Let us pass to the closing scene. Early in the year 14 A.D., Augustus felt that his end was drawing nigh, and ordered that a census of the Roman people should be taken, but hearing of an omen which seemed to portend that he would not live a hundred days, he handed over its supervision to Tiberius. When this was completed, Tiberius prepared to leave Rome in order to resume his military command in Illyricum. It was then midsummer, and Augustus determined to journey with him by easy stages towards the Apulian coast. At Astura, the aged Emperor caught a chill and suffered from a sharp attack of dysentery. But he rallied, and the two Caesars, after visiting Capreae and Naples, reached Beneventum. There they separated, Tiberius for Brundisium, the port of departure for Illyricum; Augustus for Nola, in Campania, where a dangerous relapse set in. Messengers were hastily despatched by Livia to recall Tiberius. Whether he arrived in time to receive Augustus' last instructions is uncertain, but Livia took care that her husband's death — which the malice of her enemies accused her of hastening — should not be made known to the world until Tiberius was at hand to assume the reins of power.
The scene which took place in the dying Emperor's bedchamber — the very room in which his father had breathed his last more than seventy years before — is one of the best known in Roman history. On the morning of his death, August 19th, Augustus enquired from those who stood around him whether there was any popular excitement at the gravity of his illness. Then he called for a mirror, and bade them arrange his hair and beard, and, with a flash of his old irony, asked whether they thought he had played his part well in the farce of life. "If so," he added, quoting from a Greek comedy, "applaud my exit and clap your hands with joy." Lying back upon the pillows, he asked after the health of a sick grandchild of Tiberius, but his last words were to his consort, Livia: "Livia, live in remembrance of our union, and fare thee well!" Euthanasia — the peaceful, painless end for which he had always prayed — was vouchsafed to him, and he passed quietly away without a struggle. What was in the mind of the dying man, no one can say. He may have been merely "sporting, in gentle irony, with the vanities of a human career" — the words are Merivale's — when he spoke of "the farce of life," but it is hard to believe that there was not a covert reference to the long intrigues and the furious jealousies which had raged among the members of the imperial family, when he adjured Livia to remember that she had been his consort. The simile of the actor leaving the stage was, in his case, marvelously apposite, but the long drama of his life had been tragedy rather than farce.
They bore the body to Rome in slow and stately procession, moving only by night, to avoid the fierce heat of the August sun. By day, it reposed in the local sanctuaries of the villages and cities through which their mournful route lay. At Bovillae, near the foot of the Alban Hills, the whole Equestrian Order was waiting to carry the dead chief over the final stage of the journey, and escort him for the last time to his house on the Palatine. The Senate sat in long debate to discuss the arrangements for a state funeral, and the most preposterous suggestions were put forward. But these were finally set on one side, and it was decided that Augustus should be buried with the stately simplicity which transcends magnificence and pomp. The body was deposited in the Forum, close by the Temple of Mars. Tiberius delivered a panegyric from the principal rostrum; Drusus from another. Then the bier was raised, and the procession of senators, knights, soldiers, and people passed through the Porta Triumphalis to the sacred place without the city where the funeral pyre had been built. The representatives of the legions marched past with the customary funeral evolutions, the torches were applied with averted faces, the flames shot up and consumed the body. From the ashes, extinguished with wine and perfumes, an eagle was seen to soar up to heaven, bearing the soul of the departed. Livia kept solemn watch for five days and nights, and then the ashes were carefully collected, placed in an urn, and laid in the splendid Imperial Mausoleum which Augustus had built in the Campus Martius, and which already contained the ashes of Marcellus and Agrippa, of his sister Octavia, and of the young Princes Gaius and Lucius. Nerva was the last of the Roman Emperors to mingle his dust with that of Augustus. In 410, the Goths ransacked the vaults and scattered the funeral urns. In 1167, the Mausoleum, which had served the Colonnas for a fortress, was razed to the ground.
