CHAPTER XV.

THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS, HIS CHARACTER AND AIMS, HIS WORK AND FRIENDS

 

When a great piece of work has been done in the world it is not difficult to find fault with it. A man seldom if ever sees the bearing and ultimate results of his own actions, or carries out all that he intended to do. Even when he seems to have done so, time reveals faults, miscalculations, failures. At an age when among us a boy is just leaving school, Augustus found himself the heir of a great policy and a great name amidst the ruins of a constitution and the disjecta membra of a great Empire. A comparatively small city state had conquered the greater part of the known world, and proposed to govern it by the machinery which had sufficed when its territory was insignificant, not extending at any rate beyond the shores of Italy. A close corporation, greedy and licentious, had divided amongst its members the vast profits from the gradually extending dominions. The central authority which should have restrained the rulers of distant provinces and the collection of their revenues was composed to a great extent of those most deeply interested in the corruptions which it was their duty to judge and condemn. Loyalty to this central authority grew weaker and weaker, party spirit grew stronger and less scrupulous. In the desperate struggle for wealth and luxury men stuck at nothing. Bloodshed bred bloodshed, violence provoked violence, till good citizens and honourable men (and there were always such) found themselves helpless; and the constitution which had rested on the loyalty of magistrates and citizens was ready to fall at the first touch of resolute disobedience. Then a great man appeared. Iulius Caesar had not been free from the vices or corruption of his contemporaries; but party connections at home led him to sympathise with the people, and the ten years of war and government in Gaul, during which his enemies at home were constantly threatening had thwarting him, had convinced him that the existing constitution was doomed. He was resolved to attempt its reconstruction, even at the risk of civil war. But civil war is a sea of unknown extent. Conqueror though he was in all its battle, it left him only a few months to elaborate reforms. In those he did some great thing; but his revival of the Sullan Dictatorship was too crude a return to monarchy, while the exigencies of civil war forced him to employ inferior agents. The aristocratic clique saw themselves about to lose their cherished privilege of tyranny and extortion, and they killed him.

When Octavian came home to take up his inheritance, he would naturally have joined Antony, and taken immediate vengeance on the guilty clique. But he found him intent upon the consolidation of his own position, and not inclined to admit his claim to the inheritance or to any share of power. He therefore outwardly joined the leaders of the party which he detested in order to get rid of Antony and forestall his bid for autocracy. The vicissitudes of the struggle which followed, ending in the triumvirate and the division of the Roman world, infected him with the poison of civil strife—the cruelty which treats honourable enemies as outlaws, and regards personal triumph as the only end of political exertion. This period in his career and in the development of his character ends with the victory over Sextus Pompeius, BC36, and the additional security gained by the successes of Agrippa in Gaul during the two preceding years. From that time he began to regard himself as the champion of law and order, as the defender of Italy, and the guarantee of peace in the Western Provinces.

Then came a great danger—the danger of a separation of East and West. Under the influence of his passion for Cleopatra, Antony was building up a new empire of subordinate kings, it is true, but subordinate to Alexandria not Rome: and Alexandria was being adorned with the spoils of Asiatic temples to make it a worthy capital of the Eastern world. How far this was really to involve a diminution of the Roman Empire was probably not clear to Antony himself. The old provinces were not formally separated, but they were pared and diminished to round off the new kingdoms for his and Cleopatra’s children. At Rome the danger was looked upon as a real one; and once more Augustus felt that if he was to have a free hand in the renovation of the Empire which he contemplated, Antony must disappear. No doubt every artifice was employed to discredit his opponent, and to convince the Roman people that their dominion in the East was slipping from them. But, however Machiavellian his tactics, there was a solid basis of fact beneath them; a real danger or separation had existed. The victory of Actium settled that question; and when the few severities which followed it were over, we are happily called thenceforth to contemplate the legislator and reformer, the administrator of, on the whole, a peaceful Empire. There were no more civil wars, and no serious conspiracies. With rare exceptions—perhaps only the Arabian expedition—the wars in which Augustus was henceforth engaged were the necessary consequences of a long frontier. War was often prevented by diplomacy, and such wars as were undertaken were always successful, with the exception of those with the Germans, and even in their case immediate danger was averted.

The moral problem presented by the change from ruthless cruelty to wise and persistent clemency has exercised the minds of philosophers and historians ever since. “It was not clemency,” says Seneca, “but a surfeit of cruelty.” But this explains nothing. If Augustus had ever been cruel for cruelty’s sake, the increased opportunities of exercising it would have whetted his appetite for blood as it did in some of his successors. It was circumstances that had changed, not altogether the man. Still, no doubt, success softened (it does not always) Augustus's character. His ministers were humane men and in favour of milder method; his wife was a high-minded woman, and always ready to succour distress, as she showed during the proscriptions, and afterwards in her son’s reign. He had among his immediate friends philosophers and men of letters, whose influence, so far as it went, was humanising. And lastly such opposition as still existed was no longer of irreconcilables who had known “liberty”; a new generation had grown up which on the whole acquiesced in the peace and security of a benevolent despotism. It was a new era, and Augustus became a new man. Full of honours and possessed with irresistible powers, feeling the responsibly heavily, and often in vain desiring rest, he had no farther personal object to gain beyond the credit of having served his country and saved the Empire. The apologia of the index rerum, brief and bald as it is, was intended to show that he had done this.

