[1] The reference is to the vision described above.
AUGUSTINE, SAINT (d. c. 613), first archbishop of Canterbury, occupied a
position of authority in the monastery of St Andrew at Rome, when
Gregory I. summoned him to lead a mission to England in A.D. 596. The
apprehensions of Augustine's followers caused him to return to Rome, but
the pope furnished him with letters of commendation and encouraged him
to proceed. He landed in Thanet in A.D. 597, and was favourably received
by Aethelberht, king of Kent, who granted a dwelling-place for the monks
in Canterbury, and allowed them liberty to preach. Augustine first made
use of the ancient church of St Martin at Canterbury, which before his
arrival had been the oratory of the Queen Berhta and her confessor
Liudhard. Aethelberht upon his conversion employed all his influence in
support of the mission. In 601 Augustine received the pallium from
Gregory and was given authority over the Celtic churches in Britain, as
well as all future bishops consecrated in English territory, including
York. Authority over the see of York was not, however, to descend to
Augustine's successors. In 603 he consecrated Christ Church, Canterbury,
and built the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, afterwards known as St
Augustine's. At the conference of Augustine's Oak he endeavoured in vain
to bring over the Celtic church to the observance of the Roman Easter.
He afterwards consecrated Mellitus and Justus to the sees of London and
Rochester respectively. The date of his death is not recorded by Bede,
but MS. F of the Saxon Chronicle puts it in 614, and the _Annales
Monasterienses_ in 612.
See Bede, _Eccl. Hist._ (ed. by Plummer), i. 23-ii. 3.
AUGUSTINIAN CANONS, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church,
called also Austin Canons, Canons Regular, and in England Black Canons,
because their cassock and mantle were black, though they wore a white
surplice: elsewhere the colour of the habit varied considerably.
The canons regular (see CANON) grew out of the earlier institute of
canonical life, in consequence of the urgent exhortations of the Lateran
Synod of 1059. The clergy of some cathedrals (in England, Carlisle), and
of a great number of collegiate churches all over western Europe,
responded to the appeal; and the need of a rule of life suited to the
new regime produced, towards the end of the 11th century, the so-called
Rule of St Augustine (see AUGUSTINIANS). This Rule was widely adopted by
the canons regular, who also began to bind themselves by the vows of
poverty, obedience and chastity. In the 12th century this discipline
became universal among them; and so arose the order of Augustinian
canons as a religious order in the strict sense of the word. They
resembled the monks in so far as they lived in community and took
religious vows; but their state of life remained essentially clerical,
and as clerics their duty was to undertake the pastoral care and serve
the parish churches in their patronage. They were bound to the choral
celebration of the divine office, and in its general tenor their manner
of life differed little from that of monks.
Their houses, at first without bonds between them, soon tended to draw
together and coalesce into congregations with corporate organization and
codes of constitutions supplementary to the Rule. The popes encouraged
these centralizing tendencies; and in 1339 Benedict XII. organized the
Augustinian canons on the same general lines as those laid down for the
Benedictines, by a system of provincial chapters and visitations.
Some thirty congregations of canons regular of St Augustine are
numbered. The most important were: (1) the Lateran canons, formed soon
after the synod of 1059, by the clergy of the Lateran Basilica; (2)
Congregation of St Victor in Paris, c. 1100, remarkable for the
theological and mystical school of Hugh, Richard and Adam of St Victor;
(3) Gilbertines (see GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM, ST); (4) Windesheim
Congregation, c. 1400, in the Netherlands and over north and central
Germany (see GROOT, GERHARD), to which belonged Thomas a Kempis; (5)
Congregation of Ste Genevieve in Paris, a reform c. 1630. During the
later middle ages the houses of these various congregations of canons
regular spread all over Europe and became extraordinarily numerous. They
underwent the natural and inevitable vicissitudes of all orders, having
their periods of depression and degeneracy, and again of revival and
reform. The book of Johann Busch, himself a canon of Windesheim, _De
Reformatione monasteriorum_, shows that in the 15th century grave
relaxation had crept into many monasteries of Augustinian canons in
north Germany, and the efforts at reform were only partially successful.
The Reformation, the religious wars and the Revolution have swept away
nearly all the canons regular, but some of their houses in Austria still
exist in their medieval splendour. In England there were as many as 200
houses of Augustinian canons, and 60 of them were among the "greater
monasteries" suppressed in 1538-1540 (for list see Tables in F.A.
