recompense for his stay he awarded the islanders freedom, and he attended
to many kinds of business. Great numbers of embassies came to him, and
the Indi, who had previously opened negotiations about friendship, now
made terms, sending among other gifts tigers, which were then for the
first time seen by the Romans, as also, I think, by the Greeks. They
likewise presented to him a boy without shoulders (like the statues of
Hermes that we now see). Yet this creature in spite of his anatomy made
perfect use of his feet and hands: he would stretch a bow for them, shoot
missiles, and sound the trumpet,--how, I do not know; I merely record the
story. One of the Indi, Zarmarus, whether he belonged to the class of
sophists and was ambitious on this account or because he was old and was
following some immemorial custom, or because he wished to make a display
for Augustus and the Athenians (for it was there that he had obtained an
audience), chose to die; he was therefore initiated into the service of
the two goddesses,--although it was not the proper time, it is said, for
the ritual,[2]--through the influence of Augustus, and having become an
initiate he threw himself alive into the fire.
[B.C. 19 (_a. u._ 735)]
[-10-] The consul that[2] year was Gaius Sentius. When it was found
necessary that a colleague be appointed to hold office with him,--for
Augustus again refused to accept the post which was being saved for
him,--an uprising once more broke out in Rome and assassinations
occurred, so that the senators voted Sentius a guard. When he expressed
himself as opposed to using it, they sent envoys to Augustus, each with
two lictors. As soon as the emperor learned this and felt assured that
nothing but evil would come of it, he did not adopt an attitude like
his former one toward them but appointed consul from among the envoys
themselves Quintus Lucretius, though this man's name had been posted
among the proscribed, and he hastened to Rome himself. For this and his
other actions while absent from the city many honors of all sorts were
voted none of which he would accept, save the founding of a temple to
Fortuna Redux,[3] (this being the name they applied to her), and that the
day on which he arrived should be numbered among the thanksgiving days
and be called Augustalia. Since even then the magistrates and the rest
made preparations to go out to meet him, he entered the city by night;
and on the following day he gave Tiberius the rank of the ex-prætors and
allowed Drusus to become a candidate for offices five years earlier than
custom allowed. The quarrelsome behavior of the people during his absence
did not accord at all with their conduct, influenced by fear, when he was
present; he was accordingly invited and elected to be commissioner of
morals for five years, held the authority of the censors for the same
length of time and that of the consuls for life, being allowed to use the
twelve rods always and everywhere and to sit in the chair of office in
the midst of the consuls of any year. After voting these measures they
begged him to set right all these matters and to enact what laws he
liked. And whatever ordinances might be composed by him they called from
that very moment _leges Augustæ_ and desired to take an oath that they
would abide by them. He accepted their principal propositions, believing
them to be necessary, but absolved them from the requirement of an oath.
If they should vote for a measure that suited them, he knew well that
they would observe it even if they made no agreement to that effect.
Otherwise they would not pay any attention to it, even if they should
take ten thousand pledges to secure it.--Augustus did this. Of the ædiles
one voluntarily resigned his office by reason of poverty.
[-11-] Agrippa on being sent at this time, as described from Sicily to
Rome, transacted whatever business was urgent and was later assigned to
the Gauls. The inhabitants there were at war among themselves and were
being harshly used by the Celtæ. After settling those troubles he went
over to Spain. For the Cantabri, who had been captured alive in the war
and had been sold, severally killed their masters, returned home, and
united many for a revolt. With the aid of these accessions they occupied
available sites, walled them about and concocted schemes against
the Roman garrisons. It was against this tribe that Agrippa led an
expedition, but he had some trouble also with the soldiers. Not a few of
them were too old, exhausted by the succession of wars, and in fear of
the Cantabri, whom they regarded as hard to subdue; and they consequently
would not obey him. However, by admonition, exhortation, and the hopes
that he held out[4] he soon made them yield obedience: in fighting the
Cantabri, on the other hand, he met with many failures. They had the
advantage of experience in affairs, since they had been slaves to the
Romans, and of despair of ever gaining safety again in case of capture.
