-spirited girl chafed at the restrictions imposed upon her. Many anecdotes are recorded which show how entirely her views were opposed to those of her father. "My father forgets that he is Caesar," she replied to one who reminded her that Augustus' ideal was simplicity; "I cannot but remember that I am Caesar's daughter." On another occasion, when she presented herself in the Emperor's presence in a rich and elaborate costume, he said nothing, but the look on his face showed his displeasure. The following day she appeared in a sober and simple dress, and he at once exclaimed that now she was attired as befitted Caesar's daughter. "Today," was her answer, "I am dressed to please my father. Yesterday I dressed to please my husband." At another time, he sternly rebuked a young Roman noble, named Lucius Vicinius, for calling upon his daughter at Baiae, and chided Julia for appearing in the theater in the company of some of the young fashionables of Roman society. "They will grow old with me," was her pert reply. But though her conduct vexed him sometimes and led him to exclaim that he had two troublesome daughters, "Julia and the Republic," he still had a profound belief in her purity and innocence, and was heard to boast that she was a second Claudia, the equal in virtue of the famous Roman matron whose chastity had availed to draw off the vessel conveying the image of Cybele from the shallows of the Tiber upon which it had grounded. Augustus was cruelly deceived. Julia was indeed a second Claudia, but her prototype was not Claudia the virtuous but the Clodia of Catullus, the notorious Medea of the Palatine, whose amors and excesses were still vividly remembered.
It is impossible not to feel some sympathy with a high-spirited girl who had been brought up in such uncongenial surroundings, in the society of a stepmother who saw in her the chief obstacle to her ambitious hopes for her own son, and of a father who did not carry into practice the stern morality which he inculcated into his womenfolk. Augustus' love for Julia was sincere and profound, but he had not hesitated to marry her not once but thrice for reasons of state. Her union with the young and handsome Marcellus may not have been uncongenial, but Marcus Agrippa was of the same age as her father, and too deeply immersed in his public duties to care much for pleasure. There was no open scandal before Agrippa's death, but when, on his demise, she found herself thrust upon the reluctant Tiberius, there is little wonder that she turned to the gay world for amusement and frivolity. The position was an almost intolerable one both for husband and wife, and Julia flung herself headlong into "the whirlpool's shrieking face." She counted her lovers by the score. Their names have come down to us and we find among them a Gracchus, a Scipio, an Appius Claudius, even an Antonius. Tiberius dared not lay the truth before Augustus. He did not venture to disclose to the father the adulteries of the daughter, and thus the associate of Augustus in the tribunician power and the second man in the Empire had to suffer in silence the stain which his wife inflicted upon his honor. Here, no doubt, we may find at least one of the motives which determined Tiberius to retire from Rome.
Yet this was not his only reason. The two eldest sons of his wife, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, were growing up to manhood and Augustus lavished upon them the affection of a grandfather. They were always in his company. At his meals, he liked to have them lying at the foot of his couch. Whenever he drove out, he took them with him in his carriage or had them riding on horseback by his side. He taught them himself and took pains that they should model their handwriting upon his own. He bestowed upon them the title of "Princes of the Youth" and looked eagerly forward to introducing them into public life. This eagerness was so manifest that the Senate passed special decrees to enable them to hold office at an exceptionally early age, and Gaius, while still in his teens, was already admitted to the priesthood and the senatorial benches at public banquets and the shows. Tiberius, the general and administrator, the capable man of action and statesman, might possess the esteem and the respect of Augustus; but the Emperor's affections were centered in the two young Princes, and Tiberius probably saw that, in the course of the next few years, he would be shelved to make way for the youthful favorites. He knew that he had been forced to marry their mother that he might act as guardian of her sons, and Julia not only disdained him as unequal in rank to herself — though a Claudius acknowledged no superior in point of rank and birth — but made his dishonor and her own the byword of the capital. Tiberius, therefore, in 6 B.C., declined the commission given him by Augustus to settle the affairs of Armenia and announced his intention of retiring to Rhodes. He urged as his excuse that his ambition had been satisfied and that his one desire was for rest and retirement. Livia implored him not to go. Augustus bitterly complained in the Senate that he was being deserted by his family. Tiberius was obdurate and abstained from food for four days until the requisite permission was granted. Then he hurriedly quitted Rome and betook himself to Rhodes, where he remained in exile for eight years, living in a modest house as a private citizen and on terms of equality with his Greek acquaintances.
