as our information comes from Rome and Rome alone, we forget the
enormous area over which the transactions took place. We should not
to-day be surprised to find France prosperous when war was raging in
Italy; we should not expect Spain to be affected by occurrences in the
Balkan Peninsula, or Egypt to be ruined by marauders in Asia Minor;
and we can even imagine a war in Lombardy which would leave Calabria
undisturbed. Roman history gives us all the military operations of all
the countries in Europe South of the Alps and West of the Rhine, and of
all the East that is washed by the Mediterranean, as the history of one
state, and we forget that large though the armies were which disputed
the Empire of the world, they fought over a very large area, and that
the greater part of the Empire was only for short periods or indirectly
affected. Even inside Italy the fighting was carried on at a distance
from the capital; the scenes of actual war were Lombardy or Northern
Tuscany or again the coast opposite Sicily; the marching of the troops
along the great roads did not disturb the country between the scenes of
operations. In all periods of social disturbance the attention is drawn
so exclusively to the sensational events, that the continuance of the
ordinary routine alongside of the confusion escapes notice. A community
which has long been settled parts unwillingly with its fixed habits; it
is only very long periods of war that leave their mark permanently on a
country. Perpetual disorder and perpetual invasions prevent progress,
but even such violent outbreaks of disorder as the early years of the
French Revolution may be followed by a speedy recovery.
Julius Cæsar did not hold absolute power for more than four years;
during those years he had time to remove obstructions, but not to
build; his death did not involve a general collapse of the Government;
the permanent officials continued in their places, the ordinary routine
of public and private business remained much as before. The real danger
which threatened society was the domination of the army under the
command of a licentious adventurer such as Antonius, or the breaking up
of the Empire and its distribution among similar leaders. That this
did not happen is due chiefly to the personal qualities of one man, and
that man a youth, who at the present day would be just leaving school
to begin his career at the University.
It is possible to overrate as well as to underrate Octavian, to ascribe
to him much that he could not possibly have done, as well as to refuse
to him the credit due for what he actually performed.
In contrast with the achievements of his adoptive father, Octavian
stands out in history as the great civilian; he hardly ever fought a
successful battle; even his personal courage was suspected, but he
succeeded where a long line of predecessors had failed and his success
was in part due to the fact that he was not a soldier; he was never
tempted to conquer for the sake of conquest, or to enter on campaigns
in order that he might win glory; he was entirely free from the
weaknesses of a Napoleon.
The precocity of the young Romans of the great families continually
astonishes us, but Octavian would indeed be a marvel if, alone and
unaided, he had placed himself among the four competitors for universal
dominion at the age of twenty. Had he really been the son of Cæsar,
and not a comparatively distant relative, had Cæsar himself been a
constitutional monarch, and the monarchy an institution sanctioned by
long precedent, his succession would not have surprised us; dynasties
are upheld in spite of the youth or feebleness of the successor to the
dynasty; but in this case there was no recognized dynasty, no prejudice
outside the army in favour of the dynast, and the heir could not expect
to inherit anything from his predecessor except his private property.
This was his own view of his own position; he claimed no more.
Octavian was probably no less surprised than the Liberators or Cicero
by his own popularity; the depth of the affection and admiration
inspired by the great Cæsar was not at once comprehended by his
contemporaries; they did not realize that he had become a myth in
his lifetime, and on his death a god; the strength of the sentiments
which he had evoked escaped the notice of the constructors of Utopian
Republics and devotees of the rule of the Sacred Senate. Here was a new
cult, and even a new incarnation of divinity. So little did Octavian
understand the real foundations of his popularity that on his first
arrival in Italy he made overtures to Cicero and the Constitutional
party, to the men who approved of his adoptive father’s murder; so
little did they understand the hold which he had upon the affection
of the soldiers that they prepared to use him for their own purposes
and then throw him over; they wanted a piece to play against Antonius,
Octavian wanted power to force Antonius to disgorge his inheritance.