Agrippa lost numbers of his soldiers and degraded numerous others because
they had been defeated; among other actions he prohibited a whole
division called the Augustan from being so named any longer; still, after
a long time he destroyed nearly all of the enemy who were of age for
warfare. He deprived the rest of their arms and made them go down from
the heights to the flat lands. Yet he made no communication about them to
the senate and did not accept the triumph although voted in accordance
with instructions from Augustus. In these matters he showed moderation,
as was his wont, and when asked once by the consul for an opinion in a
case concerning his brother he would not give it. At his own expense
he brought in the so-called Parthenian water-supply and named it the
Augustan. In this the emperor took so great delight that once when a
great scarcity of wine had arisen and persons were making a terrible
to-do about it, he declared that Agrippa had carefully seen to it that
they should never perish of thirst.
[-12-]Such was the character of this man. Of the rest many both made a
triumph their object and celebrated it, not for rendering these same
services, but some for having arrested robbers and others for quieting
cities that were in a state of turmoil. For Augustus, at first at least,
bestowed these rewards lavishly upon some and honored a very great
number with public burials. Those persons, then, gained splendor by
these fêtes; but Agrippa was advanced by him to a position of comparative
independence. Augustus saw that the public business required strict
attention and feared that he might, as often happens in such cases,
become the victim of plots.
[B.C. 18 (a. u. 736)]
The breastplate which he often wore beneath his dress even on entering
the senate itself he expected would be of small and slight assistance to
him in that case. Therefore he himself first added five years to his term
as supreme ruler when the ten-year period had expired (this took place in
the consulship of Publius and Gnaeus Lentulus), and then he gave Agrippa
many rights almost equal to his own, together with the tribunician
authority for the same length of time. He then said that so many years
would suffice them. Not much later he obtained the remaining five
belonging to his imperial sovereignty, so that the number of years became
ten again.
[-13-] When he had done this he next investigated the senatorial body.
The members seemed to him even now to be numerous and he saw
danger in so large a throng, while he felt a hatred for not only such as
were notorious for some baseness, but also those who were distinguished
for their flattery. And when no one, as previously, would resign willingly
nor wished alone to incur accusation, he himself selected the thirty best
men (a point which he confirmed by oath) and bade them after first taking
the same oath to choose and write down groups of five, outside of their
relatives, on tablets. After this he subjected the groups of five to a
casting of lots, with the arrangement that the one man in each who drew
a lot should himself be a senator, and enroll five others on the same
conditions.
There would, of course, properly be thirty of those chosen by others and
by those who drew a lot. And since some of them were out of town others
drew as substitutes and attended to what should have been their duties.
At first this went on so for several days; but when some abuses crept
in, he no longer put the documents in the charge of the quaestors nor
submitted the groups of five to lot, but he himself read whatever
remained and he himself chose the members that were lacking: and thus six
hundred in all were appointed. [-14-]It had been his plan to make them
three hundred as in old times, and he thought he ought to be well
satisfied if he found so many of them worthy of the senate. But he
finally chose a list of six hundred because of the universal displeasure;
for it came out, by reason of the fact that those whose names would be
cancelled would be many more than those who remained in the body, that
greater fear of becoming private citizens prevailed among its members
than expectation of being senators. Not even here did the matter rest,
since some unsuitable persons were still enrolled. A certain Licinius
Regulus after this, indignant because his name had been erased whereas
his son and several others to whom he thought himself superior had been
counted in, rent his clothing in the very senate, laid bare his body,
enumerated his campaigns, and showed them his scars. And Articuleius
Pætus, one of the senators _in posse_, besought earnestly that he might
retire from his seat in the senate in place of his father, who had been
rejected. Augustus then made a new organization, getting rid of some and
choosing others in their place. Since even so the names of many had been
stricken out and some of them, as usually happens in such a case, charged
that they had been driven out unjustly, he immediately accorded them
the right to behold spectacles and join in festivals in common with the
senators, wearing the same garb, and he permitted them for the future to
stand for offices. Most of them came back in the course of time into
the senate: some few were left in an intermediate position, regarded as
belonging neither to the senate nor to the people.
