THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS
By C. Suetonius Tranquillus;
To which are added,
HIS LIVES OF THE GRAMMARIANS, RHETORICIANS, AND POETS.
The Translation of Alexander Thomson, M.D.
Revised and corrected by T.Forester, Esq., A.M.
PREFACE
C. Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded a legion, on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of the empire in favour of Vitellius. From incidental notices in the following History, we learn that he was born towards the close of the reign of Vespasian, who died in the year 79 of the Christian era. He lived till the time of Hadrian, under whose administration he filled the office of secretary; until, with several others, he was dismissed for presuming on familiarities with the empress Sabina, of which we have no further account than that they were unbecoming his position in the imperial court. How long he survived this disgrace, which appears to have befallen him in the year 121, we are not informed; but we find that the leisure afforded him by his retirement, was employed in the composition of numerous works, of which the only portions now extant are collected in the present volume.
Several of the younger Pliny’s letters are addressed to Suetonius, with whom he lived in the closest friendship. They afford some brief, but generally pleasant, glimpses of his habits and career; and in a letter, in which Pliny makes application on behalf of his friend to the emperor Trajan, for a mark of favour, he speaks of him as “a most excellent, honourable, and learned man, whom he had the pleasure of entertaining under his own roof, and with whom the nearer he was brought into communion, the more he loved him.” [1]
The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars, led him to be more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on public events. He writes Memoirs rather than History. He neither dwells on the civil wars which sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military expeditions which extended the frontiers of the empire; nor does he attempt to develop the causes of the great political changes which marked the period of which he treats.
When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of the Caesars, we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy the characteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in their times masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human race. The pages of Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity. In them we find a series of individual portraits sketched to the life, with perfect truth and rigorous impartiality. La Harpe remarks of Suetonius, “He is scrupulously exact, and strictly methodical. He omits nothing which concerns the person whose life he is writing; he relates everything, but paints nothing. His work is, in some sense, a collection of anecdotes, but it is very curious to read and consult.” [2]
Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius’s “Lives of the Caesars” was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention of printing as the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had been published, and nearly one hundred have since been added to the number. Critics of the highest rank have devoted themselves to the task of correcting and commenting on the text, and the work has been translated into most European languages. Of the English translations, that of Dr. Alexander Thomson, published in 1796, has been made the basis of the present. He informs us in his Preface, that a version of Suetonius was with him only a secondary object, his principal design being to form a just estimate of Roman literature, and to elucidate the state of government, and the manners of the times; for which the work of Suetonius seemed a fitting vehicle. Dr. Thomson’s remarks appended to each successive reign, are reprinted nearly verbatim in the present edition. His translation, however, was very diffuse, and retained most of the inaccuracies of that of Clarke, on which it was founded; considerable care therefore has been bestowed in correcting it, with the view of producing, as far as possible, a literal and faithful version.
To render the works of Suetonius, as far as they are extant, complete, his Lives of eminent Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets, of which a translation has not before appeared in English, are added. These Lives abound with anecdote and curious information connected with learning and literary men during the period of which the author treats.
T. F.
CONTENTS
[ D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS. ]
[ TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR. [465] ]
[ T. FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS. ]
[ TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS. ]
[ LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS ]
[ LIVES OF EMINENT RHETORICIANS. ]
(1)
THE TWELVE CAESARS.
CAIUS JULIUS CASAR.
I. Julius Caesar, the Divine [3], lost his father [4] when he was in the sixteenth year of his age [5]; and the year following, being nominated to the office of high-priest of Jupiter [6], he repudiated Cossutia, who was very wealthy, although her family belonged only to the equestrian order, and to whom he had been contracted when he was a mere boy. He then married (2) Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, who was four times consul; and had by her, shortly afterwards, a daughter named Julia. Resisting all the efforts of the dictator Sylla to induce him to divorce Cornelia, he suffered the penalty of being stripped of his sacerdotal office, his wife’s dowry, and his own patrimonial estates; and, being identified with the adverse faction [7], was compelled to withdraw from Rome. After changing his place of concealment nearly every night [8], although he was suffering from a quartan ague, and having effected his release by bribing the officers who had tracked his footsteps, he at length obtained a pardon through the intercession of the vestal virgins, and of Mamercus Aemilius and Aurelius Cotta, his near relatives. We are assured that when Sylla, having withstood for a while the entreaties of his own best friends, persons of distinguished rank, at last yielded to their importunity, he exclaimed—either by a divine impulse, or from a shrewd conjecture: “Your suit is granted, and you may take him among you; but know,” he added, “that this man, for whose safety you are so extremely anxious, will, some day or other, be the ruin of the party of the nobles, in defence of which you are leagued with me; for in this one Caesar, you will find many a Marius.”
II. His first campaign was served in Asia, on the staff of the praetor, M. Thermus; and being dispatched into Bithynia [9], to bring thence a fleet, he loitered so long at the court of Nicomedes, as to give occasion to reports of a criminal intercourse between him and that prince; which received additional credit from his hasty return to Bithynia, under the pretext of recovering a debt due to a freed-man, his client. The rest of his service was more favourable to his reputation; and (3) when Mitylene [10] was taken by storm, he was presented by Thermus with the civic crown. [11]
III. He served also in Cilicia [12], under Servilius Isauricus, but only for a short time; as upon receiving intelligence of Sylla’s death, he returned with all speed to Rome, in expectation of what might follow from a fresh agitation set on foot by Marcus Lepidus. Distrusting, however, the abilities of this leader, and finding the times less favourable for the execution of this project than he had at first imagined, he abandoned all thoughts of joining Lepidus, although he received the most tempting offers.
IV. Soon after this civil discord was composed, he preferred a charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, a man of consular dignity, who had obtained the honour of a triumph. On the acquittal of the accused, he resolved to retire to Rhodes [13], with the view not only of avoiding the public odium (4) which he had incurred, but of prosecuting his studies with leisure and tranquillity, under Apollonius, the son of Molon, at that time the most celebrated master of rhetoric. While on his voyage thither, in the winter season, he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa [14], and detained by them, burning with indignation, for nearly forty days; his only attendants being a physician and two chamberlains. For he had instantly dispatched his other servants and the friends who accompanied him, to raise money for his ransom [15]. Fifty talents having been paid down, he was landed on the coast, when, having collected some ships [16], he lost no time in putting to sea in pursuit of the pirates, and having captured them, inflicted upon them the punishment with which he had often threatened them in jest. At that time Mithridates was ravaging the neighbouring districts, and on Caesar’s arrival at Rhodes, that he might not appear to lie idle while danger threatened the allies of Rome, he passed over into Asia, and having collected some auxiliary forces, and driven the king’s governor out of the province, retained in their allegiance the cities which were wavering, and ready to revolt.
V. Having been elected military tribune, the first honour he received from the suffrages of the people after his return to Rome, he zealously assisted those who took measures for restoring the tribunitian authority, which had been greatly diminished during the usurpation of Sylla. He likewise, by an act, which Plotius at his suggestion propounded to the people, obtained the recall of Lucius Cinna, his wife’s brother, and others with him, who having been the adherents of Lepidus in the civil disturbances, had after that consul’s death fled to Sertorius [17]; which law he supported by a speech.
VI. During his quaestorship he pronounced funeral orations from the rostra, according to custom, in praise of his aunt (5) Julia, and his wife Cornelia. In the panegyric on his aunt, he gives the following account of her own and his father’s genealogy, on both sides: “My aunt Julia derived her descent, by the mother, from a race of kings, and by her father, from the Immortal Gods. For the Marcii Reges [18], her mother’s family, deduce their pedigree from Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, her father’s, from Venus; of which stock we are a branch. We therefore unite in our descent the sacred majesty of kings, the chiefest among men, and the divine majesty of Gods, to whom kings themselves are subject.” To supply the place of Cornelia, he married Pompeia, the daughter of Quintus Pompeius, and grand-daughter of Lucius Sylla; but he afterwards divorced her, upon suspicion of her having been debauched by Publius Clodius. For so current was the report, that Clodius had found access to her disguised as a woman, during the celebration of a religious solemnity [19], that the senate instituted an enquiry respecting the profanation of the sacred rites.
VII. Farther-Spain [20] fell to his lot as quaestor; when there, as he was going the circuit of the province, by commission from the praetor, for the administration of justice, and had reached Gades, seeing a statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he sighed deeply, as if weary of his sluggish life, for having performed no memorable actions at an age [21] at which Alexander had already conquered the world. He, therefore, immediately sued for his discharge, with the view of embracing the first opportunity, which might present itself in The City, of entering upon a more exalted career. In the stillness of the night following, he dreamt that he lay with his own mother; but his confusion was relieved, and his hopes were raised to the highest pitch, by the interpreters of his dream, who expounded it as an omen that he should possess universal empire; for (6) that the mother who in his sleep he had found submissive to his embraces, was no other than the earth, the common parent of all mankind.
VIII. Quitting therefore the province before the expiration of the usual term, he betook himself to the Latin colonies, which were then eagerly agitating the design of obtaining the freedom of Rome; and he would have stirred them up to some bold attempt, had not the consuls, to prevent any commotion, detained for some time the legions which had been raised for service in Cilicia. But this did not deter him from making, soon afterwards, a still greater effort within the precincts of the city itself.
IX. For, only a few days before he entered upon the aedileship, he incurred a suspicion of having engaged in a conspiracy with Marcus Crassus, a man of consular rank; to whom were joined Publius Sylla and Lucius Autronius, who, after they had been chosen consuls, were convicted of bribery. The plan of the conspirators was to fall upon the senate at the opening of the new year, and murder as many of them as should be thought necessary; upon which, Crassus was to assume the office of dictator, and appoint Caesar his master of the horse [22]. When the commonwealth had been thus ordered according to their pleasure, the consulship was to have been restored to Sylla and Autronius. Mention is made of this plot by Tanusius Geminus [23] in his history, by Marcus Bibulus in his edicts [24], and by Curio, the father, in his orations [25]. Cicero likewise seems to hint at this in a letter to Axius, where he says, that Caesar (7) had in his consulship secured to himself that arbitrary power [26] to which he had aspired when he was edile. Tanusius adds, that Crassus, from remorse or fear, did not appear upon the day appointed for the massacre of the senate; for which reason Caesar omitted to give the signal, which, according to the plan concerted between them, he was to have made. The agreement, Curio says, was that he should shake off the toga from his shoulder. We have the authority of the same Curio, and of M. Actorius Naso, for his having been likewise concerned in another conspiracy with young Cneius Piso; to whom, upon a suspicion of some mischief being meditated in the city, the province of Spain was decreed out of the regular course [27]. It is said to have been agreed between them, that Piso should head a revolt in the provinces, whilst the other should attempt to stir up an insurrection at Rome, using as their instruments the Lambrani, and the tribes beyond the Po. But the execution of this design was frustrated in both quarters by the death of Piso.
X. In his aedileship, he not only embellished the Comitium, and the rest of the Forum [28], with the adjoining halls [29], but adorned the Capitol also, with temporary piazzas, constructed for the purpose of displaying some part of the superabundant collections (8) he had made for the amusement of the people [30]. He entertained them with the hunting of wild beasts, and with games, both alone and in conjunction with his colleague. On this account, he obtained the whole credit of the expense to which they had jointly contributed; insomuch that his colleague, Marcus Bibulus, could not forbear remarking, that he was served in the manner of Pollux. For as the temple [31] erected in the Forum to the two brothers, went by the name of Castor alone, so his and Caesar’s joint munificence was imputed to the latter only. To the other public spectacles exhibited to the people, Caesar added a fight of gladiators, but with fewer pairs of combatants than he had intended. For he had collected from all parts so great a company of them, that his enemies became alarmed; and a decree was made, restricting the number of gladiators which any one was allowed to retain at Rome.
XI. Having thus conciliated popular favour, he endeavoured, through his interest with some of the tribunes, to get Egypt assigned to him as a province, by an act of the people. The pretext alleged for the creation of this extraordinary government, was, that the Alexandrians had violently expelled their king [32], whom the senate had complimented with the title of an ally and friend of the Roman people. This was generally resented; but, notwithstanding, there was so much opposition from the faction of the nobles, that he could not carry his point. In order, therefore, to diminish their influence by every means in his power, he restored the trophies erected in honour of Caius Marius, on account of his victories over Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutoni, which had been demolished by Sylla; and when sitting in judgment upon murderers, he treated those as assassins, who, in the late proscription, had received money from the treasury, for bringing in the heads of Roman citizens, although they were expressly excepted in the Cornelian laws.
XII. He likewise suborned some one to prefer an impeachment (9) for treason against Caius Rabirius, by whose especial assistance the senate had, a few years before, put down Lucius Saturninus, the seditious tribune; and being drawn by lot a judge on the trial, he condemned him with so much animosity, that upon his appealing to the people, no circumstance availed him so much as the extraordinary bitterness of his judge.
XIII. Having renounced all hope of obtaining Egypt for his province, he stood candidate for the office of chief pontiff, to secure which, he had recourse to the most profuse bribery. Calculating, on this occasion, the enormous amount of the debts he had contracted, he is reported to have said to his mother, when she kissed him at his going out in the morning to the assembly of the people, “I will never return home unless I am elected pontiff.” In effect, he left so far behind him two most powerful competitors, who were much his superiors both in age and rank, that he had more votes in their own tribes, than they both had in all the tribes together.
XIV. After he was chosen praetor, the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered; and while every other member of the senate voted for inflicting capital punishment on the accomplices in that crime [33], he alone proposed that the delinquents should be distributed for safe custody among the towns of Italy, their property being confiscated. He even struck such terror into those who were advocates for greater severity, by representing to them what universal odium would be attached to their memories by the Roman people, that Decius Silanus, consul elect, did not hesitate to qualify his proposal, it not being very honourable to change it, by a lenient interpretation; as if it had been understood in a harsher sense than he intended, and Caesar would certainly have carried his point, having brought over to his side a great number of the senators, among whom was Cicero, the consul’s brother, had not a speech by Marcus Cato infused new vigour into the resolutions of the senate. He persisted, however, in obstructing the measure, until a body of the Roman knights, who stood under arms as a guard, threatened him with instant death, if he continued his determined opposition. They even thrust at him with their drawn swords, so that those who sat next him moved away; (10) and a few friends, with no small difficulty, protected him, by throwing their arms round him, and covering him with their togas. At last, deterred by this violence, he not only gave way, but absented himself from the senate-house during the remainder of that year.
