I. THERE are many indications that the Octavian family
was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; for not only was a
street in the most frequented part of the town long ago called Octavian,
but an altar was shown there besides, consecrated by an Octavius. This
man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town, and when news of a
sudden onset of the enemy was brought to him just as he chanced to be
sacrificing to Mars, he snatched the inwards of the victim from the fire
and offered them up half raw; and thus he went forth to battle, and
returned victorious. There was, besides, a decree of the people on
record, providing that for the future too the inwards should be offered
to Mars in the same way, and the rest of the victims be handed over to
the Octavii.
II. The family was admitted to the senate by king
Tarquinius Priscus among the lesser clans [Plebeian families in the
Senate enrolled in addition to the patricians. See: Geer,
American Journal of Philology, 55, 337ff.]; was later enrolled by
Servius Tullius among the patricians; in course of time returned to the
ranks of the plebeians; and after a long interval was restored to
patrician rank by the Deified Julius. The first of the house to be
elected by the people to a magistracy was Gaius Rufus, who became
quaestor. He begot Gnaeus and Gaius, from whom two branches of the
Octavian fimaily were derived, of very different standing; for Gnaeus
and all his scions in turn held the highest offices, but Gaius and his
progeny, whether from chance or choice, remained in the equestrian order
down to the father of Augustus. Augustus' great-grandfather served in
Sicily in the Second Punic War as tribune of the soldiers under the
command of Aemilius Papus [205 B.C.]. His grandfather, content with the
offices of a municipal town and possessing an abundant income, lived to
a peaceful old age. This is the account given by others; Augustus
himself merely writes [in his Memoirs] that he came of an old and
wealthy equestrian family, in which his own father was the first to
become a senator. Marcus Antonius taunts him with his great-grandfather,
saying that he was a freedman and a rope-maker from the country about
Thurii, while his grandfather was a money-changer. This is all that I
have been able to learn about the paternal ancestors of Augustus.
III. His father Gaius Octavius was from the beginning
of his life a man of wealth and repute, and I cannot but wonder that
some have said that he too was a money-changer, and was even employed to
distribute bribes at the elections and perform other services in the
Campus; for as a matter of fact, being brought up in affluence, he
readily attained to high positions and filled them with distinction.
Macedonia fell to his lot at the end of his praetorship; on his way to
the province, executing a special commission from the senate, he wiped
out a band of runaway slaves, refugees from the armies of Spartacus and
Catiline, who held possession of the country about Thurii. In governing
his province he showed equal justice and courage; for besides routing
the Bessi and the other Thracians in a great battle, his treatment of
our allies was such, that Marcus Cicero, in letters which are still in
existence [Ad Quint. Frat. 1.1.21], urges and admonishes his
brother Quintus, who at the time was serving as proconsular governor
[Quintus Cicero was really propraetor] of Asia [61/58 B.C.] with
no great credit to himself, to imitate his neighbour Octavius in winning
the favour of our allies.
IV. While returning from Macedonia, before he could
declare himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly,
survived by three children, an elder Octavia by Ancharia, and by Atia a
younger Octavia and Augustus. Atia was the daughter of Marcus Atius
Balbus and Julia, sister of Gaius Caesar. Balbus, a native of Aricia on
his father's side, and of a family displaying many senatorial portraits
[imagines were waxen masks of ancestors of senatorial rank, kept
in the atrium of their descendants], was closely connected on his
mother's side with Pompeius the Great. After holding the office of
praetor, he was one of the commission of twenty appointed by the Julian
law to distribute lands in Campania to the commons. But Antonius again,
trying to disparage the maternal ancestors of Augustus as well, twits
him with having a great-grandfather of African birth, who kept first a
perfumery shop and then a bakery at Aricia. Cassius of Parma also taunts
Augustus with being the grandson both of a baker and of a money-changer,
saying in one of his letters: "Your mother's meal came from a vulgar
bakeshop of Aricia; this a money-changer from Nerulum kneaded into shape
with hands stained with filthy lucre."
V. Augustus was born just before sunrise on the ninth
day before the Kalends of October in the consulship of Marcus Tullius
Cicero and Gaius Antonius [Sept. 23, 63 B.C.], at the Ox-Heads in the
Palatine quarter, where he now has a shrine, built shortly after his
death. For it is recorded in the proceedings of the Senate, that when
Gaius Laetorius, a young man of patrician family, was pleading for a
milder punishment for adultery because of his youth and position, he
further urged upon the Senators that he was the possessor and as it were
the warden of the spot which the deified Augustus first touched at his
birth, and begged that he be pardoned for the sake of what might be
called his own special god. Whereupon it was decreed that that part of
his house should be consecrated.
VI. A small room like a pantry is shown to this day as
the emperor's nursery in his grandfather's country-house near Velitrae,
and the opinion prevails in the neighbourhood that he was actually born
there. No one ventures to enter this room except of necessity and after
purification, since there is a conviction of long-standing that those
who approach it without ceremony are seized with shuddering and terror;
and what is more, this has recently been shown to be true. For when a
new owner, either by chance or to test the matter, went to bed in that
room, it came to pass that, after a very few hours of the night, he was
thrown out by a sudden mysterious force, and was found bedclothes and
all half-dead before the door.
VII. In his infancy he was given the surname
Thurinus in memory of the home of his ancestors, or else because it
was near Thurii that his father Octavius, shortly after the birth of his
son, had gained his victory over the runaway slaves. That he was
surnamed Thurinus I may assert on very trustworthy evidence, since I
once obtained a bronze statuette, representing him as a boy and
inscribed with that name in letters of iron almost illegible from age.
This I presented to the emperor [i.e., Hadrian], who cherishes it
among the Lares of his bed-chamber. Furthermore, he is often called
Thurinus in Marcus Antonius' letters by way of insult; to which Augustus
merely replied that he was surprised that his former name was thrown in
his face as a reproach. Later he took the name of Gaius Caesar [44
B.C.], and then the surname Augustus [27 B.C.], the former by the will
of his great-uncle [i.e., Julius Caesar], the latter on the
motion of Munatius Plancus. For when some expressed the opinion that he
ought to be called Romulus as a second founder of the city, Plancus
carried the proposal that he should rather be named Augustus, on the
ground that this was not merely a new title but a more honourable one,
inasmuch as sacred places too, and those in which anything is
consecrated by augural rites are called "august" [augusta], from
the "increase" [auctus] in dignity, or from the movements or
feeding of the birds [avium gestus gustusve], as Ennius [Annales,
502, Vahlen] also shows when he writes:
After by augury august illustrious Rome had been
founded.
VIII. At the age of four he lost his father [59 B.C.].
In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled
people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after
assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar's
African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of
his youth. When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of
Pompeius [46 B.C.], although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his
strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the
enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering
shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon
formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with
which he had made the journey. When Caesar, after recovering the Spanish
provinces, planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against
the Parthians, Augustus, who had been sent on in advance to Apollonia,
devoted his leisure to study. As soon as he learned that his uncle had
been slain and that he was his heir [44 B.C.], he was in doubt for some
time whether to appeal to the nearest legions, but gave up the idea as
hasty and premature. He did, however, return to the city and enter upon
his inheritance, in spite of the doubts of his mother and the strong
opposition of his stepfather, the ex-consul Marcius Philippus. Then he
levied armies and henceforth ruled the State, at first with Marcus
Antonius and Marcus Lepidus, then with Antonius alone for nearly twelve
years, and finally by himself for forty-four.
IX. Having given as it were a summary of his life, I
shall now take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological
order, but by classes, to make the account clearer and more
intelligible. The civil wars which he waged were five, called by the
names of Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, Sicily, and Actium; the first and
last of these were against Marcus Antonius, the second against Brutus
and Cassius, the third against Lucius Antonius, brother of the triumvir,
and the fourth against Sextus Pompeius, son of Gnaeus.
X. The initial reason for all these wars was this:
since he considered nothing more incumbent on him than to avenge his
uncle's death and maintain the validity of his enactments, immediately
on returning from A pollonia he resolved to surprise Brutus and Cassius
by taking up arms against them; and when they foresaw the danger and
fled, to resort to law and prosecute them for murder in their absence.
Furthermore, since those who had been appointed to celebrate Caesar's
victory by games did not dare to do so, he gave them himself. To be able
to carry out his other plans with more authority, he announced his
candidature for the position of one of the tribunes of the people, who
happened to die; though he was a patrician, and not yet a senator [Since
the time of Sulla only senators were eligible for the position of
tribune]. But when his designs were opposed by Marcus Antonius, who was
then consul, and on whose help he had especially counted, and Antonius
would not allow him even common and ordinary justice without the promise
of a heavy bribe, he went over to the aristocrats, who he knew detested
Antonius, especially because he was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina,
and trying to drive him by force of arms from the province given him by
Caesar and ratified by the Senate. Accordingly, at the advice of certain
men, he hired assassins to kill Antonius, and when the plot was
discovered, fearing retaliation he mustered veterans, by the use of all
the money he could command, both for his own protection and that of the
State. Put in command of the army which he had raised, with the rank of
propraetor, and bidden to join with Hirtius and Pansa, who had become
consuls, in lending aid to Decimus Brutus, he finished the war which had
been entrusted to him within three months in two battles. In the former
of these, so Antonius writes, he took to flight and was not seen again
until the next day, when he returned without his cloak and his horse;
but in that which followed all agree that he played the part not only of
a leader, but of a soldier as well, and that, in the thick of the fight,
when the eagle-bearer of his legion was sorely wounded, he shouldered
the eagle and carried it for some time.
XI. As Hirtius lost his life in battle during this
war, and Pansa shortly afterwards from a wound, the rumor spread that he
had caused the death of both, in order that after Antonius had been put
to flight and the state bereft of its consuls, he might gain sole
control of the victorious armies. The circumstances of Pansa's death in
particular were so suspicious, that the physician Glyco was imprisoned
on the charge of having applied poison to his wound. Aquilius Niger adds
to this that Augustus himself slew the other consul Hirtius amid the
confusion of the battle.
XII. But when he learned that Antonius after his
flight had found a protector in Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the
leaders and armies were coming to terms with them, he abandoned the
cause of the nobles without hesitation, alleging as a pretext for his
change of allegiance the words and acts of certain of their number,
asserting that some had called him a boy, while others had openly said
that he ought to be honoured and got rid of, to escape the necessity of
making suitable recompense to him or to his veterans. To show more
plainly that he regretted his connection with the former party, he
imposed a heavy fine on the people of Nursia and banished them from
their city when they were unable to pay it, because they had at public
expense erected a monument to their citizens who were slain in the
battles at Mutina and inscribed upon it: "they fell for liberty."
XIII. Then, forming a league with Antonius and Lepidus;
he finished the war of Philippi [42 B.C.] also in two battles, although
weakened by illness, being driven from his camp in the first battle and
barely making his escape by fleeing to Antonius' division. He did not
use his victory with moderation, but after sending Brutus' head to Rome,
to be cast at the feet of Caesar's statue, he vented his spleen upon the
most distinguished of his captives, not even sparing them insulting
language. For instance, to one man who begged humbly for burial, he is
said to have replied: "The birds will soon settle that question." When
two others, father and son, begged for their lives, he is said to have
bidden them cast lots or play mora [a game still common in Italy, in
which the contestants thrust out their fingers, the one naming correctly
the number thrust out by his opponent being the winner], to decide which
should be spared, and then to have looked on while both died, since the
father was executed because he offered to die for his son, and the
latter thereupon took his own life. Because of this the rest, including
Marcus Favonius, the well-known imitator of Cato, saluted Antonius
respectfully as Imperator when they were led out in chains, but lashed
Augustus to his face with the foulest abuse. When the duties of
administration were divided after the victory, Antonius undertaking to
restore order in the East, and Augustus to lead the veterans back to
Italy and assign them lands in the municipalities, he could neither
satisfy the veterans nor the landowners, since the latter complained
that they were driven from their homes, and the former that they were
not being treated as their services had led them to hope.
XIV. When Lucius Antonius at this juncture [41 B.C.]
attempted a revolution, relying on his position as consul and his
brother's power, he forced him to take refuge in Perusia, and starved
him into surrender, not, however, without great personal danger both
before and during the war. For at an exhibition of games, when he had
given orders that a common soldier who was sitting in the fourteen rows
be put out by an attendant, the report was spread by his detractors that
he had had the man killed later and tortured as well; whereupon he all
but lost his life in a furious mob of soldiers, owing his escape to the
sudden appearance of the missing man safe and sound. Again, when he was
sacrificing near the walls of Perusia, he was well nigh cut off by a
band of gladiators, who had made a sally from the town.
XV. After the capture of Perusia [40 B.C.] he took
vengeance on many, meeting all attempts to beg for pardon or to make
excuses with the one reply, "You must die." Some write that three
hundred men of both orders were selected from the prisoners of war and
sacrificed on the Ides of March like so many victims at the altar raised
to the Deified Julius. Some have written that he took up arms of a set
purpose, to unmask his secret opponents and those whom fear rather than
good-will kept faithful to him, by giving them the chance to follow the
lead of Lucius Antonius; and then by vanquishing them and confiscating
their estates to pay the rewards promised to his veterans.
XVI. The Sicilian war [43/35 B.C.] was among the first
that he began, but it was long drawn out by many interruptions, now for
the purpose of rebuilding his fleets, which he twice lost by shipwreck
due to storms, and that, too, in the summer; and again by making peace
at the demand of the people, when supplies were cut off and there was a
severe famine. Finally, after new ships had been built and twenty
thousand slaves set free and trained as oarsmen, he made the Julian
harbour at Baiae by letting the sea into the Lucrine lake and Lake
Avernus. After drilling his forces there all winter, he defeated
Pompeius between Mylae and Naulochus, though just before the battle he
was suddenly held fast by so deep a sleep that his friends had to awaken
him to give the signal. And it was this, I think, that gave Antonius
opportunity for the taunt: "He could not even look with steady eyes at
the fleet when it was ready for battle, but lay in a stupor on his back,
looking up at the sky, and did not rise or appear before the soldiers
until the enemy's ships had been put to flight by Marcus Agrippa." Some
censured an act and saying of his, declaring that when his fleets were
lost in the storm, he cried out, "I will have the victory despite
Neptune," and that on the day when games in the Circus next occurred, he
removed the statue of that god from the sacred procession. And it is
safe to say that in none of his wars did he encounter more dangers or
greater ones. For when he had transported an army to Sicily and was on
his way back to the rest of his forces on the mainland, he was surprised
by Pompeius's admirals Demochares and Apollophanes and barely escaped
with but a single ship. Again, as he was going on foot to Regium by way
of Locri, he saw some of Pompeius's biremes coasting along the shore,
and taking them for his own ships and going down to the beach, narrowly
escaped capture. At that same time, too, as he was making his escape by
narrow bypaths, a slave of his companion Aemilius Paulus, nursing a
grudge because Augustus had proscribed his master's father some time
before, and thinking that he had an opportunity for revenge, attempted
to slay him.
After Pompeius's flight, Augustus' other colleague,
Marcus Lepidus, whom he had summoned from Africa to help him, was puffed
up by confidence in his twenty legions and claimed the first place with
terrible threats; but Augustus stripped him of his army; and though he
granted him his life when he sued for it, he banished him for all time
to Circei.
XVII. At last he broke off his alliance with Marcus
Antonius, which was always doubtful and uncertain, and with difficulty
kept alive by various reconciliations; and the better to show that his
rival had fallen away from conduct becoming a citizen, he had the will
which Antonius had left in Rome, naming his children by Cleopatra among
his heirs, opened and read before the people. But when Antonius was
declared a public enemy, he sent back to him all his kinsfolk and
friends, among others Gaius Sosius and Titus Domitius, who were still
consuls at the time. He also excused the community of Bononia from
joining in the rally of all Italy to his standards, since they had been
from ancient days dependents of the Antonii. Not long afterwards [31
B.C.] he won the sea-fight at Actium, where the contest continued to so
late an hour that the victor passed the night on board. Having gone into
winter quarters at Samos after Actium, he was disturbed by the news of a
mutiny of the troops that he had selected from every division of his
army and sent on to Brundisium after the victory, who demanded their
rewards and discharge; and on his way back to Italy he twice encountered
storms at sea, first between the headlands of the Peloponnesus and
Aetolia, and again off the Ceraunian mountains. In both places a part of
his galleys were sunk, while the rigging of the ship in which he was
sailing was carried away and its rudder broken. He delayed at Brundisium
only twenty-seven days---just long enough to satisfy all the demands of
the soldiers---and then went to Egypt by a roundabout way through Asia
and Syria, laid siege to Alexandria, where Antonius had taken refuge
with Cleopatra, and soon took the city. Although Antonius tried to make
terms at the eleventh hour, Augustus forced him to commit suicide, and
viewed his corpse. He greatly desired to save Cleopatra alive for his
triumph, and even had Psylli brought to her, to suck the poison from her
wound, since it was thought that she died from the bite of an asp. He
allowed them both the honour of burial, and in the same tomb, giving
orders that the mausoleum which they had begun should be finished. The
young Antonius, the elder of Fulvia's two sons, he dragged from the
image of the Deified Julius, to which he had fled after many vain
entreaties, and slew him. Caesarion, too, whom Cleopatra fathered on
Caesar, he overtook in his flight, brought back, and put to death. But
he spared the rest of the offspring of Antonius and Cleopatra, and
afterwards maintained and reared them according to their several
positions, as carefully as if they were his own kin.
XVIII. About this time he had the sarcophagus and body
of Alexander the Great brought forth from its shrine, and after gazing
on it, showed his respect by placing upon it a golden crown and strewing
it with flowers; and being then asked whether he wished to see the tomb
of the Ptolemies as well, he replied, "My wish was to see a king, not
corpses." He reduced Egypt to the form of a province, and then to make
it more fruitful and better adapted to supply the city with grain, he
set his soldiers at work cleaning out all the canals into which the Nile
overflows, which in the course of many years had become choked with mud.
To extend the fame of his victory at Actium and perpetuate its memory,
he founded a city called Nicopolis near Actium, and provided for the
celebration of games there every five years; enlarged the ancient temple
of Apollo; and after adorning the site of the camp which he had occupied
with naval trophies, consecrated it to Neptune and Mars.
XIX. After this he nipped in the bud at various times
several outbreaks, attempts at revolution, and conspiracies, which were
betrayed before they became formidable. The ringleaders were, first the
young Lepidus, then Varro Murena and Fannius Caepio, later Marcus
Egnatius, next Plautius Rufus and Lucius Paulus, husband of the
emperor's granddaughter, and besides these Lucius Audasius, who had been
charged with forgery, and was moreover old and feeble; alsoAsinius
Epicadus, a half-breed of Parthian descent, and finally Telephus, slave
and page [the nomenclator was a slave whose duty it was to remind
his master, or mistress, of the names of persons] of a woman; for even
men of the lowest condition conspired against him and imperilled his
safety. Audasius and Epicadus had planned to take his daughter Julia and
his grandson Agrippa by force to the armies from the islands where they
were confined, Telephus to set upon both Augustus and the Senate, under
the delusion that he himself was destined for empire. Even a soldier's
servant from the army in Illyricum, who had escaped the vigilance of the
door-keepers, was caught at night near the emperor's bed-room, armed
with a hunting knife; but whether the fellow was crazy or feigned
madness is a question, since nothing could be wrung from him by torture.
XX. He carried on but two foreign wars in person: in
Dalmatia, when he was but a youth, and with the Cantabrians after the
overthrow of Antonius. He was wounded, too, in the former campaign,
being struck on the right knee with a stone in one battle, and in
another having a leg and both arms severely injured by the collapse of a
bridge. His other wars he carried on through his generals, although he
was either present at some of those in Pannonia and Germany, or was not
far from the front, since he went from the city as far as Ravenna,
Mediolanum, or Aquileia.
XXI. In part as leader, and in part with armies
serving under his auspices, he subdued Cantabria, Aquitania, Pannonia,
Dalmatia, and all Illyricum, as well as Raetia and the Vindelici and
Salassi, which are Alpine tribes. He also put a stop to the inroads of
the Dacians, slaying great numbers of them, together with three of their
leaders, and forced the Germans back to the farther side of the river
Albis, with the exception of the Suebi and Sigambri, who submitted to
him and were taken into Gaul and settled in lands near the Rhine. He
reduced to submission other peoples, too, that were in a state of
unrest. But he never made war on any nation without just and due cause,
and he was so far from desiring to increase his dominion or his military
glory at any cost, that he forced the chiefs of certain barbarians to
take oath in the temple of Mars the Avenger that they would faithfully
keep the peace for which they asked; in some cases, indeed, he tried
exacting a new kind of hostages, namely women, realizing that the
barbarians disregarded pledges secured by males; but all were given the
privilege of reclaiming their hostages whenever they wished. On those
who rebelled often or under circumstances of especial treachery he never
inflicted any severer punishment than that of selling the prisoners,
with the condition that they should not pass their term of slavery in a
country near their own, nor be set free within thirty years. The
reputation for prowess and moderation which he thus gained led even the
Indians and the Scythians, nations known to us only by hearsay, to send
envoys of their own free will and sue for his friendship and that of the
Roman people. The Parthians, too, readily yielded to him, when he laid
claim to Armenia, and at his demand surrendered the standards which they
had taken from Marcus Crassus and Marcus Antonius [Crassus lost his
standards at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C., and Antonius through the
defeat of his lieutenants in 40 and 36 B.C.]; they offered him hostages
besides, and once when there were several claimants of their throne,
they would accept only the one whom he selected.
XXII. The temple of Janus Quirinus, which had been
closed but twice before his time since the founding of the city [in the
reign of Numa, and in 235 B.C. after the First Punic War], he closed
three times in a far shorter period, having won peace on land and sea.
He twice entered the city in an ovation, after the war of Philippi, and
again after that in Sicily, and he celebrated three regular triumphs
[the ovation was a lesser triumph, in which the general entered the city
on foot, instead of in a chariot drawn by four horses] for his victories
in Dalmatia, at Actium, and at Alexandria, all on three successive days.
XXIII. He suffered but two severe and ignominious
defeats, those of Lollius [15 B.C.] and Varus [9 A.D.], both of which
were in Germany. Of these the former was more humiliating than serious,
but the latter was almost fatal, since three legions were cut to pieces
with their general, his lieutenants, and all the auxiliaries. When the
news of this came, he ordered that watch be kept by night throughout the
city, to prevent any outbreak, and he prolonged the terms of the
governors of the provinces, that the allies might be held to their
allegiance by experienced men with whom they were acquainted. He also
vowed great games to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, in case the condition of
the commonwealth should improve, a thing which had been done in the
Cimbric and Marsic wars. In fact, they say that he was so greatly
affected that for several months in succession he cut neither his beard
nor his hair, and sometimes he would dash his head against a door,
crying: "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!" And he observed the
day of the disaster each year as one of sorrow and mourning.
XXIV. He made many changes and innovations in the
army, besides reviving some usages of former times. He exacted the
strictest discipline. It was with great reluctance that he allowed even
his generals to visit their wives, and then only in the winter season.
He sold a Roman knight and his property at public auction, because he
had cut off the thumbs of two young sons, to make them unfit for
military service; but when he saw that some tax gatherers were intent
upon buying him, he knocked him down to a freeman of his own, with the
understanding that he should be banished to the country districts, but
allowed to live in freedom. He dismissed the entire tenth legion in
disgrace, because they were insubordinate, and others, too, that
demanded their discharge in an insolent fashion, he disbanded without
the rewards which would have been due for faithful service. If any
cohorts gave way in battle, he decimated them [i.e., executed
every tenth man, selected by lot], and fed the rest on barley [instead
of the usual rations of wheat]. When centurions left their posts he
punished them with death, just as he did the rank and file; for faults
of other kinds he imposed various ignominious penalties, such as
ordering them to stand all day long before the general's tent, sometimes
in their tunics without their sword-belts, or again holding ten-foot
poles or even a clod of earth [carrying the pole to measure off the
camp, or clods for building the rampart, was the work of the common
soldiers; hence degrading for officers].
XXV. After the civil wars he never called any of the
troops "comrades," either in the assembly or in an edict, but always
"soldiers"; and he would not allow them to be addressed otherwise, even
by those of his sons or stepsons who held military commands, thinking
the former term too flattering for the requirements of discipline, the
peaceful state of the times, and his own dignity and that of his
household. Except as a fire-brigade at Rome, and when there was fear of
riots in times of scarcity, he employed freedmen as soldiers only twice:
once as a guard for the colonies in the vicinity of Illyricum, and again
to defend the bank of the river Rhine; even these he levied, when they
were slaves, from men and women of means and at once gave them freedom;
and he kept them under their original standard [i.e., he kept
them apart from the rest in the companies in which they were first
enrolled], not mingling them with the soldiers of free birth or arming
them in the same fashion. As military prizes he was somewhat more ready
to give trappings [the phalerae wre discs or plates of metal
attached to a belt or to the harness of horses] or collars, valuable for
their gold and silver, than crowns for scaling ramparts or walls, which
conferred high honour; the latter he gave as sparingly as possible and
without favouritism, often even to the common soldiers. He presented
Marcus Agrippa with a blue banner in Sicily after his naval victory.
Those vho had celebrated triumphs were the only ones whom he thought
ineligible for prizes, even though they had been the companions of his
campaigns and shared in his victories, on the ground that they
themselves had the privilege of bestowing such honours wherever they
wished. He thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than
haste and rashness, and, accordingly, favourite sayings of his were:
"More haste, less speed"; "Better a safe commander than a bold"; and
"That is done quickly enough which is done well enough." He used to say
that a war or a battle should not be begun under any circumstances,
unless the hope of gain was clearly greater than the fear of loss; for
he likened such as grasped at slight gains with no slight risk to those
who fished with a golden hook, the loss of which, if it were carried
off, could not be made good by any catch.
XXVI. He received offices and honours before the usual
age, and some of a new kind and for life. He usurped the consulship in
the twentieth year of his age [43 B.C.], leading his legions against the
city as if it were that of an enemy, and sending messengers to demand
the office for him in the name of his army; and when the Senate
hesitated, his centurion, Cornelius, leader of the deputation, throwing
back his cloak and showing the hilt of his sword, did not hesitate to
say in the House, "This will make him consul, if you do not." He held
his second consulship nine years later [33 B.C.], and a third after a
year's interval [31 B.C.]; the rest up to the eleventh were in
successive years [30-23 B.C.], then after declining a number of terms
that were offered him, he asked of his own accord for a twelfth after a
long interval, no less than seventeen years [5 B.C.], and two years
later for a thirteenth [2 B.C.], wishing to hold the highest magistracy
at the time when he introduced each of his sons Gaius and Lucius to
public life upon their coming of age. The five consulships from the
sixth to the tenth he held for the full year, the rest for nine, six,
four, or three months, except the second, which lasted only a few hours;
for after sitting for a short time on the curule chair in front of the
temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in the early morning, he resigned the
honour on the Kalends of January and appointed another in his place. He
did not begin all his consulships in Rome, but the fourth in Asia, the
fifth on the Isle of Samos, the eighth and ninth at Tarraco.
XXVII. He was for ten years a member of the
triumvirate for restoring the State to order, and though he opposed his
colleagues for some time and tried to prevent a proscription, yet when
it was begun, he carried it through with greater severity than either of
them. For while they could oftentimes be moved by personal influence and
entreaties, he alone was most insistent that no one should be spared,
even adding to the list his guardian Gaius Toranius, who had also been
the colleague of his father Octavius in the aedileship. Julius
Saturninus adds that after the proscription was over Marcus Lepidus
addressed the Senate in justification of the past and held out hope of
leniency thereafter, since enough punishment had been inflicted; but
that Augustus on the contrary declared that he had consented to end the
proscription only on condition that he was allowed a free hand for the
future. However, to show his regret for this inflexibility, he later
honoured Titus Vinius Philopoemen witll equestrian rank, because it was
said that he had hidden his patron, who was on the list. While he was
triumvir, Augustus incurred general detestation by many of his acts. For
example, when he was addressing the soldiers and a throng of civilians
had been admitted to the assembly, noticing that Pinalius, a Roman
knight, was taking notes, he ordered that he be stabbed on the spot,
thinking him an eavesdropper and a spy. Because Tedius Afer, consul
elect, railed at some act of his in spiteful terms, he uttered such
terrible threats that Afer committed suicide. Again, when Quintus
Gallius, a praetor, held some folded tablets under his robe as he was
paying his respects, Augustus, suspecting that he had a sword concealed
there, did not dare to make a search on the spot for fear it should turn
out to be something else; but a little later he had Gallius hustled from
the tribunal by some centurions and soldiers, tortured him as if he were
a slave, and though he made no confession, ordered his execution, first
tearing out the man's eyes with his own hand. He himself writes,
however, that Gallius made a treacherous attack on him after asking for
an audience, and was haled to prison; and that after he was dismissed
under sentence of banishment, he either lost his life by shipwreck or
was waylaid by brigands. He received the tribunician power for life, and
once or twice chose a colleague in the office for periods of five years
each. He was also given the supervision of morals and of the laws for
all time, and by the virtue of this position, although without the title
of censor, he nevertheless took the census thrice, the first and last
time with a colleague, the second time alone.
XXVIII. He twice thought of restoring the republic;
first immediately after the overthrow of Antonius, remembering that his
rival had often made the charge that it was his fault that it was not
restored; and again in the weariness of a lingering illness, when he
went so far as to summon the magistrates and the Senate to his house,
and submit an account of the general condition of the empire.
Reflecting, however, that as he himself would not be free from danger if
he should retire, so too it would be hazardous to trust the State to the
control of more than one, he continued to keep it in his hands; and it
is not easy to say whether his intentions or their results were the
better. His good intentions he not only expressed from time to time, but
put them on record as well in an edict in the following words: "May it
be my privilege to establish the State in a firm and secure position,
and reap from that act the fruit that I desire; but only if I may be
called the author of the best possible government, and bear with me the
hope when I die that the foundations which I have laid for the State
will remain unshaken." And he realized his hope by making every effort
to prevent any dissatisfaction with the new regime. Since the city was
not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to
flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he
had found it built of brick and left it in marble. He made it safe too
for the future, so far as human foresight could provide for this.
XXIX. He built many public works, in particular the
following: his forum with the temple of Mars the Avenger [24 B.C.], the
temple of Apollo on the Palatine [28 B.C.], and the fane of Jupiter the
Thunderer on the Capitol [22 B.C.]. His reason for building the forum
was the increase in the number of the people and of cases at law, which
seemed to call for a third forum, since two were no longer adequate.
Therefore it was opened to the public with some haste, before the temple
of Mars was finished, and it was provided that the public prosecutions
be held there apart from the rest, as well as the selection of jurors by
lot. He had made a vow to build the temple of Mars in the war of
Philippi, which he undertook to avenge his father; accordingly he
decreed that in it the Senate should consider wars and claims for
triumphs, from it those who were on their way to the provinces with
military commands should be escorted, and to it victors on their return
should bear the tokens of their triumphs. He reared the temple of Apollo
in that part of his house on the Palatine for which the soothsayers
declared that the god had shown his desire by striking it with
lightning. He joined to it colonnades with Latin and Greek libraries,
and when he was getting to be an old man he often held meetings of the
Senate there as well, and revised the lists of jurors. He dedicated the
shrine to Jupiter the Thunderer because of a narrow escape; for on his
Cantabrian expedition during a march by night, a flash of lightning
grazed his litter and struck the slave dead who was carrying a torch
before him. He constructed some works too in the name of others, his
grandsons and nephew to wit, his wife and his sister, such as the
colonnade and basilica of Gaius and Lucius [12 B.C.], also the
colonnades of Livia and Octavia [33 & 15 B.C.], and the theatre of
Marcellus [13 B.C.]. More than that, he often urged other prominent men
to adorn the city with new monuments or to restore and embellish old
ones, each according to his means. And many such works were built at
that time by many men; for example, the temple of Hercules and the Muses
by Marcius Philippus, the temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius, the
Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollio, the temple of Saturn by Munatius
Plancus, a theatre by Cornelius Balbus, an amphitheatre by Statilius
Taurus, and by Marcus Agrippa in particular many magnificent structures.
XXX. He divided the area of the city into regions and
wards, arranging that the former should be under the charge of
magistrates selected each year by lot, and the latter under magistri
elected by the inhabitants of the respective neighbourhoods. To guard
against fires he devised a system of stations of night watchmen, and to
control the floods he widened and cleared out the channel of the Tiber,
which had for some time been filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting
buildings. Further, to make the approach to the city easier from every
direction, he personally undertook to rebuild the Flaminian Road all the
way to Ariminum, and assigned the rest of the high-ways to others who
had been honoured with triumphs, asking them to use their prize-money in
paving them. He restored sacred edifices which had gone to ruin through
lapse of time or had been destroyed by fire, and adorned both these and
the other temples with most lavish gifts, depositing in the shrine of
Jupiter Capitolinus as a single offering sixteen thousand pounds of
gold, besides pearls and other precious stones to the value of fifty
million sesterces.
XXXI. After he finally had assumed the office of
Pontifex Maximus on the death of Lepidus (for he could not make up his
mind to deprive him of the honour while he lived) [13 B.C.], he
collected whatever prophetic writings of Greek or Latin origin were in
circulation anonymously or under the names of authors of little repute,
and burned more than two thousand of them, retaining only the Sibylline
books and making a choice even among those; and he deposited them in two
gilded cases under the pedestal of the Palatine Apollo. Inasmuch as the
calendar, which had been set in order by the Deified Julius, had later
been confused and disordered through negligence, he restored it to its
former system [8 B.C.]; and in making this arrangement he called the
month Sextilis by his own surname, rather than his birthmonth September,
because in the former he had won his first consulship and his most
brilliant victories. He increased the number and importance of the
priests, and also their allowances and privileges, in particular those
of the Vestal virgins. Moreover, when there was occasion to choose
another vestal in place of one who had died, and many used all their
influence to avoid submitting their daughters to the hazard of the lot,
he solemnly swore that if anyone of his grand-daughters were of eligible
age, he would have proposed her name. He also revived some of the
ancient rites which had gradually fallen into disuse, such as the augury
of Safety, the office of Flamen Dialis, the ceremonies of the Lupercalia,
the Secular Games, and the festival of the Compitalia. At the Lupercalia
he forbade beardless youths to join in the running, and at the Secular
Games he would not allow young people of either sex to attend any
entertainment by night except in company with some adult relative. He
provided that the Lares of the Crossroads should be crowned twice a
year, with spring and summer flowers. Next to the immortal Gods he
honoured the memory of the leaders who had raised the estate of the
Roman people from obscurity to greatness. Accordingly he restored the
works of such men with their original inscriptions, and in the two
colonnades of his forum dedicated statues of all of them in triumphal
garb, declaring besides in a proclamation: "I have contrived this to
lead the citizens to require me, while I live, and the rulers of later
times as well, to attain the standard set by those worthies of old." He
also moved the statue of Pompeius from the hall in which Gaius Caesar
had been slain and placed it on a marble arch opposite the grand door of
Pompeius' theater.
XXXII. Many pernicious practices militating against
public security had survived as a result of the lawless habits of the
civil wars, or had even arisen in time of peace. Gangs of footpads
openly went about with swords by their sides, ostensibly to protect
themselves, and travellers in the country, freemen and slaves alike,
were seized and kept in confinement in the workhouses [the ergastula
were prisons for slaves, who were made to work in chains in the fields]
of the land owners; numerous leagues, too, were formed for the
commission of crimes of every kind, assuming the title of some new guild
[collegia, or guilds, of workmen were allowed and were numerous;
not infrequently they were a pretext for some illegal secret
organization]. Therefore to put a stop to brigandage, he stationed
guards of soldiers wherever it seemed advisable, inspected the
workhouses, and disbanded all guilds, except such as were of long
standing and formed for legitimate purposes. He burned the records of
old debts to the treasury, which were by far the most frequent source of
blackmail. He made over to their holders places in the city to which the
claim of the state was uncertain. He struck off the lists the names of
those who had long been under accusation, from whose humiliation nothing
was to be gained except the gratification of their enemies, with the
stipulation that if anyone was minded to renew the charge, he should be
liable to the same penalty [i.e., if he failed to win his suit,
he should suffer the penalty that would have been inflicted on the
defendant, if he had been convicted]. To prevent any action for damages
or on a disputed claim from falling through or being put off, he added
to the term of the courts thirty more days, which had before been taken
up with honorary games. To the three divisions of jurors he added a
fourth of a lower estate, to be called ducenarii, and to sit on
cases involving trifling amounts. He enrolled as jurors men of thirty
years or more, that is five years younger than usual. But when many
strove to escape court duty, he reluctantly consented that each division
in turn should have a year's exemption, and that the custom of holding
court during the months of November and December should be given up.
XXXIII. He himself administered justice regularly and
sometimes up to nightfall, having a litter placed upon the tribunal, if
he was indisposed, or even lying down at home. In his administration of
justice he was both highly conscientious and very lenient; for to save a
man clearly guilty of parricide from being sewn up in the sack
[parricides were sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake, and a
monkey, and thrown into the sea or a river], a punishment which was
inflicted only on those who pleaded guilty, he is said to have put the
question to him in this form: "You surely did not kill your father, did
you?" Again, in a case touching a forged will, in which all the signers
were liable to punishment by the Cornelian Law, he distributed to the
jury not merely the two tablets for condemnation or acquittal, but a
third as well, for the pardon of those who were shown to have been
induced to sign by misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Each year he
referred appeals of cases involving citizens to the city praetor, but
those between foreigners to ex-consuls, of whom he had put one in charge
of the business affairs of each province.
XXXIV. He revised existing laws and enacted some new
ones, for example, on extravagance, on adultery and chastity, on
bribery, and on the encouragement of marriage among the various classes
of citizens. Having made somewhat more stringent changes in the last of
these than in the others, he was unable to carry it out because of an
open revolt against its provisions, until he had abolished or mitigated
a part of the penalties, besides increasing the rewards and allowing a
three years' exemption from the obligation to marry after the death of a
husband or wife. When the knights even then persistently called for its
repeal at a public show, he sent for the children of Germanicus and
exhibited them, some in his own lap and some in their father's,
intimating by his gestures and expression that they should not refuse to
follow that young man's example. And on finding that the spirit of the
law was being evaded by betrothal with immature girls and by frequent
changes of wives, he shortened the duration of betrothals and set a
limit on divorce.
XXXV. Since the number of the Senators was swelled by
a low-born and ill-assorted rabble (in fact, the Senate numbered more
than a thousand, some of whom, called by the vulgar Orcivi [ "freedmen
by the grace of Orcus," were slaves set free by their master's will. The
Orcivi Senatores were those admitted by Marcus Antonius under
pretence that they had been named in the papers left by Caesar] were
wholly unworthy, and had been admitted after Caesar's death through
favor or bribery) he restored it to its former limits and distinction by
two enrolments, one according to the choice of the members themselves,
each man naming one other, and a second made by Agrippa and himself. On
the latter occasion it is thought that he wore a coat of mail under his
tunic as he presided, and a sword by his side, while ten of the most
robust of his friends among the Senators stood by his chair. Cremutius
Cordus writes that even then the Senators were not allowed to approach
except one by one, and after the folds of their robes had been carefully
searched. Some he shamed into resigning, but he allowed even these to
retain their distinctive dress, as well as the privilege of viewing the
games from the orchestra and taking part in the public banquets of the
order. Furthermore, that those who were chosen and approved might
perform their duties more conscientiously, and also with less
inconvenience, he provided that before taking his seat each member
should offer incense and wine at the altar of the god in whose temple
the meeting was held; that regular meetings of the Senate should be held
not oftener than twice a month, on the Kalends and the Ides; and that in
the months of September and October only those should be obliged to
attend who were drawn by lot, to a number sufficient for the passing of
decrees. He also adopted the plan of privy councils chosen by lot for
terms of six months, with which to discuss in advance matters which were
to come before the entire body. On questions of special importance he
called upon the Senators to give their opinions, not according to the
order established by precedent, but just as he fancied, to induce each
man to keep his mind on the alert, as if he were to initiate action
rather than give assent to others.
XXXVI. He introduced other innovations too, among them
these: that the proceedings of the Senate should not be published; that
magistrates should not be sent to the provinces immediately after laying
down their office; that a fixed sum should be allowed the proconsuls for
mules and tents, which it was the custom to contract for and charge to
the State; that the management of the public treasury should be
transferred from the city quaestors to ex-praetors or praetors; and that
the centumviral court [a very ancient tribunal, consisting at first of
105 members, three from each tribe, but later of 180; it sat in the
Basilica Julia, with a spear, the ancient symbol of Quiritary ownership,
planted before it. It was divided into four chambers, which usually sat
separately, but sometimes altogether, or in two divisions], which it was
usual for ex-quaestors to convoke, should be summoned by the Board of
Ten [i.e., the decemviri stlitibus iudicandis].
XXXVII. To enable more men to take part in the
administration of the State, he devised new offices: the charge of
public buildings, of the roads, of the aqueducts, of the channel of the
Tiber, of the distribution of grain to the people, as well as the
prefecture of the city, a board of three for choosing Senators, and
another for reviewing the companies of the knights whenever it should be
necessary. He appointed censors, an office which had long been
discontinued. He increased the number of praetors. He also demanded that
whenever the consulship was conferred on him, he should have two
colleagues instead of one; but this was not granted, since all cried out
that it was a sufficient offence to his supreme dignity that he held the
office with another and not alone.
