CHAPTER XIV.

AUGUSTUS, THE LAST DAYS

 

Let the sound of those he fought for,

And the feet of those he wrought for,

Echo round his bones for evermore.

 

The public and private troubles mentioned in the last chapter did not break the spirit or paralyse the energies of the aged Emperor, or prevent him from taking a strenuous part in the administration of the Empire. The last eight years of his life were full of stir and movement, though our meagre authorities give us few details. He actively supported the campaigns of Tiberius and Germanicus; he was introducing reforms in Gaul; he was pushing on improvements in the East, and founding a series of colonies in Pisidia as a defence against the predatory mountain tribes; he was directing a census of the whole Empire; he was emending his marriage laws by the farther enactments contained in the lex Papia Poppaea, which he supported by energetic speeches; he was elaborating a great financial scheme; he was personally attending to the embankment of the Tiber; he was reforming the city police and fire brigades; and when the Varian disaster occurred we have seen with what energy he acted, how he enforced the law of military service and despatched reinforcements to the Rhine, while he cleared the city of dangerous elements and provided against possible movements in the provinces. Though now seventy-two years old he shewed no sign of senility in heart; and as it was said that at every stage of his life he had the beauty appropriate to it, so in spirit, courage, and prudence he seems always to have answered to any strain to which he was submitted.

To understand the financial changes of these years it is necessary to recall a few broad facts as to the revenue of the Empire. It arose from (1) Italy, (2) the provinces. In Italy the sources of revenue were the customs (portoria), the rent of public land, the vicesima or 5 per cent, on the value of manumitted slaves. From the time that it became the habit to pay the soldiers, a tributum or property tax had been raised, at first as a temporary measure, or even as a loan, but gradually as a regular thing. Since the Macedonian wars, however, BC167, this tributum had not been levied: the additional wealth acquired by the new conquests being sufficient. It does not appear that the tributum was abolished by law, and indeed for a short time it was reimposed by the Triumvirs, though only as an extraordinary tax (temerarium). After the Social war of BC89 the Italians became full citizens and shared this exemption.

The second and most important source of revenue were the provinces. There were royalties on mines, customs, rent of public land, and other sources of profit to the government; but also every province paid a stipendium—a certain sum of money—to the Roman treasury. The manner in which it was paid—whether in money or produce, or a multure of the two—differed in different provinces, as also did the mode of its assessment and collection; but the broad fact was that each province had to furnish a sum of money, and that owners of property in a province were liable to a tributum or tax.

In the time of Augustus there was no great change made in the nature or incidence of this taxation; but the management of the treasury itself was revolutionised. In the first place, the aerarium instead of being under the care of the yearly elected quaestors, who issued money on the order of Senate or magistrates, was put under praefecti appointed by the Emperor, and though the Senate still had a nominal control over it, it was really under his power. In the next place, a new aerarium was formed, afterwards called the fiscus, into which was paid the revenues of the imperial provinces. This was entirely under the Emperor, and the tendency was in time to have every extraordinary revenue, such as confiscations, lapsed legacies (caduca), and the like, paid into it. Besides this there was the patrimonium Caesarum, the private property of the Emperor in virtue of his office. To this belonged the whole revenues of Egypt and the Thracian Chersonese, and other large estates. When Augustus talks of his having supplemented the treasury or made distributions to the people, it is often from this fund that he drew, though he had besides large personal property (res familiaris), which he employed at times for the same purpose.