Gasquet's _English Monastic Life_). The first foundation was Holy
Trinity, Aldgate, by Queen Maud, in 1108; Carlisle was an English
cathedral of Augustinian canons. In Ireland the order was even more
numerous, Christ Church, Dublin, being one of their houses. Three houses
of the Lateran canons were established in England towards the close of
the 19th century. Most of the congregations of Augustinian canons had
convents of nuns, called canonesses; many such exist to this day.
See the works of Amort and Du Molinet, mentioned under CANON. Vol. ii.
of Helyot's _Hist. des ordres religieux_ (1792) is devoted to canons
regular of all kinds. The information is epitomized by Max Heimbucher,
_Orden und Kongregationen_, i. (1896), SS 54-60, where copious
references to the literature of the subject are supplied. See also
Otto Zockler, _Askese und Monchtum_, ii. (1897), p. 422; and Wetzer
und Welte, _Kirchenlexicon_ (2nd ed.), art. "Canonici Regulares" and
"Canonissae." For England see J.W. Clark, _Observances in use at the
Augustinian Priory at Barnwell_ (1897); and an article in _Journal of
Theological Studies_ (v.) by Scott Holmes. (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, or FRIARS, a religious order in the Roman Catholic
Church, sometimes called (but improperly) Black Friars (see FRIARS). In
the first half of the 13th century there were in central Italy various
small congregations of hermits living according to different rules. The
need of co-ordinating and organizing these hermits induced the popes
towards 1250 to unite into one body a number of these congregations, so
as to form a single religious order, living according to the Rule of St
Augustine, and called the Order of Augustinian Hermits, or simply the
Augustinian Order. Special constitutions were drawn up for its
government, on the same lines as the Dominicans and other mendicants--a
general elected by chapter, provincials to rule in the different
countries, with assistants, definitors and visitors. For this reason,
and because almost from the beginning the term "hermits" became a
misnomer (for they abandoned the deserts and lived conventually in
towns), they ranked among the friars, and became the fourth of the
mendicant orders. The observance and manner of life was, relatively to
those times, mild, meat being allowed four days in the week. The habit
is black. The institute spread rapidly all over western Europe, so that
it eventually came to have forty provinces and 2000 friaries with some
30,000 members. In England there were not more than about 30 houses (see
Tables in F.A. Gasquet's _English Monastic Life_). The reaction against
the inevitable tendencies towards mitigation and relaxation led to a
number of reforms that produced upwards of twenty different
congregations within the order, each governed by a vicar-general, who
was subject to the general of the order. Some of these congregations
went in the matter of austerity beyond the original idea of the
institute; and so in the 16th century there arose in Spain, Italy and
France, Discalced or Barefooted Hermits of St Augustine, who provided in
each province one house wherein a strictly eremitical life might be led
by such as desired it.
About 1500 a great attempt at a reform of this kind was set on foot
among the Augustinian Hermits of northern Germany, and they were formed
into a separate congregation independent of the general. It was from
this congregation that Luther went forth, and great numbers of the
German Augustinian Hermits, among them Wenceslaus Link the provincial,
followed him and embraced the Reformation, so that the congregation was
dissolved in 1526.
The Reformation and later revolutions have destroyed most of the houses
of Augustinian Hermits, so that now only about a hundred exist in
various parts of Europe and America; in Ireland they are relatively
numerous, having survived the penal times. The Augustinian school of
theology (Noris, Berti) was formed among the Hermits. There have been
many convents of Augustinian Hermitesses, chiefly in the Barefooted
congregations; such convents exist still in Europe and North America,
devoted to education and hospital work. There have also been numerous
congregations of Augustinian Tertiaries, both men and women, connected
with the order and engaged on charitable works of every kind (see
TERTIARIES).
