(71)
I. That the family of the Octavii was of the first distinction in
Velitrae [106], is rendered evident by many circumstances. For in the
most frequented part of the town, there was, not long since, a street
named the Octavian; and an altar was to be seen, consecrated to one
Octavius, who being chosen general in a war with some neighbouring
people, the enemy making a sudden attack, while he was sacrificing to
Mars, he immediately snatched the entrails of the victim from off the
fire, and offered them half raw upon the altar; after which, marching out
to battle, he returned victorious. This incident gave rise to a law, by
which it was enacted, that in all future times the entrails should be
offered to Mars in the same manner; and the rest of the victim be carried
to the Octavii.
II. This family, as well as several in Rome, was admitted into the
senate by Tarquinius Priscus, and soon afterwards placed by Servius
Tullius among the patricians; but in process of time it transferred
itself to the plebeian order, and, after the lapse of a long interval,
was restored by Julius Caesar to the rank of patricians. The first
person of the family raised by the suffrages of the people to the
magistracy, was Caius Rufus. He obtained the quaestorship, and had two
sons, Cneius and Caius; from whom are descended the two branches of the
Octavian family, which have had very different fortunes. For Cneius, and
his descendants in uninterrupted succession, held all the highest offices
of the state; whilst Caius and his posterity, whether from their
circumstances or their choice, remained in the equestrian order until the
father of Augustus. The great-grandfather of Augustus served as a
military tribune in the second Punic war in Sicily, under the command of
Aemilius Pappus. His grandfather contented himself with bearing the
public offices of his own municipality, and grew old in the tranquil
enjoyment of an ample patrimony. Such is the account given (72) by
different authors. Augustus himself, however, tells us nothing more than
that he was descended of an equestrian family, both ancient and rich, of
which his father was the first who obtained the rank of senator. Mark
Antony upbraidingly tells him that his great-grandfather was a freedman
of the territory of Thurium [107], and a rope-maker, and his grandfather
a usurer. This is all the information I have any where met with,
respecting the ancestors of Augustus by the father’s side.
III. His father Caius Octavius was, from his earliest years, a person
both of opulence and distinction: for which reason I am surprised at
those who say that he was a money-dealer [108], and was employed in
scattering bribes, and canvassing for the candidates at elections, in the
Campus Martius. For being bred up in all the affluence of a great
estate, he attained with ease to honourable posts, and discharged the
duties of them with much distinction. After his praetorship, he obtained
by lot the province of Macedonia; in his way to which he cut off some
banditti, the relics of the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who had
possessed themselves of the territory of Thurium; having received from
the senate an extraordinary commission for that purpose. In his
government of the province, he conducted himself with equal justice and
resolution; for he defeated the Bessians and Thracians in a great battle,
and treated the allies of the republic in such a manner, that there are
extant letters from M. Tullius Cicero, in which he advises and exhorts
his brother Quintus, who then held the proconsulship of Asia with no
great reputation, to imitate the example of his neighbour Octavius, in
gaining the affections of the allies of Rome.
IV. After quitting Macedonia, before he could declare himself a
candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, leaving behind him a
daughter, the elder Octavia, by Ancharia; and another daughter, Octavia
the younger, as well as Augustus, by Atia, who was the daughter of Marcus
Atius Balbus, and Julia, sister to Caius Julius Caesar. Balbus was, by
the father’s (73) side, of a family who were natives of Aricia [109], and
many of whom had been in the senate. By the mother’s side he was nearly
related to Pompey the Great; and after he had borne the office of
praetor, was one of the twenty commissioners appointed by the Julian law
to divide the land in Campania among the people. But Mark Antony,
treating with contempt Augustus’s descent even by the mother’s side, says
that his great grand-father was of African descent, and at one time kept
a perfumer’s shop, and at another, a bake-house, in Aricia. And Cassius
of Parma, in a letter, taxes Augustus with being the son not only of a
baker, but a usurer. These are his words: “Thou art a lump of thy
mother’s meal, which a money-changer of Nerulum taking from the newest
bake-house of Aricia, kneaded into some shape, with his hands all
discoloured by the fingering of money.”
V. Augustus was born in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and
Caius Antonius [110], upon the ninth of the calends of October [the 23rd
September], a little before sunrise, in the quarter of the Palatine Hill
[111], and the street called The Ox-Heads [112], where now stands a
chapel dedicated to him, and built a little after his death. For, as it
is recorded in the proceedings of the senate, when Caius Laetorius, a
young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the senators for a
lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged, besides
his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the
guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon his
coming into the world; and entreated that (74) he might find favour, for
the sake of that deity, who was in a peculiar manner his; an act of the
senate was passed, for the consecration of that part of his house in
which Augustus was born.
VI. His nursery is shewn to this day, in a villa belonging to the
family, in the suburbs of Velitrae; being a very small place, and much
like a pantry. An opinion prevails in the neighbourhood, that he was
also born there. Into this place no person presumes to enter, unless
upon necessity, and with great devotion, from a belief, for a long time
prevalent, that such as rashly enter it are seized with great horror and
consternation, which a short while since was confirmed by a remarkable
incident. For when a new inhabitant of the house had, either by mere
chance, or to try the truth of the report, taken up his lodging in that
apartment, in the course of the night, a few hours afterwards, he was
thrown out by some sudden violence, he knew not how, and was found in a
state of stupefaction, with the coverlid of his bed, before the door of
the chamber.
VII. While he was yet an infant, the surname of Thurinus was given him,
in memory of the birth-place of his family, or because, soon after he was
born, his father Octavius had been successful against the fugitive
slaves, in the country near Thurium. That he was surnamed Thurinus, I
can affirm upon good foundation, for when a boy, I had a small bronze
statue of him, with that name upon it in iron letters, nearly effaced by
age, which I presented to the emperor [113], by whom it is now revered
amongst the other tutelary deities in his chamber. He is also often
called Thurinus contemptuously, by Mark Antony in his letters; to which
he makes only this reply: “I am surprised that my former name should be
made a subject of reproach.” He afterwards assumed the name of Caius
Caesar, and then of Augustus; the former in compliance with the will of
his great-uncle, and the latter upon a motion of Munatius Plancus in the
senate. For when some proposed to confer upon him the name of Romulus,
as being, in a manner, a second founder of the city, it was resolved that
he should rather be called Augustus, a surname not only new, but of more
dignity, because places devoted to religion, and those in which anything
(75) is consecrated by augury, are denominated august, either from the
word auctus, signifying augmentation, or ab avium gestu, gustuve, from
the flight and feeding of birds; as appears from this verse of Ennius: