dashing feats of arms to his credit, and who has left us no records of
impassioned eloquence, does not lend himself to idealisation. Augustus
had no contemporary biographer, nor even any very great historian
ancient or modern. The early Empire is in the gap between the end of
Mommsen and the beginning of Gibbon. Dr. Gardthausen has collected all
the available material about Augustus but has scarcely succeeded in
making him clear or real to us as a man. Tacitus touched him off in a
few satirical epigrams as the crafty tyrant who “bribed the army with
gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and the world with the blessings
of peace, and so grew greater by degrees while he concentrated in his
own hands the functions of the senate, the magistrates, and the laws.”
For biographical particulars we have to go to Suetonius’s _Lives of the
Twelve Cæsars_, a most unsatisfactory source. Suetonius’s pages teem
with human interest, but for purposes of history they are provoking
and baffling. He is a patient bookworm who compiles systematic little
biographies without a glimmer of the biographical sense. As imperial
librarian he had access to most valuable sources of information but he
had no critical instinct in using them. He simply collected scraps from
various sources and grouped them under headings. For a list of virtues
he would go to a courtier’s panegyrics and then turn to a seditious
pamphlet for a catalogue of vices. His own instinctive preference
being for scandal, he has touched nothing which he has not defiled.
It is chiefly due to Suetonius that Augustus appears as a selfish
hypocrite, Tiberius as a libidinous tyrant, Gaius as a maniac, Claudius
as a pedantic clown, and Nero as a monster of wickedness. And yet
under these five reigns the Empire was growing steadily in peace and
prosperity. The rulers who were omnipotent cannot have been altogether
such as they are described. The factious senators who still dreamed
of unreal republican glories and still treasured the memories of Cato
as a saint and Brutus as a martyr were not, of course, allowed free
criticism of their monarchs. They revenged themselves by writing secret
libels, many but not all of which logic and common sense can easily
disprove. When it came to popular reigns like those of Vespasian or
Hadrian the censorship of the press was removed for a time, and then
the senatorial Republicans like Tacitus and Juvenal took ample revenge
upon the dead. The scurrilous pamphlets were unearthed and exalted into
historical documents and so passed down to our historians as history.
It is a suspicious and thankless task to attempt the rehabilitation of
these emperors. The world is rightly sceptical of the process which it
calls “whitewashing.” Moreover the necessary data are wanting. We can
only allow our imaginations to suggest how different the story would
look if it had been told from a sympathetic point of view.
It is very difficult to form any complete idea of the character
of Augustus as a man. He had shown daring and ambition when as an
obscure lad he had crossed to Italy in 44 B.C. to take up his perilous
inheritance as Cæsar’s heir. He had been cool and diplomatic even in
those earliest days in the way he intrigued with the senate against
Antony, and then with Antony and Lepidus against the senate. He had
had extraordinary luck when both the consuls died in the engagements
round Modena, and left him, the prætor, in charge of a great army. Then
we have the infamous acts of the triumvirate, when the unfortunate
senators and knights were proscribed in hundreds, and Cicero, with whom
the young Cæsar had been on intimate terms, was handed over without
apparent compunction to Antony’s vengeance. Admirers said that in this
he was overborne by his older colleague, and yielded reluctantly to a
stern necessity for destroying the tyrannicide party. Enemies declared
that even if he had been reluctant to begin the bloodshed he was the
most cruel of persecutors when it started. In the fourteen years of
civil war that followed, he had succeeded in winning his way through to
victory more by coolness and luck than by any display of generalship.