His first important step was a masterly one. Upon Cæsar’s heir devolved
the duty of paying Cæsar’s bequests to the Roman people, and expending
money upon the great shows in honour of the dead hero. Antonius refused
to surrender the treasures which he had seized. Octavian, whose natural
father had been a very rich man, sold all his private property, sold
all Cæsar’s property that had escaped Antonius, persuaded two of his
relatives to forego their own share of the inheritance, and fulfilled
the obligations imposed by the will. The contrast between him and
Antonius was thus emphasized; Antonius had seized, confiscated,
squandered upon his personal pleasures; Octavian gave, and paid for
the pleasures of the people. It was this characteristic of Octavian,
his indifference to personal display and personal luxury, that was
one source of his strength throughout life; nobody could be more
magnificent or spend more lavishly when such a course was required by
the public interest, but in his personal expenditure he was rigidly
economical. No Roman or provincial ever felt that his property was held
in jeopardy, because Octavian needed money for his private pleasures.
The ruler himself set the example of that moderation in expenditure
which Horace so repeatedly commends to his contemporaries.
The moderation of Octavian recommended him to the financiers, and he at
once found a valuable friend in the person of C. Cilnius Mæcenas. The
Roman historians, in accordance with their invariable custom, ignore
this great permanent official; they have no eyes for any man who has
not held the great magistracies of the Republic, and the share of
Mæcenas in building up the power of Octavian occupies but a small place
in their writings; it is in fact only as a patron of literary men that
Mæcenas is widely known, and the superficial observer might be tempted
to infer that Mæcenas was a private friend of Octavian, whose influence
was due solely to the Emperor’s favour. We know when Mæcenas died,
but we do not know when he was born; his death occurred twenty-two
years before that of Octavian, and as there is no indication that the
event was considered premature, we are justified in assuming that he
was so much older than Octavian as to have had considerable experience
of affairs, and a sufficiently recognized position, when the younger
man was seen to be a possible successor to the great Cæsar. Mæcenas
was a prominent member of the Equestrian Order, of the body which had
been supported in its struggles for recognition against the Senate by
the Marian party, and by Cæsar himself; its interests coincided with
those of the whole body of permanent salaried officials, who owed their
appointments to Cæsar; the collection of the revenue of the Empire was
in its hands; of the candidates for power, the one who secured the
confidence of the Equestrians was the most likely to be successful. We
do not know what had been the previous connexion between Octavian and
Mæcenas, but we do no violence to probability by assuming that Mæcenas
was known to Cæsar, and had enjoyed a measure of his confidence, that
he belonged to the inner circle of financiers whom Cæsar must have
repeatedly consulted, and that he had frequent opportunities for
forming an opinion as to the capacity of the young Octavian.
In any case, and however the connexion was brought about, the man who
formed the alliance between Octavian and Mæcenas acted more wisely
than Octavian had acted when he placed himself at the feet of Cicero.
By himself Octavian might have appeared to be a risky speculation to
the orderly men who were gradually attracted to his party; backed by
the great financier he was safe; the clients of Cæsar in all parts of
the Empire were provided with a guarantee which encouraged them to
transfer to the nephew the allegiance which they had previously given
to the uncle. Octavian’s merit lies in the fact that he was able to
use the wisdom of this cautious adviser and submit to his diplomacy;
his head was not turned by the popular declarations in his favour. He
is frequently reproached with a lack of initiative, with a cynical
indifference to the higher morality, with a cool calculation of his own
interests, and of his own interests to the exclusion of all others;
but to judge thus is to fall into the common error of condemning a
man on his success; there is a natural tendency to ascribe to every
man who eventually succeeds a deliberate intention of success from
the commencement, and the careful working out of a preconceived plan.
Royalists after the Restoration in England could only see in Cromwell
a crafty plotter, who had proposed to himself the usurpation of the
throne. It is assumed that the power of the men who rise to great
positions was at the beginning the same that it was at the end, and
that in the first stages of their career they could have refused to do
things of which they disapproved.