XXXVIII. He was not less generous in honouring martial
prowess, for he had regular triumphs voted to above thirty generals, and
the triumphal regalia to somewhat more than that number. To enable
Senators' sons to gain an earlier acquaintance with public business, he
allowed them to assume the broad purple stripe immediately after the
gown of manhood and to attend meetings of the Senate; and when they
began their military career, he gave them not merely a tribunate in a
legion, but the command of a division of cavalry as well; and to furnish
all of them with experience in camp life, he usually appointed two
Senators' sons to command each division. He reviewed the companies of
knights at frequent intervals, reviving the custom of the procession
after long disuse. But he would not allow an accuser to force anyone to
dismount as he rode by, as was often done in the past; and he permitted
those who were conspicuous because of old age or any bodily infirmity to
send on their horses in the review, and come on foot to answer to their
names whenever they were summoned. Later he excused those who were over
thirty-five years of age and did not wish to retain their horses from
formally surrendering them.
XXXIX. Having obtained ten assistants from the Senate,
he compelled each knight to render an account of his life, punishing
some of those whose conduct was scandalous and degrading others; but the
greater part he reprimanded with varying degrees of severity. The
mildest form of reprimand was to hand them a pair of tablets publicly,
which they were to read in silence on the spot. He censured some because
they had borrowed money at low interest and invested it at a higher
rate.
XL. At the elections for tribunes if there were not
candidates enough of senatorial rank, he made appointments from among
the knights, with the understanding that after their term they might
remain in whichever order they wished. Morever, since many knights whose
property was diminished during the civil wars did not venture to view
the games from the fourteen rows through fear of the penalty of the law
regarding theatres, he declared that none were liable to its provisions,
if they themselves or their parents had ever possessed a knight's
estate. He revised the lists of the people district by district, and to
prevent the commons from being called away from their occupations too
often because of the distributions of grain, he determined to give out
tickets for four months' supply three times a year; but at their urgent
request he allowed a return to the old custom of receiving a share every
month. He also revived the old time election privileges, trying to put a
stop to bribery by numerous penalties, and distributing to his fellow
members of the Fabian and Scaptian tribes [Augustus was a member of the
latter because of his connection with the Octavian family; with the
former, through his adoption into the Julian gens] a thousand
sesterces a man from his own purse on the day of the elections, to keep
them from looking for anything from any of the candidates. Considering
it also of great importance to keep the people pure and unsullied by any
taint of foreign or servile blood, he was most chary of conferring Roman
citizenship and set a limit to manumission. When Tiberius requested
citizenship for a Grecian dependent of his, Augustus wrote in reply that
he would not grant it unless the man appeared in person and convinced
him that he had reasonable grounds for the request; and when Livia asked
it for a Gaul from a tributary province, he refused, offering instead
freedom from tribute, and declaring that he would more willingly suffer
a loss to his privy purse than the prostitution of the honour of Roman
citizenship. Not content with making it difficult for slaves to acquire
freedom, and still more so for them to attain full rights, by making
careful provision as to the number, condition, and status of those who
were manumitted, he added the proviso that no one who had ever been put
in irons or tortured should acquire citizenship by any grade of freedom
[i.e., even by iusta libertas, which conferred
citizenship; slaves who had been punished for crimes or disgraceful acts
became on manumission dediticii, or "prisoners of war"].
He desired also to revive the ancient fashion of
dress, and once when he saw in an assembly a throng of men in dark
cloaks, he cried out indignantly, "Behold them Romans, lords of the
world, the nation clad in the toga," [Verg., Aen. I.282], and he
directed the aediles never again to allow anyone to appear in the Forum
or its neighbourhood except in the toga and without a cloak.
XLI. He often showed generosity to all classes when
occasion offered. For example, by bringing the royal treasures to Rome
in his Alexandrian triumph he made ready money so abundant, that the
rate of interest fell, and the value of real estate rose greatly; and
after that, whenever there was an excess of funds from the property of
those who had been condemned, he loaned it without interest for fixed
periods to any who could give security for double the amount. He
increased the property qualification for Senators, requiring one million
two hundred thousand sesterces, instead of eight hundred thousand, and
making up the amount for those who did not possess it. He often gave
largess [congiarium, strictly a distribution of oil, came to be
used of any largess] to the people, but usually of different sums: now
four hundred, now three hundred, now two hundred and fifty sesterces a
man; and he did not even exclude young boys, though it had been usually
for them to receive a share only after the age of eleven. In times of
scarcity too he often distributed grain to each man at a very low
figure, sometimes for nothing, and he doubled the money tickets [the
tesserae nummulariae were small tablets or round hollow balls of
wood, marked with numbers; they were distributed to the people instead
of money and entitled the holder to receive the sum inscribed upon
them---grain, oil, and various commodities were distributed by similar
tesserae].
XLII. But to show that he was a prince who desired the
public welfare rather than popularity, when the people complained of the
scarcity and high price of wine, he sharply rebuked them by saying: "My
son-in-law Agrippa has taken good care, by building several aqueducts,
that men shall not go thirsty." Again, when the people demanded largess
which he had in fact promised, he replied: "I am a man of my word"; but
when they called for one which had not been promised, he rebuked them in
a proclamation for their shameless impudence, and declared that he would
not give it, even though he was intending to do so. With equal dignity
and firmness, when he had announced a distribution of money and found
that many had been manumitted and added to the list of citizens, he
declared that those to whom no promise had been made should receive
nothing, and gave the rest less than he had promised, to make the
appointed sum suffice. Once indeed in a time of great scarcity when it
was difficult to find a remedy, he expelled from the city the slaves
that were for sale, as well as the schools of gladiators, all foreigners
with the exception of physicians and teachers, and a part of the
household slaves; and when grain at last became more plentiful, he
writes: "I was strongly inclined to do away forever with distributions
of grain, because through dependence on them agriculture was neglected;
but I did not carry out my purpose, feeling sure that they would one day
be renewed through desire for popular favor." But from that time on he
regulated the practice with no less regard for the interests of the
farmers and grain-dealers than for those of the populace.
XLIII. He surpassed all his predecessors in the
frequency, variety, and magnificence of his public shows. He says that
he gave games four times in his own name and twenty-three times for
other magistrates, who were either away from Rome or lacked means. He
gave them sometimes in all the wards and on many stages with actors in
all languages,a and combats of gladiators not only in the Forum or the
amphitheatre, but in the Circus and in the Saepta; sometimes, however,
he gave nothing except a fight with wild beasts. He gave athletic
contests too in the Campus Martius, erecting wooden seats; also a
seafight, constructing an artificial lake near the Tiber, where the
grove of the Caesars now stands. On such occasions he stationed guards
in various parts of the city, to prevent it from falling a prey to
footpads because of the few people who remained at home. In the Circus
he exhibited charioteers, rumlers, and slayers of wild animals, who were
sometimes young men of the highest rank. Besides he gave frequent
performances of the game of Troya by older and younger boys, thinking it
a time-honoured and worthy custom for the flower of the nobility to
become known in this way. When Nonius Asprenas was lamed by a fall while
taking part in this game, he presented him with a golden necklace and
allowed him and his descendants to bear the surname Torquatus. But soon
afterwards he gave up that form of entertainment, because Asinius Pollio
the orator complained bitterly and angrily in the Senate of an accident
to his grandson Aeserninus, who also had broken his leg. He sometimes
employed even Roman knights in scenic and gladiatorial performances, but
only before it was forbidden by decree of the Senate. After that he
exhibited no one of respectable parentage, with the exception of a young
man named Lycius, whom he showed merely as a curiosity; for he was less
than two feet tall, weighed but seventeen pounds, yet had a stentorian
voice. He did however on the day of one of the shows make a display of
the first Parthian hostages that had ever been sent to Rome, by leading
them through the middle of the arena and placing them in the second row
above his own seat. Furthermore, if anything rare and worth seeing was
ever brought to the city, it was his habit to make a special exhibit of
it in any convenient place on days when no shows were appointed. For
example a rhinoceros in the Saepta, a tiger on the stage and a snake of
fifty cubits in front of the Comitium. It chanced that at the time of
the games which he had vowed to give in the circus, he was taken ill and
headed the sacred procession lying in a litter; again, at the opening of
the games with which he dedicated the theatre of Marcellus, it happened
that the joints of his curule chair gave way and he fell on his back. At
the games for his grandsons, when the people were in a panic for fear
the theatre should fall, and he could not calm them or encourage them in
any way, he left his own place and took his seat in the part which
appeared most dangerous.
XLIV. He put a stop by special regulations to the
disorderly and indiscriminate fashion of viewing the games, through
exasperation at the insult to a senator, to whom no one offered a seat
in a crowded house at some largely attended games in Puteoli. In
consequence of this the Senate decreed that, whenever any public show
was given anywhere, the first row of seats should be reserved for
Senators; and at Rome he would not allow the envoys of the free and
allied nations to sit in the orchestra, since he was informed that even
freedmen were sometimes appointed. He separated the soldiery from the
people. He assigned special seats to the married men of the commons, to
boys under age their own section and the adjoining one to their
preceptors; and he decreed that no one wearing a dark cloak should sit
in the middle of the house. He would not allow women to view even the
gladiators except from the upper seats, though it had been the custom
for men and women to sit together at such shows. Only the Vestal virgins
were assigned a place to themselves, opposite the praetor's tribunal. As
for the contests of the athletes, he excluded women from them so
strictly, that when a contest between a pair of boxers had been called
for at the games in honour of his appointment as pontifex maximus, he
postponed it until early the following day, making proclamation that it
was his desire that women should not come to the theatre before the
fifth hour.
XLV. He himself usually watched the games in the
Circus from the upper rooms of his friends and freedmen, but sometimes
from the imperial box, and even in company with his wife and children.
He was sometimes absent for several hours, and now and then for whole
days, making his excuses and appointing presiding officers to take his
place. But whenever he was present, he gave his entire attention to the
performance, either to avoid the censure to which he realized that his
father Caesar had been generally exposed, because he spent his time in
reading or answering letters and petitions; or from his interest and
pleasure in the spectacle, which he never denied but often frankly
confessed. Because of this he used to offer special prizes and numerous
valuable gifts from his own purse at games given by others, and he
appeared at no contest in the Grecian fashion [i.e., those given
at Rome in the Greek language and dress, sometimes by Greek actors]
without making a present to each of the participants according to his
deserts. He was especially given to watching boxers, particularly those
of Latin birth, not merely such as were recognized and classed as
professionals, whom he was wont to match even with Greeks, but the
common untrained townspeople that fought rough and tumble and without
skill in the narrow streets. In fine, he honoured with his interest all
classes of performers who took part in the public shows; maintained the
privileges of the athletes and even increased them; forbade the matching
of gladiators without the right of appeal for quarter; and deprived the
magistrates of the power allowed them by an ancient law of punishing
actors anywhere and everywhere, restricting it to the time of games and
to the theatre. Nevertheless he exacted the severest discipline in the
contests in the wrestling halls and the combats of the gladiators. In
particular he was so strict in curbing the lawlessness of the actors,
that when he learned that Stephanio, an actor of Roman plays, was waited
on by a matron with hair cut short to look like a boy, he had him
whipped with rods through the three theatres and then banished him.
Hylas, a pantomimic actor, was publicly scourged in the atrium of his
own house, on complaint of a praetor, and Pylades was expelled from the
city and from Italy as well, because by pointing at him with his finger
he turned all eyes upon a spectator who was hissing him.
XLVI. After having thus set the city and its affairs
in order, he added to the population of Italy by personally establishing
twenty-eight colonies; furnished many parts of it with public buildings
and revenues; and even gave it, at least to some degree, equal rights
and dignity with the city of Rome, by devising a kind of votes which the
members of the local Senate were to cast in each colony for candidates
for the city offices and send under seal to Rome against the day of the
elections. To keep up the supply of men of rank and induce the commons
to increase and multiply, he admitted to the equestrian military careera
those who were recommended by any town, while to those of the commons
who could lay claim to legitimate sons or daughters when he made his
rounds of the districts he distributed a thousand sesterces for each
child.
XLVII. The stronger provinces, which could neither
easily nor safely be governed by annual magistrates, he took to himself;
the others he assigned to proconsular governors selected by lot. But he
changed some of them at times from one class to the other, and often
visited many of both sorts. Certain of the cities which had treaties
with Rome, but were on the road to ruin through their lawlessness, he
deprived of their independence; he relieved others that were overwhelmed
with debt, rebuilt some which had been destroyed by earthquakes, and
gave Latin rights or full citizenship to such as could point to services
rendered the Roman people. I believe there is no province, excepting
only Africa and Sardinia, which he did not visit; and he was planning to
cross to these from Sicily after his defeat of Sextus Pompeius, but was
prevented by a series of violent storms, and later had neither
opportunity nor occasion to make the voyage.
XLVIII. Except in a few instances he restored the
kingdoms of which he gained possession by the right of conquest to those
from whom he had taken them or joined them with other foreign nations.
He also united the kings with whom he was in alliance by mutual ties,
and was very ready to propose or favour intermarriages or friendships
among them. He never failed to treat them all with consideration as
integral parts of the empire, regularly appointing a guardian for such
as were too young to rule or whose minds were affected, until they grew
up or recovered; and he brought up the children of many of them and
educated them with his own.