XV. Upon the first day of his praetorship, he summoned Quintus Catulus to render an account to the people respecting the repairs of the Capitol [34]; proposing a decree for transferring the office of curator to another person [35]. But being unable to withstand the strong opposition made by the aristocratical party, whom he perceived quitting, in great numbers, their attendance upon the new consuls [36], and fully resolved to resist his proposal, he dropped the design.
XVI. He afterwards approved himself a most resolute supporter of Caecilius Metullus, tribune of the people, who, in spite of all opposition from his colleagues, had proposed some laws of a violent tendency [37], until they were both dismissed from office by a vote of the senate. He ventured, notwithstanding, to retain his post and continue in the administration of justice; but finding that preparations were made to obstruct him by force of arms, he dismissed the lictors, threw off his gown, and betook himself privately to his own house, with the resolution of being quiet, in a time so unfavourable to his interests. He likewise pacified the mob, which two days afterwards flocked about him, and in a riotous manner made a voluntary tender of their assistance in the vindication of his (11) honour. This happening contrary to expectation, the senate, who met in haste, on account of the tumult, gave him their thanks by some of the leading members of the house, and sending for him, after high commendation of his conduct, cancelled their former vote, and restored him to his office.
XVII. But he soon got into fresh trouble, being named amongst the accomplices of Catiline, both before Novius Niger the quaestor, by Lucius Vettius the informer, and in the senate by Quintus Curius; to whom a reward had been voted, for having first discovered the designs of the conspirators. Curius affirmed that he had received his information from Catiline. Vettius even engaged to produce in evidence against him his own hand-writing, given to Catiline. Caesar, feeling that this treatment was not to be borne, appealed to Cicero himself, whether he had not voluntarily made a discovery to him of some particulars of the conspiracy; and so baulked Curius of his expected reward. He, therefore, obliged Vettius to give pledges for his behaviour, seized his goods, and after heavily fining him, and seeing him almost torn in pieces before the rostra, threw him into prison; to which he likewise sent Novius the quaestor, for having presumed to take an information against a magistrate of superior authority.
XVIII. At the expiration of his praetorship he obtained by lot the Farther-Spain [38], and pacified his creditors, who were for detaining him, by finding sureties for his debts [39]. Contrary, however, to both law and custom, he took his departure before the usual equipage and outfit were prepared. It is uncertain whether this precipitancy arose from the apprehension of an impeachment, with which he was threatened on the expiration of his former office, or from his anxiety to lose no time in relieving the allies, who implored him to come to their aid. He had no (12) sooner established tranquillity in the province, than, without waiting for the arrival of his successor, he returned to Rome, with equal haste, to sue for a triumph [40], and the consulship. The day of election, however, being already fixed by proclamation, he could not legally be admitted a candidate, unless he entered the city as a private person [41]. On this emergency he solicited a suspension of the laws in his favour; but such an indulgence being strongly opposed, he found himself under the necessity of abandoning all thoughts of a triumph, lest he should be disappointed of the consulship.
XIX. Of the two other competitors for the consulship, Lucius Luceius and Marcus Bibulus, he joined with the former, upon condition that Luceius, being a man of less interest but greater affluence, should promise money to the electors, in their joint names. Upon which the party of the nobles, dreading how far he might carry matters in that high office, with a colleague disposed to concur in and second his measures, advised Bibulus to promise the voters as much as the other; and most of them contributed towards the expense, Cato himself admitting that bribery; under such circumstances, was for the public good [42]. He was accordingly elected consul jointly with Bibulus. Actuated still by the same motives, the prevailing party took care to assign provinces of small importance to the new consuls, such as the care of the woods and roads. Caesar, incensed at this indignity, endeavoured by the most assiduous and flattering attentions to gain to his side Cneius Pompey, at that time dissatisfied with the senate for the backwardness they shewed to confirm his acts, after his victories over Mithridates. He likewise brought about a reconciliation between Pompey and Marcus Crassus, who had been at variance from (13) the time of their joint consulship, in which office they were continually clashing; and he entered into an agreement with both, that nothing should be transacted in the government, which was displeasing to any of the three.
XX. Having entered upon his office [43], he introduced a new regulation, that the daily acts both of the senate and people should be committed to writing, and published [44]. He also revived an old custom, that an officer [45] should precede him, and his lictors follow him, on the alternate months when the fasces were not carried before him. Upon preferring a bill to the people for the division of some public lands, he was opposed by his colleague, whom he violently drove out of the forum. Next day the insulted consul made a complaint in the senate of this treatment; but such was the consternation, that no one having the courage to bring the matter forward or move a censure, which had been often done under outrages of less importance, he was so much dispirited, that until the expiration of his office he never stirred from home, and did nothing but issue edicts to obstruct his colleague’s proceedings. From that time, therefore, Caesar had the sole management of public affairs; insomuch that some wags, when they signed any instrument as witnesses, did not add “in the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus,” but, “of Julius and Caesar;” putting the same person down twice, under his name and surname. The following verses likewise were currently repeated on this occasion:
Non Bibulo quidquam nuper, sed Caesare factum est;
Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.
Nothing was done in Bibulus’s year:
No; Caesar only then was consul here.
(14) The land of Stellas, consecrated by our ancestors to the gods, with some other lands in Campania left subject to tribute, for the support of the expenses of the government, he divided, but not by lot, among upwards of twenty thousand freemen, who had each of them three or more children. He eased the publicans, upon their petition, of a third part of the sum which they had engaged to pay into the public treasury; and openly admonished them not to bid so extravagantly upon the next occasion. He made various profuse grants to meet the wishes of others, no one opposing him; or if any such attempt was made, it was soon suppressed. Marcus Cato, who interrupted him in his proceedings, he ordered to be dragged out of the senate-house by a lictor, and carried to prison. Lucius Lucullus, likewise, for opposing him with some warmth, he so terrified with the apprehension of being criminated, that, to deprecate the consul’s resentment, he fell on his knees. And upon Cicero’s lamenting in some trial the miserable condition of the times, he the very same day, by nine o’clock, transferred his enemy, Publius Clodius, from a patrician to a plebeian family; a change which he had long solicited in vain [46]. At last, effectually to intimidate all those of the opposite party, he by great rewards prevailed upon Vettius to declare, that he had been solicited by certain persons to assassinate Pompey; and when he was brought before the rostra to name those who had been concerted between them, after naming one or two to no purpose, not without great suspicion of subornation, Caesar, despairing of success in this rash stratagem, is supposed to have taken off his informer by poison.
XXI. About the same time he married Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius Piso, who was to succeed him in the consulship, and gave his own daughter Julia to Cneius Pompey; rejecting Servilius Caepio, to whom she had been contracted, and by whose means chiefly he had but a little before baffled Bibulus. After this new alliance, he began, upon any debates in the senate, to ask Pompey’s opinion first, whereas he used before to give that distinction to Marcus Crassus; and it was (15) the usual practice for the consul to observe throughout the year the method of consulting the senate which he had adopted on the calends (the first) of January.
XXII. Being, therefore, now supported by the interest of his father-in-law and son-in-law, of all the provinces he made choice of Gaul, as most likely to furnish him with matter and occasion for triumphs. At first indeed he received only Cisalpine-Gaul, with the addition of Illyricum, by a decree proposed by Vatinius to the people; but soon afterwards obtained from the senate Gallia-Comata [47] also, the senators being apprehensive, that if they should refuse it him, that province, also, would be granted him by the people. Elated now with his success, he could not refrain from boasting, a few days afterwards, in a full senate-house, that he had, in spite of his enemies, and to their great mortification, obtained all he desired, and that for the future he would make them, to their shame, submissive to his pleasure. One of the senators observing, sarcastically: “That will not be very easy for a woman [48] to do,” he jocosely replied, “Semiramis formerly reigned in Assyria, and the Amazons possessed great part of Asia.”
XXIII. When the term of his consulship had expired, upon a motion being made in the senate by Caius Memmius and Lucius Domitius, the praetors, respecting the transactions of the year past, he offered to refer himself to the house; but (16) they declining the business, after three days spent in vain altercation, he set out for his province. Immediately, however, his quaestor was charged with several misdemeanors, for the purpose of implicating Caesar himself. Indeed, an accusation was soon after preferred against him by Lucius Antistius, tribune of the people; but by making an appeal to the tribune’s colleagues, he succeeded in having the prosecution suspended during his absence in the service of the state. To secure himself, therefore, for the time to come, he was particularly careful to secure the good-will of the magistrates at the annual elections, assisting none of the candidates with his interest, nor suffering any persons to be advanced to any office, who would not positively undertake to defend him in his absence for which purpose he made no scruple to require of some of them an oath, and even a written obligation.
XXIV. But when Lucius Domitius became a candidate for the consulship, and openly threatened that, upon his being elected consul, he would effect that which he could not accomplish when he was praetor, and divest him of the command of the armies, he sent for Crassus and Pompey to Lucca, a city in his province, and pressed them, for the purpose of disappointing Domitius, to sue again for the consulship, and to continue him in his command for five years longer; with both which requisitions they complied. Presumptuous now from his success, he added, at his own private charge, more legions to those which he had received from the republic; among the former of which was one levied in Transalpine Gaul, and called by a Gallic name, Alauda [49], which he trained and armed in the Roman fashion, and afterwards conferred on it the freedom of the city. From this period he declined no occasion of war, however unjust and dangerous; attacking, without any provocation, as well the allies of Rome as the barbarous nations which were its enemies: insomuch, that the senate passed a decree for sending commissioners to examine into the condition of Gaul; and some members even proposed that he should be delivered up to the enemy. But so great had been the success of his enterprises, that he had the honour of obtaining more days [50] (17) of supplication, and those more frequently, than had ever before been decreed to any commander.
XXV. During nine years in which he held the government of the province, his achievements were as follows: he reduced all Gaul, bounded by the Pyrenean forest, the Alps, mount Gebenna, and the two rivers, the Rhine and the Rhone, and being about three thousand two hundred miles in compass, into the form of a province, excepting only the nations in alliance with the republic, and such as had merited his favour; imposing upon this new acquisition an annual tribute of forty millions of sesterces. He was the first of the Romans who, crossing the Rhine by a bridge, attacked the Germanic tribes inhabiting the country beyond that river, whom he defeated in several engagements. He also invaded the Britons, a people formerly unknown, and having vanquished them, exacted from them contributions and hostages. Amidst such a series of successes, he experienced thrice only any signal disaster; once in Britain, when his fleet was nearly wrecked in a storm; in Gaul, at Gergovia, where one of his legions was put to the rout; and in the territory of the Germans, his lieutenants Titurius and Aurunculeius were cut off by an ambuscade.
XXVI. During this period [51] he lost his mother [52], whose death was followed by that of his daughter [53], and, not long afterwards, of his granddaughter. Meanwhile, the republic being in consternation at the murder of Publius Clodius, and the senate passing a vote that only one consul, namely, Cneius Pompeius, should be chosen for the ensuing year, he prevailed with the tribunes of the people, who intended joining him in nomination with Pompey, to propose to the people a bill, enabling him, though absent, to become a candidate for his second consulship, when the term of his command should be near expiring, that he might not be obliged on that account to quit his province too soon, and before the conclusion of the war. Having attained this object, carrying his views still higher, and animated with the hopes of success, he omitted no (18) opportunity of gaining universal favour, by acts of liberality and kindness to individuals, both in public and private. With money raised from the spoils of the war, he began to construct a new forum, the ground-plot of which cost him above a hundred millions of sesterces [54]. He promised the people a public entertainment of gladiators, and a feast in memory of his daughter, such as no one before him had ever given. The more to raise their expectations on this occasion, although he had agreed with victuallers of all denominations for his feast, he made yet farther preparations in private houses. He issued an order, that the most celebrated gladiators, if at any time during the combat they incurred the displeasure of the public, should be immediately carried off by force, and reserved for some future occasion. Young gladiators he trained up, not in the school, and by the masters, of defence, but in the houses of Roman knights, and even senators, skilled in the use of arms, earnestly requesting them, as appears from his letters, to undertake the discipline of those novitiates, and to give them the word during their exercises. He doubled the pay of the legions in perpetuity; allowing them likewise corn, when it was in plenty, without any restriction; and sometimes distributing to every soldier in his army a slave, and a portion of land.
XXVII. To maintain his alliance and good understanding with Pompey, he offered him in marriage his sister’s grand-daughter Octavia, who had been married to Caius Marcellus; and requested for himself his daughter, lately contracted to Faustus Sylla. Every person about him, and a great part likewise of the senate, he secured by loans of money at low interest, or none at all; and to all others who came to wait upon him, either by invitation or of their own accord, he made liberal presents; not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were favourites with their masters and patrons. He offered also singular and ready aid to all who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths; excluding from (19) his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt, poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve them. These, he openly declared, could derive no benefit from any other means than a civil war.
XXVIII. He endeavoured with equal assiduity to engage in his interest princes and provinces in every part of the world; presenting some with thousands of captives, and sending to others the assistance of troops, at whatever time and place they desired, without any authority from either the senate or people of Rome. He likewise embellished with magnificent public buildings the most powerful cities not only of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, but of Greece and Asia; until all people being now astonished, and speculating on the obvious tendency of these proceedings, Claudius Marcellus, the consul, declaring first by proclamation, that he intended to propose a measure of the utmost importance to the state, made a motion in the senate that some person should be appointed to succeed Caesar in his province, before the term of his command was expired; because the war being brought to a conclusion, peace was restored, and the victorious army ought to be disbanded. He further moved, that Caesar being absent, his claims to be a candidate at the next election of consuls should not be admitted, as Pompey himself had afterwards abrogated that privilege by a decree of the people. The fact was, that Pompey, in his law relating to the choice of chief magistrates, had forgot to except Caesar, in the article in which he declared all such as were not present incapable of being candidates for any office; but soon afterwards, when the law was inscribed on brass, and deposited in the treasury, he corrected his mistake. Marcellus, not content with depriving Caesar of his provinces, and the privilege intended him by Pompey, likewise moved the senate, that the freedom of the city should be taken from those colonists whom, by the Vatinian law, he had settled at New Como [55]; because it had been conferred upon them with ambitious views, and by a stretch of the laws.
