regard to the divine and the human, the natural and the supernatural;
even the most enlightened contemporary of Augustus might hold a faith
as to mixed marriages between gods and men not dissimilar to that
held by many orthodox Protestants as to miracles--they might believe
that such things did not happen in their own day, but that they had
happened. In the curious classification of events affecting the lives
of the Emperors adopted by Suetonius a place is always assigned for
portents. Xiphilinus, the Christian who epitomized Dio Cassius,
apologises for the long lists of portents in his author, and for having
cut out the more trivial of these occurrences, but he leaves a large
number. Faith in portents is in fact always at hand, and even in these
critical days readily springs to life at a favourable opportunity.
With the ancients it was universal; in those days, as in our own,
men preferred sensation to evidence, and the critical faculty, even
when developed, had no very satisfactory apparatus which could be
applied. As a rule, the significance of portents was seen after the
event which they portended. Then, as now, nurses and mothers recalled
remarkable circumstances which had attended the birth and education of
children who afterwards became distinguished; and there are few men
distinguished or obscure who have not at some period of their lives
encountered strange coincidences, or suffered unusual experiences,
which, interpreted by the light of subsequent events, may be held to
have been fraught with mystery. There is no reasonable doubt that the
entrance of Octavian into Rome when he returned to claim his uncle’s
inheritance was attended by some unusual disposition of the sun’s rays,
possibly a solar halo in which only one of the mock suns was clearly
visible, that the event attracted notice at the time, and that it
inclined men to believe that the fortunate youth was reserved for a
remarkable destiny--an anticipation which led to its own fulfilment.
Virgil may well have been in earnest when he hailed the procession of
the star of Cæsar and worked up convenient fragments of legends into
the _Æneid_; even if he had occasional misgivings, his inclination was
to believe, and to hope that his glorious web was woven in threads of
fact.
Faith in his divine ancestry, faith in his divine mission did not
enervate Augustus, nor render him unpractical; he treated his power
as a sacred trust, and used all the resources of a cool intellect and
industrious temperament to further the interests which he believed
to have been committed to his charge. We are told that in his later
years he liked to believe that there was something superhuman in his
glance, and was pleased when men were unable to look him in the face--a
weakness which was encouraged by studious flatterers. If this is true,
we may well believe that, like many other men and women, he was
insensibly influenced by the attitude of those around him, and dropped
into the place assigned for him by the universal opinion.
In any case, Augustus, whether in public or private, did nothing to
jar upon the prejudices of those who were prepared to believe in his
divine mission. He led such a life as has since been led by many of the
better Popes, and at least one English statesman. Gossip, always busy
with the supposed amatory proclivities of great men, has not spared him
in this respect, but even if there were any foundation for the idle
stories which have been handed down, the ancients would not have been
scandalized; the somewhat coarse pleasantries which have also been
attributed to him would have scarcely attracted attention in his own
day.
By his peculiar personality Augustus was able to stamp upon the Roman
Empire a character which has never left it--he made it a religion
as well as a state; and it was due to his work, and to his sense of
the sacredness of his work, that there are still men living even in
England who cannot feel happy in the regulation of what they believe to
be their most important concerns, unless they are assured that their
actions are in accordance with the dictates of the authority from
across the mountains, which is resident in Rome.
It is a curious fact that many of those men and women whose personal
appearance was felt by their own contemporaries to be in the highest
degree awe-inspiring were small: Napoleon was small, Louis XIV was
small, among Queens Elizabeth was small, and Her late Majesty Victoria
unusually small. Augustus was no exception--he was short, slight, and
halted perceptibly in his gait; but these personal disadvantages did
not detract from his dignity. If we compare the portrait of Julius
Cæsar in the British Museum with the bust of the young Augustus, or
the head of the magnificent statue of the Emperor found in Livia’s
villa near the Prima Porta, we are struck by a remarkable difference.