XLIX. Of his military forces he assigned the legions
and auxiliaries to the various provinces, stationed a fleet at Misenum
and another at Ravenna, to defend the Upper and Lower seas, and employed
the remainder partly in the defence of the city and partly in that of
his own person, disbanding a troop of Calagurritani which had formed a
part of his body-guard until the overthrow of Antonius, and also one of
Germans, which he had retained until the defeat of Varus. However, he
never allowed more than three cohorts to remain in thc city and even
those were without a permanent camp; the rest he regularly sent to
winter or summer quarters in the towns near Rome. Furthermore, he
restricted all the soldiery everywhere to a fixed scale of pay and
allowances, designating the duration of their service and the rewards on
its completion according to each man's rank, in order to keep them from
being tempted to revolution after their discharge either by age or
poverty. To have funds ready at all times without difficulty for
maintaining the soldiers and paying the rewards due to them, he
established a military treasury, supported by new taxes. To enable what
was going on in each of the provinces to be reported and known more
speedily and promptly, he at first stationed young men at short
intervals along the military roads, and afterwards post-chaises. The
latter has seemed the more convenient arrangement, since the same men
who bring the dispatches from any place can, if occasion demands, be
questioned as well.
L. In passports, dispatches, and private letters he
used as his seal at first a sphinx, later an image of Alexander the
Great, and finally his own, carved by the hand of Dioscurides; and this
his successors continued to use as their seal. He always attached to all
letters the exact hour, not only of the day, but even of the night, to
indicate precisely when they were written.
LI. The evidences of his clemency and moderation are
numerous and strong. Not to give the full list of the men of the
opposite faction whom he not only pardoned and spared, but allowed to
hold high positions in the state, I may say that he thought it enough to
punish two plebeians, Junius Novatus and Cassius Patavinus, with a fine
and with a mild form of banishment respectively, although the former had
circulated a most scathing letter about him under the name of the young
Agrippa, while the latter had openly declared at a large dinner party
that he lacked neither the earnest desire nor the courage to kill him.
Again,when he was hearing a case against AemiliusAelianus of Corduba and
it was made the chief offence, amongst other charges, that he was in the
habit of expressing a bad opinion of Caesar, Augustus turned to the
accuser with assumed anger and said: "I wish you could prove the truth
of that. I'll let Aelianus know that I have a tongue as well as he, for
I'll say even more about him;" and he made no further inquiry either at
the time or afterwards. When Tiberius complained to him of the same
thing in a letter, but in more forcible language, he replied as follows:
"My dear Tiberius, do not be carried away by the ardour of youth in this
matter, or take it too much to heart that anyone speak evil of me; we
must be content if we can stop anyone from doing evil to us."
LII. Although well aware that it was usual to vote
temples even to proconsuls, he would not accept one even in a province
save jointly in his own name and that of Rome. In the city itself he
refused this honour most emphatically, even melting down the silver
statues which had been set up in his honour in former times and with the
money coined from them dedicating golden tripods to Apollo of the
Palatine. When the people did their best to force the dictatorship upon
him, he knelt down, threw off his toga from his shoulders and with bare
breast begged them not to insist.
LIII. He always shrank from the title of Dominus
[ "Lord" or "Master"] as reproachful and insulting. When the words "O
just and gracious Lord!" were uttered in a farce at which he was a
spectator and all the people sprang to their feet and applauded as if
they were said of him, he at once checked their unseemly flattery by
look and gesture, and on the following day sharply reproved them in an
edict. After that he would not suffer himself to be called "Sire" even
by his children or his grandchildren either in jest or earnest, and he
forbade them to use such flattering terms even among themselves. He did
not if he could help it leave or enter any city or town except in the
evening or at night, to avoid disturbing anyone by the obligations of
ceremony. In his consulship he commonly went through the streets on
foot, and when he was not consul, generally in a closed litter. His
morning receptions were open to all, including even the commons, and he
met the requests of those who approached him with great affability,
jocosely reproving one man because he presented a petition to him with
as much hesitation "as he would a penny to an elephant." On the day of a
meeting of the Senate he always greeted the members in the House and in
their seats, calling each man by name without a prompter; and when he
left the House, he used to take leave of them in the same manner, while
they remained seated. He exchanged social calls with many, and did not
cease to attend all their anniversaries, until he was well on in years
and was once incommoded by the crowd on the day of a betrothal. When
Gallus Cerrinius, a senator with whom he was not at all intimate, had
suddenly become blind and had therefore resolved to end his life by
starvation, Augustus called on him and by his consoling words induced
him to live.
LIV. As he was speaking in the Senate someone said to
him: "I did not understand," and another: "I would contradict you if I
had an opportunity." Several times when he was rushing from the House in
anger at the excessive bickering of the disputants, some shouted after
him: "Senators ought to have the right of speaking their mind on public
affairs." At the selection of Senators when each member chose another,
Antistius Labeo named Marcus Lepidus, an old enemy of the emperor's who
was at the time in banishment; and when Augustus asked him whether there
were not others more deserving of the honor, Labeo replied that every
man had his own opinion. Yet for all that no one suffered for his
freedom of speech or insolence.
LV. He did not even dread the lampoons against him
which were scattered in the Senate house, but took great pains to refute
them; and without trying to discover the authors, he merely proposed
that thereafter such as published notes or verses defamatory of anyone
under a false name should be called to account.
LVI. When he was assailed with scurrilous or spiteful
jests by certain men, he made reply in a public proclamation; yet he
vetoed a law to check freedom of speech in wills [the Romans in their
wills often expressed their opinion freely about public men and
affairs]. Whenever he took part in the election of magistrates, he went
the round of the tribes with his candidates and appealed for them in the
traditional manner. He also cast his own vote in his tribe, as one of
the people. When he gave testimony in court, he was most patient in
submitting to questions and even to contradiction. He made his forum
narrower than he had planned, because he did not venture to eject the
owners of the neighbouring houses. He never recommended his sons for
office without adding "If they be worthy of it." When they were still
under age and the audience at the theatre rose as one man in their
honour, and stood up and applauded them, he expressed strong
disapproval. He wished his friends to be prominent and influential in
the state, but to be bound by the same laws as the rest and equally
liable to prosecution. When Nonius Asprenas, a close friend of his, was
meeting a charge of poisoning made by Cassius Severus, Augustus asked
the Senate what they thought he ought to do; for he hesitated, he said
for fear that if he should support him, it might be thought that he was
shielding a guilty man, but if he failed to do so, that he was proving
false to a friend and prejudicing his case. Then, since all approved of
his appearing in the case, he sat on the benches [the moveable seats
provided for the advocates, witnesses, etc.] for several hours, but in
silence and without even speaking in praise of the defendant. He did
however defend some of his clients, for instance a certain Scutarius,
one of his former officers, who was accused of slander. But he secured
the acquittal of no more than one single man, and then only by entreaty,
making a successful appeal to the accuser in the presence of the jurors;
this was Castricius, through whom he had learned of Murena's conspiracy.
LVII. It may readily be imagined how much he was
beloved because of this admirable conduct. I say nothing of decrees of
the Senate, which might seem to have been dictated by necessity or by
awe. The Roman knights celebrated his birthday of their own accord by
common consent, and always for two successive days [September 22 and
23]. All sorts and conditions of men, in fulfilment of a vow for his
welfare, each year threw a small coin into the Lacus Curtius, and also
brought a New Year's gift to the Capitol on the Kalends of January, even
when he was away from Rome. With this sum he bought and dedicated in
each of the city wards costly statues of the gods, such as Apollo
Sandaliarius, Jupiter Tragoedus, and others. To rebuild his house on the
Palatine, which had been destroyed by fire, the veterans, the
collegia, the tribes, and even individuals of other conditions
gladly contributed money, each according to his means; but he merely
took a little from each pile as a matter of form, not more than a
denarius from any of them. On his return from a province they received
him not only with prayers and good wishes, but with songs. It was the
rule, too, that whenever he entered the city, no one should suffer
punishment.
LVIII. The whole body of citizens with a sudden
unanimous impulse proffered him the title of Pater Patriae
["Father of his Country"]; first the commons, by a deputation sent to
Antium, and then, because he declined it, again at Rome as he entered
the theatre, which they attended in throngs, all wearing laurel wreaths;
the Senate afterwards in the House, not by a decree or by acclamation,
but through Valerius Messala. He, speaking for the whole body, said:
"Good fortune and divine favour attend you and your house, Caesar
Augustus; for thus we feel that we are praying for lasting prosperity
for our country and happiness for our city. The Senate in accord with
the people of Rome hails you Father of your Country." Then
Augustus with tears in his eyes replied as follows (and I have given his
exact words, as I did those of Messala): "Having attained my highest
hopes, Fathers of the Senate, what more have I to ask of the immortal
gods than that I may retain this same unanimous approval of yours to the
very end of my life."
LIX. In honour of his physician, Antonius Musa,
through whose care he had recovered from a dangerous illness, a sum of
money was raised and Musa's statue set up beside that of Aesculapius.
Some householders provided in their wills that their heirs should drive
victims to the Capitol and pay a thank-offering in their behalf, because
Augustus had survived them, and that a placard to this effect should be
carried before them. Some of the Italian cities made the day on which he
first visited them the beginning of their year. Many of the provinces,
in addition to temples and altars, established quinquennial games in his
honour in almost every one of their towns.
LX. His friends and allies among the kings each in his
own realm founded a city called Caesarea, and all joined in a plan to
contribute the funds for finishing the temple of Jupiter Olympius, which
was begun at Athens in ancient days, and to dedicate it to his Genius [i.e.,
one's tutelary divinity, or familiar spirit, closely identified with
the person himself]; and they would often leave their kingdoms and show
him the attentions usual in dependents, clad in the toga and without the
emblems of royalty, not only at Rome, but even when he was travelling
through the provinces.
LXI. Now that I have shown how he conducted himself in
civil and military positions, and in ruling the State in all parts of
the world in peace and in war, I shall next give an account of his
private and domestic life, describing his character and his fortune at
home and in his household from his youth until the last day of his life.
He lost his mother during his first consulship [43 B.C.]and his sister
Octavia in his fifty-fourth year [9 B.C.]. To both he showed marked
devotion during their lifetime, and also paid them the highest honours
after their death.
LXII. ln his youth he was betrothed to the daughter of
Publius Servilius Isauricus, but when he became reconciled with Antonius
after their first quarrel, and their troops begged that the rivals be
further united by some tie of kinship, he took to wife Antonius'
stepdaughter Claudia, daughter of Fulvia by Publius Clodius [43 B.C.],
although she was barely of marriageable age; but because of a falling
out with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her before they had begun
to live together. Shortly after that he married Scribonia [40 B.C.], who
had been wedded before to two ex-consuls, and was a mother by one of
them. He divorced her also, "unable to put up with her shrewish
disposition," as he himself writes, and at once [38 B.C.] took Livia
Drusilla from her husband Tiberius Nero, although she was with child at
the time; and he loved and esteemed her to the end without a rival.
LXIII. By Scribonia he had a daughter Julia, by Livia
no children at all, although he earnestly desired issue. One baby was
conceived, but was prematurely born. He gave Julia in marriage first to
Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia and hardly more than a boy, and
then after his death to Marcus Agrippa, prevailing upon his sister to
yield her son-in-law to him; for at that time Agrippa had to wife one of
the Marcellas and had children from her. When Agrippa also died,
Augustus, after considering various alliances for a long time, even in
the equestrian order, finally chose his stepson Tiberius, obliging him
to divorce his wife, who was with child and by whom he was already a
father. Marcus Antonius writes that Augustus first betrothed his
daughter to his son Antonius and then to Cotiso, king of the Getae, at
the same time asking for the hand of the king's daughter for himself in
turn.
LXIV. From Agrippa and Julia he had three grandsons,
Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and two granddaughters, Julia and Agrippina.
He married Julia to Lucius Paulus, the censor's son, and Agrippina to
Germanicus, his sister's grandson. Gaius and Lucius he adopted at home,
privately buying them from their father by a symbolic sale [the form of
purchase consisted in thrice touching a balance with a penny in the
presence of the praetor], and initiated them into administrative life
when they were still young, sending them to the provinces and the armies
as consuls elect. In bringing up his daughter and his granddaughters he
even had them taught spinning and weaving, and he forbade them to say or
do anything except openly and such as might be recorded in the household
diary [a record of the imperial household, which apparently dated from
the time of Augustus]. He was most strict in keeping them from meeting
strangers, once writing to Lucius Vinicius, a young man of good position
and character: "You have acted presumptuously in coming to Baiae to call
on my daughter." He taught his grandsons reading, swimming, and the
other elements of education, for the most part himself, taking special
pains to train them to imitate his own handwriting; and he never dined
in their company unless they sat beside him on the lowest couch, or made
a journey unless they preceded his carriage or rode close by it on
either side.
LXV. But at the height of his happiness and his
confidence in his family and its training, Fortune proved fickle. He
found the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter, guilty of every
form of vice, and banished them [in 9 and 2 B.C., respectively]. He lost
Gaius and Lucius within the span of eighteen months, for the former died
in Lycia [2 A.D.] and the latter at Massilia [4 A.D.]. He then publicly
adopted [4 A.D.] his third grandson Agrippa and at the same time his
stepson Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae;
but he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and violent
temper, and sent him off to Surrentum. He bore the death of his kin with
far more resignation than their misconduct. For he was not greatly
broken by the fate of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed the Senate of
his daughter's fall through a letter read in his absence by a quaestor,
and for very shame would meet no one for a long time, and even thought
of putting her to death. At all events, when one of her confidantes, a
freedwoman called Phoebe, hanged herself at about that same time, he
said: "I would rather have been Phoebe's father." After Julia was
banished, he denied her the use of wine and every form of luxury, and
would not allow any man, bond or free, to come near her without his
permission, and then not without being informed of his stature,
complexion, and even of any marks or scars upon his body. It was not
until five years later that he moved her from the island [of Pandataria]
to the mainland and treated her with somewhat less rigour. But he could
not by any means be prevailed on to recall her altogether, and when the
Roman people several times interceded for her and urgently pressed their
suit, he in open assembly called upon the gods to curse them with like
daughters and like wives. He would not allow the child born to his
granddaughter Julia after her sentence to be recognized or reared. As
Agrippa grew no more manageable, but on the contrary became madder from
day to day, he transferred him to an island [Planasia] and set a guard
of soldiers over him besides. He also provided by a decree of the Senate
that he should be confined there for all time, and at every mention of
him and of the Julias he would sigh deeply and even cry out: "Would that
I ne'er had wedded and would I had died without offspring" [Iliad
III.40, where the line is addressed by Hector to Paris]; and he never
alluded to them except as his three boils and his three ulcers.
