AUGUSTUS AND HIS WORSHIPPERS
_O tutela præsens_
_Italiæ dominæque Romæ._
[Sidenote: Popular feeling towards Augustus.]
After the settlement of the constitution in B.C. 23 Augustus was only
absent from Italy three times, from B.C. 22 to B.C. 19 in Sicily and the
East, from B.C. 16 to B.C. 13 in Gaul and Spain, and B.C. 9-10 in Gaul.
At the outbreak of the Pannonian and Dalmatian wars A.D. 6-9 he stayed
for some time at Ariminum. For the rest of the time he lived at Rome,
with the usual visits to his country houses, made by land or yacht.
His return to the city after any prolonged absence was celebrated with
every sign of rejoicing, with sacrifices, music, and a general holiday.
On his return from Gaul in B.C. 13 an altar was dedicated to _Fortuna
redux_.[270] Nor was this mere adulation. The people had come to look
upon him as the best guarantee of peace and security. The troubles of
the days preceding the civil wars, the street fighting and massacres,
the horrors of the civil war itself, were not forgotten: but his own
part in them was ignored or forgiven; it was only remembered that he had
put an end to them; that he had restored the ruinous city in unexampled
splendour; that it was owing to his liberality, or that of his friends
acting under his influence, that at Rome there were luxurious baths,
plentiful water, abundant food, streets free from robbers, help ready in
case of fire, and cheerful festivals nearly always in progress. It was
thanks to him that the roads in Italy were not beset by brigands, that
the corn-ships from Egypt crowded the harbour of Puteoli unmolested by
pirates on their course,[271] that not only the dreaded Parthian, but
princes from the ends of the earth were sending embassies desiring the
friendship of Rome. At the least sign of the old disorders they clamoured
for his return and besought him to become Dictator, director of the corn
trade, perpetual guardian of morals, anything, convinced that under his
absolute rule there would be peace, plenty, and security. Horace exactly
represents this feeling when he addresses Augustus in his absence in
Gaul: “Oh scion of the gracious gods, oh best guardian of the race of
Romulus ... return! Your country calls for you with vows and prayer ...
for when you are here the ox plods up and down the fields in safety;
Ceres and bounteous blessing cheer our farms; our sailors speed o’er seas
that know no fear of pirates; credit is unimpaired; no foul adulteries
stain the home; punishment follows hard on crime.... Who fears Parthian,
Scythian, German, or Spaniard with Cæsar safe? Each man closes a day of
peace on his native hills, trains his vines to the widowed trees, and
home returning, light of heart, quaffs his wine and ends the feast with
blessings on thee as a god indeed.”[272]
[Sidenote: The worship of Augustus.]
These feelings found expression in a form which in our day is apt
to appear, according to our temperament, ridiculous or profane. In
plain terms this was to treat Augustus as divine, a god on earth. The
various expressions of Horace[273] may perhaps be put down to poetical
exaggeration or conventional compliment, though there is a real meaning
at their back; but though Augustus refused to allow temples and altars
to himself in Rome and Italy,[274] and even ordered certain silver
statuettes to be melted down, the evidence of inscriptions makes it
certain that the cult began in his lifetime in several places, as at
Pompeii, Puteoli, Cumæ in Campania, and in other parts of Italy.[275]
In Rome itself, when Augustus reorganised the _vici_, the old worship
of the _Lares Compitales_ at some consecrated spot in each _vicus_
or “parish” was restored, but they were commonly spoken of as _Lares
Augusti_, and the _Genius Augusti_ was associated with them. It is this
fact that, to a certain extent, explains and renders less irrational an
attitude of mind which we are apt to dismiss as merely absurd. Each man
had a _Genius_—a deity to whom he was a particular care. We speak of a
man’s “mission,” implying by the word itself some external and directing
power, probably divine. The step is not a long one which identifies the
man and his genius, especially when his mission seems to be to bring
us peace and prosperity. “Oh Melibæus, ’twas a god that wrought this
ease for us!” exclaims the countryman in Vergil, who had got back his
lands. This confusion between the inspirer and the inspired, between the
mission and the man, was everywhere apparent. Among the statues in the
temples, and in the sacred hymns and other acts of worship, the figure
or the name of Augustus was associated with those of the gods in a way
that admitted, indeed, of a distinction being drawn between a memorial
to an almost divine man and an act of devotion to a god, but often
obscured that distinction for ordinary folk. When we dedicate a church
to a saint, or “to the glory of God and in memory of So-and-so,” the
distinction is of course clear, but the confusion which has from time to
time resulted is also notorious. Thus in the Cuman Calendar of a sacred
year, in which the anniversaries of striking events in the career of
Augustus are marked for some act of worship, sometimes the _supplicatio_
is bluntly stated as _Augusto_; sometimes in honour of some abstract idea
as _imperio Augusti_, _Fortunæ reduci_, _Victoriæ Augustæ_; at others to
a god—_Iovi sempiterno_, _Vestæ_, _Marti Ultori_, _Veneri_. In fact, the
_supplicatio_ always had a double reference, it was an act of prayer or
thanksgiving to a god, but it was also an honour to a successful man. The
two ideas properly distinct easily coalesced. A _supplicatio_ in honour
of Augustus, without much violence, became a _supplicatio_ to him.
