At the beginning of the 007 film GoldenEye, there was a scene in which 007 took a Bond girl in a sports car to a place called Monte Carlo, where France's newest stealth helicopter had been stolen during a test flight. 007 went there to investigate, and the road the sports car drove along was France's Azure Coast.
Monte Carlo was a city in the Principality of Monaco, and Monaco was precisely a necessary stop on the route to Mont, as designed by Napoleon. Racing along the Azure Coast in a convertible supercar was certainly delightful, but there were also many cyclists on that road. The Tour de France passed through Nice almost every year, and Bond encountered competing cyclists in the film.
Time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. In 43 BC, when Octavian was adopted by Caesar as his son, he was only twenty years old. By 13 BC, he was already fifty.
He could no longer be considered young at that age, and his wife Livia had also passed her best childbearing years. This forced them to consider the matter of an heir.
Perhaps there were other motives or purposes, but through the campaigns of conquest in the Alps, Augustus's adopted sons had both enhanced their military abilities, status, and prestige.
The poet Horace praised Drusus's victories over the many Alpine tribes and Tiberius's conquest of Raetia in two odes. Consolation to Livia, written during the later years of Augustus's reign, also praised the military achievements of the two brothers.
Livia was Drusus's mother and Caligula's great-grandmother. Her name included Julia, and she later received the title Augusta. A monument once stood along that coastal road by the Ligurian Sea, listing the names of the tribes conquered by the "Princeps."
From Caesar's time onward,