In estimating the value of his work we are met with this difficulty at the very threshold of the inquiry, that his object was to avoid quick and conspicuous changes. Instead of discussing some heroic measure we have to examine a multitude of details. In every department of political and social life we trace his hand. Working day and night, he was scheming to alter what he thought bad, and to introduce what he thought good. The reconstruction and embellishment of the city, the restoration of religion, the rehabilitation of marriage, measures necessary for the security of Rome and Italy, for the better government and material prosperity of the provinces, for the solvency of the exchequer, and for the protection of commerce—all these continually occupied his time and his thoughts. Of this steady industry this or that result may be open to criticism, but, on the whole, it seems certain that it increased the good order and prosperity of the Empire, and therefore added to the comfort and happiness of innumerable lives.

But of course the upshot of it all was the establishment of a monarchy; and it still remains to be considered how far its benefits were counterbalanced by evils arising disadvantages of from the loss of freedom. It might be argued that tyrants always appeal to their right use of power however irregularly obtained, but that the plea is beside the question. Freedom is the only guarantee of the continuance of good government. The beneficent tyrant may any day be succeeded by a bad one. The policy of Augustus had led the people on step by step to forfeit this freedom, and lose even the taste for it, lulled to sleep by the charms of safety and luxury. When the glamour had faded from some eyes, it was too late. The generation which had known freedom had disappeared; the experience necessary for working the old machinery no longer existed. The few who still remembered with regret the old constitution, under which they had hoped to take an independent share of political activity, had nothing left to them but sullen submission.,

In the provinces, indeed, this consideration did not apply. The despotism there added to the sum of happiness and took nothing away. They had lost their independence long ago. They were already under a master, a master who was changed at short interval, whom it was very difficult to bring to an account if he were oppressive, in whose selection they had had absolutely no share, and whose character they had no means of calculating beforehand. They might one year be enjoying all the benefits of an able and disinterested ruler, the next they might find themselves in the power of a tyrannical extortioner, selfish, cynical, cruel. The old republican names and ideals were nothing to them; or rather they suggested organised oppression and a conspiracy to refuse redress. The change to one master, who had everything to gain by their prosperity, and was at the same time master of their old oppressors, must have seemed in every respect a blessing. If there was any drawback it was that nationality and the desire for self-government were killed by kindness. In all difficulties and disasters they looked to the Emperor for aid and seldom looked in vain. In the East especially this was probably not wholesome; yet the immediate effects in producing prosperity and comfort were marked enough to put aside for the present all such scruples.

But for the governing nation itself, while some of the benefits were no less manifest, the mischievous results were more easy to point out. Material prosperity was  much increased. The city was made a pleasant and attractive place of residence. Italy was partially repeopled with an industrious class. Commerce was encouraged and protected, literature and the fine arts were fostered, and the Palace on the whole set a good example of simplicity of living. But, on the other hand, the rule of a single person stifled political life. By the system of curae or special commissions all administrative work was transferred to nominees of the Emperor, who were often his intimate friends, or even his freedmen, bound to him by the closest ties of subordination. The old magistracies became unattractive, not only because they no longer led as a matter of course to profitable employment abroad, but because their holders had little of interest to do. The Senate, though treated with respect and retaining some importance as a high court of justice, was practically no longer a governing body. It was wholly at the beck of the Emperor, and such work of consequence as it still performed was often transacted by small committees, the main body merely assenting. In spite, therefore, of the dignity of the Senator’s position, it ceased to attract the best men. The higher classes turned away from a political career, and gave themselves up more and more to luxurious idleness. The rise of the freedman—practically the rule of favourites—was clearly foreshadowed, though owing to the industry of Augustus, and his genius for detail, it did not become prominent in his time. As the upper classes were thus to a certain extent demoralised by the Principate, so the city proletariate was pampered and made still more effete. The city was made only too attractive to them, and they were to be kept in good humour by an endless series of games and shows. There was a good deal of truth in the retort of the player Pylades, when reproved by Augustus for his feud with Bathyllus, that it was for the Emperor’s advantage that the people should have their attention fixed on the playhouse rather than on politics. But they soon began not only to regard these amusements as their right: they expected also to be fed at the cost of the government, whether by direct gifts of money, or by the distribution of cheap or even gratuitous corn. Nor can it be said that the amusements provided for them were of an elevating nature. Augustus boasts in the Index, that he gave seven shows of gladiators in his own name or that of his sons, in which about 10,000 men in all had fought; and besides other games twenty-six venatoones of “African beasts,” i.e., mostly elephants, in which about 3,500 were killed. The mob of Rome needed little brutalising, but they got it in abundance.

With such drawbacks, however, it still must be owned that the administration of Augustus largely increased the sum of human happiness by the mitigation of oppression in the provinces, and by the suppression of disorder in Rome and Italy. The finances were placed on a sound footing, property was rendered secure, and men felt everywhere that they might pursue their business with every chance of enjoying the fruits of their labours. This was something after a century of revolution more or less acute, and twenty years of downright civil war. It is worthwhile to attempt to picture to ourselves the man who was the author of these good and bad results.

Augustus was a short man (just under five feet seven inches), but so well proportioned that the defect in height was not noticed unless he was standing by much taller men. He was remarkably handsome at all periods of his life, with an expression of calm dignity, whether silent or speaking, which involuntarily inspired respect. His eyes were grey, and so bright and keen that it was not easy to meet their gaze. If he had a personal vanity, it was in regard to them. He liked to think that they dazzled those on whom he looked, and he was pleased at the answer of the Roman eques, who, when asked why he turned away, replied, “Because I could not bear the lightning of your eyes.” Vergil gratified this vanity of his patron when in the description of the battle of Actium he pictures him,

Stans celsa in puppi; geminascui tempora flammas Loeta vomuni.