(20) XXIX. Roused by these proceedings, and thinking, as he was often heard to say, that it would be a more difficult enterprise to reduce him, now that he was the chief man in the state, from the first rank of citizens to the second, than from the second to the lowest of all, Caesar made a vigorous opposition to the measure, partly by means of the tribunes, who interposed in his behalf, and partly through Servius Sulpicius, the other consul. The following year likewise, when Caius Marcellus, who succeeded his cousin Marcus in the consulship, pursued the same course, Caesar, by means of an immense bribe, engaged in his defence Aemilius Paulus, the other consul, and Caius Curio, the most violent of the tribunes. But finding the opposition obstinately bent against him, and that the consuls-elect were also of that party, he wrote a letter to the senate, requesting that they would not deprive him of the privilege kindly granted him by the people; or else that the other generals should resign the command of their armies as well as himself; fully persuaded, as it is thought, that he could more easily collect his veteran soldiers, whenever he pleased, than Pompey could his new-raised troops. At the same time, he made his adversaries an offer to disband eight of his legions and give up Transalpine-Gaul, upon condition that he might retain two legions, with the Cisalpine province, or but one legion with Illyricum, until he should be elected consul.
XXX. But as the senate declined to interpose in the business, and his enemies declared that they would enter into no compromise where the safety of the republic was at stake, he advanced into Hither-Gaul [56], and, having gone the circuit for the administration of justice, made a halt at Ravenna, resolved to have recourse to arms if the senate should proceed to extremity against the tribunes of the people who had espoused his cause. This was indeed his pretext for the civil war; but it is supposed that there were other motives for his conduct. Cneius Pompey used frequently to say, that he sought to throw every thing into confusion, because he was unable, with all his private wealth, to complete the works he had begun, and answer, at his return, the vast expectations which he had excited in the people. Others pretend that he was apprehensive of being (21) called to account for what he had done in his first consulship, contrary to the auspices, laws, and the protests of the tribunes; Marcus Cato having sometimes declared, and that, too, with an oath, that he would prefer an impeachment against him, as soon as he disbanded his army. A report likewise prevailed, that if he returned as a private person, he would, like Milo, have to plead his cause before the judges, surrounded by armed men. This conjecture is rendered highly probable by Asinius Pollio, who informs us that Caesar, upon viewing the vanquished and slaughtered enemy in the field of Pharsalia, expressed himself in these very words: “This was their intention: I, Caius Caesar, after all the great achievements I had performed, must have been condemned, had I not summoned the army to my aid!” Some think, that having contracted from long habit an extraordinary love of power, and having weighed his own and his enemies’ strength, he embraced that occasion of usurping the supreme power; which indeed he had coveted from the time of his youth. This seems to have been the opinion entertained by Cicero, who tells us, in the third book of his Offices, that Caesar used to have frequently in his mouth two verses of Euripides, which he thus translates:
Nam si violandum est jus, regnandi gratia
Violandum est: aliis rebus pietatem colas.
Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws,
For sovereign power alone can justify the cause. [57]
XXXI. When intelligence, therefore, was received, that the interposition of the tribunes in his favour had been utterly rejected, and that they themselves had fled from the city, he immediately sent forward some cohorts, but privately, to prevent any suspicion of his design; and, to keep up appearances, attended at a public spectacle, examined the model of a fencing-school which he proposed to build, and, as usual, sat down to table with a numerous party of his friends. But after sun-set, mules being put to his carriage from a neighbouring mill, he set forward on his journey with all possible privacy, and a small retinue. The lights going out, he lost his way, and (22) wandered about a long time, until at length, by the help of a guide, whom he found towards day-break, he proceeded on foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road. Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province [58], he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him, and said: “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”
XXXII. While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person remarkable for his noble mien and graceful aspect, appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. When, not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also flocked from their posts to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed, “Let us go whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast.”
XXXIII. Accordingly, having marched his army over the river, he shewed them the tribunes of the people, who, upon their being driven from the city, had come to meet him; and, in the presence of that assembly, called upon the troops to pledge him their fidelity, with tears in his eyes, and his garment rent from his bosom. It has been supposed, that upon this occasion he promised to every soldier a knight’s estate; but that opinion is founded on a mistake. For when, in his harangue to them, he frequently held out a finger of his left hand, and declared, that to recompense those who should support him in the defence of his honour, he would willingly part even with his ring; the soldiers at a distance, who could more easily see than hear him while he spoke, formed their conception of what he said, by the eye, not by the ear; and accordingly gave out, that he had promised to each of them the privilege (23) of wearing the gold ring, and an estate of four hundred thousand sesterces. [60]
XXXIV. Of his subsequent proceedings I shall give a cursory detail, in the order in which they occurred [61]. He took possession of Picenum, Umbria, and Etruria; and having obliged Lucius Domitius, who had been tumultuously nominated his successor, and held Corsinium with a garrison, to surrender, and dismissed him, he marched along the coast of the Upper Sea, to Brundusium, to which place the consuls and Pompey were fled with the intention of crossing the sea as soon as possible. After vain attempts, by all the obstacles he could oppose, to prevent their leaving the harbour, he turned his steps towards Rome, where he appealed to the senate on the present state of public affairs; and then set out for Spain, in which province Pompey had a numerous army, under the command of three lieutenants, Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro; declaring amongst his friends, before he set forward, “That he was going against an army without a general, and should return thence against a general without an army.” Though his progress was retarded both by the siege of Marseilles, which shut her gates against him, and a very great scarcity of corn, yet in a short time he bore down all before him.
XXXV. Thence he returned to Rome, and crossing the sea to Macedonia, blocked up Pompey during almost four months, within a line of ramparts of prodigious extent; and at last defeated him in the battle of Pharsalia. Pursuing him in his flight to Alexandria, where he was informed of his murder, he presently found himself also engaged, under all the disadvantages of time and place, in a very dangerous war, with king Ptolemy, who, he saw, had treacherous designs upon his life. It was winter, and he, within the walls of a well-provided and subtle enemy, was destitute of every thing, and wholly unprepared (24) for such a conflict. He succeeded, however, in his enterprise, and put the kingdom of Egypt into the hands of Cleopatra and her younger brother; being afraid to make it a province, lest, under an aspiring prefect, it might become the centre of revolt. From Alexandria he went into Syria, and thence to Pontus, induced by intelligence which he had received respecting Pharnaces. This prince, who was son of the great Mithridates, had seized the opportunity which the distraction of the times offered for making war upon his neighbours, and his insolence and fierceness had grown with his success. Caesar, however, within five days after entering his country, and four hours after coming in sight of him, overthrew him in one decisive battle. Upon which, he frequently remarked to those about him the good fortune of Pompey, who had obtained his military reputation, chiefly, by victory over so feeble an enemy. He afterwards defeated Scipio and Juba, who were rallying the remains of the party in Africa, and Pompey’s sons in Spain.
XXXVI. During the whole course of the civil war, he never once suffered any defeat, except in the case of his lieutenants; of whom Caius Curio fell in Africa, Caius Antonius was made prisoner in Illyricum, Publius Dolabella lost a fleet in the same Illyricum, and Cneius Domitius Culvinus, an army in Pontus. In every encounter with the enemy where he himself commanded, he came off with complete success; nor was the issue ever doubtful, except on two occasions: once at Dyrrachium, when, being obliged to give ground, and Pompey not pursuing his advantage, he said that “Pompey knew not how to conquer;” the other instance occurred in his last battle in Spain, when, despairing of the event, he even had thoughts of killing himself.
XXXVII. For the victories obtained in the several wars, he triumphed five different times; after the defeat of Scipio: four times in one month, each triumph succeeding the former by an interval of a few days; and once again after the conquest of Pompey’s sons. His first and most glorious triumph was for the victories he gained in Gaul; the next for that of Alexandria, the third for the reduction of Pontus, the fourth for his African victory, and the last for that in Spain; and (25) they all differed from each other in their varied pomp and pageantry. On the day of the Gallic triumph, as he was proceeding along the street called Velabrum, after narrowly escaping a fall from his chariot by the breaking of the axle-tree, he ascended the Capitol by torch-light, forty elephants [62] carrying torches on his right and left. Amongst the pageantry of the Pontic triumph, a tablet with this inscription was carried before him: I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED [63]; not signifying, as other mottos on the like occasion, what was done, so much as the dispatch with which it was done.
XXXVIII. To every foot-soldier in his veteran legions, besides the two thousand sesterces paid him in the beginning of the civil war, he gave twenty thousand more, in the shape of prize-money. He likewise allotted them lands, but not in contiguity, that the former owners might not be entirely dispossessed. To the people of Rome, besides ten modii of corn, and as many pounds of oil, he gave three hundred sesterces a man, which he had formerly promised them, and a hundred more to each for the delay in fulfilling his engagement. He likewise remitted a year’s rent due to the treasury, for such houses in Rome as did not pay above two thousand sesterces a year; and through the rest of Italy, for all such as did not exceed in yearly rent five hundred sesterces. To all this he added a public entertainment, and a distribution of meat, and, after his Spanish victory [64], two public dinners. For, considering the first he had given as too sparing, and unsuited to his profuse liberality, he, five days afterwards, added another, which was most plentiful.
XXXIX. The spectacles he exhibited to the people were of various kinds; namely, a combat of gladiators [65], and stage-plays in the several wards of the city, and in different languages; likewise Circensian games [66], wrestlers, and the representation of a sea-fight. In the conflict of gladiators presented in the Forum, Furius Leptinus, a man of praetorian family, entered the lists as a combatant, as did also Quintus Calpenus, formerly a senator, and a pleader of causes. The Pyrrhic dance was performed by some youths, who were sons to persons of the first distinction in Asia and Bithynia. In the plays, Decimus Laberius, who had been a Roman knight, acted in his own piece; and being presented on the spot with five hundred thousand sesterces, and a gold ring, he went from the stage, through the orchestra, and resumed his place in the seats (27) allotted for the equestrian order. In the Circensisn games; the circus being enlarged at each end, and a canal sunk round it, several of the young nobility drove chariots, drawn, some by four, and others by two horses, and likewise rode races on single horses. The Trojan game was acted by two distinct companies of boys, one differing from the other in age and rank. The hunting of wild beasts was presented for five days successively; and on the last day a battle was fought by five hundred foot, twenty elephants, and thirty horse on each side. To afford room for this engagement, the goals were removed, and in their space two camps were pitched, directly opposite to each other. Wrestlers likewise performed for three days successively, in a stadium provided for the purpose in the Campus Martius. A lake having been dug in the little Codeta [67], ships of the Tyrian and Egyptian fleets, containing two, three, and four banks of oars, with a number of men on board, afforded an animated representation of a sea-fight. To these various diversions there flocked such crowds of spectators from all parts, that most of the strangers were obliged to lodge in tents erected in the streets, or along the roads near the city. Several in the throng were squeezed to death, amongst whom were two senators.
XL. Turning afterwards his attention to the regulation of the commonwealth, he corrected the calendar [68], which had for (28) some time become extremely confused, through the unwarrantable liberty which the pontiffs had taken in the article of intercalation. To such a height had this abuse proceeded, that neither the festivals designed for the harvest fell in summer, nor those for the vintage in autumn. He accommodated the year to the course of the sun, ordaining that in future it should consist of three hundred and sixty-five days without any intercalary month; and that every fourth year an intercalary day should be inserted. That the year might thenceforth commence regularly with the calends, or first of January, he inserted two months between November and December; so that the year in which this regulation was made consisted of fifteen months, including the month of intercalation, which, according to the division of time then in use, happened that year.
XLI. He filled up the vacancies in the senate, by advancing several plebeians to the rank of patricians, and also increased the number of praetors, aediles, quaestors, and inferior magistrates; restoring, at the same time, such as had been degraded by the censors, or convicted of bribery at elections. The choice of magistrates he so divided with the people, that, excepting only the candidates for the consulship, they nominated one half of them, and he the other. The method which he practised in those cases was, to recommend such persons as he had pitched upon, by bills dispersed through the several tribes to this effect: “Caesar the dictator to such a tribe (naming it). I recommend to you (naming likewise the persons), that by the favour of your votes they may attain to the honours for which they sue.” He likewise admitted to offices the sons of those who had been proscribed. The trial of causes he restricted to two orders of judges, the equestrian and senatorial; excluding the tribunes of the treasury who had before made a third class. The revised census of the people he ordered to be taken neither in the usual manner or place, but street by street, by the principal inhabitants of the several quarters of the city; and he reduced the number of those who received corn at the public cost, from three hundred and twenty, to a hundred and fifty, thousand. To prevent any tumults on account of the census, he ordered that the praetor should every year fill up by lot the vacancies occasioned by death, from those who were not enrolled for the receipt of corn.
(29) XLII. Eighty thousand citizens having been distributed into foreign colonies [69], he enacted, in order to stop the drain on the population, that no freeman of the city above twenty, and under forty, years of age, who was not in the military service, should absent himself from Italy for more than three years at a time; that no senator’s son should go abroad, unless in the retinue of some high officer; and as to those whose pursuit was tending flocks and herds, that no less than a third of the number of their shepherds free-born should be youths. He likewise made all those who practised physic in Rome, and all teachers of the liberal arts, free of the city, in order to fix them in it, and induce others to settle there. With respect to debts, he disappointed the expectation which was generally entertained, that they would be totally cancelled; and ordered that the debtors should satisfy their creditors, according to the valuation of their estates, at the rate at which they were purchased before the commencement of the civil war; deducting from the debt what had been paid for interest either in money or by bonds; by virtue of which provision about a fourth part of the debt was lost. He dissolved all the guilds, except such as were of ancient foundation. Crimes were punished with greater severity; and the rich being more easily induced to commit them because they were only liable to banishment, without the forfeiture of their property, he stripped murderers, as Cicero observes, of their whole estates, and other offenders of one half.
XLIII. He was extremely assiduous and strict in the administration of justice. He expelled from the senate such members as were convicted of bribery; and he dissolved the marriage of a man of pretorian rank, who had married a lady two days after her divorce from a former husband, although there was no suspicion that they had been guilty of any illicit connection. He imposed duties on the importation of foreign goods. The use of litters for travelling, purple robes, and jewels, he permitted only to persons of a certain age and station, and on particular days. He enforced a rigid execution of the sumptuary laws; placing officers about the markets, to seize upon all meats exposed to sale contrary to the rules, and bring them to him; sometimes sending his lictors and soldiers to (30) carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the officers, even when they were upon the table.