[Illustration: ALTAR DEDICATED TO THE LARES OF AUGUSTUS IN B.C. 2 BY A
MAGISTER VICI.
_Photographed from the Original in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence._
_To face page 196._]
Of the still more formal cult which arose after his death with a temple
regularly dedicated to him by Livia on the Palatine, and a new college
of Augustales to keep up the worship in all parts of the Empire, an
explanation somewhat analogous may be given. He was declared _divus_ by
the Senate, he was the late Emperor of blessed memory, a sainted soul,
the very spirit or genius of eternal Rome. The traditions in early
Roman history of the god-born and deified founder, the hero-worship of
Greece, the veil which concealed (as it still conceals) the state of the
departed, combined with the tolerant spirit of polytheism to make it
almost as easy for the men of that time to admit a new deity into the
Olympian hierarchy, as for mediæval Europe to admit a new saint into the
Calendar.
Augustus, as we said, had the good sense and modesty to put difficulties
in the way of this worship in Rome and Italy. It was another matter
in the provinces. The divine, or semi-divine, honours paid him there
were closely bound up with loyalty to Rome and a belief in her eternal
mission. He therefore allowed temples and altars to be built, but always
on the understanding that the name of Rome should be associated with
his own. Such a method of expressing devotion to Rome and reverence for
her magistrates had not been unknown in earlier times. In the second
century B.C. a colossal statue of Rome had been set up by the Rhodians in
a temple of Athena; the people of Chalcis had erected a temple in honour
of Flamininus; and Cicero implies that in his time it was not an uncommon
thing to do in the Asiatic provinces. At Smyrna a temple to Rome had
been erected in B.C. 195;[276] and even before these the communities in
Asia and Greece had been accustomed to honour the Ptolemies in a similar
manner. The new cult therefore had nothing strange to the feelings and
habits of the time. It began early in his career of success—not later at
most than B.C. 36, after the defeat of Sextus Pompeius[277]—and it spread
rapidly. We hear of temples “to Rome and Augustus,” or altars, at Cyme,
Ancyra, Pergamus, Nicomedia, Alexandria, Paneas, Sparta, and elsewhere
in the East. Connected with them were yearly festivals and games, as at
Athens, Ancyra, and in Cilicia.[278] Nor was it in the East only that
this worship began in the lifetime of Augustus. We hear of temples or
altars in Spain, Mœsia, Pannonia, Narbonne; and the altar at Lugdunum
(Lyon), consecrated by Drusus in B.C. 12, was deliberately intended to
supersede the Druidical religion which was national and separatist.
[Sidenote: The attitude of Augustus to this worship.]
