was a person whose example could be safely recommended to our children,
is a less interesting question than that relation between his personal
qualities and the needs of the time, which placed him at the head of
affairs. The Senate of Rome had failed to produce a great civilian, and
a great civilian was precisely what was needed by Greater Rome. The men
who, from the time that the problem of the administration of the Empire
had begun to make itself felt, had held the chief power successively,
were soldiers in the first place, and only in the second, if at
all, civil administrators: Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Cæsar himself
imposed their will upon Rome, because they had the legions behind
them; relying upon the force of organized armies, they were tempted
to overlook all the other forces by which society is held together.
An army is so convincing, so obvious, that men who can organize an
army may well be excused in their blindness to the existence of any
other power. Cæsar was the most enlightened of generals, and had a
clearer appreciation of civilian problems than his predecessors, but
even Cæsar relied ultimately upon the appeal to force; holding, as he
believed, the strongest weapon in his hands, he prepared to change and
reconstruct society as appeared most reasonable to his clear scientific
intelligence; confident in the integrity of his purposes, he believed
that he had only to demonstrate his common sense and benevolence in
order to secure adhesion to all his reforms; he did not weigh public
opinion; he did not study the currents of prepossession and conviction;
wishing well to all men, he never waited to consider whether his
actions might wound the self-esteem of any man; he chose his
subordinates without inquiry into their private opinions; it was enough
for him to have ascertained that they possessed the qualities essential
in his opinion to good administration. In one sense the clemency of
Cæsar was never tested; had he lived another ten years, and been forced
to realize the nature of the opposition which was excited by his
reforms, he, like Cromwell, might have been forced to supersede the
civil organization by a purely military organization; like Napoleon,
he might have been compelled to protect his person and his Government
by an army of spies, and meet plots by counterplots; but the opposition
declared itself only to be final; the first intimation of its existence
to Cæsar was his own death. Had Octavian needed so striking a lesson,
he would have learned from this event that civil power resting on
military predominance is no more secure than civil power conferred by
a popular vote; but he did not need the lesson; his whole temperament
was civilian, and the successive humiliations through which the army
led him strengthened his dislike to the army; for the army forced him
to the alliance with Antonius, in whom he rightly saw his private
enemy; the army forced him to marry the daughter of Fulvia the tigress;
the army forced the proscription upon him; the army compelled him to
deeds of savage cruelty at Perusia; the army forced him to hand over
his sister to the embraces of Antonius; he felt that he could not be a
free agent so long as the army was the dominant factor in politics. His
ideal was not the magnificent stride of the conqueror from continent
to continent. Other young men, finding several thousand veterans ready
to follow them, might have been tempted to a career of conquest; not
so Octavian; circumstances compelled him to temporize with the army,
and to use the army, but he naturally preferred the city to the camp,
and the Forum to the field. Year by year, and even month by month, he
advanced in the favour of the capitalists and constitutionalists, who
dreaded nothing so much as a perpetual cock fight of generals. All
over the Empire a new ideal had been steadily growing, the conception
of war as a permanent condition of society had been replaced by the
conception of peace. In the East for two centuries the internecine wars
between city States had disappeared; the Macedonian Empire, though
broken up and divided, had established permanent umpires; society
was united over larger areas; in the West, after the elimination of
the discordant Phœnician factor, Rome had held the same position of
supreme umpire; great cities had grown up: Smyrna, Ephesus, Antioch,
Alexandria in the East, Rome in the West, for whose populations the
orderly progress of commerce was a necessity of life; war had ceased
to be the only or the most profitable investment; other than military
careers were attractive to the ambitious. Octavian presented the
combination of qualities which the world wanted; he could command
the allegiance of armies without being intoxicated by the possession
of that form of power; he respected the civilian, and had the power
to protect him. But Octavian did not carry his dislike of military
domination to the point of extravagance; he was no intemperate advocate
of peace principles; he did not make the mistake of allowing his army