I do not think that we can fairly accuse him of cowardice. It was a
bold act when he rode alone and unarmed into the camp of the rebellious
and hostile Lepidus, and took his legions away from him without a
blow. He had not the dashing gallantry of Antony, or the fiery vigour
of Julius, but he must have had the gift of nerve and coolness. He had
certainly come through the most terrible difficulties and dangers from
open enemies and rebellious armies by land and sea. In the last duel
with Antony luck had been with him once more. Like the rake and gambler
that he was, Antony had thrown away his game for the sake of Eastern
ambitions and Eastern dalliance. Then there was that last scene of
Cleopatra’s tragedy, when the conqueror came to her palace after Antony
had committed suicide. She tried to win him by the same arts that had
won his “father” and his rival. Dressed in her finest robes she came
weeping to him, and displayed the picture and the letters of Julius wet
with her tears. He judged her splendour coldly as a future ornament for
his triumph at Rome, and when she disappointed him of that by a suicide
staged as all her life had been for theatrical effect, he hunted down
her two elder children with the same cold ferocity as before. Policy
forbade them to survive. That was all he thought of.
And now at the age of thirty-four, with this record behind him, he
had come back to Rome to celebrate his many triumphs. No doubt the
few remaining nobles at Rome trembled at his coming. Remembering the
proscriptions some of them might well tremble, especially those who had
sided with his enemies, with Sextus Pompeius, or with L. Antonius, or
with Marcus. On the other hand, some might remember the clemency which
Julius Cæsar had displayed in his hour of triumph.
Augustus had to restore confidence and order in a shattered world. He
had to deal with provinces ruined and desolate, a form of government
quite visibly obsolete, an aristocracy with immense traditions of pride
and power now thoroughly corrupt and effete, a Roman mob which still
called itself lord of the world, but which was in a political sense
hopeless, armies which were dangerous to the state, conscious of their
power
[Illustration: FIG. I. TRIUMPHAL ARCH ST. REMY, ARLES
FIG. II. MAUSOLEUM OF JULIUS, ST. REMY, ARLES
PLATE XXXII.]
and destitute of real patriotism. He had at his side a trusty general
in Agrippa,[42] who had won many battles for him, though that in itself
was generally a dangerous circumstance, and an astute diplomat in
Mæcenas, who for the past ten years had been governing Rome in Cæsar’s
name without holding any clear official position. But beyond these
two it was hard to know where to turn for support. The civil wars and
proscriptions had almost destroyed the race of Brutus, but all that was
left of the aristocracy was still jealous and hostile under a cover of
abject sycophancy, ready to stab him with their tongues if they had
not the courage to use the stiletto. Nevertheless, Augustus had one
great asset. The Roman world, exhausted with a whole generation’s civil
war, was longing for repose. It was ready to fall down and worship
the man who would give it that. Thus the broad outlines of his policy
were clear before him. He must undertake a work of healing. The fall
of Julius warned him that he must not be openly a monarch, but the
failure of Sulla and the actual state of Rome were equally eloquent to
prove that he must retain the power in his own hands. In the lassitude
following upon grave illness--for the dangers and exposure of the
civil wars had shattered his health--he may have cherished occasional
thoughts of a real abdication. But in his brain he must have known
that it was impossible. It was, of course, equally impossible for him
to govern the whole world directly without help. For that purpose the
machinery of the whole constitution with its senate and magistracies
had to be preserved, at any rate for the present. These were the broad
lines upon which his policy was shaped.
The splendour of Cæsar’s triumph must have confirmed the Romans’
impression that they had now a king. For three days they saw a constant
procession of prisoners, emblems of captured cities and conquered
princes. Some of Cleopatra’s surviving children were among his train.
The three days were apportioned to the three continents, the first
for the Illyrian war of 34, the second for Actium, and the third for
Egypt. Cartloads of money from the Egyptian treasury rolled up the
streets, and the bank rate at Rome fell instantly from eleven to four.
There was one significant change. In old republican days the victor
had been led into the city by his colleague and the senators, now they
followed humbly in the rear. Lavish triumphal gifts were distributed:
about £11 to every soldier, and about £4 to every citizen. Even the
boys got a present in the name of Cæsar’s dear young nephew Marcellus.
Thus Cæsar passed in his gold-embroidered purple toga, with a laurel
branch in his hand, while a slave stood behind holding a golden crown
of victory over his head. Of the horses that drew the chariot one was
mounted by the fourteen-year-old Marcellus, famous for his early death,
and for Vergil’s beautiful lines about him, and the other by his still
younger stepson, Tiberius. Thus he was drawn up to the Capitol to
deposit his laurels and his costly offerings at the feet of Jupiter.
