Moreover, Augustus desired a male issue; as his only living child, Julia's duty would be to provide her father with grandsons whom he could adopt as his heirs.

[7] In 25 BC, at the age of fourteen, Julia married her first cousin Marcellus, the son of her father's sister Octavia, who was some three years older than she.

In 21 BC, having now reached the age of 18, Julia married Agrippa, a man from a modest family who had risen to become Augustus's most trusted general and friend.

"[12] Agrippa was nearly 25 years her elder; it was a typical arranged marriage, with Julia functioning as a pawn in her father's dynastic plans.

There is from this period the report of an infidelity with one Sempronius Gracchus, with whom Julia allegedly had a lasting liaison (Tacitus describes him as "a persistent paramour").

According to Suetonius, Julia's marital status did not prevent her from conceiving a passion for Augustus's stepson, and thus her stepbrother, Tiberius, so it was widely rumoured.

Tiberius married Julia (11 BC), but first had to divorce Vipsania Agrippina (daughter from a previous marriage of Agrippa), the woman he dearly loved.

As the daughter of Augustus, mother (now legally the sister) of two of his heirs, Lucius and Gaius, and wife of another, Tiberius, Julia's future seemed assured to all.

Several of Julia's supposed lovers were exiled, most notably Sempronius Gracchus, while Iullus Antonius (son of Mark Antony and Fulvia) was forced to commit suicide.

Others have suggested that Julia's alleged paramours were members of her city clique, who wished to remove Tiberius from favour and replace him with Antonius.

[25] Reluctant to execute her, Augustus decided instead to confine Julia on Pandateria, an island that measures less than 1.75 square kilometres (0.68 sq mi), with no men in sight and forbidden even to drink wine.

Then, in AD 8, her elder daughter Julia the Younger was exiled to Tremirus, likewise charged with adultery; it may also have been related to the attempted revolt by her husband Lucius Aemilius Paullus and one Plautius Rufus.

[32] It is said that at any mention of Julia or her two disgraced children, Augustus would remark of them: "If only I had never married, or had died childless", slightly misquoting Hector, in the Iliad.

[33] There is mention of at least one suppressed plot to take her from captivity; one Lucius Audasius and one Asinius Epicadus had planned to forcibly take her and her son Agrippa Postumus from where they were held and to the armies, presumably to stage a coup against Augustus.

Simultaneously, her alleged paramour Sempronius Gracchus, who had endured 14 years of exile on Cercina (Kerkenna) off the African coast, was executed either at Tiberius' instigation[22] or on the independent initiative of L. Nonius Asprenas, proconsul of Africa.

Thus Marcus Velleius Paterculus (2.100) describes her as "tainted by luxury or lust", listing among her lovers Iullus Antonius, Quintius Crispinus, Appius Claudius, Sempronius Gracchus, and Cornelius Scipio.

Seneca the Younger refers to "adulterers admitted in droves";[40] Pliny the Elder calls her an “exemplum licentiae” (NH 21.9).

Seneca specifically mentions prostitution: "laying aside the role of adulteress, she there [in the Forum] sold her favours, and sought the right to every indulgence with even an unknown paramour."

[41] Among the sassy ripostes he attributes to her is a retort to people's surprise that her children all resembled Agrippa - “I take on a passenger only when the ship’s hold is full.”[42] On her character, he writes that Julia was extensively celebrated for her amiable, empathetic nature and studiousness despite her profligacy: "[S]he was abusing her standing as fortune’s darling, and her father’s, though in other respects she gained a great deal of credit for her love of literature and extensive learning... and her kindness, fellow-feeling, and lack of cruelty.

According to Dionysius' dating scheme, the Christian era supposedly began on 1 January AD 1, about one week after Jesus' birth at the end of December.

Suslyga's chronological ideas concerning the dating of Herod's death based on Julia the Elder's exile have since been challenged by archaeologists.