For forming an estimate of Augustus himself it is of great interest to
decide, if possible, how far he was deluded, how far he was acting from
deliberate policy in countenancing these things. When some people of
Tarraco reported to him, as an omen of his victorious career, that a
palm had grown on the mound of his altar in that city, he replied with
half-grave, half-playful irony, “That shews how often you use it!”[279]
But there is no note of disapproval or abnegation in the answer. He
accepts it as a natural fact that there should be such an altar, as a
modern sovereign might accept the compliment of a statue. Can we explain
it, except as a case of conscious fraud or blinding vanity? I believe
we may. We must notice first that Augustus had been zealous in the
apotheosis of Iulius, had urged Antony to become his flamen, had built
a temple to him in Rome, and encouraged the building of temples and
altars elsewhere. Now this apotheosis and worship of Iulius had begun
before his death,[280] as Augustus knew perfectly well. But in spite of
the manifestly party spirit of the packed Senate that voted the divine
honours to Iulius, he gave no sign of revulsion or incredulity. On the
contrary, he professed himself the heir not only of his wealth and
honours, but also of his religious obligations and political purposes.
It is clear, again, that Augustus believed in the gods, that is, in some
immortal being or beings who governed and controlled the world. The
restorer of a hundred temples, of sacred writings and ancient religious
rites, the pious fulfiller of vows made in the hour of danger or escape,
may have had crude or uncertain beliefs, have held views philosophical or
superstitious, wise or foolish, but he could hardly have been an atheist.
He was too busy a man to be much troubled with philosophic doubts,
and perhaps—obvious as it may be—the answer of Napoleon would have
represented his view: who after listening for a time to certain
atheistic arguments, said, pointing to the starry heavens, “All very
well, gentlemen, but who made all that?” Given a belief in oneself and
in Providence, the next step is to believe that Providence is on our
side, as Cromwell saw the hand of God even in his most questionable
achievements. If we can translate this into the language of an age
accustomed to hear at any rate with acquiescence of heroic men, sons of
the gods and destined to be enrolled among their peaceful ranks, of the
genius which attended each man from the cradle to the grave, of the care
of the gods for the welfare of the state in its darkest hours, manifested
by omens, warnings, and even material appearances: if again we consider
how much it adds to the strength of a belief to find it shared by others
and to see that it makes for the moral good of the world, we may come
faintly to conceive a frame of mind in Augustus on this subject which
need not—in view of his age and its sentiments—be set down either as
wholly irrational or wholly hypocritical. “The Roman Empire,” he might
say to himself, “is all that really matters in the world. I am divinely
appointed to restore and defend it. I have in fact secured its peace
and prosperity. If the people call me god, it is their way of honouring
the Genius that directs me, the Providence that has selected me to be
their benefactor and saviour. If they believe in that, they must also
believe in the sanctity and eternal authority of Rome and the Empire.
Religion and loyalty are but different words for the same virtue.” In
his eyes the state was divinely appointed, even in itself divine, and in
so far as he represented the state he was a divinity to its subjects.
Stability was its first requisite. “My highest ambition,” he said in an
edict, “is to be called the author of an ideally good constitution, and
to carry with me to the grave a hope that the foundations I have laid
will remain unmoved.” Goodness, and loyalty to the state, had become
convertible terms to him. Once as he was looking at a villa formerly
belonging to Cato, one of his companions, thinking to please him by
denouncing an anti-Cæsarean, spoke of the “obstinate wrong-headedness of
Cato.” But he answered gravely “any one who is opposed to revolution is
a good man as well as a good citizen.” At another time he came upon one
of his grandsons reading a book of Cicero. The boy, thinking he was on
forbidden ground, tried to conceal the book; but Augustus took it into
his hand, read in it a short time, and handed it back with the remark,
“A true scholar, my boy, and a patriot.” Perhaps he thought with remorse
of his own part in the great man’s death, perhaps of the time when he
believed him to have been false to himself, but “patriot”—“a lover of his
country”—made up for all.[281]
[Sidenote: The civilitas of Augustus.]
