Octavian divorced his first two wives, the daughter of Publ. Servilius,
to whom he had been married at eighteen, and Clodia, daughter of Antony’s
wife Fulvia by her first husband P. Clodius the triumvir, after a short
period of wedded life; and a year after she had borne him a daughter,
Julia by name, he put away his third wife Scribonia, being captivated by
the charms of Livia, the wife of Ti. Claudius Nero, who came into his
house as his fourth wife with the consent of her former husband. Her two
sons, Tiberius (born 42 B.C.) and Drusus, whom she brought into the world
three months after her union with Augustus, were brought up in the house
of their father Cl. Nero, but were received by Augustus into his own
house on the death of the former, who had appointed him their guardian.
The person who had the likeliest prospect of the succession seemed to
be M. Marcellus, the son of the emperor’s sister Octavia by her first
marriage. He was treated with the utmost distinction by Augustus, who
loaded him with honours in quick succession and married him at an early
age to his daughter Julia, to the great mortification of the haughty and
ambitious Livia, who, having borne no children to her imperial spouse,
desired to secure the first place after the monarch and the reversion of
the throne for her sons Tiberius and Drusus.
[Sidenote: [21 B.C.-2 A.D.]]
A second rival to the youthful Marcellus arose in the person of his own
brother-in-law Agrippa, the famous general to whom Augustus chiefly owed
his victories over Sext. Pompeius and Antony, and whom he himself had
encouraged to cherish the most daring hopes by high distinctions and
proofs of favour. When the enmity between Agrippa and Marcellus grew
too plainly manifest, the emperor despatched the former to Asia under
pretext of an honourable mission. But Agrippa, looking upon this as a
kind of banishment, ruled the province through his legate, while he
himself remained at Lesbos, his gaze riveted upon Rome. Fate intervened
to save Augustus from painful experience of the affronted pride of an
ambitious man. Marcellus died in the year 23, universally lamented by
the Roman people, whose darling he was. It was shrewdly suspected that
he had fallen a victim to the rancour and intrigues of Livia, who, by
birth a member of the Claudian family, had inherited all the pride and
jealous ambition of their old patrician blood. Augustus, dismayed by the
disturbances at Rome in the year 22, and the evidences of a conspiracy
against his life which then came to light, made haste to be reconciled
with Agrippa, and, by marrying him to Julia, assured him of the first
place after his own and the prospect of the succession. Octavia, the
emperor’s sister, moved by envy and jealousy of Livia, gladly agreed
to Agrippa’s divorce from her daughter Marcella, that so she might
thwart the ambitious schemes of the emperor’s consort. A few years later
Agrippa journeyed to the East, accompanied by Julia, to set in order the
complications and struggles for the throne which had arisen in various
districts from the Bosporus to Syria. His presence was a blessing to
the Asiatic provinces and dependent states; he reconciled the wrangling
members of the empire by admonitions and commands, and perpetuated the
name of his wife by founding on the site of the ancient and ruinous
seaport of Berytus the colony of Julia Felix, which was provided with a
garrison of two legions and became the centre of Roman dominion in Syria.
As Agrippa was returning to Italy after a stay of some years in the East,
he succumbed to sickness in the fifty-first year of his age. He died in
Campania in 12 B.C.
Augustus rendered the highest honours to the man to whom he owed so much,
and who had devoted himself as fully to the welfare of the state as to
the cause of his imperial friend. He had the body interred with the most
solemn obsequies in the imperial vault, himself delivering the funeral
oration, and not only made over the baths and gardens of Agrippa to the
city of Rome according to the wishes of the deceased, but distributed
considerable donations of money among the people in his name.
Livia now conceived fresh hopes for her sons. By her intrigues she
succeeded in procuring the divorce of Tiberius, her first-born, who
was at that time thirty years of age, from his wife, and his marriage
with the emperor’s widowed daughter, who had borne three sons to
Agrippa--Caius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and two daughters, Julia and
Agrippina. Augustus with difficulty suppressed his dislike of his
ambitious, overbearing, and sullen stepson.
Within a very few years the circle of friends which Augustus had gathered
about him had been sadly thinned by death. Agrippa, Octavia, Drusus,
and Mæcenas had sunk into the tomb within the space of four years (from
12 to 8 B.C.). Thus with declining age the emperor fixed his affections
all the more exclusively upon his two grandsons, Caius and Lucius, the
children of his daughter Julia and his friend Agrippa. He admitted them
by adoption into the Julian family, conferred the title of Cæsar upon
them, and had them brought up under his own eye; he even devoted part of
his own leisure to their instruction and education. They were his usual
companions at table, and were treated with such distinction that all
men regarded them as the future heirs of the empire. The populace and
the senate vied with each other in offering homage and adulation to the
imperial grandsons of Augustus, and they were loaded with fresh honours
and dignities every year.
But this brilliant position was fated to be the ruin of the young
princes. It not only filled their own hearts with presumption and
self-conceit; Livia and Tiberius turned eyes of envy and hatred upon the
favoured pair. When Augustus, who was not blind to their sentiments,
attempted to remove his stepson from the capital by giving him the
honourable task of conducting a campaign in Armenia, the latter declined
the proffered honour out of mortified pride, and begged leave to spend
some years in learned leisure in the island of Rhodes. The leave was
granted, and extended even beyond his desires. For seven years he stayed
in the Greek island; busy with philosophical and mathematical studies,
and observing the constellations in the night hours under the guidance
of Thrasyllus, to draw auguries for the future from their position. His
absence was at first associated with demonstrations of honour, through
the splendour of the tribunician office which Augustus had conferred on
him before his departure; but in course of time it assumed more and more
the character of an exile, and Julia took advantage of it to increase her
father’s aversion for the husband she abhorred.