It is possible to bring the face of Cæsar to life again; we can recall
the dark and liquid eyes, and set the strongly marked muscles of the
face in motion; we would hardly be astonished were the lips to open,
and we can anticipate the clear even enunciation of the words to which
they would give utterance. But with the portraits of Augustus it is
otherwise; they are strangely inscrutable. The bust known as the
young Augustus is the portrait of a boy, or at the oldest of a lad of
sixteen. It must have been modelled at a time when the future even of
Julius Cæsar was not assured. The artist may have flattered, but that
particular form of flattery can hardly have been designed; the habit of
thoughtfulness is seldom expressed to the same degree in the features
of boys and young men. Similarly in the older portrait there is an
aloofness; it is the face of a man who would always tempt a careful
observer to wish to know more about him, and who would always elude
curiosity. The next Emperor who was canonized was Claudius. Of him,
too, we have many authentic portraits; even in the most idealized we
can see something of the man whose apotheosis gave Seneca the materials
for a merry jest. It is the face of a man who was perpetually puzzled,
whereas the face of Augustus is the countenance of one who perpetually
puzzled other men.
The great work of establishing the Roman Empire was not the work of
a charlatan or a criminal, in both of which characters Augustus has
been represented. It was the work of a man who shared many of the
crude beliefs of his own time and unconsciously used them for his own
purposes, and those purposes were not self regarding. An Antonius
could squander great gifts in the pursuit of what earthly happiness
is afforded by dissolute excesses--he could allow his soldiers to
perish of hunger and disease while he hastened to the embraces of an
accomplished courtesan; he could shamelessly desert loyal veterans at
the bidding of a licentious woman, and seek salvation in the wake of
her purple sails; such was the hero whom Augustus annihilated, such the
conception of responsibility which he replaced by a devotion to duty
which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed.
The reign of Augustus was monotonous, his policy unadventurous. If
these are defects, we are at least at liberty to prefer them to the
excellences of those more brilliant reigns and more adventurous rulers
who succeeded in dazzling the world, but failed to lay the foundations
for a long era of prosperity. The career of Napoleon is more startling
than that of Augustus, his military record incomparable with the simple
successes of the earlier Emperor, but Napoleon left France with a
diminished frontier, and Augustus left Italy the undoubted mistress of
the civilized world.
V
Education of Tiberius
Though the apparent results of a careful education are often
disappointing, the impressions received in early childhood are
permanent in their effects. The man who has been brought up in a
particular atmosphere retains the influence through life, even though
his acts may seem to be in strong contrast with his training; the son
of a Quaker family may break with all the traditions of the Society
of Friends in his maturity, but he is never quite the same as a man
who has not been under the rigid family discipline of that estimable
sect. A man may throw off all the bonds imposed by the severe domestic
arrangements of a Scotch Elder, he may elect to bring up his own
children on liberal lines, and banish the shorter Catechism from his
household, but he cannot shake off the consciousness of another kind of
life which was forced upon him by his early experiences. In the case
of Tiberius we can trace to the very end of his life the influences to
which his youth and early manhood were subjected. There was no break
with early traditions; the aspect of details changed, the estimate of
their relative mutual importance was modified, but the spirit with
which they were approached was always the same.
The antiquaries have much to tell us of the material arrangements
of a Roman house, but we are not so well informed by them as to its
occupants. There is a disposition to ascribe all that was good in Roman
family life to an indeterminate period anterior to that progressive
decay of good manners and good morals which, according to our
authorities, was the distinguishing feature of the Empire. Exceptional
instances of extravagance are quoted as texts for the supposed rule,
the humorous or declamatory exaggerations of satirists are treated as
if they were the evidence of sober witnesses, and the spirit which
works behind the whole of Roman history is dealt with as of no account
in comparison with the letter of promiscuous citations.