LXVI. He did not readily make friends, but he clung to
them with the utmost constancy, not only suitably rewarding their
virtues and deserts but even condoning their faults, provided they were
not too great. In fact one cannot readily name any of his numerous
friends who fell into disgrace, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he had
advanced to a consul's rank, and Cornelius Gallus, whom he had raised to
the prefecture of Egypt, both from the lowest estate. The former he
handed over to the Senate that it might condemn him to death, because he
was plotting revolution; the latter he forbade his house and the
privilege of residence in the imperial provinces because of his
ungrateful and envious spirit. But when Gallus too was forced to undergo
death through the declarations of his accusers and the decrees of the
Senate, though commending their loyalty and their indignation on his
account, Augustus yet shed tears and bewailed his lot, because he alone
could not set what limits he chose to his anger with his friends [i.e.,
while a private citizen could quarrel and make up with his friends,
the emperor's position made his anger fatal]. All the rest continued to
enjoy power and wealth to the end of their lives, each holding a leading
place in his own class, although sometimes differences arose. Not to
mention the others, he occasionally found Agrippa lacking in patience
and Maecenas in the gift of silence; for the former because of a slight
suspicion of coolness and of a preference shewn for Marcellus, threw up
everything and went off to Mytilene, while the latter betrayed to his
wife Terentia the secret of the discovery of the conspiracy of Murena.
In return he demanded of his friends affection on their part, both in
life and after death. For though he was in no sense a legacy-hunter, and
in fact could never bring himself to accept anything from the will of a
stranger, yet he was highly sensitive in weighing the death-bed
utterances of his friends, concealing neither his chagrin if he was left
a niggardly bequest or one unaccompanied with compliments, nor his
satisfaction, if he was praised in terms of gratitude and affection.
Whenever legacies or shares in inheritances were left him by men of any
station who had offspring, he either turned them over to the children at
once, or if the latter were in their minority, paid the money back with
interest on the day when they assumed the gown of manhood or married.
LXVII. As patron and master he was no less strict than
gracious and merciful, while he held many of his freedmen in high honour
and close intimacy, such as Licinus, Celadus, and others. His slave
Cosmus, who spoke of him most insultingly, he merely put in irons. When
he was walking with his steward Diomedes, and the latter in a panic got
behind him when they were suddenly charged by a wild boar, he preferred
to tax the man with timorousness rather than with anything more serious,
and turned a matter of grave danger into a jest, because after all there
was no evil intent. But he forced Polus, a favourite freedman of his, to
take his own life, because he was convicted of adultery with Roman
matrons, and broke the legs of his secretary Thallus for taking five
hundred denarii to betray the contents of a letter. Because the tutor
and attendants of his son Gaius took advantage of their master's illness
and death to commit acts of arrogance and greed in his province, he had
them thrown into a river with heavy weights about their necks.
LXVIII. In early youth he incurred the reproach of
sundry shameless acts. Sextus Pompeius taunted him with effeminacy;
Marcus Antonius with having earned adoption by his uncle through
unnatural relations; and Lucius, brother of Marcus Antonius, that after
sacrificing his honour to Caesar he had given himself to Aulus Hirtius
in Spain for three hundred thousand sesterces, and that he used to singe
his legs with red-hot nutshells, to make the hair grow softer. What is
more, one day when there were plays in the theatre, all the people took
as directed against him and loudly applauded the following line, spoken
on the stage and referring to a priest of the Mother of the Gods, as he
beat his timbrel: "See'st how a wanton's finger sways the world?" [a
double word-play on orbem "round drum" and "world," and
temperat, "beats" and "sways"].
LXIX. That he was given to adultery not even his
friends deny, although it is true that they excuse it as committed not
from passion but from policy, the more readily to get track of his
adversaries' designs through the women of their households. Marcus
Antonius charged him, besides his hasty marriage with Livia, with taking
the wife of an ex-consul from her husband's dining room before his very
eyes into a bed-chamber, and bringing her back to the table with her
hair in disorder and her ears glowing; that Scribonia was divorced
because she expressed her resentment too freely at the excessive
influence of a rival; that his friends acted as his panders, and
stripped and inspected matrons and well-grown girls, as if Toranius the
slave-dealer were putting them up for sale. Antonius also writes to
Augustus himself in the following familiar terms, when he had not yet
wholly broken with him privately or publicly: "What has made such a
change in you? Because I lie with the queen? She is my wif e. Am I just
beginning this, or was it nine years ago? What then of you---do you lie
only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you read this letter you
have not been with Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia,
or all of them. Does it matter where or with whom you take your
pleasure?"
LXX. There was besides a private dinner of his,
commonly called that of the "twelve gods," which was the subject of
gossip. At this the guests appeared in the guise of gods and goddesses,
while he himself was made up to represent Apollo, as was charged not
merely in letters of Antonius, who spitefully gives the names of all the
guests, but also in these anonymous lines, which everyone knows: "As
soon as that table of rascals had secured a choragus [the choragus
at Athens had charge of the costuming and stage setting of plays], and
Mallia [according to some, the choragus; others regard it as the
name of a place] saw six gods and six goddesses, while Caesar impiously
plays the false role of Apollo and feasts amid novel debaucheries of the
gods; then all the deities turned their faces from the earth and Jupiter
himself fled from his golden throne." The scandal of this banquet was
the greater because of dearth and famine in the land at the time, and on
the following day there was an outcry that the gods had eaten all the
grain and that Caesar was in truth Apollo, but Apollo the Tormentor, a
surname under which the god was worshipped in one part of the city. He
was criticized too as over fond of costly furniture and Corinthian
bronzes and as given to gaming. Indeed, as early as the time of the
proscriptions there was written on his statue---
In silver once my father dealt, now in Corinthians.
[Corinthiarius: coined in
jest on the analogy of argentarius: used in inscriptions of
slaves in charge of the vasa Corinthia], since it was believed
that he caused some men to be entered in the list of the proscribed
because of their Corinthian vases. Later, during the Sicilian war, this
epigram was current:
After he has twice been beaten at sea and lost his
ships,
he plays at dice all the time, in the hope of winning
one victory.
LXXI. Of these charges or slanders (whichever we may
call them) he easily refuted that for unnatural vice by the purity of
his life at the time and afterwards; so too the odium of extravagance by
the fact that when he took Alexandria, he kept none of the furniture of
the palace for himself except a single agate cup, and presently melted
down all the golden vessels intended for everyday use. He could not
dispose of the charge of lustfulness and they say that even in his later
years he was fond of deflowering maidens, who were brought together for
him from all quarters, even by his own wife. He did not in the least
shrink from a reputation for gaming, and played frankly and openly for
recreation, even when he was well on in years, not only in the month of
December [when the freedom of the Saturnalia allowed it], but on other
holidays as well, and on working days too. There is no question about
this, for in a letter in his own handwriting he says: "I dined, dear
Tiberius, with the same company; we had besides as guests Vinicius and
the elder Silius. We gambled like old men during the meal both yesterday
and today; for when the dice were thrown, whoever turned up the 'dog' or
the six, put a denarius in the pool for each one of the dice, and the
whole was taken by anyone who threw the 'Venus' [when only aces
appeared, the throw was called 'canis', when all the dice turned up
different numbers, 'Venus']." Again in another letter: "We spent the
Quinquatria [the five day festival of Minerva, March 20-25] very
merrily, my dear Tiberius, for we played all day long and kept the
gaming-board warm. Your brother made a great outcry about his luck, but
after all did not come out far behind in the long run; for after losing
heavily, he unexpectedly and little by little got back a good deal. For
my part, I lost twenty thousand sesterces, but because I was
extravagantly generous in my play, as usual. If I had demanded of
everyone the stakes which I let go, or had kept all that I gave away, I
should have won fully fifty thousand. But I like that better, for my
generosity will exalt me to immortal glory." To his daughter he writes:
"I send you two hundred and fifty denarii, the sum which I gave each of
my guests, in case they wished to play at dice or at odd and even during
the dinner."
LXXII. In the other details of his life it is
generally agreed that he was most temperate and without even the
suspicion of any fault. He lived at first near the Forum Romanum, above
the Stairs of the Ringmakers, in a house which had belonged to the
orator Calvus; afterwards, on the Palatine, but in the no less modest
dwelling of Hortensius, which was remarkable neither for size nor
elegance, having but short colonnades with columns of Alban stone, and
rooms without any marble decorations or handsome pavements. For more
than forty years too he used the same bedroom in winter and summer;
although he found the city unfavourable to his health in the winter, yet
continued to winter there. If ever he planned to do anything in private
or without interruption, he had a retired place at the top of the house,
which he called "Syracusa" [with reference to the study of Archimedes]
and "technyphion" [ "little workshop"]. In this he used to take refuge,
or else in the villa of one of his freedmen in the suburbs; but whenever
he was not well, he slept at Maecenas' house. For retirement he went
most frequently to places by the sea and the islands of Campania, or to
the towns near Rome, such as Lanuvium, Praeneste or Tibur, where he very
often held court in the colonnades of the Temple of Hercules. He
disliked large and sumptuous country palaces, actually razing to the
ground one which his granddaughter Julia built on a lavish scale. His
own villas, which were modest enough, he decorated not so much with
handsome statues and pictures as with terraces, groves, and objects
noteworthy for their antiquity and rarity; for example, at Capreae the
monstrous bones of huge sea monsters and wild beasts, called the "bones
of the giants," and the weapons of the heroes.
LXXIII. The simplicity of his furniture and household
goods may be seen from couches and tables still in existence, many of
which are scarcely fine enough for a private citizen. They say that he
always slept on a low and plainly furnished bed. Except on special
occasions he wore common clothes for the house, made by his sister,
wife, daughter or granddaughters; his togas were neither close nor full,
his purple stripe neither narrow nor broad, and his shoes somewhat
high-soled, to make him look taller than he really was. But he always
kept shoes and clothing to wear in public ready in his room for sudden
and unexpected occasions.
LXXIV. He gave dinner parties constantly and always
formally, with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests.
Valerius Messala writes that he never invited a freedman to dinner with
the exception of Menas, and then only when he had been enrolled among
the freeborn after betraying the fleet of Sextus Pompeius. Augustus
himself writes that he once entertained a man at whose villa he used to
stop, who had been one of his body-guard. He would sometimes come to
table late on these occasions and leave early, allowing his guests to
begin to dine before he took his place and keep their places after he
went out. He served a dinner of three courses or of six when he was most
lavish, without needless extravagance but with the greatest
goodfellowship. For he drew into the general conversation those who were
silent or chatted under their breath, and introduced music and actors,
or even strolling players from the circus, and especially story-tellers.
LXXV. Festivals and holidays he celebrated lavishly as
a rule, but sometimes only in a spirit of fun. On the Saturnalia, and at
any other time when he took it into his head, he would now give gifts of
clothing or gold and silver; again coins of every device, including old
pieces of the kings and foreign money; another time nothing but hair
cloth, sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading
names of double meaning. He used also at a dinner party to put up for
auction lottery-tickets for articles of most unequal value, and
paintings of which only the back was shown, thus by the caprice of
fortune disappointing or filling to the full the expectations of the
purchasers, requiring however that all the guests should take part in
the bidding and share the loss or gain.
LXXVI. He was a light eater (for I would not omit even
this detail) and as a rule ate of plain food. He particularly liked
coarse bread, small fishes, handmade moist cheese, and green figs of the
second crop; and he would eat even before dinner, wherever and whenever
he felt hungry. I quote word for word from some of his letters: "I ate a
little bread and some dates in my carriage." And again: "As I was on my
homeward way from the Regia in my litter, I devoured an ounce of bread
and a few berries from a cluster of hard-fleshed grapes." Once more:
"Not even a Jew, my dear Tiberius, fasts so scrupulously on his sabbaths
as I have today; for it was not until after the first hour of the night
that I ate two mouthfuls of bread in the bath before I began to be
anointed." Because of this irregularity he sometimes ate alone either
before a dinner party began or after it was over, touching nothing while
it was in progress.
LXXVII. He was by nature most sparing also in his use
of wine. Cornelius Nepos writes that in camp before Mutina it was his
habit to drink not more than three times at dinner. Afterwards, when he
indulged most freely he never exceeded a pint; or if he did, he used to
throw it up. He liked Raetian wine best, but rarely drank before dinner.
Instead he would take a bit of bread soaked in cold water, a slice of
cucumber, a sprig of young lettuce, or an apple with a tart flavour,
either fresh or dried.
LXXVIII. After his midday meal he used to rest for a
while just as he was, without taking off his clothes or his shoes, with
his feet uncovered and his hand to his eyes. After dinner he went to a
couch in his study, where he remained till late at night, until he had
attended to what was left of the day's business, either wholly or in
great part. Then he went to bed and slept not more than seven hours at
most, and not even that length of time without a break, but waking three
or four times. If he could not resume his sleep when it was interrupted,
as would happen, he sent for readers or story-tellers, and when sleep
came to him he often prolonged it until after daylight. He would never
lie awake in the dark without having someone sit by his side. He
detested early rising and when he had to get up earlier than usual
because of some official or religious duty, to avoid inconveniencing
himself he spent the night in the room of one of his friends near the
appointed place. Even so, he often suffered from want of sleep, and he
would drop off while he was being carried through the streets and when
his litter was set down because of some delay.