There were festivities on many a day to follow. Temples were dedicated,
one to the deified Julius and one to Venus, the goddess mother of the
Julian house. There were games in which the foreign captives fought to
the death. On another day the boys of the nobility fought a Battle of
Troy in the circus. On another there was a great beast-hunt of strange
animals from Egypt when the rhinoceros and hippopotamus made their
first appearance in Europe. And then for the first time for nearly two
hundred years, that is, for the first time since the Punic Wars, the
temple of the war-god Janus was solemnly closed. _L’Empire c’est la
paix._ There are many signs of the earnest longing for Peace in the
Roman world. “Pax” and “Irene” became common names in the West and
East; “Pax” was the legend on coins. This was a new thing at Rome.
Hitherto war had been the desired as well as the normal condition. But
even the Romans had now drunk their fill of bloodshed in those dreary
civil wars. It was upon this new condition of things that Augustus had
the wisdom to build his monarchy. The army was greatly reduced at once.
Fortunately the treasury of Egypt enabled them to be dismissed without
dissatisfaction. The foreign hirelings who had served as a bodyguard
were replaced by native soldiers. A change in the _imperator’s_ form
of address to his troops indicated that they were now subject to
the civil rule of a constitutional state: henceforth they were not
“fellow-soldiers” but “soldiers.”
And now the work of reconstruction began in earnest. Acting merely
as one of the two consuls and in obedience to a law passed through
the senate and comitia, Augustus restored the depleted ranks of the
patrician order. It is true that the patricians had no political
privileges but they still had great significance in the domain of
religion and their restoration as the first official act of the new
regime marked a deliberate desire to conciliate the aristocracy and
enlist its services in support of order. Then a census of the Roman
citizens was taken for the first time in forty years. The number found
was 4,063,000 heads, which was to be increased by 170,000 in the next
twenty years. The census and purification of the people was accompanied
by a revision of the senate-roll. Here Augustus already showed his
intention to break away from the policy of Julius. Whereas Julius had
aroused the most bitter resentment by introducing provincials and
common soldiers into the ranks of the senate, and Antony also had
secured the appointment of all sorts of disreputable friends of his
own, Augustus with infinite caution and tact reduced, strengthened,
and purified the roll. Then since the numbers had been reduced and it
was necessary to secure a respectable quorum for the transaction of
business, the senate was induced to pass a standing order that its
members must not go abroad even to the provinces without permission
of its president. As Cæsar was the president it meant a concentration
of all the possible leaders of opposition at Rome and under his eyes.
During this same year, 28 B.C., the other side of Augustan rule came
into prominence, the splendid liberality which turned Rome from a
decaying and ruinous city of brick into a city of marble and made this
epoch to stand out next to that of Pericles as an age of brilliant
culture. No fewer than eighty-two temples were built or restored in
that year. Among the rest a magnificent marble temple to Apollo with
a public library annexed to it was erected on the Palatine. Libraries
were new and significant things at Rome. The first had been built by
Vergil’s patron Asinius Pollio only nine years earlier.
The time was now ripe for the all-important settlement of the
constitution which historians have agreed to call the establishment
of the Empire. It is important to narrate the actual proceedings,
at this point, somewhat more minutely than the scope of this work
generally allows. The establishment of the Empire was such a delicate
and equivocal act that it has been open to various interpretations
ever since. Probably in the clever brain of Augustus it was intended
to be equivocal from the first, so that republican aristocrats at Rome
might still believe themselves to be free, while the populace had a
prince to whom they might look for their patron, and the provincials,
particularly those of the orient, might have a splendid monarch for
their instincts of adulation.