See Helyot, _Hist. des ordres religieux_ (1792), iii.; Max Heimbucher,
_Orden und Kongregationen_, i. (1896), S 61-65; Wetzer und Welte,
_Kirchenlexicon_ (2nd ed.), art. "Augustiner"; Herzog,
_Realencyklopadie_ (3rd ed.), art. "Augustiner." The chief book on the
subject is Th. Kolde, _Die deutschen Augustiner-Kongregationen_
(1879). (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTINIANS, in the Roman Catholic Church, a generic name for religious
orders that follow the so-called "Rule of St Augustine." The chief of
these orders are:--Augustinian Canons (q.v.), Augustinian Hermits (q.v.)
or Friars, Premonstratensians (q.v.), Trinitarians (q.v.), Gilbertines
(see GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM, ST). The following orders, though not
called Augustinians, also have St Augustine's Rule as the basis of their
life: Dominicans, Servites, Our Lady of Ransom, Hieronymites,
Assumptionsts and many others; also orders of women: Brigittines,
Ursulines, Visitation nuns and a vast number of congregations of women,
spread over the Old and New Worlds, devoted to education and charitable
works of all kinds.
See Helyot, _Ordres religieux_ (1792), vols. ii., iii., iv.; Max
Heimbucher, _Orden und Kongregationen_, i. (1896), S 66-85; Wetzer und
Welte, _Kirchenlexicon_, i., 1665-1667.
St Augustine never wrote a Rule, properly so called; but _Ep._ 211
(_al._ 109) is a long letter of practical advice to a community of nuns,
on their daily life; and _Serm._ 355, 356 describe the common life he
led along with his clerics in Hippo. When in the second half of the 11th
century the clergy of a great number of collegiate churches were
undertaking to live a substantially monastic form of life (see CANON),
it was natural that they should look back to this classical model for
clerics living in community. And so attention was directed to St
Augustine's writings on community life; and out of them, and spurious
writings attributed to him, were compiled towards the close of the 11th
century three Rules, the "First" and "Second" being mere fragments, but
the "Third" a substantive rule of life in 45 sections, often grouped in
twelve chapters. This Third Rule is the one known as "the Rule of St
Augustine." Being confined to fundamental principles without entering
into details, it has proved itself admirably suited to form the
foundation of the religious life of the most varied orders and
congregations, and since the 12th century it has proved more prolific
than the Benedictine Rule. In an uncritical age it was attributed to St
Augustine himself, and Augustinians, especially the canons, put forward
fantastic claims to antiquity, asserting unbroken continuity, not merely
from St Augustine, but from Christ and the Apostles.
The three Rules are printed in Dugdale, _Monasticon_ (ed. 1846), vi.
42; and in Holsten-Brockie, _Codex Regularum_, ii. 121. For the
literature see Otto Zockler, _Askese und Monchtum_ (1897), pp. 347,
354. (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTOWO, a city of Russian Poland, in the government of Suwalki, 20 m.
S. of the town of that name, on a canal (65 m.) connecting the Vistula
with the Niemen. It was founded in 1557 by Sigismund II. (Augustus), and
is laid out in a very regular manner, with a spacious market-place. It
carries on a large trade in cattle and horses, and manufactures linen
and huckaback. Pop. (1897) 12,746.
AUGUSTUS (a name[1] derived from Lat. _augeo_, increase, i.e. venerable,
majestic, Gr. [Greek: Sebastos]), the title given by the Roman senate,
on the 17th of January 27 B.C., to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (63
B.C.-A.D. 14), or as he was originally designated, Gaius Octavius, in
recognition of his eminent services to the state (_Mon. Anc._ 34), and
borne by him as the first of the Roman emperors. The title was adopted
by all the succeeding Caesars or emperors of Rome long after they had
ceased to be connected by blood with the first Augustus.
Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on the 23rd of September 63 B.C., the
year of Cicero's consulship and of Catiline's conspiracy. He came of a
family of good standing, long settled at Velitrae (Velletri), but his
father was the first of the family to obtain a curule magistracy at Rome
and senatorial dignity. His mother, however, was Atia, daughter of
Julia, the wife of M. Atius Balbus, and sister of Julius Caesar, and it
was this connexion with the great dictator which determined his career.
In his fifth year (58 B.C.) his father died; about a year later his
mother remarried, and the young Octavius passed under her care to that
of his stepfather, L. Marcius Philippus. At the age of twelve (51 B.C.)