[-15-] After this many at once and many subsequently gained the
reputation, whether it was true or false, of plotting against both the
emperor and Agrippa. It is not possible for one outside of such matters
to have certain knowledge about them. Much of what a sovereign does by
way of punishment either personally or through the senate on the ground
that plots have been made against him is viewed with suspicion as
probably a display of wanton power, no matter how justly he may have
acted. For that reason my intention is to record in all matters of this
nature simply the regular version of the story, not busying myself with
aught beyond the public report, except in perfectly patent cases, nor
making any ulterior suggestions as to whether any act was just or unjust
or any statement true or false. Let this principle apply to everything
which I shall write after this.
At the time Augustus executed a few: Lepidus he hated because his son
had been detected in a against him and had been punished, as well as for
other reasons; he did not, however, wish to kill him but kept insulting
him now in one way, now in another. He ordered Lepidus against his
will to come down from the country to the city and always took him to
gatherings, in order that the man might be subjected to the greatest
amount of jeering and insolence in view of the change from his former
power and dignity. He did not treat him in any way as worthy his
consideration, and at this time he afforded him, last of all the
ex-consuls, the chance of voting. To the rest he was wont to put the
question in the order that belonged to them, but of the ex-consuls he
used to make one first, another second, and third and fourth and so on as
he liked. This the consuls also did. Thus it was that he treated Lepidus.
And when Antistius Labeo enrolled the latter among the men who were to be
senators at the time the vote on this matter was taken, the emperor first
declared that he had perjured himself and threatened to take vengeance.
Thereupon the other replied: "Why, what harm have I done by keeping in
the senate one whom you even now still permit to be high priest?" This
answer quieted Augustus's anger, for though he had often, both privately
and publicly, been judged worthy of this priesthood, he did not deem
it right to take it while Lepidus lived. The reply of Antistius seemed,
indeed, to have been a rather happy one, as was the case once when there
was talk in the senate to the effect that they ought to take turns in
guarding Augustus; for he had said, not daring to speak in opposition nor
willing to agree: "As for me, I snore, and so can not sleep at the door
of his chamber."
[-16-] Among the laws that Augustus enacted was one which provided that
those who to gain office bribed any person should be debarred from the
said office for five years. He laid heavier penalties upon the unmarried
men and women without husbands, and on the other hand offered prizes for
marriage and the procreation of children. And since among the nobility
there were far more males than females he allowed those who pleased, save
the senators, to marry freedwomen, and ordered that the offspring of such
a man should be deemed legitimate.
At this period a clamor arose in the senate regarding the disorderly
conduct of the women and the young men, this being alleged as a reason
for the difficulty of persuading them to contract marriage; and when they
urged him to remedy this abuse also, meanwhile indulging in sarcasms
because he enjoyed the favors of many women, at first he made answer that
the most necessary restrictions had been laid down and that anything
further could not be defined in a similar fashion. Then, when he was
driven into a corner, he said: "You ought to admonish and command your
wives what you wish,--just as I myself do." When they heard that, they
plied him with questions all the more, wishing to learn the admonitions
which he said he gave Livia. Reluctantly thereupon he made a few remarks
about dress and about other adornment, about going out and modest
behavior on such occasions. He cared not at all that he did not make good
his words in fact. Something of the sort he had done also while censor.
They brought before him a young man who had married a woman after
seducing her, making the most violent accusations against him: Augustus
was at a loss what to do, not daring to overlook the affair nor yet to
administer any rebuke. After a very long time he heaved a deep sigh and
said: "The factional disputes have borne many terrible fruits: let us try
to forget them and give our attention to the future, to see that nothing
of the sort occurs again."