If we wish to revive the ideas which were associated by the Romans with
their princely houses, we must think rather of such Roman palaces as
are described by Mr. Marion Crawford in his Italian Romances; we must
add to this conception something of a mediæval court, something too of
the great mercantile house of the Renascence. So far as the family was
concerned which inhabited such a house as Pompeius built for himself
in the Carinæ, it was often composed of many generations, and of
persons connected by various degrees of affinity; it was a patriarchal
establishment, at whose head stood the eldest man of full age descended
in the line of primogeniture from the founder--it was not merely the
home of a man and his wife and their children. Nor again was the house
only a place of residence: it was a place of business, and the business
was of many kinds--some of it was political, some financial, some
legal, some industrial. In private as in public life at Rome there was
not that strict differentiation of functions, and fine division of
labour and responsibility, which comparatively recent experiences have
caused our contemporaries to regard as a law of existence.
The Roman Empire was not built upon the foundations afforded by the
assembly of the Tribes, or the assembly of the Centuries, or even
by the Senate itself, but upon the surpassing ability of the great
families and the suitability of their organization for the work which
fell into their hands. Collectively as the Senate they exhibited
similar ability during a period which was long enough to fix the
reputation of Rome, but this period was both preceded and followed by
times in which the work of individual houses was supremely effective.
The Imperial household differed in nothing but the greater extent of
its responsibilities from other households. Augustus was not the only
Roman noble who lived upon the Palatine Hill, and his establishment
was ostentatiously modest; many of his contemporaries lived in finer
palaces, and exhibited greater magnificence in private, but the
moderation of Augustus was only relative, and his house was able to
find room at different times for two successive commanders-in-chief,
Agrippa and Tiberius, with their families and dependents. If Roman
history was presented to young Romans in a form which drew their
attention largely to such purely constitutional questions as the
quarrels between the Patricians and Plebeians, it did not omit the
legends of the great houses. The Senatorial dynasty had its heroic
mythology; Horatius who kept the bridge, Cincinnatus who left his
plough to command the army, the Fabians who all died in one day for
their country, Curtius who leapt into the gulf, occupied in the
imagination of Roman boys much the same place as King Alfred and
his cakes occupy in the mind of the English boy. Every funeral of a
member of one of the great families paraded before the eyes of Rome
the effigies of men associated with stirring events in the history of
the city, and filled their ears with the stories of great deeds. So
far as the Romans knew their own history, they knew it in connexion
with the names of the great houses, with whom indeed it was so closely
associated that it was considered somewhat scandalous in the reign of
Tiberius that a man who did not belong to one of these houses should
take upon himself to write and publish a history.
For many years a comparatively small group of families at Rome managed
the affairs of an area which has since found work for the statesmen and
administrators of several kingdoms. Collectively they worked through
the Senate and constitutional officials, individually through the
system of clientele which was expanded from a domestic institution to
a world-embracing system. Communities, as well as private persons, put
themselves in connexion with great families at Rome, who were pledged
to watch their interests; over and above the public official connexion
with the Senate there was the private non-official connexion with
individual senatorial families. Slaves and freedmen gathered from all
parts of the civilized world strengthened and extended the family
connexions. The sons of minor potentates were sent to reside with
Roman noblemen, and receive a Roman education; capable adventurers
such as the Herod family scented out the strong men of Rome and allied
themselves to their fortunes. The minute subdivision of ancient society
even after the creation of the Roman Provinces continued the patronage
system beyond the time at which it might seem to have been naturally
extinguished. Sicily might be a Roman Province, but individual Sicilian
cities might still feel the need of a permanent advocate at Rome. The
Roman Governor changed from year to year, but the dynasty of an Æmilian
or a Claudian was perpetual.