to become inefficient; he knew that a well ordered army was a necessary
instrument of sound civil Government; he knew that unless the chief
of the State demonstrably enjoyed the support of an efficient army
his reign would be short; but he took care that no successful officer
should be tempted to play the part of an Antonius, or dream that it
was in his power to become a second Cæsar. He had the good fortune to
find first in his friend Agrippa, and subsequently in his two stepsons
Tiberius and Drusus, able generals, who abstained from interfering with
the civil administration. Not the least of the remarkable powers of
Octavian was his power of commanding willing service from equals and
even from superiors, and his recognition of the men who would be useful
to him. As the heir of his father and great-uncle, he inherited not
only money but connexions; his father had been an Equestrian, who was
cut off in the first stages of a more enterprising political career;
he had been Governor of Macedonia; the extent of the connexions of
Cæsar needs no demonstration. The head of a great Roman House was in a
sense the head of a permanent corporation; he could alienate or retain
those individuals, families or cities, both with within and outside of
the technical limits of the Empire, who had been used to conduct their
private or public business through the agency of his House. The use to
which he turned an hereditary advantage of this kind depended on his
personal qualities; Octavian had the qualities which breed confidence;
self-controlled, industrious, courteous, faithful to obligations even
where they were not self-imposed, he quickly showed the adherents of
the House that there was no breach in the continuity of the Cæsarian
succession. Antonius had similar advantages, but he dissipated or
squandered them; men learned that his favour was to be won, or its
continuance to be secured by gross flattery, and subservience to his
caprices; he demanded derogatory services; the Consular Plancus thought
to secure his favour at Alexandria by flopping about at a masquerade
in the unwieldy and farcical dress of a marine deity; such an act would
have disgusted Octavian; it would have shocked him to see a man of rank
doing anything inconsistent with his dignity. A natural instinct for
what is dignified is a valuable attribute in a ruler, and a punctilious
insistence on ceremonial observances is better than an absence of
etiquette; but mere ceremony is apt to degenerate into observances
which injure the self esteem of those concerned, and to substitute
exaggerated forms of respect for the reality. Octavian grasped the true
meaning of dignified behaviour; it was not the person of the ruler but
the business in hand which was respected; frivolity was not an insult
to his person, but to the work in which he was engaged.
Men who were in earnest about anything found that they were in sympathy
with Octavian; he could relax, and be charming in his relaxation, but
with him, as with all great rulers, the line was rigidly drawn between
business and amusement. He could even pardon a refusal to comply with
his request for a personal favour; he invited Horace to leave the
service of Mæcenas and become his private secretary; the poet refused,
but did not in consequence lose the esteem of the Emperor.
Naturally attracted by what was dignified, Octavian was keenly alive
to the prestige of the Senate; Cæsar had found in that body an active
impediment to necessary reforms; he broke down the barriers of sanctity
by which it was surrounded; he treated it with no more respect than
Claudius Pulcher had shown to the sacred chickens; he destroyed its
organization and overrode its decrees; he admitted aliens to its
honours. Antonius was equally reckless in his contempt of Senatorial
prerogatives; but the men of rank and position who successively made
terms with Octavian found that they were treated with respect, that
there was nothing derogatory in working with him; and while a bitter
experience had taught them that there was no other alternative, the
pain of submission was alleviated by the personal consideration shown
to men who had suffered shipwreck. Octavian was the mediator between
the new and the old; his practical sagacity inclined him to make the
best of the new; his personal sympathies equally inclined him to deal
tenderly with the old. Good counsellors, hereditary connexions, the
affection of the veterans, would not have put Octavian permanently
at the head of affairs, had he not possessed those qualities which
enabled him to make the best of these advantages. He had not the dash,
the brilliance, the consummate intellectual ability of his uncle; he
could not have done his uncle’s work; but when that work had once
been done, he was supremely fitted to rebuild on the new foundations;
because he was in many respects inferior to his uncle, he was more
truly representative of his time; he was no prodigy; he did not thunder
and lighten and turn the universe upside down; he made the best of the
world as he found it, and that best was so very good that his work
lasted.