It is clear, again, that it was not personal vanity or a desire for
adulation that actuated Augustus. He disliked fulsome compliments or
overstrained titles of respect, and laughed at cringing attitudes,
as when he said of some obsequious petitioner that “he held out his
billet and then snatched it away again like a man giving a penny to an
elephant.” He specially objected to be called _dominus_, a word properly
applying to a master of slaves, and forbade the word to be used even
in jest in his own family. He wished to be regarded as a citizen among
citizens. He took care to shew interest (unlike Iulius) in the games
and shows that were liked by the people, and disapproved of special
marks of respect being paid to his young grandsons by the people rising
and cheering when they entered the circus. He went through the streets
on foot even when Consul, or rode with the curtains of his sedan drawn
back, that he might not seem to avoid the looks or approach of the
crowd; he admitted all kinds of people without distinction of rank
to his morning levees; forbade the Senators to rise when he entered
or left the house; visited friends without state, and was careful to
attend family festivities such as betrothal parties. At elections he
went round with his candidates and canvassed for votes, and appeared
for his clients in the courts (though anxious not to allow his presence
to exercise an unfair influence) and shewed no annoyance at being
cross-questioned and refuted. In the Senate he allowed great freedom of
speech without resentment. He was interrupted while speaking by cries of
“We don’t understand,” “I would contradict you if it were of any use.”
On one occasion, when he was leaving the house with some signs of anger
after a tiresome debate, he was followed by cries, “Senators should be
allowed to speak freely on public affairs,” something like the shouts
of “Privilege” that greeted Charles I. on a famous occasion. When he
mildly remonstrated with Antistius Labeo for nominating Lepidus (whom he
particularly disliked and treated with great contumely) to the Senate,
Antistius retorted rudely, “Every one is entitled to his own opinion.” He
was tolerant of such language and wrote a soothing note to Tiberius, who
expressed himself vehemently about some occurrence of the sort: “My dear
Tiberius, don’t give way to youthful excitement, or be so very indignant
at some one being found to speak harm of me. It is quite enough if we can
prevent their _doing_ us any harm.” In matters more personal or private
he could stand a telling or rough retort. When holding a review of the
equites he brought up a number of charges against a certain eques, who
rebutted them one after the other and ended with the contemptuous remark:
“Next time, sir, you cause inquiries to be made about a respectable
man, you had better intrust the business to respectable people.” Seeing
another eques eating in the circus he sent a message to him, “When I want
to lunch, I go home.” “Yes,” was the answer, “but you are not afraid of
losing your place.” Another eques was rebuked by him for squandering his
patrimony, and deigned no further remark than, “Oh well, I was under the
impression that it was my own property.” He once paid a Senator’s debts,
and got no more thanks than a note with the words, “Not a farthing for
myself!” A young man was once noticed at Court with an extraordinary
likeness to himself. Augustus ordered him to be introduced and said:
“Young gentleman, was your mother ever at Rome?” “No,” he replied, “but
my father was.” In this case it must be acknowledged that the Emperor
richly deserved the retort. The point, however, in all these stories
is that he was content to give and take and be a man among men. There
would be no longer any ground for Pollio’s remark, when Augustus wrote
some satirical epigrams upon that incarnation of all the talents: “I
say nothing. It is not easy to write against a man who can write one’s
name in a proscription list.” There are other anecdotes which still
farther illustrate this human side of Augustus. A veteran begged him
to appear for him in court, and Augustus named one of his friends to
undertake the case. The veteran cried out, “But when you were in danger
at Actium, Cæsar, I did not get a substitute; I fought for you myself!”
With a blush Augustus consented to appear. The troubles and tragedies
of life interested him. On hearing of one of Herod’s family executions,
he remarked, “I had rather be Herod’s pig than his son!” And when a man
supposed to be rich was found on his death to be overwhelmed with debt,
he sent to purchase his pillow at the auction, which had enabled him to
sleep when he owed such enormous sums. He could bear to have the laugh
turned against himself. The story of the man with the two ravens, one
taught to greet himself and the other Antony, has been already referred
to (p. 119). Another is of a similar kind. A poor Greek poet was in
the habit of waylaying him as he left his house for the forum with
complimentary epigrams to thrust into his hand. Augustus took no notice
for some time, but one day seeing the inevitable tablet held out he took
it and hastily scribbled a Greek epigram of his own upon it. The poet by
voice and look affected to be overpowered with admiration, and running up
to the Emperor’s sedan handed him a few pence, crying, “By heaven above
you, Augustus, if I had had more I would have given it you!” Everybody
laughed and Augustus ordered his steward to give him a substantial sum of
money.