And the Emperor Iulian, in “The Banquet of the Emperors,” laughs not unkindly at the same weakness when he introduces him, “changing colour like a chameleon, and wishing that the beams darting from his eyes should be like those of the mighty sun.” The busts, statues, and coins of Augustus fully confirm this statement as to his beauty; and in the triumphal statue found in Livia’s villa at Prima Porta, the artist has succeeded in suggesting the brightness and keenness of his eyes. He was usually clean shaven, but from his uncle’s death to BC38, according to Dio, he grew his beard as a sign of mourning; though coins showed him with a slight, whisker till about BC 36. These portraits are full of life and character. The clear-cut features, the firm mouth and chin, the steady eyes, the carelessly ordered hair, the lines on forehead and cheeks, suggest a man who had suffered and laboured, who was yet self-controlled, calm, and clear-headed. It is a face not without some tenderness, but capable of firing up into hot indignation and even cruelty. There is an air of suffering but of determined victory over pain; altogether a face of a man who had done a great work and risen to a high place in the world and know it; who had confidence, lastly, in his star. On taking leave of Gaius Caesar, it is said, he wished him “the integrity of Pompey, the courage of Alexander, and his own good fortune.” On some of his coins beneath the head crowned with the crown of twelve rays, is the Iulian star, first observed at the funeral of Iulius Caesar, and which he adopted as the sign of his own high fortunes: on others the Sphinx, which he at first adopted as his signet—emblem perhaps of a purpose unbetrayed. Augustus was accomplished in the subjects recognised in the education of his time, though he neither wrote nor spoke Greek with ease. He had studied and practised rhetoric, and had a good and correct taste in style, avoiding the use of far-fetched or obsolete words and expressions, or affected conceits. He ridiculed Antony for his “Asiatic” style of oratory, full of flowers of speech and flamboyant sentences; and writing to his granddaughter, Agrippina, while praising her abilities he warns her against pedantic expressions whether in conversation or writing. Without being an orator, he spoke clearly and to the point, assisted by a pleasant voice, which he took pains to preserve and improve. In the Senate, the camp, and private conferences, he preferred to read his speeches, though he could also speak well on the spur of the moment. In domestic life, though somewhat strict, he was generally simple and charming. He lived much with wife and children, associating himself with their employments, and even joining in the games of the latter. He personally superintended the education of his adopted sons, taught them his own method of shorthand, and interested himself in their reading. He had old-fashioned ideas about the proper employment of the women in his family. They were expected to busy themselves in weaving for the use of the household, to visit and receive visits only with his approval, and not to converse on subjects that could not with propriety be entered on the day’s journal. Though his daughter and granddaughters were well educated, and had a taste for literature, it may well be that a home thus conducted was so dull as partly to account for their aberrations in the fuller liberty of married life.

His attachments were warm and constant, and he was not illiberal to his friends or disinclined to give them his full confidence. But he was always his own master. No friend or freedman gained control over him or rose to the odious position of “favourite.” He allowed and even liked freedom of speech, but it was always without loss of dignity. He was not a man with whom liberties were taken even by the most intimate. He was quick tempered, but knew it, and was ready to admit of caution and advice, as in the well-known story of Maecenas, watching him in court about to condemn a number of prisoners (probably in the civil war times), and throwing across to him a note with the words, "Surge tandem carnifa! : “It is time to rise, hangman!”.  Or when he received with complaisance the advice of Athenodorus (hero of the covered sedan) that when he was angry he should say over the letters of the alphabet before coming to a decision.

In later times he was always looked back upon by his successors as the true founder of the Empire, and the best model for their guidance; yet it is doubtful how far he had wide and far-reaching views. He was a statesman who dealt with facts as he found them and did the best he could. He was deeply impressed with the difficulty of his task. Commenting on the fact of Alexander the Great having accomplished his conquests by the age of 32, and then feeling at a loss what to do for the rest of his life, he remarked that he “was surprised that Alexander did not regard the right ordering of the empire he possessed a heavier task than winning it.” But in one important respect at least he was wrong in his idea of what he had done. He never conceived of an empire filled with citizens enjoying equal rights, or in which Rome could possibly occupy a secondary place. He was ultra-Roman in his views; and worked and schemed to maintain the supremacy of the Eternal City. That supremacy may indeed be said to have remained to this day in the region of spiritual affairs. But it was destined to disappear politically, except in name, before many generations had passed away, and as a logical consequence of much that he had himself done. A new Rome and a new Empire—though always resting on the old title and theory—were to arise, in which Italy would be a province like the rest, and old Rome but the shadow of a mighty name.