On bronze pillars, standing at each side of the entrance to the Mausoleum, was inscribed the will of Augustus, executed by Livia, Tiberius, Germanicus, and Drusus, his principal heirs. These vanished centuries ago, but copies of the Imperial testament were also set up on the walls of certain temples raised to the memory of Augustus in the provinces, and a curious chance has preserved this celebrated document in marble in the little town of Ancyra in Galatia. The Monumentum Ancyranum — as it is now called — is Augustus' own record of his life and career, and it owes its survival in this remote corner of the world to the fact that the Temple of Augustus became successively a Christian church and a Turkish mosque. We have had frequent occasion to refer to its more important clauses in the course of this narrative. Here we need only say that, read as a whole, it is a disappointing document, frigid, false, almost commonplace. In it, Augustus laboriously counts his honors, his benefactions, his doles, his public shows. He narrates the wars he waged, the alliances he concluded, the nations he conquered. In it, too, he traces his rise to supreme power and claims that he has "restored the Republic." We would not seem to underestimate the value of the Monumentum Ancyranum, or conceal the impression which it leaves upon the mind as the work of a second-rate man. It is, indeed, almost incredible that the hand which wrote it should have built up the fabric of the Roman Empire. But only in rare cases do men give free play to their imagination when they draw up their wills, and, in fairness to Augustus, we should remember that in this, his last "speech from the throne," he was addressing a world which scarcely understood his work, and had hardly grasped the profound change which had passed over the central organization at Rome. He had never "spoken out" in life. He did not speak out in death. We must not judge the greatness of Augustus by the paltry words and thoughts of the Monumentum Ancyranum. We must look elsewhere to discover both the man and the statesman.
There are few more interesting pages in Latin literature than those in which Suetonius gives us a personal sketch of Augustus, in the intimate style of the modern paragraphist. It is the only detailed character sketch of the Emperor which has survived — Plutarch's Life being unfortunately lost — and, in spite of the discredit into which Suetonius has fallen with many modern critics, if we wish to see the real Augustus, the man of flesh and blood, we must still turn to his fascinating notebook. Augustus had a handsome presence, says Suetonius, and retained his good looks throughout his life. In stature, he was rather under middle height, but his limbs were so well proportioned that he seemed taller. His complexion was neither swarthy nor fair. His hair was slightly curly and blonde. His eyebrows met. His nose was high at the crown and drooping at the tip. His teeth were set wide apart and in his later years much decayed. His expression was usually serene and tranquil, but his contemporaries chiefly remarked the piercing brilliancy of his eyes. He liked people to think that their brightness was due to some supernatural vigor, and was pleased and flattered when those upon whom he looked intently cast down their eyes as though unable to sustain the dazzling light which shone from his.
Augustus was never physically strong. His left hip and leg were weak and made him walk rather lame, and the index finger of his right hand was subject to cramp which necessitated his wearing a horn ring for its support when he wrote. He had many long and dangerous illnesses, and was constantly troubled with stone and a disordered liver. Every spring, he used to complain of a swelling in the region of his heart, while, when the south winds were prevalent, he was never free from catarrh. The extremes both of heat and cold tried him severely. During the winter, he wore, in addition to his thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a woollen chest protector, and stockings; and in summer he slept with his windows wide open, or in the peristyle of his house with a fountain playing near him and someone to fan him. He was a confirmed valetudinarian, and preferred being rubbed with oil to washing in cold water, and frequently used sea water or warm sulphur water as a tonic. After the civil wars, he entirely gave up horsemanship and military exercises and took to playing games at ball, but soon afterwards he restricted himself to drives and walks, finishing up with a short burst of running or leaping, with a carriage rug or blanket thrown over him. In later life, he traveled in a litter, usually at night, and at such a snail's pace that he would occupy two days in making the journey to Tibur or Praeneste, distances of only eighteen and twenty-one miles from Rome.
The pleasures of the table had no attraction for him, and his tastes, both in eating and drinking, were of the simplest. He ate when he was hungry, without regard for stated hours, and then his favorite food consisted of coarse bread, small fish, cheese made of goat's milk, and green figs. "No Jew ever keeps his sabbath fast," he once wrote to Tiberius, "as strictly as I have done today. I only ate two mouthfuls in the bath from the first hour of the night until my man came to anoint me." Thus, though he entertained constantly, he often sat at table without touching anything, and took food either before his guests came or after they had departed. His dinners were short, consisting, as a rule, of three courses only, and of six at the most. But they were bright and lively, for Augustus liked the conversation to be general, and often called in reciters, actors, and even pantomimists from the circus to amuse the company. Wine he took most sparingly, rarely drinking except at dinner, and quenching his thirst between times with a little bread steeped in cold water, a slice of cucumber, a leaf of lettuce, or a juicy apple. After the midday meal, he would rest a while, with a wrap thrown over his feet and shading his eyes with his hand. After dinner, he used to finish his day's work, and then betake himself to bed. He allowed himself seven hours' sleep, but he usually woke three or four times during the night, and if he found any difficulty in falling off to sleep again, he used to send for someone to read to him or tell him stories.