Frivolous, vain, and wanton, the emperor’s daughter had caused him many
a heartache by the levity of her conduct and her fondness for amusement;
but she had always been able to propitiate his wrath and regain her
ascendency by her amiability, her talent for witty and delightful
conversation, her culture, and her art of delicate flattery. He shut
his eyes when she violated the outward propriety and decorum which he
endeavoured to diffuse over the private life of the imperial family, or
when she showed herself in public surrounded by a swarm of aristocratic
young men of lax morals. If he were annoyed at some too wanton attire
of hers, she would presently appear in the decorous garb of a Roman
matron and enliven her father by some jesting observation. The circle
of blooming grandchildren with which she had surrounded his throne, and
by which she seemed to have ensured his line in the possession of the
monarchy, inclined him to judge her leniently and to make allowances for
her.
But Livia’s intriguing temper found ways and means to destroy this bond
and to extinguish in the father’s heart the long-cherished belief in his
daughter’s innocence. She contrived to arouse in him the dark suspicion
that Julia was not only disgracing the honour of the imperial house
by a licentious way of life, but that she and her lovers had actually
conceived hostile designs against his person and the security of the
empire. For by this alone can we explain the harsh measures adopted by
Augustus, who had his daughter suddenly banished without trial to the
little island of Pandataria off the Campanian coast, and informed the
senate that through shameless wantonness she had so far erred as to make
the Forum and tribune the scene of nocturnal orgies and the witness of
her gallantries. Her accomplices, real or supposed, who were for the most
part opponents of Tiberius, shared the same fate of exile, or suffered
the penalty of death, like the gifted and cultured son of the triumvir,
Julus Antonius, eminent both as a statesman and a soldier. The sympathy
and compassion of the people accompanied the emperor’s daughter (then
thirty-eight years of age) into her place of punishment. Her guilt and
transgression were her portion in the life of a degenerate age and city
steeped in pleasures and vices, her penance was the outcome of the envy
and malignity of an intriguing stepmother.
Her life in exile, which was voluntarily shared by her mother Scribonia,
was rich in deeds of benevolence and charity. She died at Rhegium soon
after her father, full of sorrows and weary of life. The gifted and
eloquent Sempronius Gracchus, who had enjoyed her favour and love in
happier days and had consequently been banished to the African island
of Cercina, died about the same time by the hands of assassins sent by
Tiberius to despatch him; showing himself by his fortitude in death not
unworthy of the Sempronian name which in his life he had brought to shame.
[Sidenote: [1 B.C.-9 A.D.]]
With the banishment of Julia commenced that series of misfortunes
which ended by leaving the house of Augustus desolate and inflicted
deep wounds upon his paternal heart. In that same year her eldest son,
the eighteen-year-old Caius Cæsar, undertook a campaign in Asia at
the head of a considerable army, in order to reduce to submission the
Armenians--who had revolted from the dominion of Rome by the help of
the Parthians--and to chastise the refractory Arab tribes. Armed with
authority of the proconsular imperium over all the provinces of the
east, so that absolute power in matters military and civil rested in his
hands and all local governors were subject to his commands, the youthful
commander-in-chief crossed to Egypt by way of Samos, accompanied by M.
Lollius and other experienced and learned men whom Augustus had placed
about him as counsellors. Tiberius, who visited his stepson during his
stay on the island, was able to draw from the coolness of his reception
the conclusion that his own star was on the decline and that Caius Cæsar
was universally recognised and honoured as the heir to the empire. From
Egypt the expedition passed through Palestine to Syria. All men bowed
before the imperial youth who seemed destined to inherit the empire of
the world, and vied with one another in proffering homage, courting
favour, and bringing gifts. Access to the youthful imperator was
purchased of Lollius at a high price.
The enemies of Rome were struck with awe at this display of might and
majesty. The Nabatæans of Petra voluntarily returned to their previous
position of dependence, and in a personal interview with the Roman
commander-in-chief on an island in the Euphrates, Phraates, king of
Parthia, concluded a peace on terms dictated by this mighty ruler and
evacuated Armenia, which was then quickly conquered by the legions after
a faint resistance, and was again numbered among Roman dependencies.
Caius Cæsar then made ready to return home. Feeble of body and greatly
distressed by a wound received at the siege of the town of Artagera on
the Euphrates, he had no desire for more of the hardships and perils of
war; he longed for enjoyment and tranquillity rather than for honour and
military reputation. Both were denied him. Death overtook him at Lycia on
his homeward way. Before he died he received the mournful tidings that
his younger brother Lucius Cæsar had suddenly fallen a victim to sickness
eighteen months earlier, at Massilia, on an expedition into Spain.
With the death of the two Cæsars the hopes of Tiberius blossomed anew.
Hence it is not improbable that they died of poison, administered at
the criminal instigations of Livia. Even contemporaries nourished this
suspicion. The passionate nature of the empress, who shrank from no crime
however heinous, was well known, as was also the revengeful and spiteful
temper of her eldest son, who had returned to Rome shortly before the
death of Caius, and now did all he could to step into the vacant place.
The mother’s intrigues and the son’s flattering arts of dissimulation
did actually succeed to some extent in overcoming the emperor’s aversion
to his stepson. He received him into favour and graciously acceded to
Livia’s proud hopes and desires by adopting him and admitting him into
the Julian family. Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus, who resembled
her mother in beauty, in wit, as well as in levity and voluptuousness,
and the younger Agrippa (styled Postumus, because Julia had brought him
into the world after the death of her husband), a turbulent youth of
haughty and intractable disposition, rude manners, and violent passions,
were no formidable rivals to the artful Livia and her malevolent son.
When Agrippa’s outbreaks of fury were carried so far that neither the
emperor nor the empress were spared by them, the latter contrived that
the thoughtless and ungovernable youth, though adopted by Augustus at
the same time as Tiberius, should be kept under military supervision
in the little island of Planasia; where Tiberius had put him out of
the way in the first year of his reign by assassins despatched for the
purpose, alleging instruction left by the deceased emperor as his excuse.
The younger Julia was banished on the pretext of an illicit amour with
Decius Silanus, to a desolate island in the neighbourhood of Apulia, and
compelled to pass the rest of her days--twenty long years--in exile.
[Sidenote: [9-14 A.D.]]
Fortune, which had stood by Augustus faithfully throughout his public
career and had led him by many thorny paths to the summit of earthly
glory, deserted him in his private life and in his domestic circle.