Among those who exercised a permanent influence on Augustus, the first place must be given to Livia (BC54- AD2o). The writers on Augustus comment on the romantic revolution of her fortunes. After the affair of Perusia she fled with her husband, Nero, and her little son, Tiberius, from Augustus, who was to be her husband, and was to be succeeded by her son. Her divorce and prompt marriage to Augustus, while within a few months of being again mother, is not only a thing revolting to our ideas, it was strictly against Roman principles and habits, and requited all her new husband’s commanding influence to be admitted as legal. Yet Suetonius says, and says truly, that he continued “to love and honour her exclusively to the end”. The same writer gives an account of the Emperor’s intrigues with other women. To our ideas the two statements are contradictory, but Suetonius would not have thought so. Conjugal love was not amor; the latter was thought even inconsistent with, or at least undesirable in conjugal affection. He means that throughout his life Augustus continued to regard her with affection, to respect her character, and give weight to her opinion. For my own part, I believe that something more might be said, and that much of what has come down to us as to the conduct of the Emperor may be dismissed as malignant gossip. But however that may be, the influence of Livia over him seems never to have failed, and it was exercised on the side of clemency and generosity. She set an excellent example of pure and dignified conduct to Roman society, and, though abstaining from interference generally in political matters, was ready to give advice when called upon. She seems usually to have accompanied him, when possible, on his foreign progresses or residences away from Rome. When Herod visited Augustus at Aquileia in BC14, she appears to have shared her husband’s liking for that strange medley of magnificence and cruelty, and sent him costly gifts for the festivity which accompanied the completion of the new city of Caesarea Sebaste in BC13. The usual allegation against her is that she worked for the succession of her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, as against the Iulian family, represented by the son of Octavia and the children of Iulia. To secure this object she was accused in popular rumour of compassing the deaths successively of Marcellus, of Gaius and Lucius Caesar, of Agrippa Postumus, and, finally, of having even hastened the end of Augustus himself. This last is not mentioned by Suetonius, and is only related by Dio as a report, for which he gives no evidence, and which he does not appear to have believed. Tacitus records the criticism of her as a gravis noverca to the family of the Caesars, and seems to accept her guilt in regard to Gaius and Iulius. But he is also constrained to admit that she exercised a humanising influence over Tiberius, that his victims constantly found refuge and protection in her palace, and that she was benevolent and charitable to the poor—maintaining a large number of orphan boys and girls by her bounty. The most suspicious case against her is the execution of Agrippa Postumus immediately after the death of Augustus—“the first crime, of the new reign.” It will never be known whether the order for that cruel deed issued from her or her crafty son. The death of Marcellus was in no way suspicious, as it occurred in a season of exceptional unhealthiness, when large numbers were dying at Rome of malarial fever. As to the deaths of Gaius and Lucius, no suspicion seems to have occurred to Augustus, and he was keenly anxious for their survival. The poisoned fig supposed to have been given to himself is a familiar feature in the stories of great men’s death of every age in Italy. Tacitus in the famous summing up of her character, while acknowledging the purity of her domestic conduct, yet declares that her social manners were more free than was considered becoming among women of an earlier time; that as a mother she was extravagantly fond, as a wife too complaisant; and that her character was a combination of her husband's adroitness and her son’s insincerity. He by no means intends to draw a pleasing portrait. He seldom does. But what we may take for true is that she was beautiful, loyal to her husband, open-handed and generous to the distressed, merciful and kind to the unfortunate. To those who think such qualities likely to belong to a poisoner and murderess, her condemnation must be left. It is curious that neither Vergil, Horace, nor Propertius mention or allude to Livia; nor does Ovid do so until after the death of Augustus—for the consolatio ad Liviam on the death of Drusus is not his. On some of the inscriptions of a later period in the reign her name appears among the imperial family as wife of the Princeps. That was itself an innovation, and it seems as if the poets abstained from mentioning her under orders. It was improper for a matron of high rank to be made public property in this way. Horace, for instance, only once alludes to the wife of Maecenas, and then under a feigned name.

Of those who influenced the earlier policy of Augustus, and supported hint in the first twenty years of the Printipate, the first place must be given to Agrippa and Maecenas.

M. VIPSANIUS AGRIPPA (BC 63-13), differed widely from Maecenas, but was like him in constant attachment and fidelity to Augustus. He was with him in Apollonia, and on the news of the murder of Iulius advised an appeal to the army. Even before this he had accompanied him to Spain when he went to join his uncle in BC45, and ever afterwards served him with unswerving fidelity and conspicuous success. In the war with Sextus Pompeius, at Perusia, in Gaul, Spain and Illyria, in the organisation of the East, and on the Bosporus, it was his energy and ability that decided the contest in favour of his master, or secured the settlement that he desired. He was the organiser of the Roman navy, and though his great work at the Lucrine lake proved to be only temporary, the squadrons that guarded the seas at Misenum, Ravenna and Forum Iulii were the result of his activity and foresight. His acts of splendid liberality in Rome have been already noticed. He showed the same magnificence in Gaul and elsewhere, and seems also to have largely assisted in the great survey of the empire instituted by Augustus. Not only did he support all the plans and ideas of his master, he was ready to pike any position and make any personal sacrifice to further his views. After his first marriage to Pomponia, by whom he was the father of Vipsania, he was married to Marcella, the Emperor’s niece. To support his master’s plans for the succession he submitted to divorce her and marry Iulia, after, having previously made way for the rise of Marcellus by accepting a command in the East. The Emperor showed his confidence in him on every occasion. In BC23 when he thought himself dying he placed his seal in his hands, in BC18 he caused him to be admitted to share his tribunician power for five years, which was renewed again in BC13; so that though his two sons were adopted by Augustus, the succession would almost certainly have fallen to him had the Emperor died in their minority. This elevation however did not give him rest; the last years of his life were spent in the East, on the Bosporus and in Pannonia, from which last he only returned to die. This faithful service had been rendered in spite of the fact that he had advised against the acceptance of the principate. He had urged the financial difficulties, the irreconcilable nature of the opposition, the impossibility of drawing back, and Octavian’s own weak health. But when his master preferred the advice of Maecenas, he took his part in the undertaking without faltering and with splendid loyalty. Though Augustus owed much of his success to his own cautious statesmanship, he owed even more to the man who failed in nothing that he undertook, and would claim no honour for himself in return. The Emperor delivered the funeral oration over this loyal servant, and deposited his ashes in the Mausoleum which he had built for his own family.