His personal tastes were those of a simple citizen. In his younger days, he had been bitten by the prevailing craze for Corinthian bronzes and rare furniture, and it was said that some of the victims of the great proscription owed their inclusion in the fatal list to their rich collections of bronzes which Augustus coveted. He changed as he grew older. Out of all the spoils of Alexandria, he only reserved for himself a single Myrrhine vase, and he melted down the gold vessels which had been in use in his household. His mansion on the Palatine was one of the most modest in Rome, and for more than forty years he used the same bedchamber both in summer and winter. He had a small detached building erected in the grounds to which he retired when he wished to be undisturbed, and, if he felt unwell, he often went to sleep in Maecenas' house on the Esquiline. His country villas, at Lanuvium, Praeneste, and Tibur, were on the same unpretentious scale, and he razed to the ground a luxurious villa which had been built by his daughter Julia. His statues and pictures were nothing to boast of, and his furniture was commonplace and undistinguished; but he took a great interest in planting avenues and beautifying his grounds, and he had the antiquarian's eye for fragments of ancient art and sculpture. His beds and tables were long carefully preserved to show the simplicity which had contented the founder of the Empire. His personal attire was equally destitute of distinction. He wore nothing which had not been woven by the members of his own family, and the only vanity he permitted himself was that the soles of his shoes were rather thicker than usual, in order to add a little to his height.
His chief amusement was playing at dice, but he played merely for pastime, caring nothing whether he won or lost. Suetonius preserves a curious fragment of a letter written by the Emperor to Tiberius, in which he says:
"We spent the Festival of Minerva quite pleasantly, for we kept the dice board warm, and played all day long. Your brother did a lot of shouting as he played; but in the end he did not lose much, for, after standing to lose heavily, he gradually retrieved his position. I dropped twenty thousand nummi, but that was because I played with my usual reckless generosity. If I had insisted on being paid on the coups which I brought off, or had kept the money which I gave to those at the table with me, I should have won as much as fifty thousand. But I like my way best, for my kind-heartedness will win me a heavenly crown of glory."
Occasionally he angled a little, and, as we have seen in another chapter, he was a devoted and regular patron of the public shows and all manner of theatrical entertainments. But Suetonius discloses a much more amiable trait in the Emperor's character when he describes how he delighted in the company of little children, and joined in the games which they played with marbles and nuts. Moorish and Syrian children, who were brought to the palace for his amusement, pleased him most. He liked their pretty faces and their prattling talk.
Like most of the cultured Romans of his day, he enjoyed the study of rhetoric and the humanities. He had taken great pains in his younger years to become a good speaker, and even during the anxieties of the Campaign of Mutina had never let a day pass without devoting some hours to reading, writing, and declamation. He spoke in a natural voice, which was pleasant to listen to, and did not lack for fluency. But it was characteristic of the man that he was afraid of his memory playing him false and of letting fall an incautious word, and consequently he invariably prepared his speeches beforehand and wrote them out on paper. For important interviews with single individuals and even with his wife Livia — a fact suggestive of "scenes" in the Imperial family — he followed the same plan, lest he should say a word too much or too little. He was a purist in his choice of language, detesting anything approaching to affectation in style, and it was his special care to make his meaning as clear as possible. He used to chaff Maecenas for his preciosity of diction and Tiberius for his archaisms, while Marcus Antonius he described as a madman who strove to make people stare instead of writing what they could understand. "Do you think," he said, "that we want the empty, senseless gush of Asiatic rhetoricians introduced into our everyday speech?" We have seen how he taught his young grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, to imitate his handwriting. To their little sister, Agrippina, he wrote, "You must do your very best not to be affected when you write or speak." Like Lord Palmerston, he was intolerant of a badly written despatch, and he once summarily dismissed a legate of consular rank from his post for writing "ixi" instead of "ipsi." "Such a clumsy and illiterate boor" was unfit for his service, and he sent him a successor. Suetonius expresses surprise at this story, for he notes that Augustus often spelt words phonetically and changed not only single letters, but whole syllables. But emperors are privileged persons, and supra grammaticam.