Hatred and envy, fanned by female passions, ranged his court in two
hostile factions, which employed against each other all the weapons of
intrigue and all the arts of treachery and dissimulation, and scared
peace and harmony away from the apartments of the imperial palace.
Livia’s ambitious and passionate temper was so notorious that she was
actually suspected of having cut her husband’s days short by poison, lest
he should restore his grandson Agrippa, to whom he had been reconciled
in his island exile a little while before with tears and passionate
embraces, to his rights and honours. She was alone with the emperor
when death overtook him on a journey, at Nola in Lower Italy, in the
seventy-sixth year of his age; and by carefully guarding the house and
spreading false reports she concealed the fact of his decease until her
son, who for several years had been associated with his adoptive father
as coadjutor in the empire, could be summoned from Illyricum. Then the
world was startled by the double announcement that Augustus was dead and
that Tiberius had assumed the reins of power.
The gorgeous obsequies of his predecessor were the new emperor’s first
business. Escorted by the whole body of knights and senators, and
accompanied by women, bodyguards, and an innumerable multitude, the
corpse was borne to the Field of Mars and there committed to the flames.
When the ashes had been collected and interred in the imperial vault the
deceased was exalted to a place among the gods by a decree of the senate,
and a temple and ritual were assigned to him. Livia, known as Julia
Livia since her adoption into the Julian family, was to preside as high
priestess over the new college of priests devoted to the deified monarch.
She died in the year 29 A.D., at the advanced age of 86.[b]
It is extremely difficult to estimate the character of this celebrated
woman. Expression has been given above to various intimations which if
justified reveal her in the worst possible light. But it must not be
forgotten that evil-minded gossips were very busy in the early days
of the empire, and that intrigues and sinister motives of a doubtful
character darken the pages of Tacitus, our chief authority. Indeed it
is no exaggeration to say that Tacitus excels in the invention or the
partisan use of bad motives, and his great dramatic and satirical powers
give peculiar force to this unfair weapon. Tacitus can be relied on for
facts which were publicly known or recorded at the time, but he is far
from impartial. It may be, then, that an impartial estimate might soften
somewhat the harsh judgment which, thanks to Tacitus, most writers have
not hesitated to pass upon Livia. With this qualified estimate let us
turn from Livia to consider the character of her famous husband.[a]
THE PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AUGUSTUS
We are indebted to C. Suetonius Tranquillus, who lived at Rome about the
close of the first century A.D., for most that we know of the personal
characteristics of Augustus, and of his immediate successors. Thanks to
him, we are enabled to gain a personal acquaintance, as it were, with the
Cæsars; which is very unusual with the great characters of antiquity in
general. The biographies of Plutarch and of Cornelius Nepos are about the
only other extensive repositories of information concerning the character
of celebrities as men rather than as mere historical personalities. We
turn now to Suetonius’ estimate of Augustus:
Augustus was slow in forming friendships, but when once they were
contracted, he maintained them with great constancy; not only rewarding
very handsomely the virtues and good services of his friends, but
bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that they were
of a venial kind. For amongst all his friends, we scarcely find any who
fell into disgrace with him, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he raised
to the consulship, and Cornelius Gallus whom he made governor of Egypt,
both of them men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged
in a design to excite a rebellion, he delivered up to the senate, that
he might be condemned; and the other, on account of his ungrateful and
malicious temper, he dismissed from his family and the provinces under
his government. But when Gallus, by the threats of his accusers, and the
votes of the senate against him, was driven to the desperate extremity of
laying violent hands upon himself, he commended indeed the attachment of
the senate, that had expressed so much indignation on his account; but he
shed tears, and lamented his unhappy condition, “that I alone,” said he,
“cannot be permitted to be angry with my friends to such a degree as I
think proper.” The rest of his friends continued during their whole lives
to make a distinguished figure in their several orders, both in power
and estate, notwithstanding some occasional incidents of a disagreeable
nature. For to say nothing of others, he would sometimes complain of
impatience in Agrippa, and of loquacity in Mæcenas: the former, from a
suspicion of a coolness in Augustus towards him, and because Marcellus
received greater marks of favour, having withdrawn himself from all
concern in the government, and retired to Mytilene; and the latter having
confidentially imparted to his wife Terentia the discovery of Murena’s
conspiracy. He likewise expected from his friends, both living and
dying, a mutual proof of their benevolence. For though he was far from
coveting their estates (as he never would accept of any legacy left him
by a stranger), yet he examined their last sentiments of him, expressed
in their wills, with an anxious attention; not being able to conceal his
chagrin, if they made but a slight, or no very honourable mention of him,
nor his joy on the other hand, if they expressed a grateful sense of his
favours and a hearty affection for him. And what was left him by such as
had children, he used to restore to the latter, either immediately, or if
they were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly habit, or
of their marriage, with interest.
As a patron and master, his behaviour in general was mild and
conciliating; but when occasion required it, he could be severe. He
employed many of his freedmen in considerable posts about him, as
Licinius, Enceladus, and others. And when his slave Cosmus had reflected
bitterly upon him, he resented the injury no further than by putting him
in fetters. When his steward Diomedes, as they were walking together,
left him exposed to a wild boar, which came suddenly upon them, he chose
rather to charge him with cowardice than any ill design, and turned
an incident of no small hazard to his person into a jest, because it
had proceeded from no treachery. Proculus, who was one of his greatest
favourites amongst all his freedmen, he put to death, for maintaining
a criminal commerce with other men’s wives. He broke the legs of his
secretary Thallus, for taking a bribe of five hundred denarii to discover
the contents of a letter of his. And his son Caius’ tutor, and other
attendants, upon the occasion of his sickness and death behaving with
great insolence, and committing acts of rapaciousness, he tied great
weights about their necks and threw them into a river.
In his youth he lay under the infamy of various aspersions. Sextus
Pompeius reproached him as an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, that
he had earned his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. L. Antony
likewise upbraids him with the same; and that he had, for a gratification
of three hundred thousand sesterces, submitted to A. Hirtius in the same
way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with the flame of
nutshells, to make the hair become softer.