Of course from the revenue of the provinces had to be deducted the cost of their administration and defence. Provinces, therefore, which needed large forces and constant defence from surrounding barbarians did not pay. Cicero, indeed, asserts that in his time none of the provinces except Asia paid for their expenses. This probably is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the loss on some had to be put against the gain on others, and that the balance of the yearly budget was not always on the right side, as, at a later date, we know that Vespasian said that the treasury wanted four hundred million sesterces to be solvent. The outbreak of the German wars in A.D. 4, and the large forces which it had long been necessary to keep upon the Rhine had caused, if not a deficit, at any rate the near prospect of one. It was just such a crisis as in old times would have justified the levying of a tributum as a special war tax. There were, however, two reasons against Augustus doing this. In the first place, such a tributum would be temporary, and he wanted a permanency; and, in the second place, the citizens had come to view freedom from the tributum as their special privilege, differentiating Italy from the subject provinces, and marking them out as a governing body. True to his policy of avoiding offensive names, while at the same time getting what he wanted, Augustus decided against the tributum. What he did was to create a new department, an army-pay treasury (res militare), with two praefects of praetorian rank. The money in this treasury was to be devoted to the pay and pensions of the soldiers. He started it with a gift in his own name and that of Tiberius of 170,000,000 sesterces, and arranged that the tax which he had contrived soon after the end of the civil wars, the 1 per cent, on goods sold at auctions or by contract, should be paid into it. But this was not sufficient for the purpose, and he had to look round for other means of raising revenue. He did therefore what a late Chancellor of the Exchequer did for us—he imposed death duties: 5 per cent, on all legacies except those from the nearest relatives. This avoided the offensiveness of depriving the people of Italy of a valued privilege, while it in fact brought them financially almost in a line with the provinces. For those who paid tributum did not pay vicesima, and vice versa. Still the tax offended a powerful class and met with much resistance. The practice of leaving large legacies to friends, as an acknowledgment of services rendered, was common in Italy, and the tax therefore fell heavily upon the rich. In A.D. 13 a determined move was made in the Senate to obtain its abolition. Augustus sent a written communication to the Senate, pointing out that the money was necessary, but asking them to contrive some other method of raising it. The Senators declined to formulate any plan, and only answered that they were ready to submit to anything else. Thereupon Augustus proposed a tributum or tax on land and houses. Confronted with this alternative the Senate at once withdrew from opposition. It was a case of financial necessity, and it must not be supposed that Augustus wished to lower the prestige of Italy or the value of the citizenship. That was one of the points in which he reversed the policy of Iulius, who had been lavish in bestowing the citizenship, and seems to have had visions of a uniform Empire united in privilege as in government. Augustus, on the other hand, was even ultra-conservative and ultra-Roman in this respect. He made constant difficulties about granting the citizenship. In answer to Tiberius, who begged it for some favourite Greek, he insisted upon only granting it if the man appeared personally and convinced him of the soundness of his claim. Even Livia met with a refusal in behalf of some Gaul. The Emperor offered to grant the man immunity from tribute, saying that he cared less about a loss to his treasury than for vulgarising the citizenship.

Though Augustus showed in this transaction all his old tact and statesmanship with no failure either in determination or power of finesse, yet he was growing visibly feebler in body. He gave up attending social functions and it was too much for him to appear any longer at meetings of the Senate. Accordingly, instead of the half-yearly committee of twenty-five members who used to be appointed to prepare measures for the House, a sort of inner cabinet of twenty members appointed for a year—with any members of his family whom he chose—met at his house and often round the couch on which he was reclining, and their decisions were given the force of a Senatus-consultum. His interest, however, in every detail was as keen as ever. For instance, we have a letter from him to Livia, written at the end of A.D. 11, as to the advisability of allowing Claudius (the future Emperor) to appear in Rome during the ceremonies connected with the consulship of his brother Germanicus. Claudius (now twenty-one) was reported to be deformed and half-witted, and his mother Antonia herself described him as scarcely human (monstrum hominis). The letter is worth reading, partly because it is the only complete one (at any rate, of any length) which we possess, and partly because it illustrates the care which Augustus took to keep up the prestige of the imperial family, to avoid, above all things, incurring popular ridicule, and his attention to minute details :—

“I have consulted with Tiberius, as you desired me to do, my dear Livia, as to what is to be done about your grandson (Claudius) Tiberius. We entirely agree in thinking that we must settle once for all what line we are to take in regard to him. For if he is sound and, to use a common expression, has all his wits about him, what possible reason can there be for our doubting that he ought to be promoted through the same grades and steps as his brother? But if we find that he is deficient, and so deranged in mind and body as to be unfit for society, we must not give people accustomed to scoff and sneer at such things a handle for casting ridicule both on him and on us. The fact is that we shall always be in a state of agitation if we stop to consider every detail as it occurs, without having made up our minds whether to think him capable of holding offices or not. On the present occasion, however, in regard to the point on which you consult me, I do not object to his having charge of the triclinium of the priests at the games of Mars if he will submit to receive instructions from his relative, the son of Silanus, to prevent bis doing anything to make people stare or laugh. We agree that he is not to be in the imperial box at the Circus. For he will be in full view of everybody and be conspicuous. We agree that he is not to go to the Alban Mount or to be in Rome on the days of the Latin festival. For if he is good enough to be in his brother's train to the mountain, why should he not be honorary city prefect? Those are the decisions at which we arrived, my dear Livia, and we wish them to be settled once for all to prevent our wavering between hope and fear. You are at liberty, if you choose, to give Antonia this part of my letter to read.”

