When matrimony occurred, divorce was its natural consequence.
Incompatibility was sufficient cause. Cicero, who has given it to
history that the best women counted the years not numerically, but
by their different husbands, obtained a divorce on the ground that
his wife did not idolize him.

Divorce was not obligatory. Matrimony was. According to a recent
law whoso at twenty-five was not married, whoso, divorced or
widowed, did not remarry, whoso, though married, was without
children, was regarded as a public enemy and declared incapable of
inheriting or of serving the state. To this law, one of Augustus'
stupidities which presently fell into disuse, only a technical
observance was paid. Men married just enough to gain a position or
inherit a legacy; next day they got a divorce. At the moment of
need a child was adopted; the moment passed, the child was
disowned. But if the law had little value, at least it shows the
condition of things. Moreover, if in that condition Tiberius
participated, it was not because he did not differ from other men.

"Ho sempre amato la solitaria vita," Petrarch, referring to
himself, declared, and Tiberius might have said the same thing. He
was in love with solitude; ill with efforts for the unattained;
sick with the ingratitude of man. Presently it was decided that he
had lived long enough. He was suffocated--beneath a mattress at
that. Caesar had dreamed of a universal monarchy of which he
should be king; he was murdered. That dream was also Antony's; he
killed himself. Cato had sought the restoration of the republic,
and Brutus the attainment of virtue; both committed suicide. Under
the empire dreamers fared ill. Tiberius was a dreamer.