When Octavian made overtures to Cicero and called him his “father,”
he was in earnest, and acted according to his own inclinations, but
he took a false step from which he was forced to recede; he quickly
learned that he commanded sympathy as the avenger of his father’s
murderer, that on those terms he was the darling of the fierce
legionaries; he also learned that the Constitutional Party, to whom
his temperament inclined him, regarded him as a necessary evil, and
that his “father” proposed to use him and then remove him; after the
publication of the Second Philippic, in which Cæsar was denounced no
less savagely than Antonius, Octavian could no longer keep on terms of
friendship with Cicero; he would have been treated as a renegade by his
own soldiers; he had not even the alternative of retiring into private
life; he was too dangerous to both parties alike; had he rejected the
devotion of the legions, the daggers of the Constitutionalists or of
the emissaries of Antonius would have struck him down; nominally a
leader, he was really a hunted beast. The soldiers forced him into
alliance with Antonius, the soldiers forced him to marry the daughter
of the tigress Fulvia, the combination of ferocity drove him to his
share in the proscription. To Antonius the proscription was a means
of filling his ever leaky purse; to Fulvia, the sister of Clodius,
it was a vengeance, she had an old score to settle with Cicero, to
the soldiers it was the merited punishment of the murderers of Cæsar;
Octavian could not hold back; he, however, did the best thing that was
permitted by the circumstances, as soon as Antonius departed for the
East he let the pursuit of the proscribed lapse; he broke with Fulvia
and sent back her daughter; he proved singularly placable to those who
wished to make terms with him.
At this period Octavian can hardly have designed the universal
dominion to which he afterwards succeeded; it was enough to enjoy
comparative security in Italy, and to be recognized as the chief agent
in restoring safety to the peninsula; none of his military operations
were aggressive, and he preferred diplomacy to war; he was content
to let Antonius carry off the richest part of the Empire; he was
content to make terms with Sextus Pompeius, and allow him to take his
share of the provinces, provided the commercial interests of Rome
were respected, and the corn ships allowed to find their way into the
harbour. He required time to deal with the most difficult of tasks, the
reabsorption of Cæsar’s veterans in the civilian population; in order
that Octavian might be personally safe, it was necessary gradually to
break up the army which had dictated to him, and replace it by one of
which he would be master.
This operation must have required consummate skill and coolness; the
financial problem alone must have been serious; it was, however,
rendered much easier by the departure of Antonius to the East; to the
Roman soldiers, as to ourselves for many centuries, the East was the
El Dorado, and service or even settlement in Italy presented small
attractions to the legionary compared with service on the Euphrates;
the gold which had tempted Crassus still glittered in the imagination
of the centurions. Octavian and his advisers were glad to see the more
restless spirits stream after Antonius, it lightened their burden.
Meanwhile Octavian had the good fortune to find a War Minister of rare
genius and unexampled personal devotion; if the career of Octavian is
marvellous, that of his friend Agrippa is no less so; the two men
were of the same age; they were fellow students at Apollonia when the
death of Cæsar summoned Octavian to Rome; they had already laid the
foundations of a friendship which is among the most noteworthy in
history.
Agrippa as a military genius has received scant consideration; but the
man must have been a genius, who at the age of twenty-seven made a
navy for Rome and re-organized an army, and who further contrived to
place that army on a footing, which restored it to its proper position
of subordination to the civil administration. All Agrippa’s projects
bear witness to the mind of a daring planner and a consummate master
of detail. It was necessary to build and train a fleet in the face
of the opposition of Sextus Pompeius, who held the command of the
sea; Agrippa at once bethought himself of an inland lake in which his
ships could be built and then manœuvred; when the work of preparation
was complete he cut a channel into the Mediterranean, and sailed out
to attack and defeat his enemy. In preparation for the subsequent
operations against Antonius at Actium, he was not misled by the example
of the naval experts of the day; he saw that rapidity of manœuvring
was more important in a man-of-war than size and weight, and instead
of competing with the ship builders of Alexandria, constructed a large
number of light galleys, and manned them with skilled crews.