XLIV. His thoughts were now fully employed from day to day on a variety of great projects for the embellishment and improvement of the city, as well as for guarding and extending the bounds of the empire. In the first place, he meditated the construction of a temple to Mars, which should exceed in grandeur every thing of that kind in the world. For this purpose, he intended to fill up the lake on which he had entertained the people with the spectacle of a sea-fight. He also projected a most spacious theatre adjacent to the Tarpeian mount; and also proposed to reduce the civil law to a reasonable compass, and out of that immense and undigested mass of statutes to extract the best and most necessary parts into a few books; to make as large a collection as possible of works in the Greek and Latin languages, for the public use; the province of providing and putting them in proper order being assigned to Marcus Varro. He intended likewise to drain the Pomptine marshes, to cut a channel for the discharge of the waters of the lake Fucinus, to form a road from the Upper Sea through the ridge of the Appenine to the Tiber; to make a cut through the isthmus of Corinth, to reduce the Dacians, who had over-run Pontus and Thrace, within their proper limits, and then to make war upon the Parthians, through the Lesser Armenia, but not to risk a general engagement with them, until he had made some trial of their prowess in war. But in the midst of all his undertakings and projects, he was carried off by death; before I speak of which, it may not be improper to give an account of his person, dress, and manners; together with what relates to his pursuits, both civil and military.
XLV. It is said that he was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather full faced, with eyes black and piercing; and that he enjoyed excellent health, except towards the close of his life, when he was subject to sudden fainting-fits, and disturbance in his sleep. He was likewise twice seized with the falling sickness while engaged in active service. He was so nice in the care of his person, that he not only kept the hair of his head closely cut and had his face smoothly shaved, but (31) even caused the hair on other parts of the body to be plucked out by the roots, a practice for which some persons rallied him. His baldness gave him much uneasiness, having often found himself upon that account exposed to the jibes of his enemies. He therefore used to bring forward the hair from the crown of his head; and of all the honours conferred upon him by the senate and people, there was none which he either accepted or used with greater pleasure, than the right of wearing constantly a laurel crown. It is said that he was particular in his dress. For he used the Latus Clavus [70] with fringes about the wrists, and always had it girded about him, but rather loosely. This circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sylla, who often advised the nobles to beware of “the ill-girt boy.”
XLVI. He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra [71], but after his advancement to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the state in the Via Sacra. Many writers say that he liked his residence to be elegant, and his entertainments sumptuous; and that he entirely took down a villa near the grove of Aricia, which he had built from the foundation and finished at a vast expense, because it did not exactly suit his taste, although he had at that time but slender means, and was in debt; and that he carried about in his expeditions tesselated and marble slabs for the floor of his tent.
XLVII. They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding pearls [72], the size of which he would compare together, and ascertain the weight by poising them in his hand; that he would purchase, at any cost, gems, carved works, statues, and pictures, executed by the eminent masters of antiquity; and that he would give for young and handy slaves a price so extravagant, that he forbad its being entered in the diary of his expenses.
XLVIII. We are also told, that in the provinces he constantly maintained two tables, one for the officers of the army, and the gentry of the country, and the other for Romans of the highest rank, and provincials of the first distinction. He was so very exact in the management of his domestic affairs, both little and great, that he once threw a baker into prison, for serving him with a finer sort of bread than his guests; and put to death a freed-man, who was a particular favourite, for debauching the lady of a Roman knight, although no complaint had been made to him of the affair.
XLIX. The only stain upon his chastity was his having cohabited with Nicomedes; and that indeed stuck to him all the days of his life, and exposed him to much bitter raillery. I will not dwell upon those well-known verses of Calvus Licinius:
Whate’er Bithynia and her lord possess’d,
Her lord who Caesar in his lust caress’d. [73]
I pass over the speeches of Dolabella, and Curio, the father, in which the former calls him “the queen’s rival, and the inner-side of the royal couch,” and the latter, “the brothel of Nicomedes, and the Bithynian stew.” I would likewise say nothing of the edicts of Bibulus, in which he proclaimed his colleague under the name of “the queen of Bithynia;” adding, that “he had formerly been in love with a king, but now coveted a kingdom.” At which time, as Marcus Brutus relates, one Octavius, a man of a crazy brain, and therefore the more free in his raillery, after he had in a crowded assembly saluted Pompey by the title of king, addressed Caesar by that of queen. Caius Memmius likewise upbraided him with serving the king at table, among the rest of his catamites, in the presence of a large company, in which were some merchants from Rome, the names of whom he mentions. But Cicero was not content with writing in some of his letters, that he was conducted by the royal attendants into the king’s bed-chamber, lay upon a bed of gold with a covering of purple, and that the youthful bloom of this scion of Venus had been tainted in Bithynia—but upon Caesar’s pleading the cause of Nysa, the daughter of (32) Nicomedes before the senate, and recounting the king’s kindnesses to him, replied, “Pray tell us no more of that; for it is well known what he gave you, and you gave him.” To conclude, his soldiers in the Gallic triumph, amongst other verses, such as they jocularly sung on those occasions, following the general’s chariot, recited these, which since that time have become extremely common:
The Gauls to Caesar yield, Caesar to Nicomede,
Lo! Caesar triumphs for his glorious deed,
But Caesar’s conqueror gains no victor’s meed. [74]
L. It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women, as well as very expensive in his intrigues with them, and that he debauched many ladies of the highest quality; among whom were Posthumia, the wife of Servius Sulpicius; Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius; Tertulla, the wife of Marcus Crassus; and Mucia, the wife of Cneius Pompey. For it is certain that the Curios, both father and son, and many others, made it a reproach to Pompey, “That to gratify his ambition, he married the daughter of a man, upon whose account he had divorced his wife, after having had three children by her; and whom he used, with a deep sigh, to call Aegisthus.” [75] But the mistress he most loved, was Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom he purchased, in his first consulship after the commencement of their intrigue, a pearl which cost him six millions of sesterces; and in the civil war, besides other presents, assigned to her, for a trifling consideration, some valuable farms when they were exposed to public auction. Many persons expressing their surprise at the lowness of the price, Cicero wittily remarked, “To let you know the real value of the purchase, between ourselves, Tertia was deducted:” for Servilia was supposed to have prostituted her daughter Tertia to Caesar. [76]
(34) LI. That he had intrigues likewise with married women in the provinces, appears from this distich, which was as much repeated in the Gallic Triumph as the former:—
Watch well your wives, ye cits, we bring a blade,
A bald-pate master of the wenching trade.
Thy gold was spent on many a Gallic w—-e;
Exhausted now, thou com’st to borrow more. [77]
LII. In the number of his mistresses were also some queens; such as Eunoe, a Moor, the wife of Bogudes, to whom and her husband he made, as Naso reports, many large presents. But his greatest favourite was Cleopatra, with whom he often revelled all night until the dawn of day, and would have gone with her through Egypt in dalliance, as far as Aethiopia, in her luxurious yacht, had not the army refused to follow him. He afterwards invited her to Rome, whence he sent her back loaded with honours and presents, and gave her permission to call by his name a son, who, according to the testimony of some Greek historians, resembled Caesar both in person and gait. Mark Antony declared in the senate, that Caesar had acknowledged the child as his own; and that Caius Matias, Caius Oppius, and the rest of Caesar’s friends knew it to be true. On which occasion, Oppius, as if it had been an imputation which he was called upon to refute, published a book to shew, “that the child which Cleopatra fathered upon Caesar, was not his.” Helvius Cinna, tribune of the people, admitted to several persons the fact, that he had a bill ready drawn, which Caesar had ordered him to get enacted in his absence, allowing him, with the hope of leaving issue, to take any wife he chose, and as many of them as he pleased; and to leave no room for doubt of his infamous character for unnatural lewdness and adultery, Curio, the father, says, in one of his speeches, “He was every woman’s man, and every man’s woman.”
LIII. It is acknowledged even by his enemies, that in regard to wine, he was abstemious. A remark is ascribed to Marcus Cato, “that Caesar was the only sober man amongst all those who were engaged in the design to subvert (35) the government.” In the matter of diet, Caius Oppius informs us, “that he was so indifferent, that when a person in whose house he was entertained, had served him with stale, instead of fresh, oil [78], and the rest of the company would not touch it, he alone ate very heartily of it, that he might not seem to tax the master of the house with rusticity or want of attention.”
LIV. But his abstinence did not extend to pecuniary advantages, either in his military commands, or civil offices; for we have the testimony of some writers, that he took money from the proconsul, who was his predecessor in Spain, and from the Roman allies in that quarter, for the discharge of his debts; and plundered at the point of the sword some towns of the Lusitanians, notwithstanding they attempted no resistance, and opened their gates to him upon his arrival before them. In Gaul, he rifled the chapels and temples of the gods, which were filled with rich offerings, and demolished cities oftener for the sake of their spoil, than for any ill they had done. By this means gold became so plentiful with him, that he exchanged it through Italy and the provinces of the empire for three thousand sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he purloined from the Capitol three thousand pounds’ weight of gold, and substituted for it the same quantity of gilt brass. He bartered likewise to foreign nations and princes, for gold, the titles of allies and kings; and squeezed out of Ptolemy alone near six thousand talents, in the name of himself and Pompey. He afterwards supported the expense of the civil wars, and of his triumphs and public spectacles, by the most flagrant rapine and sacrilege.
LV. In eloquence and warlike achievements, he equalled at least, if he did not surpass, the greatest of men. After his prosecution of Dolabella, he was indisputably reckoned one of the most distinguished advocates. Cicero, in recounting to Brutus the famous orators, declares, “that he does not see that Caesar was inferior to any one of them;” and says, “that he (36) had an elegant, splendid, noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence.” And in a letter to Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: “What! Of all the orators, who, during the whole course of their lives, have done nothing else, which can you prefer to him? Which of them is more pointed or terse in his periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?” In his youth, he seems to have chosen Strabo Caesar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his Divination. In his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, and his action was animated, but not ungraceful. He has left behind him some speeches, among which are ranked a few that are not genuine, such as that on behalf of Quintus Metellus. These Augustus supposes, with reason, to be rather the production of blundering short-hand writers, who were not able to keep pace with him in the delivery, than publications of his own. For I find in some copies that the title is not “For Metellus,” but “What he wrote to Metellus;” whereas the speech is delivered in the name of Caesar, vindicating Metellus and himself from the aspersions cast upon them by their common defamers. The speech addressed “To his soldiers in Spain,” Augustus considers likewise as spurious. We meet with two under this title; one made, as is pretended, in the first battle, and the other in the last; at which time, Asinius Pollio says, he had not leisure to address the soldiers, on account of the suddenness of the enemy’s attack.
LVI. He has likewise left Commentaries of his own actions both in the war in Gaul, and in the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty. Some think they are the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the latter of whom composed the last book, which is imperfect, of the Gallic war. Of Caesar’s Commentaries, Cicero, in his Brutus, speaks thus: “He wrote his Commentaries in a manner deserving of great approbation: they are plain, precise, and elegant, without any affectation of rhetorical ornament. In having thus prepared materials for others who might be inclined to write his history, he may perhaps have encouraged some silly creatures to enter upon such a work, who will needs be dressing up his actions in all the extravagance a (37) bombast; but he has discouraged wise men from ever attempting the subject.” Hirtius delivers his opinion of these Commentaries in the following terms: “So great is the approbation with which they are universally perused, that, instead of rousing, he seems to have precluded, the efforts of any future historian. Yet, with respect to this work, we have more reason to admire him than others; for they only know how well and correctly he has written, but we know, likewise, how easily and quickly he did it.” Pollio Asinius thinks that they were not drawn up with much care, or with a due regard to truth; for he insinuates that Caesar was too hasty of belief in regard to what was performed by others under his orders; and that, he has not given a very faithful account of his own acts, either by design, or through defect of memory; expressing at the same time an opinion that Caesar intended a new and more correct edition. He has left behind him likewise two books on Analogy, with the same number under the title of Anti-Cato, and a poem entitled The Itinerary. Of these books, he composed the first two in his passage over the Alps, as he was returning to the army after making his circuit in Hither-Gaul; the second work about the time of the battle of Munda; and the last during the four-and-twenty days he employed in his journey from Rome to Farther-Spain. There are extant some letters of his to the senate, written in a manner never practised by any before him; for they are distinguished into pages in the form of a memorandum book whereas the consuls and commanders till then, used constantly in their letters to continue the line quite across the sheet, without any folding or distinction of pages. There are extant likewise some letters from him to Cicero, and others to his friends, concerning his domestic affairs; in which, if there was occasion for secrecy, he wrote in cyphers; that is, he used the alphabet in such a manner, that not a single word could be made out. The way to decipher those epistles was to substitute the fourth for the first letter, as d for a, and so for the other letters respectively. Some things likewise pass under his name, said to have been written by him when a boy, or a very young man; as the Encomium of Hercules, a tragedy entitled Oedipus, and a collection of Apophthegms; all which Augustus forbad to be published, in a short and plain letter to Pompeius Macer, who was employed by him in the arrangement of his libraries.
(38) LVII. He was perfect in the use of arms, an accomplished rider, and able to endure fatigue beyond all belief. On a march, he used to go at the head of his troops, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, with his head bare in all kinds of weather. He would travel post in a light carriage [79] without baggage, at the rate of a hundred miles a day; and if he was stopped by floods in the rivers, he swam across, or floated on skins inflated with wind, so that he often anticipated intelligence of his movements. [80]
LVIII. In his expeditions, it is difficult to say whether his caution or his daring was most conspicuous. He never marched his army by roads which were exposed to ambuscades, without having previously examined the nature of the ground by his scouts. Nor did he cross over to Britain, before he had carefully examined, in person [81], the navigation, the harbours, and the most convenient point of landing in the island. When intelligence was brought to him of the siege of his camp in Germany, he made his way to his troops, through the enemy’s stations, in a Gaulish dress. He crossed the sea from Brundisium and Dyrrachium, in the winter, through the midst of the enemy’s fleets; and the troops, under orders to join him, being slow in their movements, notwithstanding repeated messages to hurry them, but to no purpose, he at last went privately, and alone, aboard a small vessel in the night time, with his head muffled up; nor did he make himself known, or suffer the master to put about, although the wind blew strong against them, until they were ready to sink.
LIX. He was never deterred from any enterprise, nor retarded in the prosecution of it, by superstition [82]. When a victim, which he was about to offer in sacrifice, made its (39) escape, he did not therefore defer his expedition against Scipio and Juba. And happening to fall, upon stepping out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn to the omen, by exclaiming, “I hold thee fast, Africa.” To chide the prophecies which were spread abroad, that the name of the Scipios was, by the decrees of fate, fortunate and invincible in that province, he retained in the camp a profligate wretch, of the family of the Cornelii, who, on account of his scandalous life, was surnamed Salutio.