he delivered the customary funeral panegyric on his grandmother Julia,
his first public appearance. On the 18th of October 48 (or ? 47) B.C. he
assumed the "toga virilis" and was elected into the pontifical college,
an exceptional honour which he no doubt owed to his great-uncle, now
dictator and master of Rome. In 46 B.C. he shared in the glory of
Caesar's African triumph, and in 45 he was made a patrician by the
senate, and designated as one of Caesar's "masters of the horse" for the
next year. In the autumn of 45, Caesar, who was planning his Parthian
campaign, sent his nephew to study quietly at the Greek colony of
Apollonia, in Illyria. Here the news of Caesar's murder reached him and
he crossed to Italy. On landing he learnt that Caesar had made him his
heir and adopted him into the Julian gens, whereby he acquired the
designation of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. The inheritance was a
perilous one; his mother and others would have dissuaded him from
accepting it, but he, confident in his abilities, declared at once that
he would undertake its obligations, and discharge the sums bequeathed by
the dictator to the Roman people. Mark Antony had possessed himself of
Caesar's papers and effects, and made light of his young nephew's
pretensions. Brutus and Cassius paid him little regard, and dispersed to
their respective provinces. Cicero, much charmed at the attitude of
Antonius, hoped to make use of him, and flattered him to the utmost,
with the expectation, however, of getting rid of him as soon as he had
served his purpose. Octavianus conducted himself with consummate
adroitness, making use of all competitors for power, but assisting none.
Considerable forces attached themselves to him. The senate, when it
armed the consuls against Antonius, called upon him for assistance; and
he took part in the campaign in which Antonius was defeated at Mutina
(43 B.C.). The soldiers of Octavianus demanded the consulship for him,
and the senate, though now much alarmed, could not prevent his election.
He now effected a coalition with Antonius and Lepidus, and on the 27th
of November 43 B.C. the three were formally appointed a triumvirate for
the reconstitution of the commonwealth for five years. They divided the
western provinces among them, the east being held for the republic by
Brutus and Cassius. They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, and
caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand
knights. They further confiscated the territories of many cities
throughout Italy, and divided them among their soldiers. Cicero was
murdered at the demand of Antonius. The remnant of the republican party
took refuge either with Brutus and Cassius in the East, or with Sextus
Pompeius, who had made himself master of the seas.
Octavianus and Antonius crossed the Adriatic in 42 B.C. to reduce the
last defenders of the republic. Brutus and Cassius were defeated, and
fell at the battle of Philippi. War soon broke out between the victors,
the chief incident of which was the siege and capture by famine of
Perusia, and the alleged sacrifice of three hundred of its defenders by
the young Caesar at the altar of his uncle. But peace was again made
between them (40 B.C.). Antonius married Octavia, his rival's sister,
and took for himself the eastern half of the empire, leaving the west to
Caesar. Lepidus was reduced to the single province of Africa. Meanwhile
Sextus Pompeius made himself formidable by cutting off the supplies of
grain from Rome. The triumvirs were obliged to concede to him the
islands in the western Mediterranean. But Octavianus could not allow the
capital to be kept in alarm for its daily sustenance. He picked a
quarrel with Sextus, and when his colleagues failed to support him,
undertook to attack him alone. Antonius, indeed, came at last to his
aid, in return for military assistance in the campaign he meditated in
the East. But Octavianus was well served by the commander of his fleet,
M. Vipsanius Agrippa. Sextus was completely routed, and driven into
Asia, where he perished soon afterwards (36 B.C.). Lepidus was an object
of contempt to all parties, and Octavianus and Antonius remained to
fight for supreme power.
The five years (36-31 B.C.) which preceded the decisive encounter
between the two rivals were wasted by Antony in fruitless campaigns, and
in a dalliance with Cleopatra which shocked Roman sentiment. By Octavian
they were employed in strengthening his hold on the West, and his claim
to be regarded as the one possible saviour of Rome and Roman
civilization. His marriage with Livia (38 B.C.) placed by his side a
sagacious counsellor and a loyal ally, whose services were probably as
great as even those of his trusted friend Marcus Agrippa. With their
help he set himself to win the confidence of a public still inclined to
distrust the author of the proscriptions of 43 B.C. Brigandage was
suppressed in Italy, and the safety of the Italian frontiers secured
against the raids of Alpine tribes on the north-west and of Illyrians on
the east, while Rome was purified and beautified, largely with the help
of Agrippa (aedile in 33 B.C.). Meanwhile, indignation at Antony's
un-Roman excesses, and alarm at Cleopatra's rumoured schemes of founding
a Greco-Oriental empire, were rapidly increasing. In 32 B.C. Antony's
repudiation of his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian, and the discovery
of his will, with its clear proofs of Cleopatra's dangerous ascendancy,
brought matters to a climax, and war was declared, not indeed against
Antony, but against Cleopatra.