It is curious that though Augustus was unmoved by rough retorts or
offensive speeches he shewed considerable sensitiveness to attacks
which took the form of lampoons and epigrams. He went so far on some
occasions as to refute them in an edict. But he used the “edict” as a
means of communication with the citizens and provinces on all sorts of
subjects, such as for explaining his purpose in putting up the bust
of distinguished men, or to draw attention to what he thought useful
in ancient writers. But he shrank not only from offensive poems, but
from being the subject of any poetry or history composed by incompetent
people. Before all things he was not to be made to look ridiculous by
witty attacks or clumsy praise. The prize poem or declamation was an
abomination to him, and the prætors were charged to prevent the public
use of his name in such compositions. Connected with this sensitive
refinement of taste may be mentioned the simplicity of his manners and
way of life.
[Sidenote: The residences of Augustus.]
The Palace of Augustus, though in a group of great splendour, was not in
itself on a scale approaching the huge constructions of later Emperors.
He appears at first to have occupied a modest house close to the forum,
which had once belonged to the orator Licinius Calvus, who died B.C. 47.
He then purchased a site on the Palatine on which to erect a new house;
but in B.C. 36, after the final defeat of Sextus Pompeius, the Senate
voted him the house of Hortensius. In a chamber of this house he slept
summer and winter for the rest of his life, though occasionally when
unwell he would pass the night in the house of Mæcenas on the Esquiline
which was regarded as a healthier situation. On receiving this house
from the Senate, he devoted the site already purchased to the temple of
Apollo and its libraries, which with its peristyle was filled with the
most precious specimens of Greek art, and in which under the statue of
Apollo by Scopas the Sibylline books were preserved in gilded caskets.
In B.C. 12, upon becoming Pontifex Maximus, he built a small temple of
Vesta between these buildings and his house, to keep up the tradition
of the Pontiff residing near the shrine of Vesta in the forum, while he
handed over the official residence of the Pontiff to the Vestal Virgins
themselves. The house of Hortensius was afterwards partly destroyed by
fire and rebuilt with greater magnificence, the neighbouring house once
owned by Catiline being taken in; but even then it was on a moderate
scale compared with the later palaces. Its entrance, however, was
conspicuously marked by the laurels, the civic crown, and gilded shields
which were placed there by vote of the Senate since B.C. 27. Besides this
town-house, which has furnished the name for a royal residence to this
day, he had of course various villas in different parts of Italy. But
they were not numerous in comparison with the number we know to have been
owned by nobles at the end of the republic. There was one at the ninth
milestone on the Flaminian Way called _ad gallinas_, in the gardens of
which was the bay tree, from the leaves of which Augustus had his garland
made when celebrating his triumphs; as it became the traditional habit
of succeeding Emperors to do also. The others near Rome were selected
for their coolness and healthy position—Lanuvium twenty miles from the
city on a lofty spur of the Alban Mountains, “cold Præneste” twenty-five
miles, and “sloping Tibur” about twenty miles away. These, however, were
suburban residences and gave no escape from society or business. They
were full of Roman villas,[282] and in the temple of Hercules at Tibur he
frequently sat to administer justice. When he could get a real holiday he
preferred a yachting voyage among the islands on the Campanian coast.
For one of them (Ænaria) he took in exchange from the municipality
of Naples the beautiful Capreæ, destined for greater notoriety under
his successor. He used to call it or some small island in the bay his
“Castle of Idleness.”[283] His villas were on a modest scale. He greatly
disapproved of the vast country palaces which were becoming the fashion,
and forced his granddaughter to demolish one which she was building.[284]
Earlier in life he was accused of extravagance in the matter of rich
furniture and antique bronzes. But he seems to have shaken off this
weakness later on. The furniture of his villas was extremely simple, and
there were no costly pictures and statues in them, but the gardens were
carefully laid out with terraces and shrubberies, and generally adorned
with various curiosities, as at Capreæ with the huge bones of a whale.
His table was simple and the dinners never long. He was careful in
selecting his company, but knew how to make graceful concessions as to
the rank of his guests when occasion required it. He drank little wine,
and generally not of the best vintages; but he exerted himself to promote
conversation and to draw out the silent and shy. He would sometimes come
late and retire early without breaking up the party; sometimes talked
instead of eating, taking his own simple food before or after the meal.