The one great building for which Agrippa was responsible survives to
our time, and still testifies to the originality of his genius; the
dome of the Pantheon is remarkable even now; in its own day it was
unexampled.
Agrippa was even greater in his moral qualities, in the self-restraint,
or perhaps absence of a morbid ambition, which forbade him to become a
rival to the man whose superiority he had elected to recognize. In the
later days of the Republic a man could hardly become a great general
without threatening the balance of the constitution; the death of
Cæsar brought into prominence ambitious soldiers; it seemed that it
was enough to be a successful leader of troops in order to enter upon
the enjoyment of all things that ambitious men most covet; but to this
kind of ambition Agrippa was superior; if he had a conscious ambition
over and above the satisfaction of doing his work well, it was to make
Octavian.
His example was most valuable to the fortunes of the Empire; his
character impressed itself upon the young men at a later time, upon
the youthful Tiberius his son-in-law among others. Henceforth the old
loyalty to the Republic which restored victorious consuls to their
proper place in civil life, when their wars were finished, was replaced
by the loyalty of the army to a possibly civilian Imperator, whose
military work was delegated to subordinate commanders; it was possible
for a man to command an army without feeling that he lost dignity by
submitting to the control of the head of the State.
If Octavian is to be admired for learning in a few years the trade of a
statesman, Agrippa is no less to be admired for the celerity with which
he acquired the detailed knowledge of a naval and military commander;
both young men started with a rare power of submitting themselves
to the guidance of men of experience; the eventual result was a
combination of administrative ability, which was able to use other men
without impairing its own supremacy.
After Sextus Pompeius had disappeared, and Lepidus had found himself in
the unenviable position of a general without an army, and a provincial
governor without a province, the delimitation of authority which
followed may well have seemed to the sharers in power to be final.
Octavian took what was practically in later days the Western Empire,
Antonius the Eastern. The marriage of Octavian’s sister with Antonius
was held to render hostilities between them impossible; and there are
few modern potentates who would not be content with the share which
fell to Octavian; to be supreme ruler of France, Spain, Italy, the
large islands of the Mediterranean, and the Western portion of the
North Coast of Africa, would have satisfied Francis I. or Charles V.
Nor were the Spain and Gaul of those days relatively in such a state of
barbarism that the ruler of Italy could think of them as semi-savage
frontier colonies. Parts of Spain were still imperfectly civilized, but
the relation which they bore to the more settled regions was little
different from that held by the Celtic fringes of our own islands till
comparatively late in our history. Gaul was more united than the France
of Louis XI., and no more subject to internal disturbances. Gaul, in
fact, began almost from the time of Cæsar’s conquests to advance to
a dominant position in the Empire; she supplied soldiers, statesmen,
and rhetoricians to Italy; the balance of power gradually inclined
to the country, which had not been exhausted by successive wars, and
whose population was relatively homogeneous; the time was to come when
the Emperors would be Gallic rather than Italian. The Gauls quickly
assimilated Roman culture and Roman discipline; two of the greatest
writers of the Augustan age, Virgil and Livy, one of an earlier date,
Catullus, were natives of Cis-Alpine Gaul, if not Celtic in their
nationality; Cornelius Gallus, a Transalpine Gaul, was not only
estimated at a high value among the poets of his day, but was the first
Viceroy appointed to Egypt by Octavian. In fact, though it may have
appeared to the men of the day that Antonius had taken to himself the
best share of the Empire, and left Octavian a valueless appanage, the
sequel proved that the latter had the best of the bargain; the central
part of his dominions was the longest organized and the best organized,
while the outlying territories had no time-honoured reputation to set
against the extension of Roman civilization; they had everything to
gain by closer incorporation with the Empire; they even accepted its
language, whereas the Eastern Empire never ceased to be Greek.