The decisive battle was fought on the 2nd of September 31 B.C. at Actium
on the Epirot coast, and resulted in the almost total destruction of
Antony's fleet and the surrender of his land forces. Not quite a year
later (Aug. 1, 30 B.C.) followed the capture of Alexandria and the
deaths by their own hands of Antony and Cleopatra. On the 11th of
January 29 B.C. the restoration of peace was marked by the closing of
the temple of Janus for the first time for 200 years. In the summer
Octavian returned to Italy, and in August celebrated a three days'
triumph. He was welcomed, not as a successful combatant in a civil war,
but as the man who had vindicated the sovereignty of Rome against its
assailants, as the saviour of the republic and of his fellow-citizens,
above all as the restorer of peace.
He was now, to quote his own words, "master of all things," and the
Roman world looked to him for some permanent settlement of the
distracted empire. His first task was the re-establishment of a regular
and constitutional government, such as had not existed since Julius
Caesar crossed the Rubicon twenty years before. To this task he devoted
the next eighteen months (Aug. 29-Jan. 27 B.C.). In the article on ROME:
_History_ (q.v.), his achievements are described in detail, and only a
brief summary need be given here. The "principate," to give the new form
of government its most appropriate name, was a compromise thoroughly
characteristic of the combination of tenacity of purpose with cautious
respect for forms and conventions which distinguished its author. The
republic was restored; senate, magistrates and assembly resumed their
ancient functions; and the public life of Rome began to run once more in
the familiar grooves. The triumvirate with its irregularities and
excesses was at an end. The controlling authority, which Octavian
himself wielded, could not indeed be safely dispensed with. But
henceforward he was to exercise it under constitutional forms and
limitations, and with the express sanction of the senate and people.
Octavian was legally invested for a period of ten years with the
government of the important frontier provinces, with the sole command of
the military and naval forces of the state, and the exclusive control of
its foreign relations. At home it was understood that he would year by
year be elected consul, and enjoy the powers and pre-eminence attached
to the chief magistracy of the Roman state. Thus the republic was
restored under the presidency and patronage of its "first citizen"
(_princeps civitatis_).
In acknowledgment of this happy settlement and of his other services
further honours were conferred upon Octavian. On the 13th of January 27
B.C., the birthday of the restored republic, he was awarded the civic
crown to be placed over the door of his house, in token that he had
saved his fellow-citizens and restored the Republic. Four days later
(Jan. 17) the senate conferred upon him the cognomen of Augustus.
But it was not only the machinery of government in Rome that needed
repair. Twenty years of civil war and confusion had disorganized the
empire, and the strong hand of Augustus, as he must now be called,
could alone restore confidence and order. Towards the end of 27 B.C. he
left Rome for Gaul, and from that date until October 19 B.C. he was
mainly occupied with the reorganization of the provinces and of the
provincial administration, first of all in the West and then in the
East. It was during his stay in Asia (20 B.C.) that the Parthian king
Phraates voluntarily restored the Roman prisoners and standards taken at
Carrhae (53 B.C.), a welcome tribute to the respect inspired by
Augustus, and a happy augury for the future. In October 19 B.C. he
returned to Rome, and the senate ordered that the day of his return
(Oct. 12) should thenceforward be observed as a public holiday. The
period of ten years for which his _imperium_ had been granted him was
nearly ended, and though much remained to be done, very much had been
accomplished. The pacification of northern Spain by the subjugation of
the Astures and Cantabri, the settlement of the wide territories added
to the empire by Julius Caesar in Gaul--the "New Gaul," or the
"long-haired Gaul" (Gallia Comata) as it was called by way of
distinction from the old province of Gallia Narbonensis (see GAUL)--and
the re-establishment of Roman authority over the kings and princes of
the Near East, were achievements which fully justified the acclamations
of senate and people.
In 18 B.C. Augustus's _imperium_ was renewed for five years, and his
tried friend Marcus Agrippa, now his son-in-law, was associated with him
as a colleague. From October of 19 B.C. till the middle of 16 B.C.
Augustus's main attention was given to Rome and to domestic reform, and
to this period belong such measures as the Julian law "as to the
marriage of the orders." In June of 17 B.C. the opening of the new and
better age, which he had worked to bring about, was marked by the
celebration in Rome of the Secular games. The chief actors in the
ceremony were Augustus himself and his colleague Agrippa,--while, as the
extant record tells us, the processional hymn, chanted by youths and
maidens first before the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine and then
before the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, was composed by Horace. The
hymn, the well-known _Carmen Saeculare_, gives fervent expression to the
prevalent emotions of joy and gratitude.