The withdrawal of Tiberius left the field open to the two young princes. In 5 B.C., Augustus accepted the consulship in order to introduce Gaius Caesar to public life and accepted it again in 2 B.C. for the introduction of Lucius. But in the latter year, the storm which had been gathering over the head of Julia broke in full fury. Augustus at last heard the truth which had probably been known for years to everyone but himself. Grown reckless from long impunity, Julia had openly flaunted her folly in the Forum, and paraded her vices in the public streets. The daughter of the Emperor, now in her thirty-eighth year, was not content with being the leader of the gay and dissolute fashionable society, of which Ovid was the mouthpiece and instructor in vice, but she had fallen, if her accusers may be believed, to the level of the common women of the town. Augustus, in his fierce anger, spared neither himself nor the guilty ones. He made no effort at concealment. He called the Senate and the whole world to witness how a Roman father could punish the crimes of a dearly loved child. Julia was banished to the barren island of Pandateria, where no one was allowed to approach her without permission. He forbade her the use of wine and all the delicacies and comforts of life. Most of her paramours suffered a like sentence of banishment. One alone was put to death. This was Julius Antonius, a son of the Triumvir, who had been spared and brought up by Augustus in the palace and had been mad enough to intrigue with the daughter of the man who had slain his father. Augustus felt the disgrace deeply. When he was told that one of Julia's freedwomen named Phoebe, who had been privy to her mistress' amours, had hanged herself, the bitter cry escaped him, "I would that I had been Phoebe's father rather than Julia's." It was not only the honor of the Imperial House which suffered but the credit of the imperial policy. He had been struggling for years against the corruption of the age. The disgrace of his own daughter now advertised the impotence of his efforts. Horace had congratulated the Emperor on his success in restoring domestic purity,
Nullis polluitur casta domus stupris,
Mos et lex maculosum edomuit nefas;
here was the damning commentary. Augustus had to admit defeat, and his daughter had struck the blow. It is this which explains the severity with which he treated the guilty Julia. He was not a moral man himself, but he had preached morality to others. Had he acted up to his own professions, he might have taught better and learned how to forgive. Rome sympathized with the daughter, not with the father. The people constantly petitioned him to relent and revoke the decree of banishment, but he was obdurate and, solemnly and in public, cursed all such wives and daughters. The only concession he made was to allow Julia a change of prison from an island to the mainland, and to grant her an increase of personal comforts. But to the day of his death he never saw her again, and whenever her name or that of her daughter, Julia, who followed in her mother's footsteps, was mentioned, he would quote the line from Homer: "Ah! would that I had never entered wedlock and had died a childless man!"
The disgrace of Julia made no immediate change in the position of Tiberius. Augustus, indeed, had upon his own authority sent her, in the name of his stepson, a formal notice of repudiation, and the ill-starred marriage was thus dissolved. Tiberius rejoiced at his release, but thought it politic to write frequent letters to Augustus, begging him to deal leniently with the culprit. And he now began to be anxious about his own situation, and to regret the hasty step which he had taken in retiring to Rhodes. But he found Augustus in no yielding mood. He was curtly informed, when he wrote asking to be allowed to return to Rome to see his family, that as he had been so eager to abandon them he might dismiss from his mind all anxiety on their account. The Emperor had been deeply angered at Tiberius' desertion of him, and the utmost concession which Livia could obtain from her husband was his consent to announce that Tiberius was acting as his legate in Rhodes. This, however, can scarcely have concealed from the prying eyes of Roman society the fact that Tiberius was in deep disgrace, and the world now looked to Gaius and Lucius as the Emperor's heirs.
The elder of the two was sent at the head of an important mission to the East, under the tutelage of Lollius, and the public were given to understand that vast campaigns were in preparation which should rival the conquests of Alexander. Gaius was then twenty years of age, and, when he reached Samos, Tiberius crossed over from Rhodes and paid a visit to his young kinsman. We do not know what took place at the interview, but it is evident that Tiberius endeavored to persuade Augustus that he had withdrawn to Rhodes in order that he might not stand in the way of Gaius' advancement, and that he sought vainly to conciliate the favor of the youth who seemed certain of the succession. A story was current that Augustus had promised Gaius that he would not allow Tiberius to return to Rome except with his consent, and Lollius, who was Gaius' guardian and tutor, was a bitter enemy of Tiberius. Tiberius, therefore, not only failed to win Gaius' goodwill, but his prestige fell so low that one of Gaius' associates, heated with wine at his table, jumped up and swore that he would go to Rhodes and bring back "the exile's head," if only Gaius gave the word. Clearly throughout this period, Tiberius was regarded in the East as a man whose death would not be unwelcome in the highest quarters, and for two years he went in fear of his life. But suddenly there came a change in his fortunes, which was attributed to the ceaseless intercession of his mother Livia on his behalf, and to the disgrace of Lollius. The latter was discovered to have been in treasonable communication with the Parthians, and the young Gaius had grown tired of the ascendency which his guardian and adviser had exercised over him. His hatred of Lollius led him to become reconciled with Tiberius, and Gaius seems to have urged the Emperor to permit his stepfather's return to Rome. Consequently, in 2 A.D., the exile of Rhodes was granted permission to return to the capital, on condition that he remained a private citizen and took no part in public life.