Inasmuch, too, as certain infants were obtaining by betrothal the honors
of married couples, but did not accomplish the object in view, he ordered
that no betrothal should be valid where a person did not marry before two
years had passed. That is, any one betrothed must be certainly ten years
old in order to reap any benefit from it. Twelve full years, as I have
said, is required by custom for girls to reach the marriageable age.
[-17-] Besides these separate enactments there was one instructing those
from time to time in office each to propose one of those who had been
prætors three years previously to attend to the distribution of the
grain, and providing that of that number the four who secured the lot
should give out grain in turn: and the præfectus urbi, appointed for the
Feriæ, was always to choose one of them. The Sibylline verses which had
become indistinct through lapse of time he ordered the priests to copy
out with their own hands in order that no one else should read them. He
allowed the offices to be thrown open to all such as had property worth
ten myriad denarii and were competent to hold office in accordance with
the law. This was the value which he at first set upon the senatorial
rank: later he raised it to twenty-five myriads. Upon some of those who
lived upright lives but possessed less than ten myriads in the first case
or twenty-five in the second he bestowed the amount lacking. Again, he
allowed those prætors who so desired to spend on the festivals besides
what was given them from the public treasury three times as much
again, so that even if some were vexed at the minuteness of his other
regulations yet by reason of this one and also because he brought
back from exile one Pylades, a dancer, driven out on account of civil
quarrels, they remembered them no longer. Hence Pylades is said to have
rejoined very cleverly when the emperor rebuked him for having quarreled
with Bathyllus, an artist in the same line and a relative of Mæcenas: "It
is to your advantage, Cæsar, that the populace should exhaust its energy
over us."--These were the occurrences of that year.
[B.C. 17 (_a. u._ 737)]
[-18-]In the consulship of Gaius Furnius and Gaius Silanus Agrippa again
announced the birth of a son named Lucius, and Augustus immediately
adopted him together with his brother Gaius, not waiting for them to
become men but appointing them that very moment successors to his office,
in order that less plots might be directed against him. The festival
of Honor and of Virtus he transferred to the days which are at present
theirs. Those that celebrated triumphs he commanded to erect out of the
spoils some public work to commemorate their deeds. The Sæcularia he
brought for the fifth time to a successful conclusion. The orators, he
ordered, were to give their services without pay, on pain of a fine of
quadruple the amount they might receive. Those whom the lot made jurymen
in any season he forbade to enter any person's house during that year.
And since members of the senate showed lack of interest in attending
meetings of that body, he increased the penalties for such as were late
without some good excuse.
[B.C. 16 (_a. u._ 7386)]
[-19-] Next he started for Gaul, during the consulship of Lucius Domitius
and Publius Scipio, making an excuse of the wars that had arisen in that
region. For since he had become disliked by many as a result of his
long stay in the capital and by inflicting penalties offended many who
committed some act contrary to the laws laid down, while he was compelled
in sparing many others to transgress his own enactments, he decided to
leave the country, somewhat after the manner of Solon. Some suspected
that he had gone away on account of Terentia, the wife of Mæcenas, and
intended, because there was much talk made about them in Rome, to join
her without any gossip during his trip abroad. So great was his passion
for her that he once had her enter a contest of beauty against Livia.
Before starting he dedicated the temple of Quirinus, which he had built
up anew. By this I mean he had adorned it with seventy-six columns, equal
to the total number of years he had lived. This consequently caused some
to say that he had chosen the number purposely and not by mere chance.
After the consecration of this edifice he arranged through Tiberius and
Drusus for gladiatorial combats, permission having been granted them
by the senate. Then he committed to Taurus the management of the City
together with the rest of Italy,--for Agrippa had been despatched again
to Syria and he no longer looked with equal favor on Mæcenas because of
the latter's wife,--and taking Tiberius, though he was prætor, along, he
set out on his journey. Tiberius had become prætor in spite of holding
the honors of an ex-prætor, and his entire office by a decree was placed
in the hands of Drusus. The night following their departure the Hall
of Youth burned to the ground. This was not the only portent that had
occurred, for a wolf had rushed along the Sacred Way into the Forum,
tearing men to pieces, and at a distance from the Forum ants were very
plainly seen together in swarms; likewise a gleam all night long kept
shooting from the south toward the north. Prayers were therefore
offered for the safe return of Augustus. Meantime they celebrated the
quinquennial festival of his sovereignty, the expense being borne by
Agrippa; for the latter had been consecrated by his fellow priests to
be one of the quindecimviri to whom the oversight of the event fell in
regular succession.