C. CILNIUS MAECENAS (crc. BC 65-8), was probably a few years older than Augustus, but near enough to his age to have been one of his companions at Apollonia. His influence was maintained till about BC16. It is most conspicuous from the time immediately following the Perusian war. He negotiated the marriage with Scribonia, the peace of Brindisi with Antony (BC40), and the subsequent reconciliation of BC38. In the war against Sextus Pompeius (BC 38-36), he was partly with Augustus, but partly at Rome, with full powers to act for him and even to alter his despatches and letters as seemed necessary, having the triumvir’s private seal entrusted to him for that purpose. This was possible from the fact of such letters being written by amanuenses and being therefore only recognisable by the seal. Thus Cicero often commissions Atticus to write formal letters to his friends for him. This position—it was no definite office, or perhaps was more like being legatus to Octavian than anything else—he seems to have retained till after the battle of Actium, at which he probably was not present, though that has been disputed. He detected the conspiracy of the younger Lepidus, and sent him to Octavian to be judged. In BC29, on Octavian’s return from the East, he recommended the establishment of a despotism, as a republic was no longer possible. The speech preserved by Dio may very well be genuine, in view of the habit of the day, and of Augustus himself, of reading addresses even in comparatively private conferences on matters of importance. Even if it is not the genuine speech, it correctly represents many of the principles on which Augustus did act, and as to which he doubtless consulted Maecenas. It counsels him to keep in his hands legislation, foreign affairs, elections, executive appointments and the courts of law, and to hear cases of appeal himself: exactly what Augustus did under various disguises. It argues that it was necessary both for his own safety and that of the state that he should remain in power, the glory being well worth the risk. Other recommendations are a reform of Senate and equites, the maintenance of the old republican magistrates for home service, the establishment of a praefectus urbi, the exercise by himself of censorial functions, the subordination of provincial governors to the Emperor, and their payment by a fixed salary, with the appointment of procurators to superintend the finances of the provinces. A system of education for the equites he also suggested, which does not seem to have been carried out; but many of the financial proposals were adopted, as well as the idea of keeping the people amused by games and shows. The advice to abolish the comitia Augustus could not follow consistently with his policy of compromise. They remained and were the causes of more than one trouble and disturbance, but their freedom of election was gradually but surely destroyed, and one of the first measures of Tiberius was to abolish them as no longer a reality. The reform of the Senate was, as we have seen, carried out. As for the judicia, the Senate became a high court for cases of treason (maiestas), before which alone Senators could be tried; the decuriae iudicum were reformed, and Augustus himself performed the functions of a court of appeal in various ways, sometimes by his tribunician power of “interceding” against the sentences of magistrates or Senate, and sometimes by hearing cases from the provinces of citizens who disputed the competence of provincial courts and claimed to be heard at Rome. Maecenas holding no office never became a Senator; but he represented the Emperor in his absence, unless Agrippa was appointed to do so instead. In this capacity he really exercised a greater power than any definite office would have given him, and the whole business of the Empire passed through his hands.

But it was not only as the ostensible representative of the Emperor that he worked for his support. In the comparative retirement of his palace on the Esquiline he contributed to that object by gathering round him the best intellects and first men of letters of the day, whom he induced to devote their talents not only to glorify the Emperor personally, but to popularise his policy and magnify his service to the state. How far this may have been effectual by making it the fashion to accept and admire the principate may perhaps be questioned, but that he should have secured such writers as Vergil, Horace, and Propertius on his side says much for his insight and literary taste. One of the weaknesses of the position of Iulius had been that he had the literary class mostly against him. The present reputation and future fame of Augustus were to be better safeguarded. Personally Maecenas was luxurious and effeminate, always a valetudinarian, and in his later years afflicted with almost constant insomnia. This accounts well enough for the retirement from public business during the last eight years of his life without those other causes of the Emperor's displeasure which have been already discussed. His wife was a beauty, much younger than himself, wilful and wayward; and if it is true that she intrigued with Augustus, it seems also true that, her husband repaid her in kind. There were frequent quarrels and reconciliations, so that Seneca says that he married her “a thousand times”;  and once at any rate the family trouble found its way into the law courts, where, however, the bona fides of the divorce which she was alleged to have made was questioned. In spite of some coldness between them in later years, and the physical infirmities which removed him from public business, Augustus sincerely mourned his loss, as of a counsellor who never betrayed his confidence or spoke idle words. He had no real successor. From the time of his death the Emperor seems more and more to have become his own prime minister, or to have looked to his own family for assistance as well as for a successor. Tacitus says that his place was taken by Sallustius Crispus, great-nephew of the historian; but Augustus does not seem to have thought highly of his ability, and the part he took in affairs was not prominent enough to have secured mention by either Suetonius or Dio. Maecenas wrote himself both in prose and verse, but in an affected and obscure Style, which Augustus playfully ridiculed. The stoic Seneca is particularly severe on a poem in which he declares that he clings to life in spite of all physical suffering however painful :—