IV
Augustus
In the year 27 B.C., four years after the battle of Actium, the power
of Octavian was so firmly established, his services to the civilized
world were so obviously unique, that there was a general desire to
express by some honourable addition to his title a recognition of those
services. After much discussion the Senate fixed upon the adjective
“Augustus” as the only epithet which would adequately define the
position in which Octavian stood in relation to Rome and the Empire.
This epithet is deeply significant; the modern habit of using it as a
name has destroyed its significance; even in antiquity the necessity of
distinguishing between the different members of the Cæsarian dynasty
led to its occasional use by historians in place of the name of Cæsar,
but the ancients never lost sight of its meaning, as the modern is apt
to do; they were as conscious of using a title for a name when they
spoke of Augustus, as we are when we use the phrases “His Majesty” or
“His Highness,” in speaking of royal personages.
Various alternatives had been suggested, and been rejected either
as deficient in dignity, as having been used before, or as being
applicable to Rome alone and not to the whole Empire; the man who hit
upon the word which satisfied public opinion, both in Rome and the
provinces, was, strangely enough, no other than that Plancus, whose
undignified floppings had amused Cleopatra and the Eunuchs of her
Court. The etymology of the word may be held to be still uncertain, but
the associations which it suggested to the ancients are indisputable;
it was used of things or places, and especially the latter, marked out
by the gods as the abodes of divinity or particularly connected with
their service; the association of ideas was somewhat similar to that
implied in our own use of the word “consecrated”; but a place which
was “augustus” was rather more than “consecrated”; it was not merely
devoted to the service of the deities, but the gods themselves had
signified their will that it should be so; its transference to a man
was a declaration that the gods had selected him as their instrument;
it did not ascribe divinity to the man, but it asserted that the man
was entitled to the respect due to one who was specially under the
protection of the gods; he was not a god, but the divine will was
manifested in him. The distinction, though clear, is too subtle for the
ordinary human intelligence, and the use of the epithet and its Greek
equivalent rapidly led to an actual worship of the man, which, though
discountenanced in Italy, was permitted, and eventually encouraged
in the provinces. Such a thing appears to us impossible; we are even
shocked at its impiety; for us there has been one Incarnation, and one
only; we can more readily transfer ourselves to the mental condition of
those who made their gods in the likeness of men than of those who in
men saw gods. While some of us do not shrink from the irreverence of
attributing to tables and chairs and hats and bits of deal supernatural
powers, and from believing them to be channels of communication between
ourselves and the spiritual world, we shrink from declaring, what
surely should be simpler and more reverent, that certain human beings
have been elected by the Deity to declare His will to men, that to
treat them with insufficient respect is to rebel against the divine
will, and that to worship them is to worship the Deity who is pleased
to permit a portion of His Divine essence to reside in them. So far
have we travelled from the conception of godship prevalent among the
ancients, and even among our subjects in India at the present day, that
it is hardly possible to present the views of the contemporaries of
Augustus without using language suspected of irreverence. That danger,
however, must be faced, if we would understand one of the forces which
helped to bind the Roman Empire together, for though the idea of
assigning Divine honours to a man is repugnant to us, to the ancients
it was natural.
At all times and in all countries it is difficult to define the
current convictions of human beings as to non-human or supra-human
agencies; we always find a minority who reflect and study and discuss,
a majority who tremble; if we pay attention only to the enlightened
men of any particular period, we find a certain resemblance in their
speculations, a similar tendency to distinguish between superstition
and religion, a disinclination to ascribe to the divine agencies
vulgar and petty interference with human concerns; on the other hand,
if we fix our attention upon the voiceless multitude, we find no
distinction between religion and superstition, and a strong inclination
to see even in trivial occurrences an intervention of the divinity. We
cannot gather from Plato or Cicero the religious faith of the majority
of the active men of their day; still less can we infer it from the
mythologies of the poets. Polytheism had no dogmatic faith; it did
not ask a man to state what he believed; it took note of what he did.