[-20-] There was much other confusion, too, during that period. The
Camunni and Vennones, Alpine tribes, flew to arms but were conquered and
subdued by Publius Silius. The Pannonians in company with the Norici
overran Istria, and after suffering damage at the hands of Silius and
his lieutenants the former came to terms again and were the cause of the
Norici falling into the same slavery. The uprisings in Dalmatia and
in Spain were in a short time quelled. Macedonia was ravaged by the
Dentheleti and the Scordisci. In Thrace somewhat earlier Marcus Lollius
while aiding Rhoemetalces, the uncle and guardian of the children of
Cotys, had subjugated the Bessi. Later Lucius Gallus conquered the
Sarmatæ in the same dispute and drove them back across the Ister. The
greatest, however, of the wars which at that time fell to the lot of the
Romans, which also had something to do, probably, with Augustus's leaving
the city, was against the Celtæ.
The Sugambri, Usipetes, and Tencteri had first seized in their own
territory some of the Romans and had crucified them, after which they
crossed the Rhine and plundered Germania and Gaul. When the Roman cavalry
approached they laid an ambush and by taking to flight drew their
assailants to follow them; and though they fell in unexpectedly with
the Roman leader Lollius, they conquered even him. On ascertaining this
Augustus hastened against them but found no warfare to carry on. For the
barbarians, learning that Lollius was getting ready and that the emperor
was also heading an expedition, retired into their own territory and made
peace, giving hostages.
[B.C. 15 (_a. u._ 739)]
[-21-] On this account Augustus had no need of arms, but the demands of
various other business consumed the entire time of this year, as well as
of the next, in which Marcus Libo and Calpurnius Piso were consuls.
For much injury had been wrought by the Celtæ and much by a certain
Licinnius.[5] And of this, I think, the sea-monster had very plainly
given them warning beforehand. This creature, twenty feet broad and three
times as long and resembling a woman except for its head, had been washed
up on the land from the ocean. Now Licinnius was originally a Gaul but
was captured, brought among Romans, and made a slave to Cæsar, by whom he
was set free, and then by Augustus he had been made procurator of Gaul.
He had barbarian avarice and Roman haughtiness, and tried to overthrow
every person and thing deemed superior to himself and to annihilate
any power which temporarily appeared strong. It was his care to supply
himself with plenty of funds for the requirements of his ministry as well
as to secure a plenty for himself and for members of his family. His
abuses went so far that in some cases where the population paid tribute
by the month he made the months fourteen in number. He declared that this
month called December was really the tenth, and for that reason it was
necessary to count in also the two last months (of which he called one
Undecimber and the other Duodecimber), and to contribute the money that
was due for them. These quibbles brought him into danger. The Gauls
secured the ear of Augustus and made a terrible protest, so that the
emperor first shared their indignation and next begged them to be
patient. Of some of the extortions he said he was unaware and others
he affected not to believe. Some things he concealed, being ashamed of
having employed such a procurator. Licinnius however, by devising another
scheme was enabled to laugh to scorn absolutely all their efforts. When
found that Augustus was displeased with him and that he was likely to
be punished, he took the emperor into his house, and showing him many
treasures of silver and gold and many other valuables piled up in heaps,
he said: "I have gathered these purposely, master, for you and for the
rest of the Romans, to prevent the inhabitants from getting control of so
much money and therefore revolting. You see I have kept it all for you
and herewith give it to you." Thus the sophist was saved, by pretending
that he had sapped the strength of the barbarians to serve Augustus.