In the next year (16 B.C.), however, Augustus was suddenly called away
from Rome to deal with a problem which engrossed much of his attention
for the next twenty-five years. The defeat of Marcus Lollius, the legate
commanding on the Rhine, by a horde of German invaders, seems to have
determined Augustus to take in hand the whole question of the frontiers
of the empire towards the north, and the effective protection of Gaul
and Italy. The work was entrusted to Augustus's step-sons Tiberius and
Drusus. The first step was the annexation of Noricum and Raetia (16-15
B.C.), which brought under Roman control the mountainous district
through which the direct routes lay from North Italy to the upper waters
of the Rhine and the Danube. East of Noricum Tiberius reduced to order
for the time the restless tribes of Pannonia, and probably established a
military post at Carnuntum on the Danube. To Drusus fell the more
ambitious task of advancing the Roman frontier line from the Rhine to
the Elbe, a work which occupied him until his death in Germany in 9 B.C.
In 13 B.C. Augustus had returned to Rome; his return, and the conclusion
of his second period of rule, were commemorated by the erection of one
of the most beautiful monuments of the Augustan age, the Ara Pacis
Augustae (see ROMAN ART, Pl. II, III). His _imperium_ was renewed, again
for five years, and in 12 B.C., on the death of his former
fellow-triumvir Lepidus, he was elected Pontifex Maximus. But this third
period of his imperium brought with it losses which Augustus must have
keenly felt. Only a few months after his reappointment as Augustus's
colleague, Marcus Agrippa, his trusted friend since boyhood, died. As
was fully his due, his funeral oration was pronounced by Augustus, and
he was buried in the mausoleum near the Tiber built by Augustus for
himself and his family. Three years later his brilliant step-son Drusus
died on his way back from a campaign in Germany, in which he had reached
the Elbe. Finally in 8 B.C. he lost the comrade who next to Agrippa had
been the most intimate friend and counsellor of his early manhood, Gaius
Cilnius Maecenas, the patron of Virgil and Horace.
For the moment Augustus turned, almost of necessity, to his surviving
step-son. Tiberius was associated with him as Agrippa had been in the
tribunician power, was married against his will to Julia, and sent to
complete his brother Drusus's work in Germany (7-6 B.C.). But Tiberius
was only his step-son, and, with all his great qualities, was never a
very lovable man. On the other hand, the two sons of Agrippa and Julia,
Gaius and Lucius, were of his own blood and evidently dear to him. Both
had been adopted by Augustus (178. c.). In 6 B.C. Tiberius, who had just
received the tribunician power, was transferred from Germany to the
East, where the situation in Armenia demanded attention. His sudden
withdrawal to Rhodes has been variously explained, but, in part at
least, it was probably due to the plain indications which Augustus now
gave of his wish that the young Caesars should be regarded as his heirs.
The elder, Gaius, now fifteen years old (5 B.C.), was formally
introduced to the people as consul-designate by Augustus himself, who
for this purpose resumed the consulship (12th) which he had dropped
since 23 B.C., and was authorized to take part in the deliberations of
the senate. Three years later (2 B.C.) Augustus, now consul for the 13th
and last time, paid a similar compliment to the younger brother Lucius.
In 1 B.C. Gaius was given proconsular imperium, and sent to re-establish
order in Armenia, and a few years afterwards (A.D. 2) Lucius was sent to
Spain, apparently to take command of the legions there. But the fates
were unkind; Lucius fell sick and died at Marseilles on his way out, and
in the next year (A.D. 3) Gaius, wounded by an obscure hand in Armenia,
started reluctantly for home, only to die in Lycia. Tiberius alone was
left, and Augustus, at once accepting facts, formally and finally
declared him to be his colleague and destined successor (A.D. 4) and
adopted him as his son.