That he was guilty of various acts of adultery is not denied even by
his friends; but they allege in excuse for it that he engaged in those
intrigues not from lewdness but policy, to discover more easily the
designs of his enemies by their wives.
With respect to the charge of prostitution, he very easily refuted it
by the chastity of his life, at the very time when the imputation was
made, as well as ever after. His conduct likewise gave the lie to that
of a luxurious extravagance in his furniture, when, upon the taking of
Alexandria, he reserved for himself nothing of all the furniture of the
palace but a cup of porcelain; and soon after melted down all the golden
vessels, even such as were intended for common use. But he never could
discountenance the imputation of lewdness with women; being, as they
say, in the latter part of his life, much addicted to the deflowering of
virgins, who were procured for him from all parts, even by his own wife.
To the remarks concerning his gaming he paid not the smallest regard; but
played frankly and openly for his diversion, even when he was advanced
in years; and not only in the month of December, but at other times, and
upon all days, whether festivals or not. This evidently appears from a
letter under his own hand, in which he says, “I supped, my dear Tiberius,
with the same company. We had besides Vinicius, and Silvius the father.
We gamed like old fellows at supper, both yesterday and to-day. And as
any one threw upon the _tali_[5] aces or sixes, he put down for every
_talus_ a denarius; all which was gained by him who threw a Venus.”
In another letter he says: “We had, my dear Tiberius, a pleasant time of
it during the festival of Minerva: for we played every day, and kept the
gaming board warm. Your brother uttered many exclamations at a desperate
run of ill fortune; but recovering by degrees, and unexpectedly, he in
the end lost not much. I lost twenty thousand sesterces for my part;
but then I was profusely generous in my play, as I commonly am; for
had I insisted upon the stakes which I declined, or kept what I gave
away, I should have won above fifty thousand. But this I like better;
for my generosity will raise me to celestial glory.” In a letter to his
daughter, he writes thus: “I have sent you 250 denarii, which I gave to
every one of my guests; in case they were inclined at supper to divert
themselves with the _tali_, or at the game of even or odd.”
In other parts of his life, it is certain that he conducted himself
with great discretion, and was free from all suspicion of any vice. He
lived at first near the Roman Forum, above the Ringmaker’s Stairs, in a
house which had once been occupied by Calvus the orator. He afterwards
moved to the Palatine, where he resided in a small house belonging to
Hortensius, no way remarkable either in respect of accommodation or
ornament; the piazzas being but small, the pillars of Alban stone, and
the rooms without anything of marble or fine paving. He continued to use
the same bed chamber, both winter and summer, during forty years; for
though he was sensible that the city did not agree well with his health,
he nevertheless resided constantly in it through the winter.
If at any time he wished to be perfectly retired, and secure from
interruption, he shut himself up in an apartment in the top of his house,
which he called Syracuse, or Τεχνοφυον, or he went to some seat belonging
to his freedmen near the city. But when he was indisposed, he commonly
took up his residence in Mæcenas’ house. Of all the places of retirement
from the city, he chiefly frequented those upon the seacoast, and the
islands of Campania, or the towns near the city, as Lanuvium, Præneste,
and Tibur, where he often used to sit for the administration of justice,
in the porticos of Hercules’ temple. He had a particular aversion to
large and sumptuous palaces; and some that had been raised at a vast
expense by his granddaughter Julia he levelled with the ground. Those
of his own, which were far from being spacious, he adorned not so much
with statues and pictures as with walks and groves, and things which were
curious either for their antiquity or rarity; such as at Capreæ, the huge
limbs of sea monsters and wild beasts, which some affect to call the
bones of giants and the arms of old heroes.
His frugality in the furniture of his house appears even at this day,
from some beds and tables still extant; most of which are scarcely fit
for any genteel private family. It is reported that he never lay upon
a bed, but such as was low and meanly furnished. He seldom wore any
garment but what was made by the hands of his wife, sister, daughter,
and granddaughters. His togas were neither scanty nor full; nor the
_clavus_ of his tunic either remarkably broad or narrow. His shoes were a
little higher than common, to make him appear taller than he was. He had
always clothes and shoes, proper to go abroad in, ready by him in his bed
chamber, for any sudden occasion.
At his table, which was always plentiful and elegant, he constantly
entertained company; but was very scrupulous in the choice of them.
Valerius Messalla informs us that he never admitted any freedman to his
table, except Menas, after he had betrayed to him Pompey’s fleet, but not
until he had promoted him to the state of the freeborn. He writes himself
that he invited to his table a person in whose country house he lodged,
that had formerly been a spy to him. He often would come late to table,
and withdraw soon, so that the company began supper before his coming in
and continued at table after his departure. His entertainments consisted
of three dishes, or at most only six. But if the expense was moderate,
the complaisance with which he treated his company was extraordinary.
For such as were silent, or talked low, he excited to bear a part in the
common conversation; and ordered in music and stage-players and dancers
from the circus, and very often itinerant declaimers, to enliven the
company.
Festivals and solemn days of joy he usually celebrated in a very
expensive manner, but sometimes only in a jocular manner. In the
Saturnalia, or at any other time when the fancy took him, he would
distribute to his company clothes, gold, and silver; sometimes coins
of all sorts, even of the ancient kings of Rome and of other nations;
sometimes nothing but hair-cloth, sponges, peels, and pincers, and other
things of that kind, with obscure and ambiguous inscriptions upon them.
He used likewise to sell tickets of things of very unequal value, and
pictures with the back sides turned towards the company at table; and so,
by the unknown quality of the lot, disappoint or gratify the expectation
of the purchasers. This sort of traffic went round the whole company,
everyone being obliged to buy something, and to run the chance of loss or
gain with the rest.
He was a man of a little stomach (for I must not omit even this article),
and commonly used a plain diet. He was particularly fond of coarse bread,
small fishes, cheese made of cow’s milk, and green figs of that kind that
comes twice a year. He would eat before supper, at any time, and in any
place, when he had an appetite.