“Though racked with gout in hand and foot,

Though cancer deep should strike its root,

Though palsy shake my feeble thighs,

Though hideous hump on shoulders rise,

From flaccid gum teeth drop away;

Yet all is well if life but stay,

Give me but life, and even the pain

Of sharpest cross shall count as gain’

The chief writers of the Maecenas circle, who either became intimate with Augustus himself, or were induced by Maecenas to join in the chorus of praise, were Vergil, Varius, Horace, Propertius. Of the epics of L. Varius Rufus (BC 64-14) on Iulius Caesar and Augustus, we have only a few fragments. The historian, Livy, (BC59—AD16) was also on friendly terms with Augustus, and seems to have had some hand in teaching Claudius, son of Drusus, the future emperor. But his great work—from the foundation of Rome to the death of Drusus (BC9) was afterwards regarded as being too republican, and even Augustus used laughingly to call him the Pompeian. It was the poets who made Augustus and his policy the subject of their praises, and who employed their genius to support his views.

The firsts to do this was P. VERGILIUS MARO (BC 70—17). The earliest of his writings, the Eclogues, composed between BC 42-37, do not show any close connection with Augustus. The first indeed celebrates the restoration of his farm after a personal interview witty Octavian, on the suggestion of Pollio and Maecenas, and the poet declares, that never will there fade from his heart the gracious look of the young prince. But the chief object of praise in the Eclogues, so far as there is one, is Pollio, who had been left in charge of the distribution of lands by the Triumvirs in BC42. In the Georgics, however, finished after BC30, we find that he has fallen in with the new régime. They are dedicated to the minister Maecenas, they celebrate Augustus’s triple triumph of BC29, and they were composed partly, at any rate, at the wish of Maecenas, who with Augustus was anxious to make country life and pursuits seem desirable. No doubt the theme itself was congenial to Vergil, who preferred a country life at Nola, or near Tarentum, to the bustle of Rome; but it also happened to chime in with the views of Augustus, who all his life believed in the influence of literature and wished to have the poets on his side. Accordingly, soon after his return from the East in BC29 he seems to have suggested to Vergil to compose a poem that would inspire men with a feeling of national pride and an enthusiasm for the greatness of Rome’s mission. The plan and form were no doubt wholly Vergil’s, but the spirit and purpose, like those of Horace’s more patriotic odes of about the same time, were those which the Emperor desired. He was not satisfied with mere suggestion, he was eager for the appearance of the poem. While in Gaul and Spain front BC 27-24 he frequently wrote to the poet urging the completion of the work. A part of one of Vergil’s answers has been preserved:

“As to my Aeneas, upon my honour if I had anything written worth your listening to, I would gladly send it. But the subject thus begun is so vast, that I almost think I must have been beside myself when I undertook a work of this magnitude; especially considering that—as you are aware—I am also devoting part of my time to different and much more important studies.”

The Aeneid was thus undertaken at the solicitation of Augustus. The legend on which it turns—perhaps a late one—of the landing of Aeneas in Italy and the foundation of Rome by his descendant, is with great skill interwoven with a fanciful descent of the gens Iulia from his son Iulus, to magnify Rome and her divine mission, and at the same time to point to Augustus as the man of destiny, and as representing in his own person and career the majesty of the Roman people. In such a poem detailed allusions cannot be expected as in the occasional odes of Horace. Yet, besides the fine passage in the eighth book describing the victory of Actium and the discomfiture of Cleopatra, and that in the sixth announcing the victorious career of Augustus, we have, more or less, direct references to the restoration of religious worship in the vici, to the return of the standards by the Parthians, and the death of the young Marcellus. In form, the Aeneid follows the model of Homer, the supreme epic. But in substance it is original, in that it does not take for its theme one of the old myths—as the Alexandrine poets always did—but while teeming with all kinds of mythological allusions it finds its chief inspiration in the greatness of Rome, measured by the elemental strife preceding the accomplishment of the divine purpose: tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem—“So vast the task to found the Roman race”, is the key-note of the whole. It is original as the epic of Milton was original who, with details borrowed from every quarter, took for his theme the foundation of a world and the strife in heaven that preceded it. Vergil’s epic is Roman history on the highest plane, and has crystallised for ever a view of that history which has done more than arms and laws to commend it to the imagination of mankind. Augustus had a true intuition when he forebade the poet’s executors to obey his will and burn the rolls containing this great national epic.

Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS (BC 65 - 8) is not perhaps so great a poet as Vergil, but he possessed the charm which keeps, such work as his alive. His connection with. Augustus is a remarkable phenomenon in literary history. Having fought on the side of his enemies at Philippi, and having shared in the amnesty granted to the bulk of the troops, he returned home to find his paternal property confiscated. Poverty drove him to poetry, poetry gained him the friendship of Varius and Vergil, who introduced him to Maecenas, who saw his merit, relieved him from the uncongenial employment of a clerk, and eventually introduced him to Augustus. The Emperor, in his turn, was not long in recognising his charm. He writes to Maecenas :

“In old times I was vigorous enough to write my friends’ letters for them. Nowadays being overwhelmed with business and weak in health, I am very anxious to entice Horace away from you. He shall therefore quit your table of parasites and. come to my table of kings and assist me in writing letters.”