The interest of the last ten years of Augustus's life centres in the
events occurring on the northern frontier. The difficult task of
bringing the German tribes between the Rhine and the Elbe under Roman
rule, commenced by Drusus in 13 B.C., had on his death been continued by
Tiberius (9-6 B.C.). During Tiberius's retirement in Rhodes no decisive
progress was made, but in A.D. 4 operations on a large scale were
resumed. From Velleius Paterculus, who himself served in the war, we
learn that in the first campaign Roman authority was restored over the
tribes between the Rhine and the Weser, and that the Roman forces,
instead of returning as usual to their headquarters on the Rhine, went
into winter-quarters near the source of the Lippe. In the next year
(A.D. 5) the Elbe was reached by the troops, while the fleet, after a
hazardous voyage, arrived at the mouth of the same river and sailed some
way up it. Both feats are deservedly commemorated by Augustus himself in
the Ancyran monument. To complete the conquest of Germany and to connect
the frontier with the line of the Danube, it seemed that only one thing
remained to be done, to break the power of the Marcomanni and their king
Maroboduus. In the spring of A.D. 6 preparations were made for this
final achievement; the territory of the Marcomanni (now Bohemia) was to
be invaded simultaneously by two columns. One, starting apparently from
the headquarters of the army of Upper Germany at Mainz, was to advance
by way of the Black Forest and attack Maroboduus on the west; the other,
led by Tiberius himself, was to start from the new military base at
Carnuntum on the Danube and operate from the south-east.
But the attack was never delivered, for at this moment, in the rear of
Tiberius, the whole of Pannonia and Dalmatia burst into a blaze of
insurrection. The crisis is pronounced by Suetonius to have been more
serious than any which had confronted Rome since the Hannibalic war, for
it was not merely the loss of a province but the invasion of Italy that
was threatened, and Augustus openly declared in the senate that the
insurgents might be before Rome in ten days. He himself moved to
Ariminum to be nearer the seat of war, recruiting was vigorously carried
on in Rome and Italy, and legions were summoned from Moesia and even
from Asia. In the end, and not including the Thracian cavalry of King
Rhoemetalces, a force of 15 legions with an equal number of auxiliaries
was employed. Even so the task of putting down the insurrection was
difficult enough, and it was not until late in the summer of A.D. 9,
after three years of fighting, that Germanicus, who had been sent to
assist Tiberius, ended the war by the capture of Andetrium in Dalmatia.
Five days later the news reached Rome of the disaster to Varus and his
legions, in the heart of what was to have been the new province of
Germany beyond the Rhine. The disaster was avowedly due entirely to
Varus's incapacity and vanity, and might no doubt have been repaired by
leaders of the calibre of Tiberius and Germanicus. Augustus, however,
was now seventy-two, the Dalmatian outbreak had severely tried his
nerve, and now for the second time in three years the fates seemed to
pronounce clearly against a further prosecution of his long-cherished
scheme of a Roman Germany reaching to the Elbe.
All that was immediately necessary was done. Recruiting was pressed
forward in Rome, and first Tiberius and then Germanicus were despatched
to the Rhine. But the German leaders were too prudent to risk defeat,
and the Roman generals devoted their attention mainly to strengthening
the line of the Rhine.
The defeat of Varus, and the tacit abandonment of the plans of expansion
begun twenty-five years before, are almost the last events of importance
in the long principate of Augustus. The last five years of his life
(A.D. 10-14) were untroubled by war or disaster. Augustus was ageing
fast, and was more and more disinclined to appear personally in the
senate or in public. Yet in A.D. 13 he consented, reluctantly we are
told, to yet one more renewal of his _imperium_ for ten years,
stipulating, however, that his step-son Tiberius, himself now over
fifty, should be associated with himself on equal terms in the
administration of the empire. Early in the same year (January 16, A.D.
13) the last triumph of his principate was celebrated. Tiberius was now
in Rome, the command on the Rhine having been given to Germanicus, who
went out to it immediately after his consulship (A.D. 12), and the time
had come to celebrate the Dalmatian and Pannonian triumph, which the
defeat of Varus had postponed. Augustus witnessed the triumphal
procession, and Tiberius, as it turned from the Forum to ascend the
Capitol, halted, descended from his triumphal car, and did reverence to
his adopted father.
One last public appearance Augustus made in Rome. During A.D. 13 he and
Tiberius conducted a census of Roman citizens, the third taken by his
orders; the first having been in 28 B.C. at the very outset of his rule.