Perhaps the voice is the voice of Tiberius, but the courtesy and well-bred style are all Augustus's. By this time the influence of Tiberius was well established, and Augustus treats him as a successor who has a right to be consulted on all family matters and important State affairs. Since his return from Rhodes Tiberius had done eminent service to the State both on the Rhine and in Illyricum. In appointing Varus to Germany Augustus had made a mistake which he seldom committed. He had nearly always picked good men, but P. Quintilius Varus had not only been extortionate in his former province, but was neither energetic nor prudent; and his experience among the unwarlike inhabitants of Syria was not a good preparation for dealing with the brave and warlike Germans. Tiberius knew him well, having been his colleague in the consulship of BC13, and would certainly not have appointed him. It was to Tiberius that the Emperor then turned to retrieve the disaster and confront the almost more serious dangers in Illyricum. And if he found him trustworthy in the field, this letter shows how much confidence he felt in him at home. It was a common report that Augustus knew and disliked his character. The lackeys of the palace gave out that he had on one occasion exclaimed, “Unhappy people of Rome who will some day be the victims of those slow grinders!”. And in a speech to the Senate some expressions used by him were taken to convey an apology for his reserved and sullen manners, and an acknowledgment, therefore, of his mistrust or dislike. But it is abundantly plain that in these last years he not only trusted his military abilities, but felt a sincere affection for himself. In earlier times, before the retreat to Rhodes, the short notes written, to him (parts of which are preserved by Suetonius) are playful and intimate; and though he was vexed at his retirement and answered a suggestion of return by a message bidding him “dismiss all concern for his relatives, whom he had abandoned with such excessive eagerness,” yet the fragments preserved of the Emperor’s letters to him in these later times breathe not only admiration, but warm affection. “Goodbye, Tiberius, most delightful of men! Success to you in the field, you who serve the Muses as well as me! Most delightful of men, and, as I hope to be happy, bravest of heroes and steadiest of generals!”. And again: “How splendidly managed are your summer quarter! I am decidedly of opinion that, in the face of so many untoward circumstances and such demoralisation of the troops, no one could have borne himself with greater prudence than you are doing! The officers now at Rome who have served with you all confess that the verse might have been written for you, ‘One man by vigilance restored the State'.” Once more: “Whenever anything occurs that calls for more than usually earnest thought or that stirs my spleen, what I miss most, by heaven, is my dear Tiberius, and that passage of Homer always occurs to me—

“If he but follow, e’en from burning fire

We both shall back return, so wise is he!’ ”

And in the midst of his laborious campaign the Emperor writes to him anxiously: “When I hear or read that you are worn out by the protracted nature of your labours, heaven confound me if I do not shudder in every limb; and I beseech you to spare yourself, lest if we hear of your being ill your mother and I should expire and the Roman people run the risk of losing their empire. If doesn’t matter a bit whether I am well or not as long as you are not well. I pray the gods to preserve you to us and to suffer you to be well now and always, unless they abhor the Roman people.”

These letters seem sufficiently to refute the idle stories of the gene that his presence was to Augustus, of his being a wet blanket to cheerful conversation, and a makeshift with which the Emperor was forced to put up in default of better heirs. Nor did Tiberius fall short in respect and loyal service. After his adoption in A.D.4, he immediately accepted the position of a son under the patria potestas, abstained from manumissions and other acts of a man who was sui iuris, and apparently transferred his residence to the palace, and seems really to have taken the burden from shoulders no longer string enough to bear it.

