Editing Livia (section)

==Personality==
While reporting various unsavory hearsay, the ancient sources generally portray Livia as a woman of proud and queenly attributes, faithful to her imperial husband. Dio records two of her utterances: "Once, when some naked men met her and were to be put to death in consequence, she saved their lives by saying that to a chaste woman such men are in no way different from statues. When someone asked her how she had gained respect from Augustus, she answered that it was by being scrupulously chaste herself, doing gladly whatever pleased him, not meddling with any of his affairs, and, in particular, by pretending neither to hear nor to notice the favourites of his passion."<ref>Cassius Dio, 58.2.5</ref>

With the passage of time, however, some thought that with widowhood a haughtiness and an overt craving for power and the outward trappings of status came increasingly to the fore.{{Citation needed|date=June 2019}} Livia had always been a principal beneficiary of the climate of adulation that Augustus had done so much to create, and which Tiberius despised ("a strong contempt for honours", Tacitus, ''Annals'' 4.37). In AD 24, whenever she attended the theatre, a seat among the Vestals was typically reserved for her (''Annals'' 4.16), but this may have been intended more as an honor for the Vestals than for her (cf. Ovid, ''Tristia'', 4.2.13f, ''Epist. ex Ponto'' 4.13.29f).

Livia played a vital role in the formation of her children Tiberius and Drusus. Attention focuses on her part in the divorce of her first husband, father of Tiberius, in 39/38 BC. Her role in this is unknown, as well as in Tiberius's divorce of [[Vipsania Agrippina]] in 12 BC at Augustus's insistence: whether it was merely neutral or passive, or whether she actively colluded in Caesar's wishes.