Tiberius was now in his forty-fifth, and Augustus in his sixty-fifth year, and the prospects of the former succeeding to the Empire seemed remote indeed, inasmuch as Gaius and Lucius Caesar were grown to manhood. Yet within eighteen months of Tiberius' return both were dead. Lucius Caesar, the consul elect, who had been sent on a mission to Spain, was seized with illness at Massilia, and died there. In the following year, Gaius was treacherously wounded in Armenia. The wound was not in itself a fatal one, but the young Prince, whose constitution was not of the strongest, made slow recovery, and ruined his chance of restoration to health by omitting the proper medical precautions and indulging in excess. He withdrew to Syria, and was on his way home when he succumbed in the city of Limyra. This double bereavement weighed heavily upon the now aging Emperor. There is a charming letter addressed by him to Gaius on the occasion of his own sixty-sixth birthday, in which he assures him how keenly he feels his absence. "Oculi mei requirunt meum Caium." My eyes sadly miss the presence of my dear Gaius, especially on fête days, like today, but, wherever you are, I hope that you are well and happy and have celebrated my birthday." Augustus had made no secret of his intentions towards Gaius, who was to have been his heir and successor. Now both he and his brother were dead, and public gossip in Rome did not hesitate to hint at poison, and connect Livia and Tiberius with deaths so sudden and so opportune to their interests. There was, of course, not a jot of evidence to warrant the suspicion, and it may be dismissed without comment. The poisoner had not yet come to court.
Thus, by a series of extraordinary fatalities, in which a superstitious world saw the manifest hand of destiny, the imperial family had been sadly thinned in numbers. It was certainly remarkable that the valetudinarian Emperor should have survived so many of the younger scions of his house. Marcellus, Drusus, Gaius, and Lucius Caesar, all four had been cut off in early manhood, while Agrippa had died in the full vigor of middle age. The dearest hopes of the Emperor had been blasted by these unlooked-for calamities, and the disgrace of Julia still embittered his life. He had, indeed, still descendants in the direct line. Agrippa Postumus was now a boy of fifteen. Julia, his eldest granddaughter, was married to Lucius Aemilius Paulus, and her sister Agrippina to Germanicus, the son of Drusus. But though these unions gave promise of a new generation, Augustus was well advanced in years and needed a prop upon which he might lean. It was natural, therefore, that he should turn again to Tiberius and restore him to favor. No sooner did the Emperor receive the melancholy intelligence of the death of Gaius, than he adopted his stepson Tiberius and bestowed upon him the tribunicia potestas for a second time, together with the command of the Rhine legions for the prosecution of the war in Germany. But, faithful as ever in his devotion towards his lineal descendants, he adopted at the same time his sole surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, and insisted that Tiberius should adopt his nephew Germanicus, the son of his dead brother Drusus, and the husband of Agrippina. By so doing the Emperor hoped to unite the imperial family and remove all causes of jealousy. The remainder of his reign was passed in almost unbroken warfare. During the next five years, from 4 A.D. to 9 A.D., Tiberius scarcely set foot in the capital. He was continuously with the legions, first in Germany, then in Pannonia, and afterwards back again on the Rhine, and only saw Augustus as he visited Rome to pass from one command to the other and receive his chief's instructions. The years were dark and gloomy, for the Pax Romana had been broken and Rome was fighting on the Rhine and the Danube not so much for glory as for existence. It was fortunate for Augustus that in this time of trial he had so experienced and capable a general as Tiberius on whom to rely, and that the genius of the Claudian House manifested itself once more in the young Germanicus, the worthy son of a worthy father.