Thus in one of its aspects, and not its least important aspect, a Roman
family was a community in itself, with many and far-reaching interests;
the capacity of its chief personage was a matter of importance to a
very large number of men and women; his failure involved the ruin of a
hierarchy of relatives and dependents. Even in the earlier and simpler
days of Rome the sons of the family were carefully trained to represent
the family in the Forum and the Senate, to manage its estates, to
conduct its financial relations and the extension of the family
connexions, to hold office, to command armies. Greek culture added to
the conception of obligation to the family, obligation to the state;
Greek and Roman ideals alike forbade the young Roman noble to neglect
himself. Even his deportment, his manners, his gestures were serious
matters; he could not afford to be ungainly, or to express himself
awkwardly. If a son proved to be physically or morally incapable of
receiving the required training, Roman sentiment was not shocked by
his supersession or removal. We have a curious illustration of this
in the story of the Emperor Claudius. He was the younger brother of
Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the grandson of Livia. In the ordinary
course of events he would have been introduced to public life like his
brother, but he was awkward, he rolled in his gait, his tongue was
too large for his mouth, he stammered and sputtered, his family, and
even his mother, were ashamed of him, he was kept in the background,
and practically pensioned off. He was, however, a serious student,
a linguist, or at any rate a philologist; as Emperor he planned and
carried out works of great public utility; he was an extensive writer,
an industrious worker. He may have been of feeble character, easily led
by favourites and women, but his reign was by no means a disastrous
one. No ancient writer, however, protests against the prejudice, which
deprived Claudius of all opportunities of advancement, till a supposed
freak of the soldiers made him Emperor; they unanimously accept with
approval the verdict of Augustus, that he was unfitted by his personal
defects for public life. Similarly the youngest son of Agrippa and
Julia, the youngest grandson of Augustus himself, was removed from
Rome, and sequestered in an island “on account of his intractability”;
but though his subsequent fate is one of the many counts in the process
against the reputation of Tiberius, no fault is found with Augustus for
thus eliminating a member of his family who did not prove amenable to
discipline.
Duty to the family, duty to the State, or it might be first duty to
the State, then duty to the family, were impressed upon the young
Roman noble as the conditions of his existence; he lived, like the
heir-apparent to a throne, in a court which forced upon him the
traditions and observances which the maintenance of the court demanded.
If the father neglected his children, and evaded the responsibility
of training them, there were numerous other persons ready and willing
to undertake his work. The presiding genius of a Roman family was not
infrequently an aged lady, or a trusted freedman, deeply imbued with
the importance of the house and the sanctity of its traditions.
For the first nine years of his life Tiberius lived with his father--a
man serious, fond of learning, full of the republican tradition. It is
not impossible that, in spite of the association with Octavian through
Livia, the house was to some extent a meeting place of the remnant of
the Republican party. We at least know that one of these men made the
young Tiberius his heir, and adopted him by his will; he seems to have
been allowed to take the succession, but had to refuse the adoption,
because his benefactor was anti-Cæsarian. The elder Tiberius, not being
engaged in public business, would have plenty of time to give to his
children, and Roman children in a Roman family of the old-fashioned
type were much with their parents. We are told that Tiberius was very
carefully educated; at his father’s death he was already sufficiently
well advanced in recitation to pronounce the customary eulogy at his
funeral. Up to this time everything in his surroundings would tend to
encourage a naturally severe temperament; it can hardly have been a
cheerful home, this house of the lost cause. The affections of the boy
expanded themselves upon his brother Drusus, his junior by more than
two years, to whom his attachment was deep and lasting.
On the death of their father the two boys were transferred to the care
of their mother and stepfather, who was now their guardian. Tiberius
was old enough to resent such an arrangement, but there is no evidence
that he did so; he accepted his stepfather loyally, and Octavian
himself was scrupulously careful of the interests of his stepsons.
Diplomatic divorces and re-marriages were of such common occurrence in
the Roman houses at this period that no slight was felt or intended,
and as a rule the divorced parties maintained friendly relations.
Octavia, the sister of Octavian, was neglected and eventually
repudiated by Antonius, but she nevertheless took good care of his
children by a former marriage, the children of the tigress Fulvia.
Scribonia, the divorced wife of Octavian, continued to be on
sufficiently friendly terms with his family to watch over her daughter
Julia, not altogether to the latter’s advantage, and eventually
accompanied her into exile. Where marriage was treated entirely as
a business arrangement, there was no room for wounded feelings, and
children were not tempted to feel themselves aggrieved by a change
of parents, or to cherish resentment. When a wife was repudiated on
account of infidelity, and therefore disgraced, there was room for
ill-feeling, but not otherwise.