LXXIX. He was unusually handsome and exceedingly
graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for
personal adornment. He was so far from being particular about the
dressing of his hair, that he would have several barbers working in a
hurry at the same time, and as for his beard he now had it clipped and
now shaved, while at the very same time he would either be reading or
writing something. His expression, whether in conversation or when he
was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men of the
Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it had softened his
heart, and kept him from carrying out his design of pushing the emperor
over a cliff, when he had been allowed to approach him under the
pretence of a conference, as he was crossing the Alps. He had clear,
bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind
of divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly
at anyone, if he let his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun;
but in his old age he could not see very well with his left eye. His
teeth were wide apart, small, and ill-kept; his hair was slightly curly
and inclining to golden; his eyebrows met. His ears were of moderate
size, and his nose projected a little at the top and then bent slightly
inward. His complexion was between dark and fair. He was short of
stature (although Julius Marathus, his freedman and keeper of his
records, says that he was five feet and nine inches in height [Roman
measure, a little less than five feet seven inches American measure]),
but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his
figure, and was noticeable only by comparison with some taller person
standing beside him.
LXXX. It is said that his body was covered with spots
and that he had birthmarks scattered over his breast and belly,
corresponding in form, order and number with the stars of the Bear in
the heavens [Ursa Major, aka "the Big Dipper"]; also numerous
callous places resembling ringworm, caused by a constant itching of his
body and a vigorous use of the strigil. He was not very strong in his
left hip, thigh, and leg, and even limped slightly at times; but he
strengthened them by treatment with sand and reeds. He sometimes found
the forefinger of his right hand so weak, when it was numb and shrunken
with the cold, that he could hardly use it for writing even with the aid
of a finger-stall of horn. He complained of his bladder too, and was
relieved of the pain only after passing stones in his urine.
LXXXI. In the course of his life he suffered from
several severe and dangerous illnesses, especially after the subjugation
of Cantabria [23 B.C.], when he was in such a desperate plight from
abscesses of the liver, that he was forced to submit to an unprecedented
and hazardous course of treatment. Since hot fomentations gave him no
relief, he was led by the advice of his physician Antonius Musa to try
cold ones. He experienced also some disorders which recurred every year
at definite times; for he was commonly ailing just before his birthday;
and at the beginning of spring he was troubled with an enlargement of
the diaphragm, and when the wind was in the south, with catarrh. Hence
his constitution was so weakened that he could not readily endure either
cold or heat.
LXXXII. In winter he protected himself with four
tunics and a heavy toga, besides an undershirt, a woollen
chest-protector, and wraps for his thighs and shins, while in summer he
slept with the doors of his bed-room open, oftentimes in the open court
near a fountain, besides having someone to fan him. Yet he could not
endure the sun even in winter, and never walked in the open air without
wearing a broad-brimmed hat, even at home. He travelled in a litter,
usually at night, and by such slow and easy stages that he took two days
to go to Praeneste or Tibur; and if he could reach his destination by
sea, he preferred to sail. Yet in spite of all he made good his weakness
by great care, especially by moderation in bathing; for as a rule he was
anointed or took a sweat by a fire, after which he was doused with water
either lukewarm or tepid from long exposure to the sun. When however he
had to use hot salt water and sulphur baths for rheumatism, he contented
himself with sitting on a wooden bath-seat, which he called by the
Spanish name dureta, and plunging his hands and feet in the water
one after the other.
LXXXIII. Immediately after the civil war he gave up
exercise with horses and arms in the Campus Martius, at first turning to
pass-ball [the pila was a small hard ball; three players stood at
the three points of a triangle (whence the game was called trigon)
and passed the ball one from the other] and balloonball [the
folliculus was a large light ball; the players wore a guard on the
right arm, with which they struck the ball, as in the Italian gioco
del pallone], but soon confining himself to riding or taking a walk,
ending the latter by running and leaping, trapped in a mantle or a
blanket. To divert his mind he sometimes angled and sometimes played at
dice, marbles and nuts [many games were played with nuts] with little
boys, searching everywhere for such as were attractive for their pretty
faces or their prattle, especially Syrians and Moors; for he abhorred
dwarfs, cripples, and everything of that sort, as freaks of nature and
of ill omen.
LXXXIV. From early youth he devoted himself eagerly
and with the utmost diligence to oratory and liberal studies. During the
war at Mutina, amid such a press of affairs, he is said to have read,
written and declaimed every day. In fact he never afterwards spoke in
the Senate, or to the people or the soldiers, except in a studied and
written address, although he did not lack the gift of speaking offhand
without preparation. Moreover, to avoid the danger of forgetting what he
was to say, or wasting time in committing it to memory, he adopted the
practice of reading everything from a manuscript. Even his conversations
with individuals and the more important of those with his own wife Livia,
he always wrote out and read from a note-book, for fear of saying too
much or too little if he spoke offhand. He had an agreeable and rather
characteristic enunciation, and he practised constantly with a teacher
of elocution; but sometimes because of weakness of the throat he
addressed the people through a herald.
LXXXV. He wrote numerous works of various kinds in
prose, some of which he read to a group of his intimate friends, as
others did in a lecture room; for example, his "Reply to Brutus on
Cato." At the reading of these volumes he had all but come to the end,
when he grew tired and handed them to Tiberius to finish, for he was
well on in years. He also wrote "Exhortations to Philosophy" and some
volumes of an Autobiography, giving an account of his life in thirteen
books up to the time of the Cantabrian war, but no farther. His essays
in poetry were but slight. One book has come down to us written in
hexameter verse, of which the subject and the title is "Sicily." There
is another, equally brief, of "Epigrams," which he composed for the most
part at the time of the bath. Though he began a tragedy with much
enthusiasm, he destroyed it because his style did not satisfy him, and
when some of his friends asked him what in the world had become of Ajax,
he answered that "his Ajax had fallen on his sponge."
LXXXVI. He cultivated a style of speaking that was
chaste and elegant, avoiding the vanity of attempts at epigram and an
artificial order, and as he himself expresses it, "the noisomeness of
far-fetched words," making it his chief aim to express his thought as
clearly as possible. With this end in view, to avoid confusing and
checking his reader or hearer at any point, he did not hesitate to use
prepositions with names of cities, nor to repeat conjunctions several
times, the omission of which causes some obscurity, though it adds
grace. He looked on innovators and archaizers with equal contempt, as
faulty in opposite directions, and he sometimes had a fling at them, in
particular his friend Maecenas, whose "unguent-dripping curls," as he
calls them, he loses no opportunity of belabouring and pokes fun at them
by parody. He did not spare even Tiberius, who sometimes hunted up
obsolete and pedantic expressions; and as for Marcus Antonius, he calls
him a madman, for writing rather to be admired than to be understood.
Then going on to ridicule his perverse and inconsistent taste in
choosing an oratorical style, he adds the following: "Can you doubt
whether you ought to imitate Annius Cimber or Veranius Flaccus, that you
use the words which Sallustius Crispus gleaned from Cato's Origines ? Or
would you rather introduce into our tongue the verbose and unmeaning
fluency of the Asiatic orators?" And in a letter praising the talent of
his granddaughter Agrippina he writes: "But you must take great care not
to write and talk affectedly."
LXXXVII. That in his everyday conversation he used
certain favourite and peculiar expressions appears from letters in his
own hand, in which he says every now and then, when he wishes to
indicate that certain men will never pay, that "they will pay on the
Greek Kalends." Urging his correspondent to put up with present
circumstances, such as they are, he says: "Let's be satisfied with the
Cato we have; and to express the speed of a hasty action, "Quicker than
you can cook asparagus." He continually used baceolus (dolt) for
stultus (fool), for pullus (dark) pulleiaceus
(darkish), and for cerritus (mad) vacerrosus (blockhead);
also vapide se habere (feel flat) for male se habere (feel
badly), and betizaree (be like a beet) for languere (be
weak), for which the vulgar term is lachanizare. Besides he used
simus for sumus and domos in the genitive singular
instead of domuos. The last two forms he wrote invariably, for
fear they should be thought errors rather than a habit. I have also
observed this special peculiarity in his manner of writing: he does not
divide words or carry superfluous letters from the end of one line to
the beginning of the next, but writes them just below the rest of the
word and draws a loop around them.
LXXXVIII. He does not strictly comply with
orthography, that is to say the theoretical rules of spelling laid down
by the grammarians, seeming to be rather of the mind of those who
believe that we should spell exactly as we pronounce. Of course his
frequent transposition or omission of syllables as well as of letters
are slips common to all mankind. I should not have noted this, did it
not seem to me surprising that some have written that he cashiered a
consular governor, as an uncultivated and ignorant fellow, because he
observed that he had written izi for ipsi. Whenever he
wrote in cipher, he wrote B for A, C for B, and the rest of the letters
on the same principle, using AA for X.
LXXXIX. He was equally interested in Greek studies,
and in these too he excelled greatly. His teacher of declamation was
Apollodorus of Pergamon, whom he even took with him in his youthful days
from Rome to Apollonia, though Apollodorus was an old man at the time.
Later he became versed in various forms of learning through association
with the philosopher Areus and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor. Yet he
never acquired the ability to speak Greek fluently or to compose
anything in it; for if he had occasion to use the language, he wrote
what he had to say in Latin and gave it to someone else to translate.
Still he was far from being ignorant of Greek poetry, even taking great
pleasure in the Old Comedy and frequently staging it at his public
entertainments. In reading the writers of both tongues there was nothing
for which he looked so carefully as precepts and examples instructive to
the public or to individuals; these he would often copy word for word,
and send to the members of his household, or to his generals and
provincial governors, whenever any of them required admonition. He even
read entire volumes to the Senate and called the attention of the people
to them by proclamations; for example, the speeches of Quintus Metellus
"On Increasing the Family," and of Rutilius "On the Height of
Buildings"; to convince them that he was not the first to give attention
to such matters, but ihat they had aroused the interest even of their
forefathers. He gave every encouragement to the men of talent of his own
age, listening with courtesy and patience to their readings, not only of
poetry and history, but of speeches and dialogues as well. But he took
offence at being made the subject of any composition except in serious
earnest and by the most eminent writers, often charging the praetors not
to let his name be cheapened in prize declamations.
XC. This is what we are told of his attitude towards
matters of religion. He was somewhat weak in his fear of thunder and
lightning, for he always carried a seal-skin about with him everywhere
as a protection, and at any sign of a violent storm took refuge in an
underground vaulted room; for as I have said, he was once badly
frightened by a narrow escape from lightning during a journey by night.
XCI. He was not indifferent to his own dreams or to
those which others dreamed about him. At the Battle of Philippi, though
he had made up his mind not to leave his tent because of illness, he did
so after all when warned by a friend's dream; fortunately, as it turned
out, for his camp was taken and when the enemy rushed in, his litter was
stabbed through and through and torn to pieces, in the belief that he
was still lying there ill. All through the spring his own dreams were
very numerous and fearful, but idle and unfulfilled; during the rest of
the year they were less frequent and more reliable. Being in the habit
of making constant visits to the temple of Jupiter the Thunderer, which
he had founded on the Capitol, he dreamed that Jupiter Capitolinus
complained that his worshippers were being taken from him, and that he
answered that he had placed the Thunderer hard by to be his doorkeeper;
and accordingly he presently festooned the gable of the temple with
bells, because these commonly hung at house-doors. It was likewise
because of a dream that every year on an appointed day he begged alms of
the people, holding out his open hand to have pennies dropped in it.
XCII. Certain auspices and omens he regarded as
infallible. If his shoes were put on in the wrong way in the morning,
the left instead of the right, he considered it a bad sign. If there
chanced to be a drizzle of rain when he was starting on a long journey
by land or sea, he thought it a good omen, betokening a speedy and
prosperous return. But he was especially affected by prodigies. When a
palm tree sprang up between the crevices of the pavement before his
house, he transplanted it to the inner court beside his household gods
and took great pains to make it grow. He was so pleased that the
branches of an old oak, which had already drooped to the ground and were
withering, became vigorous again on his arrival in the island of Capreae,
that he arranged with the city of Naples to give him the island in
exchange for Aenaria. He also had regard to certain days, refusing ever
to begin a journey on the day after a market day,a or to take up any
important business on the Nones; though in the latter case, as he writes
Tiberius, he merely dreaded the unlucky sound of the name.
XCIII. He treated with great respect such foreign
rites as were ancient and well established, but held the rest in
contempt. For example, having been initiated at Athens and afterwards
sitting in judgment of a case at Rome involving the privileges of the
priests of Attic Ceres, in which certain matters of secrecy were brought
up, he dismissed his councillors and the throng of bystanders and heard
the disputants in private. But on the other hand he not only omitted to
make a slight detour to visit Apis, when he was travelling through
Egypt, but highly commended his grandson Gaius for not offering prayers
at Jerusalem as he passed by Judaea.
XCIV. Having reached this point, it will not be out of
place to add an account of the omens which occurred before he was born,
on the very day of his birth, and afterwards, from which it was possible
to anticipate and perceive his future greatness and uninterrupted good
fortune. In ancient days, when a part of the wall of Velitrae had been
struck by lightning, the prediction was made that a citizen of that town
would one day rule the world. Through their confidence in this the
people of Velitrae had at once made war on the Roman people and fought
with them many times after that almost to their utter destruction; but
at last long afterward the event proved that the omen had foretold the
rule of Augustus. According to Julius Marathus, a few months before
Augustus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome, which gave
warning that nature was pregnant with a king for the Roman people;
thereupon the Senate in consternation decreed that no male child born
that year should be reared; but those whose wives were with child saw to
it that the decree was not filed in the treasury, since each one
appropriated the prediction to his own family. I have read the following
story in the books of Asclepias of Mendes entitled Theologamena.
When Atia had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of
Apollo, she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while
the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to
her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if
after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her
body a mark in colours like a serpent, and she could never get rid of
it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the
tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore regarded as
the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him birth, dreamed that her
vitals were borne up to the stars and spread over the whole extent of
land and sea, while Octavius dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's womb.