But the domestic troubles of Augustus had not yet come to an end. In 7 A.D., three years after his adoption, Postumus was banished to the island of Planasia and kept under strict military guard. His offense is unknown, and his unhappy fate forms one of the dark mysteries of the House of Caesar. All the authorities agree that in character he was intractable and wild. Suetonius described him as brutish and fierce, "sordidum ac ferox ingenium." Velleius speaks of his extraordinary depravity of mind and his recklessness, "Mira pravitate animi atque ingenii in proecipitia conversus." Tacitus, whose detestation of Tiberius would naturally bias him in favor of one of Tiberius' victims, declares that he was utterly devoid of worthy qualities and possessed only the brute courage of physical strength, "Rudem sane bonarum artium et robore corporis stolide ferocem.' We may suppose, therefore, that the young Prince, whose personal appearance was ungainly and repellent, was a savage in manners, moody and vicious, and a stolid rebel against authority. His tastes were low. His mind depraved and gross, and he lacked the dignity which was part of the Roman noble's birthright. Probably in his childhood, he had been neglected and allowed to run wild. His chances of the succession seemed hardly worth consideration, and it is to be remembered that he was brought up in the household of Julia at a time when his mother was scandalizing the capital. The account which Cassius Dio gives of how this luckless prince idled away his time at Baiae, fishing rod in hand, and claimed the attributes of Neptune and the command of the sea on the strength of the good fortune which attended his angling, suggests a dull wit and sluggish intellect, and it may well be that Agrippa Postumus inherited that taint of madness which was to show itself in diverse yet unmistakable forms in the younger descendants of the Caesars. Augustus apparently attributed these defects of mind and character to willful perversity rather than to natural shortcomings. He soon grew impatient with his adopted son and impatience changed to detestation. Postumus had no friends at court, but he had many bitter enemies, and none more persevering and irreconcilable than the astute Livia, whose ascendancy over her husband grew stronger with his increasing infirmities, and whose ambitions were centered in one object alone, the advancement of her son Tiberius. Postumus returned her hate in equal measure; accused her to his associates of all manner of crimes, and, in his passion, did not spare the Emperor himself. The only living grandson of Augustus, he was jealous that his stepfather Tiberius should rob him of the whole or part of his inheritance, and the mad boy vowed vengeance. His unguarded language was carried to the Emperor's ears, and Augustus determined to cast him off. He denounced Postumus in the Senate, where he complained bitterly of the lad's character and vices, and the senators formally sanctioned the sentence of exile which had been passed upon him.
Agrippa Postumus, therefore, was deported to the island of Planasia and kept under strict watch. He found some sympathizers, for mention is made by Seutonius of an obscure conspiracy formed with the avowed object of rescuing him and his mother from their captivity. But the plotters were men of no account, a convicted embezzler named Lucius Audasius, and Asinius Epicadus, who was partially of Parthian descent. Such a crazy scheme had no chance of success and scarcely merits the name of conspiracy. Much more interesting is the story mentioned by Tacitus that Augustus, shortly before his death, repented of the harshness with which he had treated his grandson and paid him a secret visit in his prison. It was reported that he was accompanied only by Fabius Maximus and a few trusted servants, and that many tears were shed on both sides at the interview. It was said, too, that Maximus revealed the visit to his wife Marcia, who communicated it to the Empress Livia, and that soon afterwards Maximus committed suicide and Marcia blamed herself as the cause of his death. Probably the story was the merest gossip, but it is quite conceivable that the aged Emperor, softening under the shadow of approaching death, repented him of the harshness with which he had treated a dull-witted lad, who probably had been more sinned against than sinning. The eager haste with which Livia and Tiberius hurried Agrippa Postumus out of the world, as soon as Augustus had breathed his last, shows their anxiety to rid themselves of one who had been their victim and might even now become a dangerous rival.