For now the end was near, portended as the pious or credulous believed by many omens. There was an eclipse of the sun, and various fiery meteors in the sky. On one of his statues the letter C of Caesar was melted by lightning, and the augurs prophesied, or afterwards invented the prediction, that he would die within a hundred days and join the gods—eesar being good Etruscan for “divinities.” He himself seems to have been made somewhat nervous by certain accidents that might be twisted into omens. The early part of A.D. 14 was taken up with the usual legal business, but also with the Census, which he held this year in virtue of his consular power and with Tiberius as his colleague. The organisation of the city into vici probably made the actual clerical work easy and rapid, but when that was overcame the ceremony of closing the lustrum”, and the offering of solemn sacrifice and prayer. This took place in the Campus Martius, and large crowds assembled to witness it. But the Emperor, uneasy at something which he thought ominous, or perhaps really feeling unwell, would not read the solemn vows, which according to custom had been written out and were now put into his hands. He said that he should not live to fulfil them and handed them over to Tiberius to read. After this ceremony was over, Augustus was anxious to get away from Rome and take his usual yachting tour along the Latin and Campanian coast. On this occasion he had the farther object of accompanying Tiberius as far as Beneventum on the Appian road, on his way to Brindisi and Illyricum, where some difficulties resulting from the recent war required his presence and authority. But various legal causes awaiting decision detained the Emperor in the city. He was restive and impatient at the delay, and petulantly exclaimed that “if they let everything stop them he should never be at Rome again.” At length, however, he set out, accompanied by Livia and Tiberius and a numerous court. They reached the coast at Astura, in the delta of a river of the same name, which falls into the sea at the southern point of the bay of Antium. It was a quiet place though there were seaside villas near, and there Cicero had spent the months of his mourning for Tullia, finding consolation in the solitude of the woods which skirt the side of the stream. At Astura the party embarked, but owing to the state of the wind they did so by night. A chill then caught brought on diarrhoea, and laid the foundation of his fatal illness. Nevertheless the voyage along the Campanian coast tad the adjacent islands was continued till they reached Capreae. It was on this voyage that, happening to touch at Puteoli, he was so much delighted and cheered by the thanks offered him by the crew of an Alexandrian corn-ship for his safeguarding of the seas. At Capreae he seems to have stayed some time, amusing himself by watching the young athletes training for the Greek game at Naples—the only town in Italy except Rhegium which at this time retained any trace of Hellenic customs and life. He gave parties, also, at which he asked his Roman guests to dress in Greek fashion and speak Greek, and the Greeks to use Roman dress and speak Latin. There was the usual distribution of presents, and on one occasion he gave a banquet to the athletes in training, and watched them after dinner pelting each other with apples and other parts of the dessert. It was a custom, more honoured in the breach than in the observance, with which he was familiar. He once entertained a certain Curtius, who prided himself on his taste in cookery, and who thought a fat thrush that had been put before him was ill-done. “May I despatch it?  he said to the Emperor. “Of course,” was the reply; upon which he threw it out of the window. On this occasion the aged Emperor, feeling, we may suppose, somewhat better and glad to be away from the cares of State, enjoyed this curious horse-play. He was also particularly cheerful during these days at Capreae, pleasing himself with inventing Greek verses and then defying one of Tiberius’ favourite astrologers to name the play from which they came.

Before long, however, he crossed to Naples, with his illness still upon him, but with alternate rallies and relapses. At Naples he had to sit through some long gymnastic contests that were held every fifth year in his honour. Such a function in an August day at Naples would have been trying to the most vigorous and healthy, but for a man in his seventy-sixth year, and suffering from such a complaint, it must have been deadly. He preferred, however, not to disappoint people eager to show him honour. He then fulfilled his purpose of accompanying Tiberius to Beneventum, and having taken leave of him there turned back towards Naples. But he was never to reach it. At Nola, about eighteen English miles short of that town, his illness became so acute that he was obliged to stop at the villa there in which his father had died seventy-two years before. Messengers were hastily sent to recall Tiberius. With him the dying man had a long private conversation, in which he seems to have imparted to him his wishes and counsels as to the government; and perhaps it was now that he pointed out the three nobles who were possible candidates for the succession—“Marcus Lepidus, who was fit for it, but would not care to take it; Asinius Gallus, who would desire it, but was unfit; and L. Arruntius, who was not unfit for it and would have the courage to seize it if opportunity offered.” But this conference over he busied himself with no other affairs of State. He seemed to acquiesce in the fact that he had done with the world, its vexations and problems. On the last day of his life, the 19th of August (his lucky month!) the only question which he continually repeated was whether his situation was causing any commotion out of doors. Then he asked for a mirror and directed his attendants to arrange his hair and close his already relaxing jaws, that he might not shock beholders by the ghastliness of his appearance. Then his friends were admitted to say goodbye. With a pathetic mixture of playfulness and sadness he asked them whether “they thought that he had played life’s farce fairly well?” quoting a common tag at the end of plays:—

“If aught of good our sport had, clap your hands,

And send us, gentles all, with joy away.”

These being dismissed, he turned to Livia and asked for news of one of her granddaughters who was ill; but even as he spoke he felt the end was coming—“Livia, don't forget our wedded life, goodbye”. And as he tried to kiss her lips he fell back dead".