[Illustration: ROMAN GENERAL WEARING THE PALUDAMENTUM]
He was naturally extremely sparing in the use of wine. Cornelius Nepos
says that he used to drink only three times at supper in the camp at
Mutina; and when he indulged himself the most, he never exceeded a pint,
or if he did, he threw it up again. Of all wines, he gave the preference
to the Rhætic, but scarcely ever drank any in the daytime. Instead of
drinking, he used to take a piece of bread dipped in cold water, or a
slice of cucumber, or some leaves of lettuce, or a green sharp juicy
apple.
After a little food at noon, he used to take a nap with his clothes and
shoes on, his feet covered, and his hand held before his eyes. After
supper he commonly withdrew to a couch in his study, where he continued
late, until he had put down in his diary all or most of the remaining
transactions of the day, which he had not before registered. He would
then go to bed, but never slept above seven hours at most, and that not
without interruption; for he would wake three or four times in that
space. If he could not again fall asleep, as sometimes happened, he
would call for some person to read or tell stories to him, until sleep
supervened, which was usually protracted till after daybreak. He never
would lie awake in the dark without somebody to sit by him. Very early
rising was apt to disagree with him. On which account, if religious or
social duty obliged him to get up early, that he might guard as much as
possible against the inconvenience resulting from it, he used to lodge in
some apartment belonging to any of his domestics that was nearest the
place at which he was to give his attendance. If at any time a fit of
drowsiness seized him in passing along the streets, he would order the
chair to be set down, until he had taken a little sleep.
In person he was handsome and graceful, through all the stages of his
life. But he was careless of dress; and so little attentive to the
adjustment of his hair, that he usually had it done in great haste, by
several barbers at a time. He would sometimes clip, and sometimes shave
his beard; and during the operation would be either reading or writing.
His countenance, either when he spoke or held his tongue, was so calm
and serene, that a Gaul of the first rank declared amongst his friends
that he was so much mollified by it, as to be restrained from throwing
him down a precipice, in his passage over the Alps, upon being admitted
to approach him, under the pretext of speaking with him. His eyes were
clear and bright; and he was willing it should be thought that there
was something of a divine vigour in them. He was likewise not a little
pleased to see people, upon his looking steadfastly at them, lower their
countenances, as if the sun shone in their eyes. But in his old age, he
saw very imperfectly with his left eye. His teeth were thin set, small
and rough, his hair a little curled, and inclining to a yellow colour.
His eyebrows met; his ears were small, and he had an aquiline nose. His
complexion was betwixt brown and fair; his stature but low; though Julius
Marathus his freedman says he was five feet and nine inches in height.
This however was so much concealed by the just proportion of his limbs,
that it was only perceivable upon comparison with some taller person
standing by him.
From early youth he devoted himself with great diligence and application
to the study of eloquence, and the other liberal arts. In the war of
Mutina, notwithstanding the weighty affairs in which he was engaged,
he is said to have read, written, and declaimed every day. He never
addressed the senate, people, or soldiery but in a premeditated speech,
though he was not destitute of the talent of speaking extempore. And
lest his memory should fail him, as well as to prevent the loss of time
in getting his speeches by heart, he resolved to read them all. In his
intercourse with individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon a
subject of importance, he had all he would say down in writing, lest,
if he spoke extempore, he should say more or less than was proper.
He delivered himself in a sweet and peculiar tone, in which he was
diligently instructed by a master. But when he had a cold, he sometimes
made use of a crier for the delivery of his speeches to the people.[c]
In his literary qualifications, without at all rivalling the attainments
of Cæsar, he was on a level with most Romans of distinction of his time;
and it is said that both in speaking and writing his style was eminent
for its perfect plainness and propriety. His speeches on any public
occasion were composed beforehand, and recited from memory; nay, so
careful was he not to commit himself by any inconsiderate expression,
that even when discussing any important subject with his own wife, he
wrote down what he had to say, and read it before her. Like his uncle, he
was strongly tinged with superstition; he was very much afraid of thunder
and lightning, and always carried about with him a sealskin, as a charm
against its power; notwithstanding which, in any severe storm, he was
accustomed to hide himself in a chamber in the centre of his house, to be
as much out of the way of it as possible; add to which, he was a great
observer of dreams, and of lucky and unlucky days.[d]
He neither slighted his own dreams, nor those of other people relating to
himself. At the battle of Philippi, though he had resolved not to stir
out of his tent, on account of being indisposed, yet, upon the occasion
of a dream which a friend of his had, he altered his resolution; and it
was fortunate for him that he did so; for the camp was taken, and his
couch, upon a supposition of his being in it, was pierced in several
parts, and cut to pieces. He had many frivolous silly dreams during
the spring; but in the other parts of the year, his dreams were less
frequent and more significative. Upon his frequently visiting a temple
in the Capitol, which he had dedicated to Thundering Jove, he dreamed
that Jupiter Capitolinus complained that his worshippers were taken from
him, and that upon this he replied he had only given him the Thunderer
for his porter. He therefore immediately hung the ceiling of the temple
round with little bells; because such commonly hung at the gates of great
houses. Upon occasion of a dream too, he always, on a certain day of the
year, begged an alms of the people, reaching out his hand to receive the
dole with which they presented him.
Some signs and omens he regarded as infallible. If in the morning his
shoe was put on wrong, or the left instead of the right, that was with
him a dismal presage. If, upon his setting out on a long journey by sea
or land, there happened to fall a mizzling rain he held it to be a good
sign of a speedy and happy return. He was much affected likewise with
anything out of the common course of nature. A palm tree, which chanced
to grow up betwixt some stones in the pavement before his house, he
transplanted into a court where the household gods were placed, and took
all possible care to make it thrive.
His death and his subsequent deification were said to have been intimated
by divers manifest prodigies. As he was finishing the census amidst a
great crowd of people in the Field of Mars, an eagle flew about him
several times, and then directed its course to a neighbouring temple,
where it sat down upon the name of Agrippa, and at the first letter.