As Octavian at a later date set up a school in his own house for the
benefit of his grandchildren and the children of friends, it is not
improbable that a somewhat similar arrangement was adopted for the
young Neros; the course of grammar, the course of rhetoric, the course
of philosophy would be duly followed out. Except in the far greater
attention paid to elocution, the formal education will have differed
little from that of an Eton boy in the middle of the nineteenth
century. Both Roman and English boy learned Greek, and the Roman boy
had the advantage of learning it as a spoken language; neither had
a systematic instruction in mathematics, though the Roman had the
advantage of being drilled in keeping accounts. But far more valuable
than the formal instruction was the informal education given by the
circumstances of the family. The Romans kept early hours, and it was
customary for the children to dine in the same room with their parents,
though at different tables. Octavian, partly from choice, partly from
necessity imposed upon him by weak health, was not given to large
entertainments. His table was a simple one, old-fashioned observances
were rigorously maintained, but the company was choice. The children
could sit and listen while the conversation was being conducted
by Horace and Virgil; all the latest inventions, all the newest
literature, everything that did not pertain to secret diplomacy, was
discussed at that table. There was Mæcenas with his charming manners
and casual dress; Agrippa, somewhat silent as a rule, but animated
enough when the roof of the Pantheon or the model of a light galley had
to be described to an appreciative audience; there too was Cornelius
Gallus, the brilliant gentleman and poet, betraying by his passionate
vivacity his Gallic origin; Varius too would be there ready to recite
his last heroic poem. After dinner there would be amusements, sometimes
games of chance for small stakes, sometimes recitations; or the last
fashionable preacher, some Greek or Greek-speaking Jew, would discourse
of virtue to the admiration of Livia and the ladies. Chieftains from
Gaul and Spain, Princes from the East or Africa, wealthy citizens from
Antioch or Alexandria or the cities of Asia Minor, were all to be met
at that simple table, wondering at the exiguity of the repast, but none
the less impressed by the personality of their host. The opportunity
was a rare one for a youth who was bent on self-improvement, and it was
not neglected by Tiberius or his brother.
Along with them was brought up Julia, the spoiled child of the family,
and cousin Marcellus with his two sisters, the children of Octavia,
whose other daughter, Antonia, was to be the wife of Drusus, and the
lifelong friend of Tiberius, perhaps the most beautiful of Roman women.
There could be no better preparation for a life devoted to the public
service than this household, in which power only served to increase
the sense of responsibility, in which the routine of every day was a
routine of duty, and the command of the resources of the civilized
world did not add a dish to the table, a garment to the wardrobe, or a
superfluous slave to the servants’ hall.
The atmosphere of the household of Augustus is not to be found in the
scandalous gossip occasionally repeated by Suetonius or Tacitus, but
in the works of Horace and Virgil; both poets repeatedly insist on the
merits of simplicity, not because they were commissioned to do so, but
because their own personal tastes and habits fell into line with those
of the master of the civilized world.
The education of a young Roman was not confined to his home; he
accompanied his father to war when he was old enough, and on peaceful
expeditions at all times, where a great train did not involve
inconvenience. Tiberius was probably still too young to attend Octavian
on his Eastern tour after the battle of Actium, but when he was only
seventeen he accompanied him to Spain, and there took his first lessons
in the field, just as Octavian himself had previously been trained
under Cæsar. A Roman was considered to be of age when he was sixteen,
and he was quickly tested by being called upon to undertake minor
responsibilities. In all departments of public life Tiberius had the
advantage of the example and precept of the best authorities. The staff
of Agrippa, and perhaps Agrippa himself, were ready to instruct him in
the latest developments of the art of war; for finance and diplomacy he
could go to Mæcenas. Octavian was a practised and careful orator; no
one of these men could afford to slumber on his laurels; they were all
hard at work modifying the old, organizing the new. The secrets of the
Empire so frequently alluded to by Tacitus were not so very mysterious;
hard work, discretion, tact, public spirit, formed the bulk of them.
The time for intriguing came after the apprenticeship of Tiberius was
finished, and the intriguers were not the men who had taught him his
business.