It was a rapid and painless end, for which he had so often hoped, an euthanasia that he used to pray for, for himself and his friends. Up to the last his mind had been clear, with only the slightest occasional wandering. And so after long years of work and struggle, of mixed evil and flood, of stern cruelties and beneficent exertion, of desperate dangers and well-earned honours, the great Emperor as he lay dying looked into the eyes which he had loved best in the world.

The body was borne to Rome by the municipal magistrates of the several towns along the road, the cortége always moving by night because of the heat, and the bier being deposited in the court-house of each town till it reached Bovillae, twelve miles from Rome. There a procession of Roman knights took it in charge, having obtained that honour from the consuls, conducted it to Rome, and deposited it in the vestibule of his own house on the Palatine.

With not unnatural or unpardonable emotion some extravagant proposals were made in the Senate as to funeral honours and general mourning. But Tiberius disliked such excesses, and the funeral though stately was simple. The bier was carried on the shoulders of Senators to the Campus. Twice the cortège stopped, first at the Rostra, where Drusus, the son of Tiberius, delivered a funeral oration (laudatio), and again at the front of the temple of Iulius, where Tiberius himself read a panegyric. Drusus had dwelt chiefly on his private Virtues, Tiberius confined himself to his public work. He began with a reference to his youthful services to the state immediately after the death of Caesar; his success in putting an end to the civil wars, and his clemency after them. He spoke of the skill with which, while splendidly rewarding his ministers, he yet prevented them from gaining a power detrimental to the state; of his disinterested and constitutional conduct when, having everything in his hands, he yet shared the power with the people and Senate; of his unselfishness in the division of the provinces in taking the difficult ones upon himself; of his equity in leaving Senate and constitution independent; of his economy and liberality; of the good Order which he kept and the wholesome laws which he carried; of his sympathy with the tastes and enjoyments of the people; of his hatred of flattery and tolerance of free speech. The address was read and had been carefully composed. There is not much fervour or eloquence in it, but it wilfully put the people which Augustus would himself have put, and indeed had put in that apologia pro vita sua which we know from the inscription at Ancyra.

The speeches over, the cortège moved on to the Campus Martins, where the body was burnt on the pyre prepared for it, and the ashes ceremoniously collected by eminent equites, who according to custom wore only their tunics, without the toga, ungirdled, and with bare feet. The urn was then deposited in the Mausoleum which Augustus had himself erected in B.C. 28 on the Campus close to the curving river-bank, which had already received the ashes of his nephew Marcellus, of his sister Octavia, of his two grandsons, and of his great friend and minister Agrippa, but was sternly closed by his will to his erring daughter and granddaughter.

Always careful and business-like, he left his testamentary dispositions and the accounts of his administration in perfect order. His will, which had been deposited with the Vestal Virgins and was now read aloud by Drusus in the Senate, made Tiberius heir to two-thirds, Livia to one-third of his private property. In case of their predeceasing him it was to be divided between Drusus (son of Tiberius), Germanicus, and his three sons, as “second heirs.” There were liberal legacies to citizens and soldiers and to various friends. The property thus disposed of was the res familiaris: the Patrimonium Caesarum—Egypt, the Thracian Chersonese, and other estate—went to his successor in the principate. The will contained an apology for the smallness of the amount thus coming to his heirs (150,000,000 sesterces) on the plea that he had devoted to the public service nearly all the vast legacies which had fallen to him. By the will Livia was also adopted into the Iulian gens and was to take his name. She was thenceforth therefore known as Iulia Augusta, and seems to have assumed that thereby, she obtained a certain share in the imperial prerogatives, a claim which led to much friction between herself and her son.

Besides the will, and a roll containing directions as to his funeral, there were two other documents drawn up by Augustus with great care. One was a breviarium totius imperii, an exact account of the state of the Empire, the number of soldiers under colours, the amount of money in the treasury or the fiscus, the arrears due, and the names of those freedmen who were to be held responsible. As a kind of appendix to this were some maxims of state which he wished to impress upon his successor: such as, not to extend the citizenship too widely, but to maintain the distinction between Roman and subject; to select able men for administrative duties, but not to allow them to become too powerful or think themselves indispensable; and not to extend the frontiers of the Empire.