Augustus aspired to authorship, and used to read his compositions to a select company of friends, following the fashion which had been newly introduced by Asinius Pollio. We must regret the loss of his Exhortation to the Study of Philosophy, and the Reply to Brutus on the Subject of Cato and the History of My Life — the latter in thirteen books covering his career down to the Spanish Expedition — would have been of invaluable assistance to the historians of this period. Poetry he essayed, but rather as an exercise than as a serious study. A poem on "Sicily," a volume of epigrams, and an unfinished tragedy dealing with the story of Ajax comprised his entire efforts in this direction. He started the tragedy with great zest, but his pen did not run fluently. "How is Ajax getting on?" his friends asked. "Ajax has fallen upon his—sponge," was the neat reply. Doubtless Augustus was wise to cheat the critics of an easy prey. He had studied Greek learning and philosophy in his youth under Apollodorus of Pergamum. Arius of Alexandria was one of his most intimate friends, and the two sons of Arius, Dionysius and Nicanor, dwelt with him on the Palatine. Yet we are told that whenever he had occasion to write in Greek, he set down in Latin what he wished to say and then handed it over to one of his Greek secretaries to be translated. Probably he was afraid of committing some solecism which might be turned into ridicule by his sharp-tongued Eastern subjects. Suetonius adds another detail which is intensely characteristic of Augustus. Whenever, in the course of his reading, he came upon a passage containing a useful sentiment or maxim which tended to edification, he had it copied out and sent it to such of his court officials and provincial governors as needed a word in season.
There is a dark side, however, to the character of Augustus which cannot be glossed over. Whether, in his earlier years, he had been guilty of the gross offenses attributed to him, we cannot tell. Such charges were recklessly made. Scarcely anyone who rose to eminence escaped them. On this point, he may fairly be given the benefit of the doubt. But the indulgence which is granted to youth cannot be extended indefinitely to manhood and age, and the private life of the Emperor has justly fallen under the lash of the moralist. The moral hypocrite is always odious and contemptible, and the irregularities of Augustus were notorious and beyond denial. Scribonia, it was said, had complained that his mistresses were more powerful than herself. She was divorced. Livia was more astute. Failing as she did to bear him children, she connived at, and, according to the gossip of the day, even ministered to his passions, in order to retain her influence over him. His friends put forward the despicable excuse that Augustus intrigued with the wives of those whom he distrusted in order that he might learn their secrets, and so sought to justify his adultery by pleading the necessities of statecraft. The plea merely aggravates the offense.
There is nothing surprising in the failure of an emperor to observe his own edicts, when these edicts are directed against immorality, or in the violent anger displayed by a licentious parent at the licentiousness of his child. Such phenomena are common enough. But what is surprising in the case of Augustus is that in every other respect he was ascetic and puritanical. There are indeed those who believe that his whole career was a lie, that his austerity of life was assumed for effect, that his call to the age to revert to ancient ideals was a sham, and that his zeal for religion was sheer hypocrisy. The theory is simple, but it solves the difficulty much too easily to carry conviction, and this assuredly is not the explanation of so Sphinx-like a personality. On the contrary, it is far more probable that Augustus belonged to that numerous class of men who see the right course and pursue it, but with frequent lapses into the wrong. It scarcely required that Augustus should be a pattern of virtue for him to realize whither Roman society was drifting or, indeed, had already drifted. He was a moral reformer because moral reform was imperative. He was the author of the Lex Julia de Adulteriis because the times required such a law. The beam in his own eye did not destroy his vision. He was essentially religious and superstitious and these qualities have often been associated with profligacy. He was also an ascetic. Human nature is capable of endless combinations, but the conjunction of asceticism and licentiousness is so rare that, when it is met with, it is hardly recognized, and men are tempted to deny either one quality or the other. Yet such was the character of Augustus. In this one respect, he was a moral hypocrite. In all others, his moral zeal was sincere, though it was inspired perhaps by reasons of state and careful calculation rather than by personal enthusiasm for morality.