LX. He not only fought pitched battles, but made sudden attacks when an opportunity offered; often at the end of a march, and sometimes during the most violent storms, when nobody could imagine he would stir. Nor was he ever backward in fighting, until towards the end of his life. He then was of opinion, that the oftener he had been crowned with success, the less he ought to expose himself to new hazards; and that nothing he could gain by a victory would compensate for what he might lose by a miscarriage. He never defeated the enemy without driving them from their camp; and giving them no time to rally their forces. When the issue of a battle was doubtful, he sent away all the horses, and his own first, that having no means of flight, they might be under the greater necessity of standing their ground.
LXI. He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a man, the hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance to toes. This horse he had bred himself, and the soothsayers having interpreted these circumstances into an omen that its owner would be master of the world, he brought him up with particular care, and broke him in himself, as the horse would suffer no one else to mount him. A statue of this horse was afterwards erected by Caesar’s order before the temple of Venus Genitrix.
LXII. He often rallied his troops, when they were giving way, by his personal efforts; stopping those who fled, keeping others in their ranks, and seizing them by their throat turned them towards the enemy; although numbers were so terrified, that an eagle-bearer [83], thus stopped, made a thrust at him with (40) the spear-head; and another, upon a similar occasion, left the standard in his hand.
LXIII. The following instances of his resolution are equally, and even more remarkable. After the battle of Pharsalia, having sent his troops before him into Asia, as he was passing the straits of the Hellespont in a ferry-boat, he met with Lucius Cassius, one of the opposite party, with ten ships of war; and so far from endeavouring to escape, he went alongside his ship, and calling upon him to surrender, Cassius humbly gave him his submission.
LXIV. At Alexandria, in the attack of a bridge, being forced by a sudden sally of the enemy into a boat, and several others hurrying in with him, he leaped into the sea, and saved himself by swimming to the next ship, which lay at the distance of two hundred paces; holding up his left hand out of the water, for fear of wetting some papers which he held in it; and pulling his general’s cloak after him with his teeth, lest it should fall into the hands of the enemy.
LXV. He never valued a soldier for his moral conduct or his means, but for his courage only; and treated his troops with a mixture of severity and indulgence; for he did not always keep a strict hand over them, but only when the enemy was near. Then indeed he was so strict a disciplinarian, that he would give no notice of a march or a battle until the moment of action, in order that the troops might hold themselves in readiness for any sudden movement; and he would frequently draw them out of the camp without any necessity for it, especially in rainy weather, and upon holy-days. Sometimes, giving them orders not to lose sight of him, he would suddenly depart by day or by night, and lengthen the marches in order to tire them out, as they followed him at a distance.
LXVI. When at any time his troops were dispirited by reports of the great force of the enemy, he rallied their courage; not by denying the truth of what was said, or by diminishing the facts, but, on the contrary, by exaggerating every particular. (41) Accordingly, when his troops were in great alarm at the expected arrival of king Juba, he called them together, and said, “I have to inform you that in a very few days the king will be here, with ten legions, thirty thousand horse, a hundred thousand light-armed foot, and three hundred elephants. Let none of you, therefore, presume to make further enquiry, or indulge in conjectures, but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from undoubted intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard an old crazy vessel, and leave them exposed to the mercy of the winds, to be transported to some other country.”
LXVII. He neither noticed all their transgressions, nor punished them according to strict rule. But for deserters and mutineers he made the most diligent enquiry, and their punishment was most severe: other delinquencies he would connive at. Sometimes, after a great battle ending in victory, he would grant them a relaxation from all kinds of duty, and leave them to revel at pleasure; being used to boast, “that his soldiers fought nothing the worse for being well oiled.” In his speeches, he never addressed them by the title of “Soldiers,” but by the kinder phrase of “Fellow-soldiers;” and kept them in such splendid order, that their arms were ornamented with silver and gold, not merely for parade, but to render the soldiers more resolute to save them in battle, and fearful of losing them. He loved his troops to such a degree, that when he heard of the defeat of those under Titurius, he neither cut his hair nor shaved his beard, until he had revenged it upon the enemy; by which means he engaged their devoted affection, and raised their valour to the highest pitch.
LXVIII. Upon his entering on the civil war, the centurions of every legion offered, each of them, to maintain a horseman at his own expense, and the whole army agreed to serve gratis, without either corn or pay; those amongst them who were rich, charging themselves with the maintenance of the poor. No one of them, during the whole course of the war, deserted to the enemy; and many of those who were made prisoners, though they were offered their lives, upon condition of bearing arms against him, refused to accept the terms. They endured want, and other hardships, not only (42) when they were besieged themselves, but when they besieged others, to such a degree, that Pompey, when blocked up in the neighbourhood of Dyrrachium, upon seeing a sort of bread made of an herb, which they lived upon, said, “I have to do with wild beasts,” and ordered it immediately to be taken away; because, if his troops should see it, their spirit might be broken by perceiving the endurance and determined resolution of the enemy. With what bravery they fought, one instance affords sufficient proof; which is, that after an unsuccessful engagement at Dyrrachium, they called for punishment; insomuch that their general found it more necessary to comfort than to punish them. In other battles, in different quarters, they defeated with ease immense armies of the enemy, although they were much inferior to them in number. In short, one cohort of the sixth legion held out a fort against four legions belonging to Pompey, during several hours; being almost every one of them wounded by the vast number of arrows discharged against them, and of which there were found within the ramparts a hundred and thirty thousand. This is no way surprising, when we consider the conduct of some individuals amongst them; such as that of Cassius Scaeva, a centurion, or Caius Acilius, a common soldier, not to speak of others. Scaeva, after having an eye struck out, being run through the thigh and the shoulder, and having his shield pierced in an hundred and twenty places, maintained obstinately the guard of the gate of a fort, with the command of which he was intrusted. Acilius, in the sea-fight at Marseilles, having seized a ship of the enemy’s with his right hand, and that being cut off, in imitation of that memorable instance of resolution in Cynaegirus amongst the Greeks, boarded the enemy’s ship, bearing down all before him with the boss of his shield.
LXIX. They never once mutinied during all the ten years of the Gallic war, but were sometimes refractory in the course of the civil war. However, they always returned quickly to their duty, and that not through the indulgence, but in submission to the authority, of their general; for he never yielded to them when they were insubordinate, but constantly resisted their demands. He disbanded the whole ninth legion with ignominy at Placentia, although Pompey was still in arms, and would (43) not receive them again into his service, until they had not only made repeated and humble entreaties, but until the ringleaders in the mutiny were punished.
LXX. When the soldiers of the tenth legion at Rome demanded their discharge and rewards for their service, with violent threats and no small danger to the city, although the war was then raging in Africa, he did not hesitate, contrary to the advice of his friends, to meet the legion, and disband it. But addressing them by the title of “Quirites,” instead of “Soldiers,” he by this single word so thoroughly brought them round and changed their determination, that they immediately cried out, they were his “soldiers,” and followed him to Africa, although he had refused their service. He nevertheless punished the most mutinous among them, with the loss of a third of their share in the plunder, and the land destined for them.
LXXI. In the service of his clients, while yet a young man, he evinced great zeal and fidelity. He defended the cause of a noble youth, Masintha, against king Hiempsal, so strenuously, that in a scuffle which took place upon the occasion, he seized by the beard the son of king Juba; and upon Masintha’s being declared tributary to Hiempsal, while the friends of the adverse party were violently carrying him off, he immediately rescued him by force, kept him concealed in his house a long time, and when, at the expiration of his praetorship, he went to Spain, he took him away in his litter, in the midst of his lictors bearing the fasces, and others who had come to attend and take leave of him.
LXXII. He always treated his friends with such kindness and good-nature, that when Caius Oppius, in travelling with him through a forest, was suddenly taken ill, he resigned to him the only place there was to shelter them at night, and lay upon the ground in the open air. When he had placed himself at the head of affairs, he advanced some of his faithful adherents, though of mean extraction, to the highest offices; and when he was censured for this partiality, he openly said, “Had I been assisted by robbers and cut-throats in the defence of my honour, I should have made them the same recompense.”
(44) LXXIII. The resentment he entertained against any one was never so implacable that he did not very willingly renounce it when opportunity offered. Although Caius Memmius had published some extremely virulent speeches against him, and he had answered him with equal acrimony, yet he afterwards assisted him with his vote and interest, when he stood candidate for the consulship. When C. Calvus, after publishing some scandalous epigrams upon him, endeavoured to effect a reconciliation by the intercession of friends, he wrote to him, of his own accord, the first letter. And when Valerius Catullus, who had, as he himself observed, fixed such a stain upon his character in his verses upon Mamurra as never could be obliterated, he begged his pardon, invited him to supper the same day; and continued to take up his lodging with his father occasionally, as he had been accustomed to do.
LXXIV. His temper was also naturally averse to severity in retaliation. After he had captured the pirates, by whom he had been taken, having sworn that he would crucify them, he did so indeed; but he first ordered their throats to be cut [84]. He could never bear the thought of doing any harm to Cornelius Phagitas, who had dogged him in the night when he was sick and a fugitive, with the design of carrying him to Sylla, and from whose hands he had escaped with some difficulty by giving him a bribe. Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised his enemies to poison him, he put to death without torture. When he was summoned as a witness against Publicus Clodius, his wife Pompeia’s gallant, who was prosecuted for the profanation of religious ceremonies, he declared he knew nothing of the affair, although his mother Aurelia, and his sister Julia, gave the court an exact and full account of the circumstances. And being asked why then he had divorced his wife? “Because,” he said, “my family should not only be free from guilt, but even from the suspicion of it.”
LXXV. Both in his administration and his conduct towards the vanquished party in the civil war, he showed a wonderful moderation and clemency. For while Pompey declared that he would consider those as enemies who did not take arms in defence of the republic, he desired it to be understood, that he (45) should regard those who remained neuter as his friends. With regard to all those to whom he had, on Pompey’s recommendation, given any command in the army, he left them at perfect liberty to go over to him, if they pleased. When some proposals were made at Ileria [85] for a surrender, which gave rise to a free communication between the two camps, and Afranius and Petreius, upon a sudden change of resolution, had put to the sword all Caesar’s men who were found in the camp, he scorned to imitate the base treachery which they had practised against himself. On the field of Pharsalia, he called out to the soldiers “to spare their fellow-citizens,” and afterwards gave permission to every man in his army to save an enemy. None of them, so far as appears, lost their lives but in battle, excepting only Afranius, Faustus, and young Lucius Caesar; and it is thought that even they were put to death without his consent. Afranius and Faustus had borne arms against him, after obtaining their pardon; and Lucius Caesar had not only in the most cruel manner destroyed with fire and sword his freed-men and slaves, but cut to pieces the wild beasts which he had prepared for the entertainment of the people. And finally, a little before his death, he permitted all whom he had not before pardoned, to return into Italy, and to bear offices both civil and military. He even replaced the statues of Sylla and Pompey, which had been thrown down by the populace. And after this, whatever was devised or uttered, he chose rather to check than to punish it. Accordingly, having detected certain conspiracies and nocturnal assemblies, he went no farther than to intimate by a proclamation that he knew of them; and as to those who indulged themselves in the liberty of reflecting severely upon him, he only warned them in a public speech not to persist in their offence. He bore with great moderation a virulent libel written against him by Aulus Caecinna, and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus, most highly reflecting on his reputation.
LXXVI. His other words and actions, however, so far outweigh all his good qualities, that it is thought he abused his power, and was justly cut off. For he not only obtained excessive honours, such as the consulship every year, the dictatorship for life, and the censorship, but also the title of emperor [86], (46) and the surname of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY [87], besides having his statue amongst the kings [88], and a lofty couch in the theatre. He even suffered some honours to be decreed to him, which were unbefitting the most exalted of mankind; such as a gilded chair of state in the senate-house and on his tribunal, a consecrated chariot, and banners in the Circensian procession, temples, altars, statues among the gods, a bed of state in the temples, a priest, and a college of priests dedicated to himself, like those of Pan; and that one of the months should be called by his name. There were, indeed, no honours which he did not either assume himself, or grant to others, at his will and pleasure. In his third and fourth consulship, he used only the title of the office, being content with the power of dictator, which was conferred upon him with the consulship; and in both years he substituted other consuls in his room, during the three last months; so that in the intervals he held no assemblies of the people, for the election of magistrates, excepting only tribunes and ediles of the people; and appointed officers, under the name of praefects, instead of the praetors, to administer the affairs of the city during his absence. The office of consul having become vacant, by the sudden death of one of the consuls the day before the calends of January [the 1st Jan.], he conferred it on a person who requested it of him, for a few hours. Assuming the same licence, and regardless of the customs of his country, he appointed magistrates to hold their offices for terms of years. He granted the insignia of the consular dignity to ten persons of pretorian rank. He admitted into the senate some men who had been made free of the city, and even natives of Gaul, who were semi-barbarians. (47) He likewise appointed to the management of the mint, and the public revenue of the state, some servants of his own household; and entrusted the command of three legions, which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite of his, the son of his freed-man Rufinus.
LXXVII. He was guilty of the same extravagance in the language he publicly used, as Titus Ampius informs us; according to whom he said, “The republic is nothing but a name, without substance or reality. Sylla was an ignorant fellow to abdicate the dictatorship. Men ought to consider what is becoming when they talk with me, and look upon what I say as a law.” To such a pitch of arrogance did he proceed, that when a soothsayer announced to him the unfavourable omen, that the entrails of a victim offered for sacrifice were without a heart, he said, “The entrails will be more favourable when I please; and it ought not to be regarded as a prodigy that a beast should be found wanting a heart.”
LXXVIII. But what brought upon him the greatest odium, and was thought an unpardonable insult, was his receiving the whole body of the conscript fathers sitting, before the temple of Venus Genitrix, when they waited upon him with a number of decrees, conferring on him the highest dignities. Some say that, on his attempting to rise, he was held down by Cornelius Balbus; others, that he did not attempt to rise at all, but frowned on Caius Trebatius, who suggested to him that he should stand up to receive the senate. This behaviour appeared the more intolerable in him, because, when one of the tribunes of the people, Pontius Aquila, would not rise up to him, as he passed by the tribunes’ seat during his triumph, he was so much offended, that he cried out, “Well then, you tribune, Aquila, oust me from the government.” And for some days afterwards, he never promised a favour to any person, without this proviso, “if Pontus Aquila will give me leave.”