Upon observing this, he ordered Tiberius to put up the vows, which it
is usual to make on such occasions, for the succeeding lustrum. For he
declared he would not meddle with what it was probable he should never
accomplish, though the tables were ready drawn for it. About that same
time, the first letter of his name, in an inscription upon a statue of
him, was struck out by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage
that he would live only a hundred days longer: which number the letter
C stands for, and that he would be placed amongst the gods; as Æsar,
which is the remaining part of the word Cæsar, signifies, in the Tuscan
language, a god. Being therefore about despatching Tiberius to Illyricum,
and designing to go with him as far as Beneventum, but being detained
by several persons who applied to him upon account of causes they had
depending, he cried out, which was afterwards regarded as an omen of
his death, “Not all the business that can occur shall detain me at Rome
one moment longer”; and setting out upon his journey, he went as far as
Astura; whence, contrary to his custom, he put to sea in the night time,
upon the occasion of a favourable wind.
His sickness was occasioned by diarrhoea; notwithstanding which, he
went round the coast of Campania and the adjacent islands, and spent
four days in that of Capreæ; where he gave himself up entirely to his
ease; behaving, at the same time, to those about him with the utmost
good nature and complaisance. As he happened to sail by the Bay of
Puteoli, the passengers and mariners aboard a ship of Alexandria just
then arrived, clad all in white, with crowns upon their heads, loaded
him with praises and joyful acclamations, crying out, “By you we live,
by you we sail, by you enjoy our liberty and our fortunes.” At which
being greatly pleased, he distributed to each of his friends that
attended him forty gold pieces, requiring from them an assurance by oath
not to employ the sum given them any other way than in the purchase of
Alexandrian goods. And during several days after, he distributed togæ and
pallia, upon condition that the Romans should use the Grecian, and the
Grecians the Roman dress and language. He likewise constantly attended
to see the boys perform their exercises, according to an ancient custom
still continued at Capreæ. He gave them likewise an entertainment in
his presence, and not only permitted but required from them the utmost
freedom in jesting, and scrambling for fruit, victuals, and other things
which he threw amongst them. In a word, he indulged himself in all the
ways of amusement he could contrive. Soon after, passing over to Naples,
though at that time greatly disordered by the frequent returns of his
disease, he continued a spectator to the end of some solemn games which
were performed every five years in honour of him, and came with Tiberius
to the place intended. But on his return, his disorder increasing, he
stopped at Nola, sent for Tiberius back again, and had a long discourse
with him in private; after which he gave no further attention to business
of any importance.
Upon the day of his death, he now and then inquired if there was any
disturbance in the town about him; and calling for a mirror, he ordered
his hair to be combed, and his falling cheeks to be adjusted. Then asking
his friends that were admitted into the room, “Do ye think that I have
acted my part in life well?” he immediately subjoined,
Ἐι δὲ παν ἔχει καλως, τῳ παιγνίῳ
Δότε κρότον, καὶ πάντες ὑμεῖς μετὰ χαρας κτυπήσατε.
“If all be right, with joy your voices raise
In loud applauses to the actor’s praise.”
After which, having dismissed them all, whilst he was inquiring of some
that were just come from Rome, concerning Drusus’ daughter who was in
a bad state of health, he expired amidst the kisses of Livia, and with
these words: “Livia, live mindful of our marriage, and farewell!” dying
a very easy death, and such as he himself had always wished for. For as
often as he heard that any person had died quickly and without pain, he
wished for himself and his friends the like ευθανασια (an easy death),
for that was the word he made use of. He discovered but one symptom
before his death of his being delirious, which was this: he was all on a
sudden much frightened, and complained that he was carried away by forty
men. But this was rather a presage, than any delirium; for precisely that
number of soldiers carried out his corpse.
He expired [Suetonius continues] in the same room in which his father
Octavius had died, when the two Sextuses, Pompeius and Apuleius, were
consuls, upon the fourteenth of the calends of September [Aug. 19 A.D.,
14 according to the revised calendar], at the ninth hour of the day,
wanting only five-and-thirty days of seventy-six years of age. His
remains were carried by the magistrates of the municipia[6] and colonies,
from Nola to Bovillæ, and in the night time because of the season of
the year. During the intervals, the body lay in some court, or great
temple, of each town. At Bovillæ it was met by the equestrian order
who carried it to the city, and deposited it in the porch of his own
house. The senate proceeded with so much zeal in the arrangement of his
funeral, and paying honour to his memory, that, amongst several other
proposals, some were for having the funeral procession made through the
triumphal gate, preceded by the image of Victory, which is in the senate
house, and the children of the first quality, of both sexes, singing the
funeral ditty. Others moved that on the day of the funeral they should
lay aside their gold rings, and wear rings of iron; and others, that his
bones should be collected by the priests of the superior orders. One
likewise proposed to transfer the name of Augustus to September, because
he was born in the latter, but died in the former. Another moved that
the whole period of time, from his birth to his death, should be called
the Augustan age, and be inserted in the calendar under that title.
But at last it was judged proper to be moderate in the honours to be
paid to his memory. Two funeral orations were pronounced in his praise,
one before the temple of Julius, by Tiberius; and the other before the
rostra, under the old shops, by Drusus, Tiberius’ son. The body was then
carried upon the shoulders of senators into the Field of Mars, and there
burned. A man of prætorian rank affirmed upon oath that he saw his spirit
ascend into heaven. The most distinguished persons of the equestrian
order, bare-footed, and with their tunics loose, gathered up his relics,
and deposited them in the mausoleum, which had been built in his sixth
consulship, betwixt the Flaminian way and the bank of the Tiber, at which
time likewise he gave the woods and walks about it for the use of the
people.
He had made a will a year and four months before his death, upon the
third of the nones of April, in the consulship of Lucius Plancus and
C. Silius. It consisted of two skins of parchment, written partly in
his hand, and partly by his freedmen Polybius and Hilarion. It had been
committed to the custody of the vestal virgins, by whom it was now
produced, with three other volumes, all sealed up as well as the will,
which were every one read in the senate. He appointed for his first
heirs, Tiberius for two thirds of his estate, and Livia for the other
third, whom he likewise desired to assume his name. The heirs substituted
in their room, in case of death, were Drusus, Tiberius’ son, for a third
part, and Germanicus with his three sons for the rest. Next to them were
his relations and several of his friends.