Deference to accepted forms of worship was expected; men paid a mutual
respect to one another’s observances; all methods of conciliating the
favour of the gods were good; the dangerous man was the man of no
observances; there was no knowing what wrath he might bring down upon
the community. Many of the ancients developed eclectic tendencies in
the matter of religion; the temper of Herodotus was a common one among
the enlightened, and the inclination to see points of resemblance in
various cults rather than to emphasize differences. Germanicus was
travelling from shrine to shrine in the East when he caught the fever
which killed him; Apuleius at a later date travelled widely with a view
to being initiated into the different mysteries. The conception that
there was One God and One God only who ought to be worshipped, and that
acts of adoration to other divinities, or powers in which divinity was
recognized, constituted an act of treason to Him, was an impossible
conception to the ancients; in spite of the unitarian tendencies,
which we may detect even in Hesiod, and which became increasingly
prevalent among the speculative philosophers, a deity was local rather
than universal; it would have been dangerous to attempt to substitute
the worship of Pallas Athene at Ephesus for that of Artemis, to remove
Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome and put Melkarth in his place; but no
Ephesian thought the Athenian wrong in worshipping Pallas, no Roman saw
a dangerous heresy in the cult of Melkarth at Tyre or Carthage.
The association between religion and morality was only slowly
established; the god was not better than the man; he was stronger than
the man; thus mere power unaccompanied by moral excellence had a divine
character even in a man. To us the Incarnate God is necessarily the
perfection of moral excellence; to the ancients the manifestation of
power was in itself an indication of the divine favour; and similarly
in the case of his worshippers, provided the priest did not infringe
the regulations of the prescribed ritual in preparing for or conducting
an act of worship; his moral character was a matter of indifference;
he might bring down the divine wrath upon the community by paring his
nails at the wrong time, just as much as by the infringement of social
obligations, or by personal debauchery; ritual and not morality was the
province of religion.
In the didactic work of Hesiod, the Farm and the Calendar, which was
used by the Greeks much as we use a catechism, minute and trivial
points of cleanliness and decency rank with perjury and violence;
to neglect the former, to commit the latter, alike involved the
displeasure of the immortals. The Italians were enslaved by minute
ritual even more than the Greeks; they were more superstitious; the
worship of the Lares and of the ancestors, the faith in fortune,
the dread of the unlucky, survived among cultivated Italians to a
late period. Italy is still profoundly superstitious; men who have
shaken off the authority of the Church still dread the evil eye, and
witchcraft of a peculiar kind is still firmly believed in by the
peasants of central Italy; the strega is still a power in the villages
of the Bolognese.
The ancients had nothing to set against the ascription of Divine powers
to a man, though for the enlightened it was possible to distinguish
between ceremonial acts whose purpose was to propitiate the Divinity
behind the man, and the worship of the man himself as a divine being;
nor did death terminate the power of the favoured individual; the
spirit was even more powerful when released from the accidents of
humanity. Among the Italians faith in the power of the dead, and a
considerable dread of their continued interference in the concerns of
the living, was a lively faith, and exemplified in many curious ways;
and thus the worship of Augustus, which was officially recognized only
in the provinces during his lifetime, was extended to Italy after his
death. This worship was not an exclusive worship; it did not destroy
or even impair the cults of other divinities; it was only another god
added to the celestial hierarchy, another saint canonized; but this
particular worship was alone in being universal throughout the Empire
and officially sanctioned; in Gaul it was imposed.