LXXIX. To this extraordinary mark of contempt for the senate, he added another affront still more outrageous. For when, after the sacred rites of the Latin festival, he was returning home, amidst the immoderate and unusual acclamations (48) of the people, a man in the crowd put a laurel crown, encircled with a white fillet [89], on one of his statues; upon which, the tribunes of the people, Epidius Marullus, and Caesetius Flavus, ordered the fillet to be removed from the crown, and the man to be taken to prison. Caesar, being much concerned either that the idea of royalty had been suggested to so little purpose, or, as was said, that he was thus deprived of the merit of refusing it, reprimanded the tribunes very severely, and dismissed them from their office. From that day forward, he was never able to wipe off the scandal of affecting the name of king, although he replied to the populace, when they saluted him by that title, “I am Caesar, and no king.” And at the feast of the Lupercalia [90], when the consul Antony placed a crown upon his head in the rostra several times, he as often put it away, and sent it to the Capitol for Jupiter, the Best and the Greatest. A report was very current, that he had a design of withdrawing to Alexandria or Ilium, whither he proposed to transfer the imperial power, to drain Italy by new levies, and to leave the government of the city to be administered by his friends. To this report it was added, that in the next meeting of the senate, Lucius Cotta, one of the fifteen [91], would make a motion, that as there was in the Sibylline books a prophecy, that the Parthians would never be subdued but by a king, Caesar should have that title conferred upon him.
LXXX. For this reason the conspirators precipitated the execution of their design [92], that they might not be obliged to give their assent to the proposal. Instead, therefore, of caballing any longer separately, in small parties, they now united their counsels; the people themselves being dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, both privately and publicly (49) condemning the tyranny under which they lived, and calling on patriots to assert their cause against the usurper. Upon the admission of foreigners into the senate, a hand-bill was posted up in these words: “A good deed! let no one shew a new senator the way to the house.” These verses were likewise currently repeated:
The Gauls he dragged in triumph through the town,
Caesar has brought into the senate-house,
And changed their plaids [93] for the patrician gown.
Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit: iidem in curiam
Galli braccas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt.
When Quintus Maximus, who had been his deputy in the consulship for the last three months, entered the theatre, and the lictor, according to custom, bid the people take notice who was coming, they all cried out, “He is no consul.” After the removal of Caesetius and Marullus from their office, they were found to have a great many votes at the next election of consuls. Some one wrote under the statue of Lucius Brutus, “Would you were now alive!” and under the statue of Caesar himself these lines:
Because he drove from Rome the royal race,
Brutus was first made consul in their place.
This man, because he put the consuls down,
Has been rewarded with a royal crown.
Brutus, quia reges ejecit, consul primus factus est:
Hic, quia consules ejecit, rex postremo factus est.
About sixty persons were engaged in the conspiracy against him, of whom Caius Cassius, and Marcus and Decimus Brutus were the chief. It was at first debated amongst them, whether they should attack him in the Campus Martius when he was taking the votes of the tribes, and some of them should throw him off the bridge, whilst others should be ready to stab him upon his fall; or else in the Via Sacra, or at the entrance of the theatre. But after public notice had been given by proclamation for the senate to assemble upon the ides of March [15th March], in the senate-house built by Pompey, they approved both of the time and place, as most fitting for their purpose.
LXXXI. Caesar had warning given him of his fate by indubitable (50) omens. A few months before, when the colonists settled at Capua, by virtue of the Julian law, were demolishing some old sepulchres, in building country-houses, and were the more eager at the work, because they discovered certain vessels of antique workmanship, a tablet of brass was found in a tomb, in which Capys, the founder of Capua, was said to have been buried, with an inscription in the Greek language to this effect “Whenever the bones of Capys come to be discovered, a descendant of Iulus will be slain by the hands of his kinsmen, and his death revenged by fearful disasters throughout Italy.” Lest any person should regard this anecdote as a fabulous or silly invention, it was circulated upon the authority of Caius Balbus, an intimate friend of Caesar’s. A few days likewise before his death, he was informed that the horses, which, upon his crossing the Rubicon, he had consecrated, and turned loose to graze without a keeper, abstained entirely from eating, and shed floods of tears. The soothsayer Spurinna, observing certain ominous appearances in a sacrifice which he was offering, advised him to beware of some danger, which threatened to befall him before the ides of March were past. The day before the ides, birds of various kinds from a neighbouring grove, pursuing a wren which flew into Pompey’s senate-house [94], with a sprig of laurel in its beak, tore it in pieces. Also, in the night on which the day of his murder dawned, he dreamt at one time that he was soaring above the clouds, and, at another, that he had joined hands with Jupiter. His wife Calpurnia fancied in her sleep that the pediment of the house was falling down, and her husband stabbed on her bosom; immediately upon which the chamber doors flew open. On account of these omens, as well as his infirm health, he was in some doubt whether he should not remain at home, and defer to some other opportunity the business which he intended to propose to the senate; but Decimus Brutus advising him not to disappoint the senators, who were numerously assembled, and waited his coming, he was prevailed upon to go, and accordingly (51) set forward about the fifth hour. In his way, some person having thrust into his hand a paper, warning him against the plot, he mixed it with some other documents which he held in his left hand, intending to read it at leisure. Victim after victim was slain, without any favourable appearances in the entrails; but still, disregarding all omens, he entered the senate-house, laughing at Spurinna as a false prophet, because the ides of March were come, without any mischief having befallen him. To which the soothsayer replied, “They are come, indeed, but not past.”
LXXXII. When he had taken his seat, the conspirators stood round him, under colour of paying their compliments; and immediately Tullius Cimber, who had engaged to commence the assault, advancing nearer than the rest, as if he had some favour to request, Caesar made signs that he should defer his petition to some other time. Tullius immediately seized him by the toga, on both shoulders; at which Caesar crying out, “Violence is meant!” one of the Cassii wounded him a little below the throat. Caesar seized him by the arm, and ran it through with his style [95]; and endeavouring to rush forward was stopped by another wound. Finding himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the toga [96] about his head, and at the same moment drew the skirt round his legs with his left hand, that he might fall more decently with the lower part of his body covered. He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering a groan only, but no cry, at the first wound; although some authors relate, that when Marcus Brutus fell upon him, he exclaimed, “What! art thou, too, one of them? Thou, my son!” [97] The whole assembly instantly (52) dispersing, he lay for some time after he expired, until three of his slaves laid the body on a litter, and carried it home, with one arm hanging down over the side. Among so many wounds, there was none that was mortal, in the opinion of the surgeon Antistius, except the second, which he received in the breast. The conspirators meant to drag his body into the Tiber as soon as they had killed him; to confiscate his estate, and rescind all his enactments; but they were deterred by fear of Mark Antony, and Lepidus, Caesar’s master of the horse, and abandoned their intentions.
LXXXIII. At the instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-law, his will was opened and read in Mark Antony’s house. He had made it on the ides [13th] of the preceding September, at his Lavican villa, and committed it to the custody of the chief of the Vestal Virgins. Quintus Tubero informs us, that in all the wills he had signed, from the time of his first consulship to the breaking out of the civil war, Cneius Pompey was appointed his heir, and that this had been publicly notified to the army. But in his last will, he named three heirs, the grandsons of his sisters; namely, Caius Octavius for three fourths of his estate, and Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius for the remaining fourth. Other heirs [in remainder] were named at the close of the will, in which he also adopted Caius Octavius, who was to assume his name, into his family; and nominated most of those who were concerned in his death among the guardians of his son, if he should have any; as well as Decimus Brutus amongst his heirs of the second order. Be bequeathed to the Roman people his gardens near the Tiber, and three hundred sesterces each man.
LXXXIV. Notice of his funeral having been solemnly proclaimed, a pile was erected in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of his daughter Julia; and before the Rostra was placed a gilded tabernacle, on the model of the temple of Venus Genitrix; within which was an ivory bed, covered with purple and cloth of gold. At the head was a trophy, with the [bloodstained] robe in which he was slain. It being considered that the whole day would not suffice for carrying the funeral oblations in solemn procession before the corpse, directions were given for every one, without regard to order, to carry them from the city into the Campus Martius, by what way they pleased. To raise pity and indignation for his murder, in the plays acted at the funeral, a passage was sung from Pacuvius’s tragedy, entitled, “The Trial for Arms:”
That ever I, unhappy man, should save
Wretches, who thus have brought me to the grave! [98]
And some lines also from Attilius’s tragedy of “Electra,” to the same effect. Instead of a funeral panegyric, the consul Antony ordered a herald to proclaim to the people the decree of the senate, in which they had bestowed upon him all honours, divine and human; with the oath by which they had engaged themselves for the defence of his person; and to these he added only a few words of his own. The magistrates and others who had formerly filled the highest offices, carried the bier from the Rostra into the Forum. While some proposed that the body should be burnt in the sanctuary of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and others in Pompey’s senate-house; on a sudden, two men, with swords by their sides, and spears in their hands, set fire to the bier with lighted torches. The throng around immediately heaped upon it dry faggots, the tribunals and benches of the adjoining courts, and whatever else came to hand. Then the musicians and players stripped off the dresses they wore on the present occasion, taken from the wardrobe of his triumph at spectacles, rent them, and threw them into the flames. The legionaries, also, of his (54) veteran bands, cast in their armour, which they had put on in honour of his funeral. Most of the ladies did the same by their ornaments, with the bullae [99], and mantles of their children. In this public mourning there joined a multitude of foreigners, expressing their sorrow according to the fashion of their respective countries; but especially the Jews [100], who for several nights together frequented the spot where the body was burnt.
LXXXV. The populace ran from the funeral, with torches in their hands, to the houses of Brutus and Cassius, and were repelled with difficulty. Going in quest of Cornelius Cinna, who had in a speech, the day before, reflected severely upon Caesar, and mistaking for him Helvius Cinna, who happened to fall into their hands, they murdered the latter, and carried his head about the city on the point of a spear. They afterwards erected in the Forum a column of Numidian marble, formed of one stone nearly twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it these words, TO THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. At this column they continued for a long time to offer sacrifices, make vows, and decide controversies, in which they swore by Caesar.
LXXXVI. Some of Caesar’s friends entertained a suspicion, that he neither desired nor cared to live any longer, on account of his declining health; and for that reason slighted all the omens of religion, and the warnings of his friends. Others are of opinion, that thinking himself secure in the late decree of the senate, and their oaths, he dismissed his Spanish guards who attended him with drawn swords. Others again suppose, that he chose rather to face at once the dangers which threatened him on all sides, than to be for ever on the watch against them. Some tell us that he used to say, the commonwealth was more interested in the safety of his person than himself: for that he had for some time been satiated with power and glory; but that the commonwealth, if any thing should befall him, would have no rest, and, involved in another civil war, would be in a worse state than before.
(55) LXXXVII. This, however, was generally admitted, that his death was in many respects such as he would have chosen. For, upon reading the account delivered by Xenophon, how Cyrus in his last illness gave instructions respecting his funeral, Caesar deprecated a lingering death, and wished that his own might be sudden and speedy. And the day before he died, the conversation at supper, in the house of Marcus Lepidus, turning upon what was the most eligible way of dying, he gave his opinion in favour of a death that is sudden and unexpected.
LXXXVIII. He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked amongst the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the vulgar. For during the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated to his memory, a comet blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o’clock; and it was supposed to be the soul of Caesar, now received into heaven: for which reason, likewise, he is represented on his statue with a star on his brow. The senate-house in which he was slain, was ordered to be shut up [101], and a decree made that the ides of March should be called parricidal, and the senate should never more assemble on that day.
LXXXIX. Scarcely any of those who were accessary to his murder, survived him more than three years, or died a natural death [102]. They were all condemned by the senate: some were taken off by one accident, some by another. Part of them perished at sea, others fell in battle; and some slew themselves with the same poniard with which they had stabbed Caesar [103].
(56) [104] The termination of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey forms a new epoch in the Roman History, at which a Republic, which had subsisted with unrivalled glory during a period of about four hundred and sixty years, relapsed into a state of despotism, whence it never more could emerge. So sudden a transition from prosperity to the ruin of public freedom, without the intervention of any foreign enemy, excites a reasonable conjecture, that the constitution in which it could take place, however vigorous in appearance, must have lost that soundness of political health which had enabled it to endure through so many ages. A short view of its preceding state, and of that in which it was at the time of the revolution now mentioned, will best ascertain the foundation of such a conjecture.
Though the Romans, upon the expulsion of Tarquin, made an essential change in the political form of the state, they did not carry their detestation of regal authority so far as to abolish the religious institutions of Numa Pompilius, the second of their kings, according to which, the priesthood, with all the influence annexed to that order, was placed in the hands of the aristocracy. By this wise policy a restraint was put upon the fickleness and violence of the people in matters of government, and a decided superiority given to the Senate both in the deliberative and executive parts of administration. This advantage was afterwards indeed diminished by the creation of Tribunes of the people; a set of men whose ambition often embroiled the Republic in civil dissensions, and who at last abused their authority to such a degree, that they became instruments of aggrandizement to any leading men in the state who could purchase their friendship. In general, however, the majority of the Tribunes being actuated by views which comprehended the interests of the multitude, rather than those of individuals, they did not so much endanger the liberty, as they interrupted the tranquillity, of the public; and when the occasional commotions subsided, there remained no permanent ground for the establishment of personal usurpation.
In every government, an object of the last importance to the peace and welfare of society is the morals of the people; and in proportion as a community is enlarged by propagation, or the accession of a multitude of new members, a more strict attention is requisite to guard against that dissolution of manners to which a crowded and extensive capital has a natural tendency. Of this (57) the Romans became sensible in the growing state of the Republic. In the year of the City 312, two magistrates were first created for taking an account of the number of the people, and the value of their estates; and soon after, they were invested with the authority not only of inspecting the morals of individuals, but of inflicting public censure for any licentiousness of conduct, or violation of decency. Thus both the civil and religious institutions concurred to restrain the people within the bounds of good order and obedience to the laws; at the same time that the frugal life of the ancient Romans proved a strong security against those vices which operate most effectually towards sapping the foundations of a state.