He left in legacies to the Roman people 40,000,000 sesterces; to the
tribes 3,500,000; to the guards 1000 each man; to the city battalions
500; and to the soldiers in the legions 300 each; which several sums he
ordered to be paid immediately after his death. For he had taken care
that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered
different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as
20,000 sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth;
alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and
declaring that not more than 150,000,000 sesterces would come to his
heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had
received in legacies from his friends, the sum of 1,400,000,000; almost
the whole of which, with his two paternal estates, and others that had
been left him, he expended upon the public.
He left order that the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter,
should not be buried in his sepulchre. With regard to the three volumes
before mentioned, in one of them he gave orders about his funeral;
another contained a narrative of his actions, which he intended should
be inscribed on brass plates, and placed before his mausoleum; in the
third he had drawn up a concise account of the state of the empire; as
to the number of soldiers in pay, what money there was in the treasury,
exchequer, and arrears of taxes; to which are added the names of the
freedmen and slaves, from whom the several accounts might be taken.[c]
A BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF AUGUSTUS
It will be observed that Suetonius makes reference to brass plates,
which Augustus had had inscribed with a narrative of his actions, to
be placed before his mausoleum. It would appear that this biographical
inscription, or a kindred one, was widely copied on tablets placed in
the various temples dedicated to Augustus all over the empire. Fragments
of this duplicate inscription from various ruins have been preserved,
but by far the most complete one is that which was discovered in the
sixteenth century, on a marble slab in the wall of the temple at Ancyra
(the modern Angora) in Asia Minor; which, owing to the place of its
discovery, is known as the _Monumentum Ancyranum_. This inscription, to
which reference has already been made, supplies many important data as to
the life of Augustus. It has a peculiar interest, because, as has been
said, it is virtually autobiographical. In addition to the facts that it
tabulates, it therefore gives interesting glimpses into the character of
its author.[a]
In a well-known passage of this inscription Augustus reviews his
political career. In this review he does not begin with his adoption by
Julius Cæsar, but he starts from the fact that in his nineteenth year he
raised an army and saved the state on his own initiative and by his own
resources. As an emperor upon whom old age was creeping, he looked back
at the single landmarks of his rising career and saw the turning-point
which decided his later destiny in this acquisition of an army of his
own; according to him his political significance begins with the moment
in which he became the head of an army.
This right of exercising authority over the army, and indeed sole,
undisputed authority, Cæsar had wanted to be sure of preserving at any
cost for the future; this was the fundamental notion of his whole system,
if that can be called a system which was indeed only a practice. The
republic, too, could not do without its commanders, but it only left them
for a year, or at the most a year and a half, in office. The innovation
of the emperor’s time consisted in this, that the sole commander actually
kept his power for a lifetime, held it simultaneously with other powerful
offices, and even dared to exercise it in the capital itself.
In order to maintain his army, he had been permanently invested with
control of the important boundary provinces and with the permanent
garrisons of the legions; as also with the right to supervise the other
provinces, which were of course bound to supply their quota to the
imperial army.
The new ruler then had to have a domestic power which he could exercise
uncontrolled; he found it in the legions and the provinces, which, from
beginning to end, remained the sure foundation of the principatus. The
good will of the senate and of the people, who had formerly conducted
the government, was now but of second or third rate consideration to the
princeps; both senate and people were conquered and had to a large extent
lost their importance in the civil wars. In spite of this, every senator
who frankly recognised the new régime, and provided necessary assurances
in other ways, had been raised to the highest honours and treated, at
least externally, on an equal footing by the ruler.
As we have seen, Augustus preferred the modest title of Princeps,
although it could not be reckoned amongst official titles and only
implied the first man of the senate and of the citizens. As the ruler’s
rank as a citizen found expression in this title, so Augustus chose the
title of Imperator to indicate his military standing. Both were selected
with much ingenuity to promote the intentions of the new ruler. They were
meant to cover a new thing with an old name; for this reason he pitched
upon words in no way foreign to former times, which had remained totally
unstamped and were soon employed exclusively in the modern sense. This
it was to which the ruler attached quite particular weight, and this
characterises the man no less than his administration.
He let himself be guided by the senate in the year 29 B.C. as imperator,
but not in the sense in which so many victorious generals for centuries
past had been greeted for the period between the day of victory and
the triumph, after which the army was disbanded. What these generals
had enjoyed for a short period young Cæsar had wished to possess for a
lifetime: that is, the military supremacy of the Roman Empire. That is
why this title in the new monarchical sense comes, not at the end, but at
the commencement of the full name in the place of the citizen forename
which was set aside.
Rightly was the conferring of this name, even by the ancients, regarded
as the beginning of monarchy; rightly have the Middle Ages, rightly have
the thinkers of to-day, described the successors of the Roman ruler as
emperors. With this title Augustus wished to mark the transition from the
ancient to the modern spirit; for his achieved work lies essentially in
this, that he dovetailed into the constitution the notion of a permanent
commander-in-chief and a permanent army, such as had hitherto been
unknown to the republic.
The practical position of the princeps must always be clearly
distinguished from the theoretical. The new office of commander-in-chief
for the whole Roman Empire was analogous to the office of a republican
proconsul in a single province, who administered his country, commanded
his troops, with a possible right to supervise the neighbouring
districts. In the year 23 B.C., by way of addition, Augustus, who in the
course of his long reign was always more and more occupied in obscuring
the unconstitutional elements of his new position, had caused to be
conferred upon him a regular proconsular imperium, so as to be sure that
the exercise of his authority should also meet with recognition in the
senatorial provinces.
Although Cæsar was then pre-eminently an imperator, we should do him an
injustice were we to describe his achievement as a military despotism.