We have already dwelt upon his strong family affections, as displayed in his tender regard for his sister Octavia and her son Marcellus, in his love for his daughter Julia, and in his devotion to her two eldest boys. He was also a faithful friend. It was not easy to win his friendship, but, once obtained, it was sure. He not only, says Suetonius, suitably rewarded the virtues and merits of his intimates, but bore with their failures and shortcomings as long as they were not too flagrant: Vitia quoque et delicta, dumtaxat modica, perpessus. Salvidienus Rufus and Cornelius Gallus were the only two of his friends who fell into deep disgrace. With the rest, there might be temporary estrangements, as with Maecenas and Agrippa, but though they lost the Emperor's confidence, he did not pursue them with the vindictiveness which it is the usual fate of a disgraced minister to suffer. Augustus was no gloomy and solitary tyrant, dwelling apart from his fellow men. He craved for friendship and its outward manifestations. When his intimates died, he expected to be mentioned in their wills and carefully scrutinized the words in which they referred to him in their last testaments. The legacies themselves were quite a secondary consideration. He usually relinquished them to the next of kin, or, if the heirs were minors, he kept the money until they were of age and then handed it over with substantial increase. Such anxiety to be appreciated may be a weakness, but it is at least a human weakness. In his household, he was strict but forgiving, and an easy master to serve. He employed a number of freedmen, many of whom gained his complete confidence. Occasionally indeed, his punishments were of great severity, yet all men spoke with praise of his wonderful clemency.
"The clemency of Augustus" passed into a proverb, in spite of the great proscription. He had climbed to power over the dead bodies of those who stood in his path. Other conquerors have done the same. If he had lost, his life too would have been forfeited. But once secure, he spared the enemies from whom he had nothing to fear. He sought to conciliate his opponents, to disarm the discontented. He did not repress criticism or punish those who attacked him with speech or pamphlet. Once when Tiberius wrote to him advocating repressive measures, Augustus replied: "Do not, my dear Tiberius, let your youthful impetuosity run away with you in such a matter, nor allow your indignation to run riot because some one speaks injuriously of me. It is enough if we can make sure that no one can do us an injury." There spoke the statesman. In modern phrase, Augustus saw the folly of sitting on the safety valve. Thus he tolerated opposition so long as it was not armed and could inflict no deadly wound, and when, on one occasion, the lampooners scattered copies of their scurrilous verses in the Senate house, he merely suggested that the Senate should, at some later date, discuss the advisibility of punishing the anonymous publication of libel. Many interesting stories are told of his tolerance. We hear, for example, of someone shouting in the Senate, "I don't understand you," as Augustus was speaking; of another interrupting him with the words, "I would contradict you, if I had an opportunity"; and of the cry, "There ought to be free speech in the Senate," when he angrily quitted the Chamber after a heated and stormy scene. More amusing are the stories told of Antistius Labeo, the famous jurisconsult, one of the "characters" of Rome, who scarcely took the trouble to conceal his Republican sympathies. When the Senate voted the Emperor a senatorial guard of honor to watch outside his bedchamber, Labeo drily remarked that he was unsuitable for the dignity, for he snored and might disturb the Emperor's sleep. Again, at the revision of the Senate, Labeo voted for the inclusion of Marcus Lepidus, then in exile. "Is there no one more worthy?" asked Augustus with a frown. "Each man has a right to his own opinion," was the ready reply. When Messala Corvinus resigned the praefecture of the city, after holding it only for six days, with the remark that he knew not how to exercise a power which was inimical to liberty, Augustus took no offense. He simply conferred the office upon another.
He was affable and accessible to all. His doors were always open, and he received even the humblest with a gracious kindliness. The title of "Dominus" he forbade by special edict, and would not allow his favorite grandchildren to address him by that name even in jest. Once when a supplicant handed him a petition with a clumsy and exaggerated show of deference, the Emperor wittily remarked that he might be offering a halfpenny to an elephant. Augustus was considerate in all things. To prevent public inconvenience, he usually entered or quitted the city by night, so that his friends might not feel obliged to escort him, after the Roman fashion, to or from the gates. Yet he himself observed with exactitude all the punctilio of Roman etiquette, and never missed honoring his friends with his presence at their houses when they were keeping festivals of birth or marriage. Only in his later years, after being mobbed at a marriage function, did he perform by proxy the offices of friendship. His palace was scarcely a palace in the modern sense of the term. The paraphernalia of a court, and the host of court officials, with purely ceremonial duties, were introduced after his death, or were to be found in the adjoining house of Livia. Augustus' palace was rather the central bureau of the Empire, where the Emperor worked and where he also happened to live.