The business of the census lasted over into the next year, but on the
11th of May, A.D. 14, before a great crowd in the Campus Martius,
Augustus took part in the solemn concluding ceremony of burying away out
of sight the old age and inaugurating the new. The ceremony had been
full of significance in 28 B.C., and now more than forty years later it
was given a pathetic interest by Augustus himself. When the tablets
containing the vows to be offered for the welfare of the state during
the next lustrum were handed to him, he left the duty of reciting them
to Tiberius, saying that he would not take vows which he was never
destined to perform.
It was apparently at the end of June or early in July that Augustus left
Rome on his last journey. Travelling by road to Astura (Torre Astura) at
the southern point of the little bay of Antium, he sailed thence to
Capri and to Naples. On his way at Puteoli, the passengers and crew of a
ship just come from Alexandria cheered the old man by their spontaneous
homage, declaring, as they poured libations, that to him they owed life,
safe passage on the seas, freedom and fortune.
At Naples, in spite of increasing disease, he bravely sat out a
gymnastic contest held in his honour, and then accompanied Tiberius as
far as Beneventum on his way to Brundusium and Illyricum. On his return
he was forced by illness to stop at Nola, his father's old home.
Tiberius was hastily recalled and had a last confidential talk on
affairs of state. Thenceforward, says Suetonius, he gave no more thought
to such great affairs. He bade farewell to his friends, inquired after
the health of Drusus's daughter who was ill, and then quietly expired in
the arms of the wife who for more than fifty years had been his most
intimate and trusted guide and counsellor, and to whom his last words
were an exhortation to "live mindful of our wedded life." He died on the
19th of August, A.D. 14, in the same room in which his father had died
before him, and on the anniversary of his entrance upon his first
consulship fifty-seven years before (43 B.C.). The corpse was carried to
Rome in slow procession along the Appian Way. On the day of the funeral
it was borne to the Campus Martius on the shoulders of senators and
there burnt. The ashes were reverently collected by Livia, and placed in
the mausoleum by the Tiber which her husband had built for himself and
his family. The last act was the formal decree of the senate by which
Augustus, like his father Julius before him, was added to the number of
the gods recognized by the Roman state.
If we except writers like Voltaire who could see in Augustus only the
man who had destroyed the old republic and extinguished political
liberty, the verdict of posterity on Augustus has varied just in
proportion as his critics have fixed their attention, mainly, on the
means by which he rose to power, or the use which he made of the power
when acquired. The lines of argument followed respectively by friendly
and hostile contemporaries immediately after his death (Tac. _Ann_. i.
9, 10) have been followed by later writers with little change. But of
late years, our increasing mistrust of the current gossip about him, and
our increased knowledge of the magnitude of what he actually
accomplished, have conspicuously influenced the judgments passed upon
him. We allow the faults and crimes of his early manhood, his cruelties
and deceptions, his readiness to sacrifice everything that came between
him and the end he had in view. On the other hand, a careful study of
what he achieved between the years 38 B.C., when he married Livia, and
his death in A.D. 14, is now held to give him a claim to rank, not
merely as an astute and successful intriguer, or an accomplished
political actor, but as one of the world's great men, a statesman who
conceived and carried through a scheme of political reconstruction which
kept the empire together, secured peace and tranquillity, and preserved
civilization for more than two centuries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The most comprehensive work on Augustus and his age is
that of V. Gardthausen, _Augustus und seine Zeit_ (2 vols., Leipzig,
1891-1904), which deals with all aspects of Augustus's life, vol. ii.
consisting of elaborate critical and bibliographical notes. See also
histories of Rome generally, and among special works:--E.S.
Shuckburgh, _Augustus_ (London, 1903; reviewed by F.T. Richards in
_Class. Rev._ vol. xviii.), containing the text of the _Monumentum
Ancyranum_ (see also Gardthausen, book xiii.); J.B. Firth, _Augustus
Caesar_ (London, 1903), in "Heroes of the Nations" series; O. Seeck,
"Kaiser Augustus" (_Monographien zur Weltgeschichte_, xvii., 1902),
nine essays on special problems, e.g. the campaigns of Mutina, Perusia
and against Sextus Pompeius, "das Augustische Zeitalter"; A. Dumeril,
"Auguste et la fondation de l'empire romain," in the _Annales de la
Fac. des lett. de Bordeaux_ (1890); a suggestive monograph on the
reforms of Augustus in relation to the decrease of population is Jules
Ferlet's _L'Abaissement de la natalite a Rome_ (Paris, 1902).
(H. F. P.)