Towards the close of the year 28 Augustus had issued a proclamation
formally reversing all the illegal acts of himself and his colleagues
during the Triumvirate. It would not call the dead back to life, it
would not restore Cicero to the senate, it did not even give back the
land to the burghers of those eighteen confiscated townships. But it
marked contrition, and restitution of some sort was to follow. At the
beginning of his seventh consulship on January 13, 27 B.C., Cæsar
convened a meeting of the senate and made them a long speech in which
he spoke with pride of his own and his “deified father’s” benefactions
to the state. At the end, with a true Italian instinct for the theatre
he turned to the astonished fathers and exclaimed: “And now I give back
the Republic into your keeping. The laws, the troops, the treasury,
the provinces are all restored to you. May you guard them worthily.”
Dio Cassius, who has given us a long speech certainly of his own
composition, paints the mingled feelings of the audience, the
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV BARBARIAN WOMAN, KNOWN AS “THUSNELDA”]
indifference of those who were in the secret, the uneasiness of those
who feared that it was another trap to catch the unwary and the joy
of those who believed and hoped. The immediate reply of the senate
was, it appears, to grant him further honours--the “civic crown” of
oak leaves awarded to one who had saved the life of a fellow-citizen,
in token that Augustus had saved the lives of all his countrymen,
and laurel-trees to be planted at his gate in sign of perpetual
victory.[43] Then they conducted a long and solemn debate upon the
proper _cognomen_ to be conferred upon their saviour and at length
decided upon the name “Augustus.” In these proceedings we have the
measure of the Augustan senate. Already they had the instinct of
courtiers. Augustus knew it, and therefore knew what he was about in
this dramatic “restoration of the Republic.” Coins of the period bear
the legend “Respublica restituta,” and Ovid, though a courtier, was
free to say
redditaque est omnis populo prouincia nostro
et tuus Augusto nomine dictus auus.
Augustus himself records this occurrence in the great inscription,
in which he afterwards described his achievements: “In my sixth and
seventh consulship, when by universal consent I had acquired complete
dominion over everything both by land and sea, I restored the State
from my own control into the hands of the Senate and People.”
A few sessions later, but still in the beginning of the year 27,
the senate decided upon its real answer, no doubt concocted at the
suggestion of Augustus. The senate accepted the restitution of most of
the provinces, and undertook to govern them for the future by means of
senatorial magistrates very much as they had been governed of old. But
three provinces which were still unsettled, and required soldiers, and
money, and a general, called for special treatment. Cæsar was therefore
entreated to take for his province Syria, Gaul, and Spain. Gaul was not
yet completely organised; besides Julius had publicly imposed the task
of adding Britain to it upon his successor. Syria was of the utmost
importance, because the Parthians were still “riding unavenged” flushed
with fresh victories over Antony. This was another of the legacies of
Julius. Spain was still largely unconquered and in great disorder. I
think, in opposition to Ferrero, that military needs were more powerful
than economic motives in the selection of these provinces. It is to be
noted that there was no question of the restitution of Egypt. Cæsar
had never completely given this kingdom to the state. He still kept it
for the sake of its treasures, as a private domain, and governed it
through an agent, a mere knight, not even a senator. Over these three
great provinces Augustus received consular authority--much as Pompeius
had received it for the war against the pirates--for ten years. But at
the same time he promised to restore these provinces also, as soon as
they should be completely pacified. The ingenious nature of the whole
compromise will be manifest when it is perceived that this arrangement
of provinces left the senate with scarcely a single legion under its
command, while the bulk of the Roman army was concentrated in Cæsar’s
provinces.
Now let us consider the constitutional position of Augustus in these
years from 27 to 23, when a slight rearrangement was effected. Augustus
continued each year to be elected consul with a colleague for one year,
until he had far outstripped even the record of Marius. In addition to
this he had “consular power” over his enormous province, which included
all the armies of the state. That power was ostensibly granted for ten
years, but as a matter of fact it was renewed with some ceremony at
intervals of ten or five years throughout the reign. Constitutionally
he was by no means master of the world although, of course, he was
so in reality. He says himself: “I excelled all in prestige, but
of authority I had no more than my colleagues in each office.” For
the maintenance of his domestic dignity, he had in addition to the
consulship various privileges of tribunician authority. His person was
protected by the sanctity of that office, and it is probable that all
prosecutions for treason were taken on that point. He was also chief
priest. He was also president of the senate, _princeps senatus_, but
that simply meant that his name came first on the roll, so that he had
the right to speak first. Only when Cæsar said “aye” it would be a bold
man who would say “no.”