Before all he does not appear to have adopted the unsociable habit, often
mentioned by Cicero and especially characteristic of Iulius, of reading
and answering his letters at table. The dinner was generally a family
function and his young grandsons were always present at it. Sometimes
conversation was varied by reciters, readers, actors or professors of
philosophy. But at the Saturnalia and other festivals the quiet and
decorum of these meals gave way to the spirit of the hour. The table was
better furnished and the Emperor presented his guests with all kinds of
gifts, or amused himself by holding a kind of blind auction, putting
together lots of widely different value which the guests bid for without
knowing what they were purchasing. On such occasions gambling with dice
was permitted, though in family parties the Emperor took care to lose or
to surrender his winnings, and sometimes he supplied each member of the
party with a sum of money beforehand with which to make their stakes. But
games of chance had a fascination for him at all times of his life, and
his real gambling was not confined to festival days. He made no secret
of it, and we hear nothing of any great loss or gain. Social life at
Rome began early in the day, visitors at a levee would arrive soon after
daybreak, and a magistrate would sometimes have to be up immediately
after midnight, to take omens or perform some other religious rite. But
as Augustus worked late at night, and was not a good sleeper, early
rising was painful to him, and resulted in his falling fast asleep in
his sedan. If any of these night duties became imperative he took the
precaution of sleeping in some lodging near the place. But his normal
habit was to work up to noon, then after the light luncheon or prandium,
often consisting of bread and a few grapes, to sleep for a short time
fully dressed. Having finished the morning’s work and bath, dinner (cena)
would come between 3 and 4, though busy men like the Emperor often pushed
it on to 6 or 7; after dinner he went to his study, and there finished
off what was left of the day’s work, his memoranda and accounts, sitting
or reclining on his couch far into the night. The amount of work which
he must have bestowed upon his official business is shewn by the state
of readiness and completeness in which the various schedules of the
finances of the Empire and the army, and the book of political maxims
were found at his death. In early youth he had dabbled in literature,
and composed a tragedy in the Greek fashion called “Ajax”; but coming
in later years to estimate its value more truly he destroyed it, and
when some friend or flatterer inquired for it, he said, “Ajax has fallen
on his own sponge.”[285] He composed also memoirs of his own life, but
they were interrupted by his serious illness after the Spanish War (B.C.
25-3), and never resumed. They were used by Suetonius and other writers,
as well as collections of his letters, edicts, and speeches, but have not
been preserved. Only one of his epigrams has survived, of which I shall
speak hereafter. These excursions into literature, never very serious,
seem to have ceased as he got on in life. In the third book of his _Odes_
(written between B.C. 30-25), Horace tells the Muses that “they afford a
recreation to high Cæsar when he has put his troops into winter quarters
and seeks a rest from toil,”[286] but in the fourth book (B.C. 13-12)
it is the statesman, the conqueror, and reformer that he addresses, not
the man of letters. The Epistle addressed to Augustus in B.C. 12, though
it deals with literary criticism and explicitly supports the Emperor’s
well-known dislike of being the theme of inferior writers, while it
dwells upon his numerous employments and warmly compliments him on his
successful achievements, contains no word or hint of his authorship.[287]
The principate was a most laborious profession, absorbing all his
energies and occupying all his time, and though he might enjoy the
company of literary men, despatches, edicts, and state papers would now
be the limit of his literary ambition.
The heavy work of his lofty position was performed under painful
conditions of health. Besides at least four serious illnesses[288]
of which we hear, he was subject to periodical complaints, generally
recurring at the beginning of spring and autumn. Soon after B.C. 30 he
gave up the martial exercises of the Campus, then the less fatiguing
ball games, and finally confined himself to getting out of his sedan to
take short runs or walks. As he grew old his only outdoor amusements
(except yachting) seem to have been fishing and playing games with little
children.
In the last years of his life he gave up going into Roman society.
