George Inness The Trout Brook painting

George Inness The Trout Brook paintingGeorge Inness The Delaware Water Gap paintingPierre Auguste Renoir Au bord de la mer painting
account of my infancy, going no farther back than my parents, I would certainly do so, for genealogies and family histories are tedious. But I shall not be able to avoid writing at some length about my grandmother Livia (the only one of my four grandparents who was alive at my birth) because unfortunately she is the chief character in the first part of my story and unless I give a clear account of her early life her later actions will not be intelligible. I have mentioned that she was married to the Emperor Augustus: this was her second marriage, following her divorce by my grandfather. After my father's death she became the virtual head of our family, supplanting my mother Antonia, my Uncle Tiberius (the legal head) and Augustus himself—to whose powerful protection my father had committed us children in his will.
Livia was of the Claudian family, one of the most ancient of Rome, and so was my grandfather. There is a popular ballad, still