It is particularly worthy of attention that the care of the worship of
Augustus was assigned to freedmen; the Augustales, whose duty it was
in each town to maintain the cult, were to be “libertini”; in Rome the
Prætor Peregrinus, the foreigner’s judge, presided over its feasts, and
it was associated with the worship of the Lares of the Compitalia, that
is to say, with the oratories in the streets at which the slaves paid
their devotions. Men of all nationalities driven together as slaves in
the great cities, far from their native gods, found a common cult and
a common protector in Augustus. It was not long before the worship of
Augustus became indistinguishable from the worship of the Empire, and
each successive Emperor received divine honours, as manifesting that
abstraction; to deny the divinity of the Emperor, to refuse to spill
a little wine, or cast a few grains of incense in his honour, was to
rebel against the civil organization accepted by mankind; it was as
difficult to evade the obligation as for an English soldier to refuse
to drink to the health of his sovereign. The Jews alone protested, and
for a long while their protest was accepted; they did not pray to the
Emperor, but they prayed for him.
Augustus met his worshippers halfway; his own temperament was
profoundly religious, as religion was understood by his contemporaries;
he substituted the divine right of the Emperor for the divine right
of the Senate; he was not a madman like Caligula, jealous of other
divinities; on the contrary, he made every effort to restore cults
which were being abandoned, and to revive both public and private
observances. If he did not believe in his own divinity in the sense
which the words would convey to us, he was equally removed from the
robust scepticism of Vespasian, who remarked in his last moments:
“Bah! I feel I am turning into a god!” His attitude towards his own
divinity was a reverential one; it did not encourage him to set human
laws at defiance, and flagrantly override the rights of other men; on
the contrary he practised a studied humility, and seemed to feel that
if he was himself a god, it was incumbent upon him to see that due
respect was paid to other members of the same fraternity; in dealing
with men he anticipated the Popes in assuming the attitude of the
“Servus Servorum Dei.” There was no deliberate imposture, no conscious
pose. When Cromwell enumerated to an unruly assembly the successive
events in his career which had placed him at the head of affairs, and
claimed that they bore witness to a special Providence, he expressed
in the language of his time and country the same association of ideas
which convinced Octavian that there was something supernatural in the
chain of events, in the unbroken success, which had given him power far
greater than Cromwell’s. There was no arrogance in the claim; there
was humility; he ascribed to powers not his own a series of successes
in which a less reverently minded man would have seen nothing but the
evidence of his own surpassing ability. It was not merely political
astuteness which led him to act in everything as an ordinary citizen,
to vote, to ask for votes, to live without magnificence or ostentatious
expenditure; such conduct was the result partly of personal
inclination, partly of a sense of the infinite smallness of such things
as marble columns and silken raiment, costly banquets and trains of
servants in comparison with the greatness of the destiny imposed upon
him. If at the great shows in the circus he sat on the platform on
which were placed the statues of the gods, he did not thereby assert
equality with them, but claimed their protection and bore witness to
the favour which they bestowed not only on him, but on the people whose
destinies he guided with their approbation and in virtue of the powers
which they had granted. In the pages of Tacitus and Suetonius we may
detect a certain flavour of approbation when these historians tell
us that Tiberius or other Emperors refused divine honours or limited
them, and we might be tempted to infer from this that the assumption
of divinity by the Emperors was contrary to the feeling of the times;
but both Tacitus and Suetonius wrote more than a century after Octavian
had been declared “Augustus,” and in their days the unitarian faith
of the Jews had begun generally to influence the educated classes at
Rome; Horace could jest lightly at the Jewish Sabbath; in the time of
Suetonius, if it was not observed as a day of rest all over the Empire,
as Josephus boasts, it was certainly a well known institution.
It might be urged that whatever the religious attitude of Augustus
in other respects, he cannot have believed in his descent from the
goddess Venus, and that Virgil’s great poem in all that concerns Æneas
and Anchises is conscious imposture. To argue in this way is again
to misinterpret polytheism. The faith in Fauns and Satyrs is not
absolutely extinct in Italy even today; the survival of such a faith
suggested the plot of Hawthorne’s exquisite romance, _Transformation_.
Charles Leland discovered traces of it in Tuscany and Umbria.