But in the time of Julius Caesar the barriers of public liberty were become too weak to restrain the audacious efforts of ambitious and desperate men. The veneration for the constitution, usually a powerful check to treasonable designs, had been lately violated by the usurpations of Marius and Sylla. The salutary terrors of religion no longer predominated over the consciences of men. The shame of public censure was extinguished in general depravity. An eminent historian, who lived at that time, informs us, that venality universally prevailed amongst the Romans; and a writer who flourished soon after, observes, that luxury and dissipation had encumbered almost all so much with debt, that they beheld with a degree of complacency the prospect of civil war and confusion.
The extreme degree of profligacy at which the Romans were now arrived is in nothing more evident, than that this age gave birth to the most horrible conspiracy which occurs in the annals of humankind, viz. that of Catiline. This was not the project of a few desperate and abandoned individuals, but of a number of men of the most illustrious rank in the state; and it appears beyond doubt, that Julius Caesar was accessary to the design, which was no less than to extirpate the Senate, divide amongst themselves both the public and private treasures, and set Rome on fire. The causes which prompted to this tremendous project, it is generally admitted, were luxury, prodigality, irreligion, a total corruption of manners, and above all, as the immediate cause, the pressing necessity in which the conspirators were involved by their extreme dissipation.
The enormous debt in which Caesar himself was early involved, countenances an opinion that his anxiety to procure the province of Gaul proceeded chiefly from this cause. But during nine years in which he held that province, he acquired such riches as must have rendered him, without competition, the most opulent person in the state. If nothing more, therefore, than a (58) splendid establishment had been the object of his pursuit, he had attained to the summit of his wishes. But when we find him persevering in a plan of aggrandizement beyond this period of his fortunes, we can ascribe his conduct to no other motive than that of outrageous ambition. He projected the building of a new Forum at Rome, for the ground only of which he was to pay 800,000 pounds; he raised legions in Gaul at his own charges: he promised such entertainments to the people as had never been known at Rome from the foundation of the city. All these circumstances evince some latent design of procuring such a popularity as might give him an uncontrolled influence in the management of public affairs. Pompey, we are told, was wont to say, that Caesar not being able, with all his riches, to fulfil the promises which he had made, wished to throw everything into confusion. There may have been some foundation for this remark: but the opinion of Cicero is more probable, that Caesar’s mind was seduced with the temptations of chimerical glory. It is observable that neither Cicero nor Pompey intimates any suspicion that Caesar was apprehensive of being impeached for his conduct, had he returned to Rome in a private station. Yet, that there was reason for such an apprehension, the positive declaration of L. Domitius leaves little room to doubt: especially when we consider the number of enemies that Caesar had in the Senate, and the coolness of his former friend Pompey ever after the death of Julia. The proposed impeachment was founded upon a notorious charge of prosecuting measures destructive of the interests of the commonwealth, and tending ultimately to an object incompatible with public freedom. Indeed, considering the extreme corruption which prevailed amongst the Romans at this time, it is more than probable that Caesar would have been acquitted of the charge, but at such an expense as must have stripped him of all his riches, and placed him again in a situation ready to attempt a disturbance of the public tranquillity. For it is said, that he purchased the friendship of Curio, at the commencement of the civil war, with a bribe little short of half a million sterling.
Whatever Caesar’s private motive may have been for taking arms against his country, he embarked in an enterprise of a nature the most dangerous: and had Pompey conducted himself in any degree suitable to the reputation which he had formerly acquired, the contest would in all probability have terminated in favour of public freedom. But by dilatory measures in the beginning, by imprudently withdrawing his army from Italy into a distant province, and by not pursuing the advantage he had gained by the vigorous repulse of Caesar’s troops in their attack upon his camp, this commander lost every opportunity of extinguishing a war which was to determine the fate, and even the existence, of the Republic. It was accordingly determined on the plains of Pharsalia, where Caesar obtained a victory which was not more decisive than unexpected. He was now no longer amenable either to the tribunal of the Senate or the power of the laws, but triumphed at once over his enemies and the constitution of his country.
It is to the honour of Caesar, that when he had obtained the supreme power, he exercised it with a degree of moderation beyond what was generally expected by those who had fought on the side of the Republic. Of his private life either before or after this period, little is transmitted in history. Henceforth, however, he seems to have lived chiefly at Rome, near which he had a small villa, upon an eminence, commanding a beautiful prospect. His time was almost entirely occupied with public affairs, in the management of which, though he employed many agents, he appears to have had none in the character of actual minister. He was in general easy of access: but Cicero, in a letter to a friend, complains of having been treated with the indignity of waiting a considerable time amongst a crowd in an anti-chamber, before he could have an audience. The elevation of Caesar placed him not above discharging reciprocally the social duties in the intercourse of life. He returned the visits of those who waited upon him, and would sup at their houses. At table, and in the use of wine, he was habitually temperate. Upon the whole, he added nothing to his own happiness by all the dangers, the fatigues, and the perpetual anxiety which he had incurred in the pursuit of unlimited power. His health was greatly impaired: his former cheerfulness of temper, though not his magnanimity, appears to have forsaken him; and we behold in his fate a memorable example of illustrious talents rendered, by inordinate ambition, destructive to himself, and irretrievably pernicious to his country.
From beholding the ruin of the Roman Republic, after intestine divisions, and the distractions of civil war, it will afford some relief to take a view of the progress of literature, which flourished even during those calamities.
The commencement of literature in Rome is to be dated from the reduction of the Grecian States, when the conquerors imported into their own country the valuable productions of the Greek language, and the first essay of Roman genius was in dramatic composition. Livius Andronicus, who flourished about 240 years before the Christian aera, formed the Fescennine verses into a kind of regular drama, upon the model of the Greeks. He was followed some time after by Ennius, who, besides dramatic and other compositions, (60) wrote the annals of the Roman Republic in heroic verse. His style, like that of Andronicus, was rough and unpolished, in conformity to the language of those times; but for grandeur of sentiment and energy of expression, he was admired by the greatest poets in the subsequent ages. Other writers of distinguished reputation in the dramatic department were Naevius, Pacuvius, Plautus, Afranius, Caecilius, Terence, Accius, etc. Accius and Pacuvius are mentioned by Quintilian as writers of extraordinary merit. Of twenty-five comedies written by Plautus, the number transmitted to posterity is nineteen; and of a hundred and eight which Terence is said to have translated from Menander, there now remain only six. Excepting a few inconsiderable fragments, the writings of all the other authors have perished. The early period of Roman literature was distinguished for the introduction of satire by Lucilius, an author celebrated for writing with remarkable ease, but whose compositions, in the opinion of Horace, though Quintilian thinks otherwise, were debased with a mixture of feculency. Whatever may have been their merit, they also have perished, with the works of a number of orators, who adorned the advancing state of letters in the Roman Republic. It is observable, that during this whole period, of near two centuries and a half, there appeared not one historian of eminence sufficient to preserve his name from oblivion.
Julius Caesar himself is one of the most eminent writers of the age in which he lived. His commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars are written with a purity, precision, and perspicuity, which command approbation. They are elegant without affectation, and beautiful without ornament. Of the two books which he composed on Analogy, and those under the title of Anti-Cato, scarcely any fragment is preserved; but we may be assured of the justness of the observations on language, which were made by an author so much distinguished by the excellence of his own compositions. His poem entitled The Journey, which was probably an entertaining narrative, is likewise totally lost.
The most illustrious prose writer of this or any other age is M. Tullius Cicero; and as his life is copiously related in biographical works, it will be sufficient to mention his writings. From his earliest years, he applied himself with unremitting assiduity to the cultivation of literature, and, whilst he was yet a boy, wrote a poem, called Glaucus Pontius, which was extant in Plutarch’s time. Amongst his juvenile productions was a translation into Latin verse, of Aratus on the Phaenomena of the Heavens; of which many fragments are still extant. He also published a poem of the heroic kind, in honour of his countryman C. Marius, who was born at Arpinum, the birth-place of Cicero. (61) This production was greatly admired by Atticus; and old Scaevola was so much pleased with it, that in an epigram written on the subject, he declares that it would live as long as the Roman name and learning subsisted. From a little specimen which remains of it, describing a memorable omen given to Marina from an oak at Arpinum, there is reason to believe that his poetical genius was scarcely inferior to his oratorical, had it been cultivated with equal industry. He published another poem called Limon, of which Donatus has preserved four lines in the life of Terence, in praise of the elegance and purity of that poet’s style. He composed in the Greek language, and in the style and manner of Isocrates, a Commentary or Memoirs of the Transactions of his Consulship. This he sent to Atticus, with a desire, if he approved it, to publish it in Athens and the cities of Greece. He sent a copy of it likewise to Posidonius of Rhodes, and requested of him to undertake the same subject in a more elegant and masterly manner. But the latter returned for answer, that, instead of being encouraged to write by the perusal of his tract, he was quite deterred from attempting it.
Upon the plan of those Memoirs, he afterwards composed a Latin poem in three books, in which he carried down the history to the end of his exile, but did not publish it for several years, from motives of delicacy. The three books were severally inscribed to the three Muses; but of this work there now remain only a few fragments, scattered in different parts of his other writings. He published, about the same time, a collection of the principal speeches which he had made in his consulship, under the title of his Consular Orations. They consisted originally of twelve; but four are entirely lost, and some of the rest are imperfect. He now published also, in Latin verse, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus, of which work no more than two or three small fragments now remain. A few years after, he put the last hand to his Dialogues upon the Character and Idea of the perfect Orator. This admirable work remains entire; a monument both of the astonishing industry and transcendent abilities of its author. At his Cuman villa, he next began a Treatise on Politics, or on the best State of a City, and the Duties of a Citizen. He calls it a great and a laborious work, yet worthy of his pains, if he could succeed in it. This likewise was written in the form of a dialogue, in which the speakers were Scipio, Laelius, Philus, Manilius, and other great persons in the former times of the Republic. It was comprised in six books, and survived him for several ages, though it is now unfortunately lost. From the fragments which remain, it appears to have been a masterly production, in which all the important questions in politics and morality were discussed with elegance and accuracy.
(62) Amidst all the anxiety for the interests of the Republic, which occupied the thoughts of this celebrated personage, he yet found leisure to write several philosophical tracts, which still subsist, to the gratification of the literary world. He composed a treatise on the Nature of the Gods, in three books, containing a comprehensive view of religion, faith, oaths, ceremonies, etc. In elucidating this important subject, he not only delivers the opinions of all the philosophers who had written anything concerning it, but weighs and compares attentively all the arguments with each other; forming upon the whole such a rational and perfect system of natural religion, as never before was presented to the consideration of mankind, and approaching nearly to revelation. He now likewise composed in two books, a discourse on Divination, in which he discusses at large all the arguments that may be advanced for and against the actual existence of such a species of knowledge. Like the preceding works, it is written in the form of dialogue, and in which the chief speaker is Laelius. The same period gave birth to his treatise on Old Age, called Cato Major; and to that on Friendship, written also in dialogue, and in which the chief speaker is Laelius. This book, considered merely as an essay, is one of the most entertaining productions of ancient times; but, beheld as a picture drawn from life, exhibiting the real characters and sentiments of men of the first distinction for virtue and wisdom in the Roman Republic, it becomes doubly interesting to every reader of observation and taste. Cicero now also wrote his discourse on Fate, which was the subject of a conversation with Hirtius, in his villa near Puteoli; and he executed about the same time a translation of Plato’s celebrated Dialogue, called Timaeus, on the nature and origin of the universe. He was employing himself also on a history of his own times, or rather of his own conduct; full of free and severe reflections on those who had abused their power to the oppression of the Republic. Dion Cassius says, that he delivered this book sealed up to his son, with strict orders not to read or publish it till after his death; but from this time he never saw his son, and it is probable that he left the work unfinished. Afterwards, however, some copies of it were circulated; from which his commentator, Asconius, has quoted several particulars.
During a voyage which he undertook to Sicily, he wrote his treatise on Topics, or the Art of finding Arguments on any Question. This was an abstract from Aristotle’s treatise on the same subject; and though he had neither Aristotle nor any other book to assist him, he drew it up from his memory, and finished it as he sailed along the coast of Calabria. The last (63) work composed by Cicero appears to have been his Offices, written for the use of his son, to whom it is addressed. This treatise contains a system of moral conduct, founded upon the noblest principles of human action, and recommended by arguments drawn from the purest sources of philosophy.
Such are the literary productions of this extraordinary man, whose comprehensive understanding enabled him to conduct with superior ability the most abstruse disquisitions into moral and metaphysical science. Born in an age posterior to Socrates and Plato, he could not anticipate the principles inculcated by those divine philosophers, but he is justly entitled to the praise, not only of having prosecuted with unerring judgment the steps which they trod before him, but of carrying his researches to greater extent into the most difficult regions of philosophy. This too he had the merit to perform, neither in the station of a private citizen, nor in the leisure of academic retirement, but in the bustle of public life, amidst the almost constant exertions of the bar, the employment of the magistrate, the duty of the senator, and the incessant cares of the statesman; through a period likewise chequered with domestic afflictions and fatal commotions in the Republic. As a philosopher, his mind appears to have been clear, capacious, penetrating, and insatiable of knowledge. As a writer, he was endowed with every talent that could captivate either the judgment or taste. His researches were continually employed on subjects of the greatest utility to mankind, and those often such as extended beyond the narrow bounds of temporal existence. The being of a God, the immortality of the soul, a future state of rewards and punishments, and the eternal distinction of good and evil; these were in general the great objects of his philosophical enquiries, and he has placed them in a more convincing point of view than they ever were before exhibited to the pagan world. The variety and force of the arguments which he advances, the splendour of his diction, and the zeal with which he endeavours to excite the love and admiration of virtue, all conspire to place his character, as a philosophical writer, including likewise his incomparable eloquence, on the summit of human celebrity.
The form of dialogue, so much used by Cicero, he doubtless adopted in imitation of Plato, who probably took the hint of it from the colloquial method of instruction practised by Socrates. In the early stage of philosophical enquiry, this mode of composition was well adapted, if not to the discovery, at least to the confirmation of moral truth; especially as the practice was then not uncommon, for speculative men to converse together on important subjects, for mutual information. In treating of any subject respecting which the different sects of philosophers differed (64) from each other in point of sentiment, no kind of composition could be more happily suited than dialogue, as it gave alternately full scope to the arguments of the various disputants. It required, however, that the writer should exert his understanding with equal impartiality and acuteness on the different sides of the question; as otherwise he might betray a cause under the appearance of defending it. In all the dialogues of Cicero, he manages the arguments of the several disputants in a manner not only the most fair and interesting, but also such as leads to the most probable and rational conclusion.