It is perhaps an easier task to estimate Augustus as a statesman than as a man, for there is one supreme test question which we can put to all great rulers. It is this: "What have they done for their country?" If we strike the balance between the good and the evil which they wrought — and no important political changes can be effected without destroying much that is worth preservation — does the good outweigh the evil? Let us apply this test to Augustus and his work.
He destroyed the Republic; he founded the Roman Empire. There are those who regard this as an inexpiable crime. They are tempted to forget the vices of the Republic, because they were associated with free institutions, and the virtues of the Empire, because they were associated with absolutism. But those who take this view ought to be able to show that the Republic was capable of being reformed and reorganized from within; that the Senate and the Comitia were capable of dealing with the new world problems which were demanding solution, and that there was at least a reasonable chance of a working arrangement being arrived at between them, whereby the affairs of the State might be efficiently administered. But this is precisely what cannot be shown. We look in vain for any indication in the last fifty years of the Republic that either the old oligarchical families or the popular party would have risen to a broad conception of what the Roman world required. The Optimates formed a narrow clique, jealous only of their class privileges; the supremacy of the Populares meant mob rule, pure and simple. Such a system could not be made efficient by peaceful constitutional reform; it needed to be transformed by violent methods. Julius had recognized this; Augustus recognized it also. But he sought to conceal the transformation as much as possible, by retaining the ancient forms. He spoke of the Principate as though it were merely another magistracy in the Republic. He established a dyarchy, dividing the government of the world between himself and the Senate, but every year that passed made this dyarchy more and more a sham. The Principate at the death of Augustus was an Empire in everything but in name.
Let it be granted then that what Augustus established was — if we look merely at names and their strict meaning — a sham and a fraud. But a constitution may be a sham and yet, in Carlyle's phrase, it may "march." Some of the most perfectly logical paper constitutions have proved the most appalling failures. Some of the least logical have succeeded best and lasted longest. The divergence between theory and practice, on which we have laid stress in previous chapters and to which the hostile critics of Augustus point as though it were a conclusive and unanswerable condemnation of his system, is a familiar feature of the British, and indeed of every unwritten, constitution. Yet the smooth working of the British constitution, in spite of its being a tangled mass of contradictions, is the envy of many states whose constitutions are masterpieces of logical ingenuity. So, though the dyarchy of Augustus was an imposture — for the division of power between the Senate and the Principate was an unequal division — it yet served its purpose. It smoothed the process of transition from Republic to Empire. It gratified the susceptibilities of the Republican senators. It salved wounded pride. It disarmed, during the most critical years, active oppposition. Augustus was a typical opportunist in politics, and the name carries with it a certain reproach. Yet every great statesman, who has accomplished anything permanent, has found himself obliged to play the part of the opportunist, to make allowances for prejudice and ignorance, to flatter the vanity of his opponents, and to conciliate their wrath by timely concessions. So long as he is guided by some great principle tending to the general welfare of the State, such opportunism is really only another name for the statecraft which is an essential feature of statesmanship. And Augustus possessed such a guiding principle, which may be summed up in the one word — Order. He set the Roman world in order. Those who contemptuously dismiss him as a man of second-rate intelligence assuredly forget the magnitude of that task.
His is not an heroic figure. Our sympathies are not irresistibly drawn towards him as they are to the brilliant and versatile Julius. Indeed, he repels rather than attracts. He excites cold approval and respect but kindles no enthusiasm. He was not a visionary or a dreamer — there was no touch of "the practical mystic" in him which we find in men like Napoleon or Cromwell — he was, so far as politics were concerned, wholly practical and without imagination. But these, after all, were the qualities most requisite in the statesman who undertook to "tidy up" the Roman world from the chaos in which it had been left by the civil wars. He succeeded perfectly, and he was, throughout his reign, rather the Managing Director of the Empire than its Emperor. We think of Augustus not as a dazzling central figure upon a throne and not as the Commander-in-Chief of the scattered Roman legions on the Tagus, the Rhine, the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile, but as the businessman in his private room in the palace grounds, clad in a work-a-day dress of homespun, busy with despatches from his agents abroad. The well-known lines of Horace give us the truest picture of Augustus:
"Quum tot sustineas et tanta negotia solus,
Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes,
Legibus emendes, in publica commoda peccem,
Si longo sermone morer tua tempora, Caesar."