The refusal of Horace—prudent no doubt in view of his tastes and habits—did not lose him the Emperor’s favour. He twice received substantial marks of it, and some extracts of letters to him from Augustus have been preserved which exhibit the latter in his most gracious mood :

“Consider yourself a privileged person in my house, as though an habitual guest at my table. You will be quite within your rights and will always be sure of a welcome: for it is my wish that our intimacy should be on that footing if your state or health permits it.”

And again :

“What a warm recollection I retain or you, you will be able to learn from Septimius among others, as I happened to be talking about you in his presence the other day. For you need, not suppose, because you were so high and mighty as to reject my friendship, that I am on the high horse too to pay you back.”

Augustus, in fact, had a great opinion of Horace, and predicted his immortality. He selected him to write the ode for the secular games, pressed him later in life to immortalise the achievements of Tiberius and Drusus, and was desirous of his own name appearing as the recipient of one of his Satires or Epistles.

“I am quite angry, let me tell you, that you don’t give me the preference as a person to address in your writings of that kind. Are you afraid that an appearance of intimacy with me will damage your reputation with posterity?”.

Horace made the Emperor a return in full for such condescension. How far the genius of a poet is warmed or chilled by patronage it is not easy to decide. So far as he is tempted away from his natural bent, or confined in the free expression of thought, he suffers: so far as he is saved from sordid cares, he is a gainer. Horace, in early youth, sympathised with the republican party in whose ranks he had served, and probably in later life still felt a theoretical preference for it, and could speak of the nobile letum and atrox animus of Cato with a true note of admiration. But he was a man of his time. The policy of Octavian had made the supremacy of Augustus inevitable, and it at least secured peace and safety. The patronage and liberality of Maecenas assuredly helped to turn the scale, but I see no reason to doubt that the poet was convinced, though, perhaps, without enthusiasm, that the new régime was one to be supported by reasonable men. The kindness of the Emperor naturally enhanced the effect of his commanding personality, but it would be difficult for a poet so placed to write with greater dignity and less fulsomeness than Horace does in the first epistle of the second book, addressed to Augustus at his own request. But it is in the Odes that we must trace the unbroken sympathy with the career and policy of Augustus. If they are closely examined, with an eye to chronological arrangement, the ingenuity with which these imitations of Greek models are framed to support and recommend the purposes or celebrate the successes of the Emperor, will stand revealed in a striking manner. The Epodes and the first three books of the Odes were apparently written between BC35 and BC25. Dropped in among a number of poems of fancy, or passion, or mere literary tours de force, are compositions that follow not only the actual achievements of Augustus, but his ideals, his intentions, and his aspirations, from the years just before Actium to his return from Spain in BC25. We begin with the Second Epode, which refers with regret to the abandoned intention of invading Britain in BC35, and expresses his alarm at the prospect of a renewed civil war. In the Sixteenth Epode this terror has become a reality; the civil war has begun, and the poet, foreseeing the downfall of the state, turns longing eyes to the peace and calm of the fabled islands of the West. From Italy and all its horrors they must at any rate depart. In the Ninth Epode the relief has come; the shameful servitude of a Roman imperator and Roman soldiers to a foreign queen is over; Antony and Cleopatra are in full flight (BC31). In another year it is known that Antony has fallen by his own hand, and that Cleopatra has saved herself the indignity of the triumphal procession by the adder’s aid. The discharge of the legions follows, and their settlement in Italian and Sicilian lands. In the other odes of the first book the devotion to Augustus proceeds apace. The Iulian star is in the ascendant; Augustus is pater and princeps, anticipating the future titles; he is again contemplating the invasion of Britain; the Arabian expedition is being planned with all its futile hopes of wealth. In the second book of the Odes, beginning with reflections on the evils of civil war, the poet notices one after the other the triumphs of Augustus or his generals in BC 27-24. The Cantabrian war; the triumphal arch at Susa; the success of his diplomacy in Scythia, Armenia, and Parthia. In the third book the embassy of British chiefs is treated as though the island were annexed; the Cantabrians are regarded as conquered after the expedition of Augustus. Then succeeds a period of statesmanship and reform. The Emperor’s Roman policy, and his determination to keep Rome the centre of government, are warmly supported; the moral evils, the extravagance and debauchery of the age must be cured, and Horace proceeds to support the abortive legislation of BC27, and to foreshadow the censorial acts, and the legislation of BC18. There is a protest against the magnificence and extent of country houses; against the effeminacy of youth; against the immorality of women and the licentiousness that led to civil strife. The Carmen saculare speaks of the legislation as effected, and foretells its success; while in the fourth book he asserts that, at any rate while Augustus is with them, that success has been secured, and that he has not only given them peace, but a great moral reform. The policy of the Emperor in regard to the bugbear of the East, the Parthian power, is also followed step by step. They are the dangerous enemy whose subjection will make Augustus divine, and whose threatened invasions keep his ministers in constant anxiety. This is before BC20; but in BC19 they have made submission and restored the Standards and prisoners, and this is one of the triumphs of Augustus that requires a master hand to record; it is the glory of the Augustan age, and as long as Augustus is safe, no one will fear them more. Finally, at the Emperor’s request, he celebrated the victories of Drusus and Tiberius over the Vindelici and Rhaeti, and especially the defeat of the Sugambri who had routed Lollius, with a compliment to Augustus himself for having gone to Gaul to support Tiberius and Drusus with reinforcements and advice, and for having at length closed the door of Ianus. The lyrical career of Horace, therefore, corresponds remarkably with the activities of Augustus. His genius presented those activities to his fellow citizens (and Horace’s verses were soon read in schools) exactly in the light in which the Emperor wished them to be viewed. If we lay aside some expressions of overstrained compliment, which favoured the growing fashion of paying the Emperor divine honours, it cannot be said that the language is fulsome or degrading to the poet. The “parasitic table” of Maecenas may, as M. Beulé asserts, have been a misfortune to the poets, and attenuated their vein of inspiration: but a man must have something in practical life on which to pin his faith; and Horace might have done worse than devote his genius to promote loyalty to the great statesman who had saved Roman society and given peace and prosperity to an empire. Just as Vergil, if he had followed his own impulse, might have perhaps produced a fine poem on the Epicurean cosmogony, but not one that lives and breathes with the noble glow of patriotism.