In the earlier part of his principate he dined out freely, and not
always in select company. He seems to have been rather inclined to the
vulgar millionaire, perhaps because he could reckon on contributions to
the public objects which he had at heart. He did not expect splendid
entertainments, and was content with the wine of the district, still he
did not like being treated with too little ceremony. To one man who gave
him a dinner ostentatiously plain and common, he remarked on leaving—“I
did not know that I was such an intimate friend of yours.” At times,
too, he had occasion to assume the Emperor with some of these _nouveaux
riches_, as in the celebrated case of Vedius Pollio. This man had a
stewpond of lampreys, which he fed with flesh. When he was entertaining
Augustus on one occasion the cup-bearer dropped a valuable crystal
cup, and his master ordered him at once to be thrown to the lampreys.
Augustus tried to beg him off, but when Pollio refused, he ceased to
entreat; assuming imperial airs he ordered all the cups of the same
sort in the house, and all others of value, to be brought into the room
and broken. Licinius, the grasping procurator of Gaul, was another of
these rich vulgar people, with whom Augustus was somewhat too intimate,
and expected in return for that honour large contributions to his
works. On one occasion he even took the liberty of altering the figure
in the promissory note sent by him so as to double the sum. Licinius
said nothing, but on the next occasion he sent a note thus expressed:
“I promise towards the expense of the new work—whatever your Highness
pleases.”
Wit is seldom kind, and some of the retorts attributed to him are not
always exceptions to the rule. To a humpbacked advocate pleading before
him, and often repeating the expression, “If you think I am wrong in
any way, pray set me straight,” he said, “I can give you some advice,
but I can’t set you _straight_.” To an officer who made rather too
much fuss about his services, and kept pointing to an ugly scar on his
forehead, he said, “When you run away you shouldn’t look behind you.”
More good-natured are the following. To a young prefect who was being
sent home from camp for misbehaviour, and who exclaimed, “How can I go
home? What am I to say to my father?” he replied, “Tell him that you did
not like me.” To another who was being cashiered, and pleaded to have
the usual good-service pension, that people might think he had left the
service in the usual way, he said, “Well, give out that you have received
the money; I won’t say that I haven’t paid it.”
Though affable to all, and neither an unkind nor unreasonable master to
his slaves, or patron to his freedmen, he was enough a man of his age not
to hesitate to inflict cruel punishment for certain offences. A secretary
who had taken a bribe to disclose some confidential paper, he ordered to
have his legs broken. A favourite freedman was forced to commit suicide
when detected in intrigues with Roman married ladies. He ordered the
personal servants of his grandson Caius, who had taken advantage of his
illness and death to enrich themselves in the province of Syria, to be
thrown into the sea with weights attached to their feet.
To those who had been his friends there is hardly any instance of extreme
severity after the end of the civil wars. It is possible that Muræna
died before trial, though his fellow-conspirator was put to death.
Cornelius Gallus, the first prefectus of Egypt, committed suicide rather
than confront the accusations brought against him and the evident animus
of the Senate; but Augustus did not wish it, and exclaimed with tears in
his eyes that it was hard that he should be the only man who might not be
angry with his friends without the matter going farther than he intended.
The coldness that arose between him and his ministers Agrippa and Mæcenas
was only temporary and never very grave. He deeply deplored their loss
at their death. We shall have to discuss his conduct to his daughter and
granddaughter and their paramours in another chapter. But neither in
regard to these persons nor the conspirators against his life did he ever
act in a way that his contemporaries would think cruel.
These anecdotes of Augustus do not suggest a very heroic figure, very
quick wit, or great warmth of heart. They rather indicate what I conceive
to be the truer picture, a cool and cautious character, not unkindly
and not without a sense of humour; but at the same time as inevitable
and unmoved by pity or remorse as nature herself. No one accuses him of
having neglected or hurried any task that it was his duty to perform.
But neither friend, relation, nor minister ever really influenced him.
He issues orders, and they all obey instinctively, without remonstrance,
and generally with success. He is providence to them all. Everything
succeeds under his hands. He is no soldier, though he knows one when he
sees him, but all the nations of the earth seek his friendship. Till the
last decade of his life no serious reverse befel his armies; at home all
opposition melted away, as the difficulties in a road or course disappear
before a skilful driver or steerer. He is not godlike, but there is an
air of calm success about him which swayed men’s wills and awakened their
reverence.