He was personally far too little a soldier and too much a statesman for
this form of government, even to suit his own taste. The army was there
only to make it possible for him in all important questions to carry out
his will; as a rule he kept within those constitutional limits which he
himself had reconstructed.
Whereas formerly the Absolutist development of the empire was assumed
without any further inquiry into its origin, we owe it to Mommsen to have
fixed his gaze on the difference between the times and to have hit the
note of the constitutional scheme in his systematic presentation, which
is certainly more important for the conception of Augustus than for his
practical illustration of it. Mommsen talks of the “juristic construction
of the principatus,” very rightly dwelling on the point that “Augustus’
principate is not a boundless authority, but a measured magistracy within
republican forms.” The right of legislating remained, in theory at least,
the same as in republican times. Co-operation was secured to the ruler
through his official power as a consul or later as a tribune.
Besides this, like every magistrate of former times, he could announce
his will to the people by edicts and acts; and that these expressions
received great consideration in view of his position and personal
authority need scarcely be said, especially from the time when senators
and officials were sworn on every New Year’s Day, not only to the laws
themselves, but also to the _Acta Cæsaris_. It does not follow from this
in any way that the princeps was superior to the laws; we must be careful
not to import the views of the Greek of a later period into the judicial
views of a regent like Augustus. Practically, of course, he found for
the most part a means of carrying out his will in a given case: but the
emperor never expressed such a doctrine as a fundamental principle of
jurisprudence. On the contrary the emperor was not empowered even to
suspend the prevailing law; under Augustus at any rate this remained the
privilege of the senate. He recognised it, too, without opposition; for
instance, in not publishing a gift to the people before he had requested
and received permission from the senate.
It was then a constitution full of contradictions, capable of
interpretation only by means of compromise, this constitution substituted
by the new ruler for the old republic, in order, beneath the garb of
republican form, to make the exercise of monarchical power possible.
Whether the student of systems called it a republic or a monarchy
troubled him little, although until his death he himself clung to the
fiction (and with a certain degree of truth) that he had restored the
ancient and legitimate constitution of the state.[7][e]
A most extraordinary man, then, was this foremost citizen of the new
Roman state. But nothing about him is more extraordinary than the view
regarding him that has been entertained by posterity. He has been almost
uniformly regarded as not a man of the very first capacity,--as an
opportunist rather than a creative leader. He held the world under the
sway of his will for almost half a century, and was never so autocratic
in his power, so securely fixed in his position, as at the hour of his
death. He found Rome brick and left it marble; he found the Roman state
an inchoate, wavering commonwealth, and left it a peerless empire. Yet
the world has denied him the title of “great”; is disposed to deny him
even the possession of genius.
Perhaps a partial explanation lies in the fact that we demand always a
certain theatrical quality in a man of genius. It has been suggested by
an eminent historian (Professor Sloane) that a great man has usually a
capacity for inordinate wickedness, as well as for consummate greatness.
Alexander loses control of himself on occasion, and in his frenzy kills
his friend. Hannibal spends his whole life under the spell of a sworn
hatred. Cæsar stops at nothing to attain his selfish ends. In modern
times your Frederick, your Napoleon, is not called great because of any
moral quality. Public taste seems to demand a rounded character in its
favoured heroes: it likes the piquant flavour of immorality. In every
direction your hero must be measured by other standards than ordinary
mortals.
But the life of Augustus is keyed to the tone of a passionless
moderation. He is all judgment, no emotion. Between the courses at
dinner he listlessly plays games that he may not be annoyed by the
persiflage of the jesters who are there to amuse his guests. And he plays
the game of life in the same fashion. One cannot imagine him excited,
enthusiastic, angry even. He might, indeed, commit a crime, but it
would be a carefully measured crime, dictated by policy: not a crime of
passion. Even in his liaisons, it was said of him that his chief ambition
was to learn the real sentiment of those about him through their wives,
rather than merely to gratify a personal appetite.
But it must not be forgotten that Augustus, had he not been such a man as
this, could not have accomplished the work he did. Had he been full of
enthusiasms he would have antagonised too many people; would have made
too many powerful enemies; would have invited the fate that befell the
man of genius whose nephew he was, and by whose good example he profited.
Yet, after all, the measure of capacity is success, and it seems a
grudging estimate which withholds the title of “great” from the man who
changed the entire complexion of the civilised world and put his stamp
indelibly upon the centuries.
But whether genius or not in the ordinary acceptance of that loosely
applied and somewhat ambiguous word, there is one regard in which
Augustus need fear comparison with no leader of any age: in practical
statecraft, judged by its result, he has no superior. In a pre-eminent
degree he was able to isolate himself from his environment; to visualise
the political situation; to see his fellow-men through the clear medium
of expediency, undistorted by any aberration of passion or of prejudice.
To the theatrical quality of personal vanity, from which Cæsar was by no
means free, Augustus was an entire stranger. Because he was master of
his own ambition, he came to be master of the world. If because of his
placid logicality, posterity has been disposed to speak slightingly of
his genius, the same quality won him at least an unchallenged position as
the most consummate master of practical politics.[a]
FOOTNOTES
[5] The Romans, at their feasts, during the intervals of drinking, often
played at dice, of which there were two kinds, the _tesseræ_ and _tali_.
The former had six sides, like the modern dice; the latter, four oblong
sides, for the two ends were not regarded. In playing, they used three
_tesseræ_ and four _tali_, which were all put into a box wider below than
above, and being shaken, were thrown out upon the gaming board or table.
[6] _Municipia_ were foreign towns which obtained the right of Roman
citizens, and were of different kinds. The _municipia_ used their own
laws and customs; nor were they obliged to receive the Roman laws unless
they chose them.
[7] [Modern historians have much to say of the “disguised monarchy” of
Augustus. But probably the Romans were not so blind as to the character
of the Augustan constitution as are now the historians. The government
was in reality a compromise between republic and monarchy--a compromise
made easy to the Romans by their habit of investing magistrates,
especially extraordinary magistrates, with vast powers. The republic
was for Rome and Italy, the monarchy for the provinces. This form of
government Mommsen aptly terms a dyarchy.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]