The personal qualities of Antonius brought about the union of the
Empire; so long as he served under the direction of the great Cæsar he
passed for a politician and administrator, no less than for a dashing
general; deprived of his great model, he quickly showed himself to be
nothing but a greedy soldier. The East learned by successive bitter
experiences what it lost in Cæsar; first came little Dolabella to harry
Syria, then Cassius and even Brutus extorted all that they could lay
their hands on in the rich cities of the Levant and Asia Minor; then
came Antonius with further fines and confiscations; there was a general
sense of relief when Cleopatra carried him off to Alexandria, only
however to prompt him to fresh extortions.
The alliance of Antony and Cleopatra was the salvation of the Roman
Empire; it frightened the West into union, and its failure brought
about the final submission of the East. This was no mere question of
rivalry between two eminent Roman statesmen; it was a turning point in
civilization; the issue was once again whether the Mediterranean was to
be governed on Oriental or Western lines. The halo of not particularly
edifying romance which shines round the figure of Cleopatra averts the
attention from the statesman-like qualities which she really possessed;
her residence in Rome in the capacity of Cæsar’s mistress was not a
glorious episode in the career of the Egyptian Queen, but it taught
her, as a similar experience had taught Juba, the weakness of Rome from
an Oriental point of view. Cleopatra saw that Rome wanted a despot;
on the death of her admirer she went back to Egypt to wait on events;
when Antonius appeared in the East, she proposed to annex Italy through
Antonius, as Cæsar had through herself annexed Egypt; but, like many
others, she had misjudged the man; Antonius was no Cæsar; and though
Cleopatra could form magnificent schemes of ambition, she lacked the
self-control necessary to carry them out; unfortunately for herself,
in the attempt to annex Antonius she fell violently in love with him,
and statesmanship became a secondary consideration; she could not
deny herself the companionship of her lover; he, too, more than once
forgot all the duties of a soldier in his impatience to return to
her arms. Their plans for extended conquests in the East were foiled
by their maladministration; and even a temporary success proved in
its results worse than a series of defeats; for Antonius celebrated
his victory over the Parthians by parodying at Alexandria the solemn
ritual of a triumph at Rome. This event, more even than a fleeting
descent of Antonius at a previous date upon the coast of Iapygia in
conjunction with Sextus Pompeius, consolidated the power of Octavian;
he became no longer the leader of a party, but the representative
of Latin civilization. Nor is it contrary to probability that the
luxurious excesses of the Court at Alexandria, at Smyrna, at Samos,
frightened the Greek cities, and that frequent emissaries gave Octavian
good reason for supposing that the Greek cities were ready to throw
themselves into his hands; Cæsar had never acted in the spirit of a
Greek tyrant, but the type was abundantly manifested in Antonius.
Octavian waited till he was ready; he then produced a document, the
will of Antonius, which clearly informed the Roman people of the
destiny prepared for them, and when the right moment came, allowed a
dispute about his claims over certain cities to end in a declaration of
war.
The battle of Actium was the result, and the victory was followed
by what was practically a triumphant progress of Octavian round
the Mediterranean; the Roman Empire was one again, the unity of
civilization was complete. Henceforth the wars of the Empire were
conducted on its frontiers, and though they occasionally resulted in
an extension of territory, their primary object was self-defence, the
maintenance of the ring fence of the “civilized world.” The short
war of the Succession, which followed on the death of Nero, hardly
disturbed the peace of Gaul and Italy.
The extraordinary success of the man, who at the age of two and
thirty was recognized as the supreme arbiter of the civilized world,
tempts us, as it tempted his contemporaries, to look for qualities
in him beyond the reach of an ordinary man; some who have looked for
these qualities and failed to discover them have gone in the opposite
direction, and speak of him with scant respect.