The day he was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before the House, and
Octavius came late because of his wife's confinement; then Publius
Nigidius, as everyone knows, learning the reason for his tardiness and
being informed also of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of
the world had been born. Later, when Octavius was leading an army
through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Father Liber
consulted the priests about his son with barbarian rites, they made the
same prediction; since such a pillar of flame sprang forth from the wine
that was poured over the altar, that it rose above the temple roof and
mounted to the very sky, and such an omen had befallen no one save
Alexander the Great when he offered sacrifice at the same altar.
Moreover, the very next night he dreamt that his son appeared to him in
a guise more majestic than that of mortal man, with the thunderbolt,
sceptre, and insignia of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, wearing a crown begirt
with rays and mounted upon a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve
horses of surpassing whiteness. When Augustus was still an infant, as is
recorded by the hand of Gaius Drusus, he was placed by his nurse at
evening in his cradle on the ground floor and the next morning had
disappeared; but after long search he was at last found lying on a lofty
tower with his face towards the rising sun. As soon as he began to talk,
it chanced that the frogs were making a great noise at his grandfather's
country place; he bade them be silent, and they say that since then no
frog has ever croaked there. As he was lunching in a grove at the fourth
milestone on the Campanian road, an eagle surprised him by snatching his
bread from his hand, and after flying to a great height, equally to his
surprise dropped gently down again and gave it back to him. After
Quintus Catulus had dedicated the Capitol, he had dreams on two nights
in succession: first, that Jupiter Optimus Maximus called aside one of a
number of boys of good family, who were playing around his altar, and
put in the fold of his toga an image of Roma, which he was carrying in
his hand; the next night he dreamt that he saw this same boy in the lap
of Jupiter of the Capitol, and that when he had ordered that he be
removed, the god warned him to desist, declaring that the boy was being
reared to be the saviour of his country. When Catulus next day met
Augustus, whom he had never seen before, he looked at him in great
surprise and said that he was very like the boy of whom he had dreamed.
Some give a different account of Catulus' first dream: when a large
group of well-born children asked Jupiter for a guardian, he pointed out
one of their number, to whom they were to refer all their wishes, and
then, after lightly touching the boy's mouth with his fingers, laid them
on his own lips. As Marcus Cicero was attending Gaius Caesar to the
Capitol, he happened to tell his friends a dream of the night
before---that a boy of noble countenance was let down from heaven on a
golden chain and, standing at the door of the temple, was given a whip
by Jupiter. Just then suddenly catching sight of Augustus, who was still
unknown to the greater number of those present and had been brought to
the ceremony by his uncle Caesar, he declared that he was the very one
whose form had appeared to him in his dream. When Augustus was assuming
the gown of manhood, his senatorial tunic was ripped apart on both sides
and fell at his feet, which some interpreted as a sure sign that the
order of which the tunic was the badge would one day be brought to his
feet. As the Deified Julius was cutting down a wood at Munda and
preparing a place for his camp, coming across a palm tree, he caused it
to be spared as an omen of victory. From this a shoot at once sprang
forth and in a few days grew so great that it not only equalled the
parent tree, but even overshadowed it; moreover many doves built their
nests there, although that kind of bird especially avoids hard and rough
foliage. Indeed, it was that omen in particular, they say, that led
Caesar to wish that none other than his sister's grandson should be his
successor. While in retirement at Apollonia, Augustus mounted with
Agrippa to the studio of the astrologer Theogenes. Agrippa was the first
to try his fortune, and when a great and almnst incredible career was
predicted for him, Augustus persisted in concealing the time of his
birth and in refusing to disclose it, through diffidence and fear that
he might be found to be less eminent. When he at last gave it
unwillingly and hesitatingly, and only after many urgent requests,
Theogenes sprang up and threw himself at his feet. From that time on
Augustus had such faith in his destiny, that he made his horoscope
public and issued a silver coin stamped with the sign of the
constellation Capricornus, under which he was born.
XCV. As he was entering the city on his return from
Apollonia after Caesar's death, though the heaven was clear and
cloudless, a circle like a rainbow suddenly formed around the sun's
disc, and straightway the tomb of Caesar's daughter Julia was struck by
lightning. Again, as he was taking the auspices in his first consulship,
twelve vultures appeared to him, as to Romulus, and when he slew the
victims; the livers within all of them were found to be doubled inward
at the lower end, which all those who were skilled in such matters
unanimously declared to be an omen of a great and happy future.
XCVI. He even divined beforehand the outcome of all
his wars. When the forces of the triumvirs were assembled at Bononia, an
eagle that had perched upon his tent made a dash at two ravens, which
attacked it on either side, and struck them to the ground. From this the
whole army inferred that there would one day be discord among the
colleagues, as actually came to pass, and divined its result. As he was
on his way to Philippi, a Thessalian gave him notice of his coming
victory on the authority of the deified Caesar, whose shade had met him
on a lonely road. When he was sacrificing at Perusia without getting a
favourable omen, and so had ordered more victims to be brought, the
enemy made a sudden sally and carried off all the equipment of the
sacrifice; whereupon the soothsayers agreed that all the dangers and
disasters with which the sacrificer had been threatened would recoil on
the heads of those who were in possession of the entrails; and so it
turned out. As he was walking on the shore the day before the sea-fight
off Sicily, a fish sprang from the sea and fell at his feet. At Actium,
as he was going down to begin the battle, he met an ass with his driver,
the man having the name Eutychus and the beast that of Nicon; and after
the victory he set up bronze images of the two in the sacred enclosure
into which he converted the site of his camp.
XCVII. His death, too, of which I shall speak next,
and his deification after death, were known in advance by unmistakable
signs. As he was bringing the lustrum to an end in the Campus Martius
before a great throng of people, an eagle flew several times about him
and then going across to the temple hard by, perched above the first
letter of Agrippa's name. On noticing this, Augustus bade his colleague
Tiberius recite the vows which it is usual to offer for the next five
years; for although he had them prepared and written out on a tablet, he
declared that he would not be responsible for vows which he should never
pay. At about the same time the first letter of his name was melted from
the inscription on one of his statues by a flash of lightning; this was
interpreted to mean that he would live only a hundred days from that
time, the number indicated by the letter C, and that he would be
numbered with the gods, since aesar (that is, the part of the
name Caesar which was left) is the word for god in the Etruscan
tongue. Then, too, when he was on the point of sending Tiberius to
Illyricum and was proposing to escort him as far as Beneventum, and
litigants detained him on the judgment seat by bringing forward case
after case, he cried out that he would stay no longer in Rome, even if
everything conspired to delay him---and this too was afterwards looked
upon as one of the omens of his death. When he had begun the journey, he
went on as far as Astura and from there, contrary to his custom, took
ship by night since it chanced that there was a favourable breeze, and
thus contracted an illness beginning with a diarrhea.
XCVIII. Then after skirting the coast of Campania and
the neighbouring islands, he spent four more days at his villa in
Capreae, where he gave himself up wholly to rest and social diversions.
As he sailed by the gulf of Puteoli it happened that from an Alexandrian
ship which had just arrived there, the passengers and crew, clad in
white, crowned with garlands, and burning incense, lavished upon him
good wishes and the highest praise, saying that it was through him they
lived, through him that they sailed the seas, and through him that they
enjoyed their liberty and their fortunes. Exceedingly pleased at this,
he gave forty gold pieces to each of his companions, exacting from every
one of them a pledge under oath not to spend the sum that had been given
them in any other way than in buying wares from Alexandria. More than
that, for the several remaining days of his stay, among little presents
of various kinds, he distributed togas and cloaks as well, stipulating
that the Romans should use the Greek dress and language and the Greeks
the Roman. He continually watched the exercises of the ephebi [Greek
youths between the ages of eighteen and that of full manhood, who had
regular gymnastic training as a part of their education], of whom there
was still a goodly number at Capreae according to the ancient usage. He
also gave these youths a banquet at which he himself was present, and
not only allowed, but even required perfect freedom in jesting and in
scrambling for tickets for fruit, dainties and all kinds of things,
which he threw to them. In short, there was no form of gaiety in which
he did not indulge. He called the neighbouring part of the island of
Capreae Apragopolis [the "land of the do-nothings"] from the
laziness of some of his company who sojourned there. Besides he used to
call one of his favourites, Masgaba by name, Ktistes [the Greek
name for a founder of a city or colony], as if he were the founder of
the island. Noticing from his dining-room that the tomb of this Masgaba,
who had died the year before, was visited by a large crowd with many
torches, he uttered aloud this verse, composed offhand:
I see the founder's tomb alight with fire;
and turning to Thrasyllus, one of the suite of
Tiberius who was reclining opposite him and knew nothing about the
matter, he asked of what poet he thought it was the work. When
Thrasyllus hesitated, he added another verse:
See you with lights Masgaba honoured now?
and asked his opinion of this one also. When Thrasyllus could say nothing except that they were very good, whoever
made them, he burst into a laugh and fell a joking about it. Presently
he crossed over to Naples, although his bowels were still weak from
intermittent attacks. In spite of this he witnessed and then started
with Tiberius for his destination [Beneventum]. But as he was returning
his illness increased and he at last took to his bed at Nola, calling
back Tiberius, who was on his way to Illyricum, and keeping him for a
long time in private conversation, after which he gave attention to no
business of importance.
XCIX. On the last day of his life he asked every now
and then whether there was any disturbance without on his account; then
calling for a mirror, he had his hair combed and his falling jaws set
straight. After that, calling in his friends and asking whether it
seemed to them that he had played the comedy of life fitly, he added the
tag:
Since well I've played my part, all clap your hands
And from the stage dismiss me with applause.
Then he sent them all off, and while he
was asking some newcomers from the city about the daughter of Drusus,
who was ill, he suddenly passed away as he was kissing Livia, uttering
these last words:
Live mindful of our wedlock, Livia, and farewell,
thus blessed with an easy death and such a one as he had always longed
for. For almost always on hearing that anyone had died swiftly and
painlessly, he prayed that he and his might have a like euthanasia,
for that was the term he was wont to use. He gave but one single sign of
wandering before he breathed his last, calling out in sudden terror that
forty young men were carrying him off. And even this was rather a
premonition than a delusion, since it was that very number of soldiers
of the pretorian guard that carried him forth to lie in state.
C. He died in the same room as his father Octavius, in
the consulship of two Sextuses, Pompeius and Appuleius, on the
fourteenth day before the Kalends of September [August 19, 14 A.D.] at
the ninth hour, just thirty-five days before his seventy-sixth birthday.
His body was carried by the Senators of the municipalities and colonies
from Nola all the way to Bovillae, in the night time because of the
season of the year, being placed by day in the basilica of the town at
which they arrived or in its principal temple. At Bovillae the members
of the equestrian order met it and bore it to the city, where they
placed it in the vestibule of his house. In their desire to give him a
splendid funeral and honour his memory the Senators so vied with one
another that among many other suggestions some proposed that his cortege
pass through the triumphal gate, preceded by the statue of Victory which
stands in the House, while a dirge was sung by children of both sexes
belonging to the leading families; others, that on the day of the
obsequies golden rings be laid aside and iron ones worn; and some, that
his ashes be collected by the priests of the highest colleges. One man
proposed that the name of the month of August be transferred to
September, because Augustus was born in the latter, but died in the
former; another, that all the period from the day of his birth until his
demise be called the Augustan Age, and so entered in the Calendar. But
though a limit was set to the honours paid him, his eulogy was twice
delivered: before the temple of the Deified Julius by Tiberius, and from
the old rostra by Drusus, son of Tiberius; and he was carried on the
shoulders of Senators to the Campus Martius and there cremated. There
was even an ex-praetor who took oath that he had seen the form of the
Emperor, after he had been reduced to ashes, on its way to heaven. His
remains were gathered up by the leading men of the equestrian order,
bare-footed and in ungirt tunics, and placed in the Mausoleum. This
structure he had built in his sixth consulship [28 B.C.] between the Via
Flaminia and the bank of the Tiber, and at the same time opened to the
public the groves and walks by which it was surrounded.
CI. He had made a will in the consulship of Lucius
Plancus and Gaius Silius on the third day before the Nones of April
[April 3, 13 A.D.], a year and four months before he died, in two note-books,written
in part in his own hand and in part in that of his freedmen Polybius and
Hilarion. These the Vestal virgins, with whom they had been deposited,
now produced, together with three rolls, which were sealed in the same
way. All these were opened and read in the Senate. He appointed as his
chief heirs Tiberius, to receive two-thirds of the estate, and Livia,
one-third; these he also bade assume his name. His heirs in the second
degree were Drusus, son of Tiberius, for one-third, and for the rest
Germanicus and his three male cbildren. In the third grade he mentioned
many of his relatives and friends. He left to the Roman people forty
million sesterces; to the tribes three million five hundred thousand; to
the soldiers of the pretorian guard a thousand each; to the city cohorts
five hundred; and to the legionaries three hundred. This sum he ordered
to be paid at once, for he had always kept the amount at hand and ready
for the purpose. He gave other legacies to various individuals, some
amounting to as much as twenty thousand sesterces, and provided for the
payment of these a year later, giving as his excuse for the delay the
small amount of his property, and declaring that not more than a hundred
and fifty millions would come to his heirs; for though he had received
fourteen hundred millions during the last twenty years from the wills of
his friends, he said that he had spent nearly all of it, as well as his
two paternal estates and his other inheritances, for the benefit of the
State. He gave orders that his daughter and his granddaughter Julia
should not be put in his Mausoleum, if anything befell them. In one of
the three rolls he included directions for his funeral; in the second,
an account of what he had accomplished, which he desired to have cut
upon bronze tablets and set up at the entrance to the Mausoleum; in the
third, a summary of the condition of the whole empire; how many soldiers
there were in active service in all parts of it, how much money there
was in the public treasury and in the privy-purse, and what revenues
were in arrears. He added, besides, the names of the freedmen and slaves
from whom the details could be demanded.