And he was no Philip II of Spain, patiently and conscientiously blinding himself over official detail which his dull wit could not grasp. Love of detail was his second nature, and the detail all formed part of his great scheme of order and efficiency. Voltaire once described Augustus as "un monstre adroit et heureux" — an excellent example of misapplied terseness of expression, yet containing just a few grains of truth. The cold-blooded calculation and adroitness displayed by Augustus after the Battle of Mutina, when he was still in his teens, and his sanction of the great proscription may almost justify the word "monster." But he was then a gamester playing for his life against even more reckless gamesters, who were playing for theirs. It was no time for generosity. As Antonius had said, "Only the winner will live." But it is absurd to judge the Emperor Augustus, who died at the age of seventy-six, by his actions before he was twenty-one, to remember only the proscription and forget that he was known to his countrymen for centuries as the magnanimous and the clement. Calculating and adroit he remained to the end, but these qualities spell statesmanship, and as for his luck, luck in politics is usually the reward of competence and capacity. "We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." Augustus took it; Antonius did not. Fortune certainly favored him, and the phrase "Sis felicior Augusto" became the recognized salutation to the throne. But he deserved fortune because he put himself in fortune's way. He owed nothing to good luck in his patient reorganization of the Empire. While others would have remained in Rome to enjoy in ease the fruits of victory, Augustus spent many years in journeying through his dominions and setting the crooked straight. He gave peace within the Empire by battering down all opposition. His methods were often ruthless. They must have caused untold misery among the natives of Spain, northern Italy, and Gaul, for he transported whole tribes from their native homes and sold whole races into slavery. Yet civilization has reaped the benefit. The rapid and permanent Romanization of Gaul and Spain was the grand result, in the presence of which history either ignores or condones the crime.
We have said that Augustus was without imagination. Perhaps that is too sweeping a judgement to pass upon the man who rebuilt Rome on so splendid a scale. Yet even here we suspect that his main idea was to impress the imagination of others. The grandeur of Rome was a great business asset of the Empire. It flattered the pride of the Romans. It created a sense of awe among the provincials. It was a sort of visible guarantee that the new regime had come to stay. But we suspect that the Emperor took a keener interest in the reports of the Tiber Conservancy Board and the construction of the great military roads over the Alps than he did in the completion of the various amphitheaters and temples which rose under his guidance in the capital. It was the practical side of the great imperial idea which appealed most to him. Efficient government, safe frontiers, the opening of new trade routes, and a full exchequer — to secure those was his constant occupation. He had, in a word, the practical imagination which goes to make a successful businessman and a practical statesman. Chateaubriand has said that Augustus did not belong to the select company of that first class of men who make revolutions, but rather to the second class who profit by them. There is much truth in that saying. If there had been no Julius, there would have been no Augustus. But this does not derogate from his greatness. His work endured — there lies its justification. He built up the Principate, which became gradually transformed into the Empire. If liberty died in Rome, the capital, a new life arose in the provinces of the west and in Africa. The Hellenism of the eastern portion of the Empire endured as before. It was no part of the Roman mission to destroy the Hellenistic civilization and replace it by the Roman. Such an attempt was never made. If it had been, it must have failed.
What then was the main result of his work? The answer is clear. He knitted together the Roman world, east and west, into one great organization of which the Emperor stood as the supreme head. He set his legions upon the distant frontiers and their swords formed a wall of steel within which commerce and peace might flourish. The security was not perpetual, yet it lasted for four centuries, and saved ancient civilization from destruction. But for the Empire and the system inaugurated by Augustus, there is every probability that the Roman civilization would have been as thoroughly wiped out in Gaul and Spain, as it was in northern Africa, and as the civilization of Greece was blotted out in Asia Minor and Syria. We may regret the tyranny of the later emperors and the civil wars which followed. But the seeds of degeneration and decay had been planted in the days of the Republic, and would have come to maturity far sooner if there had been no Augustus and no Empire. Augustus started the Roman world on a new career. He made it realize its unity for the first time. That was his lifework, and its consequences are felt to this day.