SEXTUS PROPERTIUS (circ. BC 45—15) was another of the Maecenas circle of poets who did something to glorify Augustus. He is not (but that is a personal opinion) on anything like the same level as either Vergil or Horace as an artist. He is said to have died young, perhaps at thirty years of age, and there is no evidence of personal intimacy with Augustus, but there is some indication of his having been on bad terms with Horace. His elegies also are nearly all poems of passion. Politics and emperors are mere episodes, and were introduced in deference to Maecenas. Still many points in the career of Augustus are referred to in the same spirit as that of Horace. The siege of Perusia—described in tones of horror, which would scarcely have been acceptable—precedes his conversion, and the failure of the marriage law of BC27 is only referred to with relief. In more complimentary terms he speaks of the victory of Actium and of the downfall of Antony and Cleopatra; and the end of the civil wars is attributed to Augustus. Then came the intended invasion of Britain; the Arabian expedition and the Indian envoys; the opening and description of the Palatine Library—the best extant; the raids of the Sugambri and their suppression; while he has the Parthians frequently on his lips, though rather as predicting what is to be done with them than as recording the return of the standards. In the fifth book there are signs of a beginning of a Fasti like that of Ovid as a record of events in Roman history; and it is possible that this was in obedience to a wish of Augustus, who, on his death, transferred the task to Ovid. Thus his voice also was secured, in part at least, in support of the imperial régime.

PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO (BC43—AD18) belongs to the last part of the reign. He had only seen Vergil, and though he heard Horace recite, he does not profess to have known him. He was quite young when Augustus was winning his position and reforming the constitution, and there are no signs of his coming forward as a court poet till Maecenas and his circle had disappeared, and if he had attracted the attention of Augustus at all, it was probably not altogether in a favourable manner. His earliest poems—the Amores and Heroidum Epistula—do not touch on public affairs; they are poems of passion—the former personal, the latter dramatic. In the Ars Amatoria for the first time we detect the court poet from a complimentary allusion to the approaching mission of Gaius Caesar to Syria and Armenia, with his title of princeps iuventutis and that of Augustus as pater patria, as also to the naumachia or Representation of the battle of Salamis given by Augustus in the flooded nemus Casarum in BC2. The Metanorphoses had been composed before his exile in AD9, but after the death of Augustus he apparently introduced the Epilogue containing an eulogy on Tiberius, and on the now finished career of Augustus. It is the Fasti—the Calendar of events in Roman history—that probably was undertaken in obedience to a wish of the Emperor, and in which accordingly we find points in his career touched upon. It was dedicated to Germanicus, and contains an allusion to his own exile, and was therefore, partly at least, composed between BC2-AD10. His allusions to Augustus are not those of an intimate acquaintance, but of an admiring subject—real or feigned. He mentions the battle of Mutina; the bestowal of the title Augustus; the recovery of the standards from the Parthians as a triumph of the Emperor. He alludes to Augustus becoming Pontifex Maximus; to the laurels on his palace front; to the demolition of the house of Vedius Pollio as connected with the reforms and the laws of BC18; to the division of the city into vici, and the worship of the Lares Augusti; to the Forum Augusti and the temple of Mars dedicated in BC2. Ovid afterwards protested that his books had been read with pleasure by Augustus, and assumed to have some knowledge of the private chambers of the palace, but there is nothing in the allusions to matters which he knew that Augustus wished to have recorded that has the air of close or intimate relations. They are the conventional expressions of the outside, and perhaps humble, panegyrist, not those of a friend and supporter, like Horace. The abject expressions in the Tristia and the letters from Pontus need not be taken into account. They are merely bids for a recall, anti they often express in the crudest form the growing fashion of worshipping the Emperor or his genius. Perhaps the most subtle of these appeals is that in which he explains why he had spent his youth in writing frivolous poetry instead of celebrating the glories of the Emperor—he was not a good enough poet, and would have dishonoured a subject above his reach. This was using a weapon forged by the Emperor himself, who had always let it be known that he disliked being the subject of inferior artists. The melancholy and feebleness of these later poems of Ovid seem to bear a sort of analogy with the cloud that descended on the later years of Augustus. Vergil and Horace have the freshness of the morning or the vigour of noon, Ovid the gathering sadness of the evening.

 

 

 

AUGUSTUS’S ACCOUNT OF HIS REIGN (FROM THE INSCRIPTION IN THE TEMPLE OF ROME AND AUGUSTUS AT ANGORA)