A third roll contained a statement of his own services and achievements (index rerum a se gestarum). Meant to be preserved as an inscription, it is in what we might call the telegraphic style, a series of brief statements of facts without note or comment beyond the suggestiveness of a word here and there designedly used. Yet it is essentially a defence of his life and policy—the oldest extant autobiography. He directed it to be engraved on bronze columns and set up outside the Mausoleum. This was no doubt done, but the bronze columns have long ago disappeared. Fortunately, however, copies of the inscription were engraved elsewhere (with a Greek translation) in temples 0f “Rome and Augustus”, as at Apollonia in Pisidia and Ancyra in Galatia. That at Ancyra (Angora) exists nearly complete to this day, and some portions at Apollonia. No life of Augustus could be complete without this document, which is therefore given in an English dress at the end of this book.

The Senate at once proceeded to decree divine honours to him. A temple was to be built at Rome, which was afterwards consecrated by Livia and Tiberius. Others were erected elsewhere, and the house at Nola in which he died was consecrated. His image on a gilded couch was placed in the temple of Mars, and festivals (Augustalia) were established with a college of Augustales to maintain them in all parts of the Empire, as well as an annual festival on the Palatine which continued to be held by succeeding Emperors.

The usual foolish rumours followed his death. Some said that Tiberius did not reach Nola in time to see him alive; that he had died some time before, but that Livia the death of closed the doors and concealed the truth. Others even said that his death had been hastened by Livia by means of a poisoned fig; and professed to explain it by a piece of secret court history. Shortly before his death, they said, Augustus had gone attended only by Fabius Maximus on a secret visit to Agrippa Postumus in the island of Planasia, to which he had been confined since the cancelling of his adoption in A.D. 5; and that Livia fearing that he would relent towards him and name him as successor, determined that he should not live to do so, Fabius Maximus having meanwhile died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously. But the authentic accounts of his last illness and death give the lie to such an unnecessary crime. Unhappily the jealousy of the unforfunate Agrippa Postumus was a fact which helped to spread such stories, but it was a jealousy roused by the knowledge of some secret plots to carry him off and set him up as a rival, and “the first crime of the new reign”—his assassination by his guards—must, we fear, lie at the door of either Tiberius or Livia. Another report was that the soul of Augustus flew up to heaven in the shape of an eagle that rose from his pyre. Nor must the ingenious Senator—Numerius Atticus—be omitted, who declared on oath that he had seen the soul of the Emperor ascending, and was said to have received a present of 25,000 denarii from Livia in acknowledgment of this loyal clearness of vision.

The prudent forethought of Augustus in regard to the succession answered its purpose. There was practically no break in the government. Tiberius was possessed of tribunicia potestas, which enabled him to summon and consult the Senate. He also, in virtue of his proconsular imperium, gave the watchword to the praetorian guard, and despatched orders to the legions in service in the provinces. There was, indeed, some question as to whether this imperium legally terminated with the death of the princeps, but the matter was settled by all classes taking the oath (sacramentum) to him, and all the powers and honours (except the title of pater patria, which he would not accept) were shortly afterwards voted to him in the Senate and confirmed by a lex. His professed reluctance to accept the whole burden only brought out more clearly how the work of Augustus had made the rule of a single man inevitable; “I ask you, sir, which part of the government you wish to have committed to you?” said Asinius Gallus. No answer was possible. A man could not control the provinces without command of the army. But he could not control the army if another man controlled the exchequer. He could not keep order in Rome and Italy, if another had command of all the legions and fleets abroad, and could at any moment invade the country or starve it out by stopping the cornships. And if a man had the full control of the purse and the sword the rest followed. It was well enough for the officials to have the old titles and perform some of the old work, but if the central authority were once removed there would be chaos. The Senate had attempted to exercise that central authority and failed. It could not secure the loyalty of men who, exercising undisturbed power in distant lands, soon grew impatient of the control of a body of mixed elements and divergent views, which they often conceived to be under the influence of cliques inimical to themselves. The provinces too as they became more Romanised were certain to claim to be put on a more equal status with Italy: they could only be held together by a man who had equal authority everywhere, never by a local town council. Augustus, indeed, did not realise this development, or rather he feared its advent. In his eyes Rome ought still to rule, but could only do so by all its powers being centred in one man, who could consult the interest and attract the reverence of all parts of the Empire alike. The success of this plan depended, of course, on the character of the man, and perhaps, above all, on his abilities as a financier; but, at any rate, it was impossible to return to a system of divided functions, and constitutional checks, which were shown to be inoperative the moment a magistrate drew the sword and defied them. So far the work of Augustus stood, and admitted of no reaction. Republican ideals could only be entertained as pious opinions, not more practical than some of the republican virtues, on the belief in which they were founded.

 

 

CHAPTER XV

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