Agrippa Postumus had been banished in 7 A.D. Two years later, his sister Julia suffered the same fate. She had been married to Lucius Aemilius Paulus, one of the leading members of the Roman aristocracy, and bore him a son and a daughter. But undeterred by the punishment which had overtaken her mother, she had followed the elder Julia's evil example, and the irregularities of her conduct were as notorious as those of her parent. Her lovers were many, but chief among them was Decimus Silanus, and the guilty pair were charged not only with adultery but with treason. We do not know what form the treason took, but in some way or other the crime of Julia and Silanus appears to be closely connected with the banishment of Ovid, which took place at the same time. The nominal reason assigned for the sentence passed upon the poet was that the verses which he had written on "The Art of Love" were an offense against public morality. Such a judgement would be endorsed by any censor of public morals, but this notorious poem had been published some years before — in the year, indeed, which had witnessed the banishment of the elder Julia — and the elegiacs of repentance, which Ovid penned in his exile, clearly indicate that this was not his principal offense. Many theories have been started in explanation of the obscure lines in which he refers to the reason which brought down upon him the wrath of the Emperor, but the most plausible seems to be that which attributes to him a guilty knowledge of the intrigue between Julia the younger and Silanus, with both of whom he was probably on terms of intimate friendship. Ovid was the poet laureate, not of the court — for Augustus spurned all his overtures — but of the fashionable and depraved society of Rome, which, in the scathing words of Tacitus, existed only to corrupt and to be corrupted: "Corrumpere et corrumpi soeculum vocant." And thus when Augustus discovered that Ovid had been privy to an intrigue which brought new scandal and disgrace upon the Imperial House, he banished to the farthest corner of the Euxine the poet to whose libidinous verses he attributed much of the existing depravity. Julia was exiled from Rome. The fate of Silanus is not known. Thus of the five children of Julia and Marcus Agrippa, the two eldest sons were dead, the youngest son and the elder daughter were in deep disgrace, and only the second daughter, Agrippina, — the wife of Germanicus, who was winning golden opinions as a general — was any comfort to the Emperor in his declining years.
Augustus had now passed his seventieth year, and one cannot but pity the central figure in the desolate mansion on the Palatine, who had suffered so many bitter disappointments in the intimacy of his domestic life. His hopes rested upon Tiberius and Germanicus. The one was a man of middle age, and the younger was the popular idol of Rome. If Augustus had been spared to greater length of years, it is conceivable that Tiberius might have been supplanted by the son of his dead brother Drusus, whom he had been obliged to adopt as his own son. For it is tolerably clear that there never was any real warmth of feeling between Augustus and Tiberius. Tiberius possessed many sterling and indeed inestimable qualities, but from his earliest days he seems to have been reserved and morose, and Augustus liked to be surrounded by young people who were frank and joyous. Full allowance must be made for the extraordinary embarrassments of Tiberius' position. The stepson saw himself successively passed over in favor of the nephew, the minister, and then of the young grandsons. Only when the hand of death had removed the two first husbands of the Emperor's daughter was he thought worthy of becoming the son-in-law of Augustus, and then he was forced to separate from a wife he loved to take to his house a woman whose character was a byword in the city. If, as seems probable, the Empress Livia, his mother, had brought him up from his earliest years to hope for the succession, Tiberius might well be embittered that so many new obstacles from time to time arose in his path, and that his great services to the Empire seemed doomed to undergo periods of eclipse. His character is one of the standing puzzles of history, alike in his earlier and later years. But the account of Suetonius seems to be most consonant with the facts as we know them. The prevailing tradition in Rome was that Augustus was repelled by the moroseness of his stepson, and by the gloomy hauteur and reserve which were typical of the Claudian House. It was said that when Tiberius entered a room all lively conversation was at once checked. His frowning brows made others feel ill at ease. On one occasion, when Tiberius quitted the Emperor's chamber, the doorkeepers declared that they heard Augustus exclaim, "I pity the Roman people when they come between those slow-moving jaws" (Miserum populum Romanum qui sub tam lentis maxillis erit). And yet Suetonius pertinently remarks, "I cannot bring myself to believe that in a matter of such momentous importance as the settlement of the succession, such a master of circumspection and prudence as Augustus would have acted rashly," and he states his conviction that the Emperor carefully weighed the virtues and vices of his stepson in the balance and found that the good qualities weighed down the bad. Augustus was right. He adopted Tiberius as his son, not because he was attached to him or in order to please Livia, but for reasons of state, because Tiberius, after the death of Marcus Agrippa, was the strongest man in the Empire, and its most experienced and capable general. Augustus was cautious, so was Tiberius. He was not likely to embark upon any mad or dangerous enterprise. He had gained sufficient military glory. He had won laurels enough. He would not emperil the Empire to win more. Augustus could not fail to respect the man who had stamped out the Pannonian insurrection and made the Rhine bank secure after the disaster to Varus. He might not possess the brilliant qualities or the dash of his brother Drusus, which Drusus had transmitted to his son Germanicus, but he was safe, and Augustus, after the death of his favorite nephew and grandsons, wanted a safe man to succeed him.