For the lawyer this exhausts his titles to power, but in reality he
was something very much more than consul with tribunician powers. The
one word that embraces all his authority, constitutional and real
alike, is the word “princeps.” “Princeps” is not the title of any
office, it merely expresses dignity. He is “the chief,” he is “Cæsar
the August, the son of the God Julius, ten times hailed as general.”
It is historically misleading to speak of these early _principes_
as “Emperors,” for that word implies notions of purple and crowns
really foreign to their position. Any stout republican who chose to be
deceived could still boast that he was governed by senate and comitia,
by consuls, prætors, ædiles, tribunes, and the rest of them. It is
even historically false to believe that the senate and magistrates had
ceased to exist for practical purposes. They had, as we shall presently
see, a very real function in the state, especially when Cæsar was
abroad, as in the earlier years of his rule he constantly was. It was
impossible for one man to govern the whole empire. Little by little
when a complete imperial bureaucracy was evolved, the senate really
sank into insignificance, but for the present Cæsar and the senate were
to some extent colleagues in the government of the empire.
It is equally unhistorical to assert, as does the foremost of living
historians in Germany, Dr. Eduard Meyer, that this “Restoration” was
a genuine abdication, and that Cæsar only continued to act as the
senate’s executive officer. Sometimes he did act in that capacity,
often he made a pretence of so acting. Especially when there was
anything disagreeable to be done, he liked to get it authorised by
a decree of the senate. But no intelligent Roman can have failed to
perceive that there was no real equilibrium between Cæsar and Senate.
Cæsar had not only the control of nearly all the legions; but at the
very gate of Rome he had the only troops in Italy, the prætorian guard,
at his beck and call. Roman generals had always had their life-guards.
The law forbade the presence of an army at Rome, but Cæsar had shown
his usual ingenuity in circumventing the spirit of the law, while
respecting its letter. An army meant a legion, and a legion consisted
of ten cohorts generally of three hundred men each. Very well, Cæsar
would only have nine cohorts. But as each consisted of a thousand
men, he found himself in command of a force equal to three legions in
permanent quarters at the gates of Rome. If he thus had the men, he
had the money too. The senatorial provinces were now, thanks to a long
regime of senatorial governors, mostly the poor ones. Cæsar had the
enormous treasury of Egypt in his pocket, Spain was rich in undeveloped
mines, and Gaul had great possibilities as yet unexploited. Moreover,
Augustus had inherited an immense patrimony from Julius, and the
legacies of admiring friends also increased his wealth. Thus it came
about that the senatorial treasury simply could not exist without help
from the imperial purse. His private wealth, too, enabled him to keep
the Roman mob happy with cheap or free corn, public shows, and handsome
buildings, and to satisfy the troops with lavish bounties. There was no
real equilibrium.
On the other hand, Augustus was very careful not to wound republican
sensibilities. He was himself of a distinctly historical and
antiquarian turn of mind. He never performed a function or assumed
an office without assuring himself that it was not new to the
constitution. Thus when he was asked to undertake censorial duties he
declined the “censorial authority,” which the senate conferred upon
him, but carried out the duties by virtue of his power as consul,
having assured himself that in the olden times consuls had performed
the duties of the censor. He was also most punctilious in his use of
forms. We shall see later something of the republican simplicity of his
mode of life. He never failed, as his “divine father” Julius had done,
to treat the senate with outward marks of respect. Call him a “crafty
tyrant” if you will. It is much more just to call him a diplomatic
reformer engaged in a necessary work of repair, working it with
infinite patience, tact, and subtlety, by the most ingenious system of
compromises known to history.