After enumerating the various tracts composed and published by Cicero, we have now to mention his Letters, which, though not written for publication, deserve to be ranked among the most interesting remains of Roman literature. The number of such as are addressed to different correspondents is considerable, but those to Atticus alone, his confidential friend, amount to upwards of four hundred; among which are many of great length. They are all written in the genuine spirit of the most approved epistolary composition; uniting familiarity with elevation, and ease with elegance. They display in a beautiful light the author’s character in the social relations of life; as a warm friend, a zealous patron, a tender husband, an affectionate brother, an indulgent father, and a kind master. Beholding them in a more extensive view, they exhibit an ardent love of liberty and the constitution of his country: they discover a mind strongly actuated with the principles of virtue and reason; and while they abound in sentiments the most judicious and philosophical, they are occasionally blended with the charms of wit, and agreeable effusions of pleasantry. What is likewise no small addition to their merit, they contain much interesting description of private life, with a variety of information relative to public transactions and characters of that age. It appears from Cicero’s correspondence, that there was at that time such a number of illustrious Romans, as never before existed in any one period of the Republic. If ever, therefore, the authority of men the most respectable for virtue, rank, and abilities, could have availed to overawe the first attempts at a violation of public liberty, it must have been at this period; for the dignity of the Roman senate was now in the zenith of its splendour.
Cicero has been accused of excessive vanity, and of arrogating to himself an invidious superiority, from his extraordinary talents but whoever peruses his letters to Atticus, must readily acknowledge, that this imputation appears to be destitute of truth. In those excellent productions, though he adduces the strongest arguments for and against any object of consideration, that the (65) most penetrating understanding can suggest, weighs them with each other, and draws from them the most rational conclusions, he yet discovers such a diffidence in his own opinion, that he resigns himself implicitly to the judgment and direction of his friend; a modesty not very compatible with the disposition of the arrogant, who are commonly tenacious of their own opinion, particularly in what relates to any decision of the understanding.
It is difficult to say, whether Cicero appears in his letters more great or amiable: but that he was regarded by his contemporaries in both these lights, and that too in the highest degree, is sufficiently evident. We may thence infer, that the great poets in the subsequent age must have done violence to their own liberality and discernment, when, in compliment to Augustus, whose sensibility would have been wounded by the praises of Cicero, and even by the mention of his name, they have so industriously avoided the subject, as not to afford the most distant intimation that this immortal orator and philosopher had ever existed. Livy however, there is reason to think, did some justice to his memory: but it was not until the race of the Caesars had become extinct, that he received the free and unanimous applause of impartial posterity. Such was the admiration which Quintilian entertained of his writings, that he considered the circumstance or being delighted with them, as an indubitable proof of judgment and taste in literature. Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit. [105]
In this period is likewise to be placed M. Terentius Varro, the celebrated Roman grammarian, and the Nestor of ancient learning. The first mention made of him is, that he was lieutenant to Pompey in his piratical wars, and obtained in that service a naval crown. In the civil wars he joined the side of the Republic, and was taken by Caesar; by whom he was likewise proscribed, but obtained a remission of the sentence. Of all the ancients, he has acquired the greatest fame for his extensive erudition; and we may add, that he displayed the same industry in communicating, as he had done in collecting it. His works originally amounted to no less than five hundred volumes, which have all perished, except a treatise De Lingua Latina, and one De Re Rustica. Of the former of these, which is addressed to Cicero, three books at the beginning are also lost. It appears from the introduction of the fourth book, that they all related to etymology. The first contained such observations as might be made against it; the second, such as might be made in its favour; and the third, observations upon it. He next proceeds to investigate the origin of (66) Latin words. In the fourth book, he traces those which relate to place; in the fifth, those connected with the idea of time; and in the sixth, the origin of both these classes, as they appear in the writings of the poets. The seventh book is employed on declension; in which the author enters upon a minute and extensive enquiry, comprehending a variety of acute and profound observations on the formation of Latin nouns, and their respective natural declinations from the nominative case. In the eighth, he examines the nature and limits of usage and analogy in language; and in the ninth and last book on the subject, takes a general view of what is the reverse of analogy, viz. anomaly. The precision and perspicuity which Varro displays in this work merit the highest encomiums, and justify the character given him in his own time, of being the most learned of the Latin grammarians. To the loss of the first three books, are to be added several chasms in the others; but fortunately they happen in such places as not to affect the coherency of the author’s doctrine, though they interrupt the illustration of it. It is observable that this great grammarian makes use of quom for quum, heis for his, and generally queis for quibus. This practice having become rather obsolete at the time in which he wrote, we must impute his continuance of it to his opinion of its propriety, upon its established principles of grammar, and not to any prejudice of education, or an affectation of singularity. As Varro makes no mention of Caesar’s treatise on Analogy, and had commenced author long before him, it is probable that Caesar’s production was of a much later date; and thence we may infer, that those two writers differed from each other, at least with respect to some particulars on that subject.
This author’s treatise De Re Rustica was undertaken at the desire of a friend, who, having purchased some lands, requested of Varro the favour of his instructions relative to farming, and the economy of a country life, in its various departments. Though Varro was at this time in his eightieth year, he writes with all the vivacity, though without the levity, of youth, and sets out with invoking, not the Muses, like Homer and Ennius, as he observes, but the twelve deities supposed to be chiefly concerned in the operations of agriculture. It appears from the account which he gives, that upwards of fifty Greek authors had treated of this subject in prose, besides Hesiod and Menecrates the Ephesian, who both wrote in verse; exclusive likewise of many Roman writers, and of Mago the Carthaginian, who wrote in the Punic language. Varro’s work is divided into three books, the first of which treats of agriculture; the second, of rearing of cattle; and the third, of feeding animals for the use of the table. (67) In the last of these, we meet with a remarkable instance of the prevalence of habit and fashion over human sentiment, where the author delivers instructions relative to the best method of fattening rats.
We find from Quintilian, that Varro likewise composed satires in various kinds of verse. It is impossible to behold the numerous fragments of this venerable author without feeling the strongest regret for the loss of that vast collection of information which he had compiled, and of judicious observations which he had made on a variety of subjects, during a life of eighty-eight years, almost entirely devoted to literature. The remark of St. Augustine is well founded, That it is astonishing how Varro, who read such a number of books, could find time to compose so many volumes; and how he who composed so many volumes, could be at leisure to peruse such a variety of books, and to gain so much literary information.
Catullus is said to have been born at Verona, of respectable parents; his father and himself being in the habit of intimacy with Julius Caesar. He was brought to Rome by Mallius, to whom several of his epigrams are addressed. The gentleness of his manners, and his application to study, we are told, recommended him to general esteem; and he had the good fortune to obtain the patronage of Cicero. When he came to be known as a poet, all these circumstances would naturally contribute to increase his reputation for ingenuity; and accordingly we find his genius applauded by several of his contemporaries. It appears that his works are not transmitted entire to posterity; but there remain sufficient specimens by which we may be enabled to appreciate his poetical talents.
Quintilian, and Diomed the grammarian, have ranked Catullus amongst the iambic writers, while others have placed him amongst the lyric. He has properly a claim to each of these stations; but his versification being chiefly iambic, the former of the arrangements seems to be the most suitable. The principal merit of Catullus’s Iambics consists in a simplicity of thought and expression. The thoughts, however, are often frivolous, and, what is yet more reprehensible, the author gives way to gross obscenity: in vindication of which, he produces the following couplet, declaring that a good poet ought to be chaste in his own person, but that his verses need not be so.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum: versiculos nihil necesse est.
This sentiment has been frequently cited by those who were inclined to follow the example of Catullus; but if such a practice be in any case admissible, it is only where the poet personates (68) a profligate character; and the instances in which it is adopted by Catullus are not of that description. It had perhaps been a better apology, to have pleaded the manners of the times; for even Horace, who wrote only a few years after, has suffered his compositions to be occasionally debased by the same kind of blemish.
Much has been said of this poet’s invective against Caesar, which produced no other effect than an invitation to sup at the dictator’s house. It was indeed scarcely entitled to the honour of the smallest resentment. If any could be shewn, it must have been for the freedom used by the author, and not for any novelty in his lampoon. There are two poems on this subject, viz. the twenty-ninth and fifty-seventh, in each of which Caesar is joined with Mamurra, a Roman knight, who had acquired great riches in the Gallic war. For the honour of Catullus’s gratitude, we should suppose that the latter is the one to which historians allude: but, as poetical compositions, they are equally unworthy of regard. The fifty seventh is nothing more than a broad repetition of the raillery, whether well or ill founded, with which Caesar was attacked on various occasions, and even in the senate, after his return from Bithynia. Caesar had been taunted with this subject for upwards of thirty years; and after so long a familiarity with reproach, his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now have been much diminished, if not entirely extinguished. The other poem is partly in the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of common jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same terms which Caesar’s legions, though strongly attached to his person, scrupled not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their general, during the celebration of his triumph. In a word, it deserves to be regarded as an effusion of Saturnalian licentiousness, rather than of poetry. With respect to the Iambics of Catullus, we may observe in general, that the sarcasm is indebted for its force, not so much to ingenuity of sentiment, as to the indelicate nature of the subject, or coarseness of expression.
The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and discover a lively imagination. Amongst the best of his productions, is a translation of the celebrated ode of Sappho:
Ille mi par esse Deo videtur,
me, etc.
This ode is executed both with spirit and elegance; it is, however, imperfect; and the last stanza seems to be spurious. Catullus’s epigrams are entitled to little praise, with regard either to sentiment or point; and on the whole, his merit, as a poet, appears to have been magnified beyond its real extent. He is said to have died about the thirtieth year of his age.
(69) Lucretius is the author of a celebrated poem, in six books, De Rerum Natura; a subject which had been treated many ages before by Empedocles, a philosopher and poet of Agrigentum. Lucretius was a zealous partizan of Democritus, and the sect of Epicurus, whose principles concerning the eternity of matter, the materiality of the soul, and the non-existence of a future state of rewards and punishments, he affects to maintain with a certainty equal to that of mathematical demonstration. Strongly prepossessed with the hypothetical doctrines of his master, and ignorant of the physical system of the universe, he endeavours to deduce from the phenomena of the material world conclusions not only unsupported by legitimate theory, but repugnant to the principles of the highest authority in metaphysical disquisition. But while we condemn his speculative notions as degrading to human nature, and subversive of the most important interests of mankind, we must admit that he has prosecuted his visionary hypothesis with uncommon ingenuity. Abstracting from it the rhapsodical nature of this production, and its obscurity in some parts, it has great merit as a poem. The style is elevated, and the versification in general harmonious. By the mixture of obsolete words, it possesses an air of solemnity well adapted to abstruse researches; at the same time that by the frequent resolution of diphthongs, it instils into the Latin the sonorous and melodious powers of the Greek language.
While Lucretius was engaged in this work, he fell into a state of insanity, occasioned, as is supposed, by a philtre, or love-potion, given him by his wife Lucilia. The complaint, however, having lucid intervals, he employed them in the execution of his plan, and, soon after it was finished, laid violent hands upon himself, in the forty-third year of his age. This fatal termination of his life, which perhaps proceeded from insanity, was ascribed by his friends and admirers to his concern for the banishment of one Memmius, with whom he was intimately connected, and for the distracted state of the republic. It was, however, a catastrophe which the principles of Epicurus, equally erroneous and irreconcilable to resignation and fortitude, authorized in particular circumstances. Even Atticus, the celebrated correspondent of Cicero, a few years after this period, had recourse to the same desperate expedient, by refusing all sustenance, while he laboured under a lingering disease.
It is said that Cicero revised the poem of Lucretius after the death of the author, and this circumstance is urged by the abettors of atheism, as a proof that the principles contained in the work had the sanction of his authority. But no inference in favour of Lucretius’s doctrine can justly be drawn from this circumstance. (70) Cicero, though already sufficiently acquainted with the principles of the Epicurean sect, might not be averse to the perusal of a production, which collected and enforced them in a nervous strain of poetry; especially as the work was likely to prove interesting to his friend Atticus, and would perhaps afford subject for some letters or conversation between them. It can have been only with reference to composition that the poem was submitted to Cicero’s revisal: for had he been required to exercise his judgment upon its principles, he must undoubtedly have so much mutilated the work, as to destroy the coherency of the system. He might be gratified with the shew of elaborate research, and confident declamation, which it exhibited, but he must have utterly disapproved of the conclusions which the author endeavoured to establish. According to the best information, Lucretius died in the year from the building of Rome 701, when Pompey was the third time consul. Cicero lived several years beyond this period, and in the two last years of his life, he composed those valuable works which contain sentiments diametrically repugnant to the visionary system of Epicurus. The argument, therefore, drawn from Cicero’s revisal, so far from confirming the principle of Lucretius, affords the strongest tacit declaration against their validity; because a period sufficient for mature consideration had elapsed, before Cicero published his own admirable system of philosophy. The poem of Lucretius, nevertheless, has been regarded as the bulwark of atheism—of atheism, which, while it impiously arrogates the support of reason, both reason and nature disclaim.
Many more writers flourished in this period, but their works have totally perished. Sallust was now engaged in historical productions; but as they were not yet completed, they will be noticed in the next division of the review.
D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS.
(71)
I. That the family of the Octavii was of the first distinction in Velitrae [106], is rendered evident by many circumstances. For in the most frequented part of the town, there was, not long since, a street named the Octavian; and an altar was to be seen, consecrated to one Octavius, who being chosen general in a war with some neighbouring people, the enemy making a sudden attack, while he was sacrificing to Mars, he immediately snatched the entrails of the victim from off the fire, and offered them half raw upon the altar; after which, marching out to battle, he returned victorious. This incident gave rise to a law, by which it was enacted, that in all future times the entrails should be offered to Mars in the same manner; and the rest of the victim be carried to the Octavii.
II. This family, as well as several in Rome, was admitted into the senate by Tarquinius Priscus, and soon afterwards placed by Servius Tullius among the patricians; but in process of time it transferred itself to the plebeian order, and, after the lapse of a long interval, was restored by Julius Caesar to the rank of patricians. The first person of the family raised by the suffrages of the people to the magistracy, was Caius Rufus. He obtained the quaestorship, and had two sons, Cneius and Caius; from whom are descended the two branches of the Octavian family, which have had very different fortunes. For Cneius, and his descendants in uninterrupted succession, held all the highest offices of the state; whilst Caius and his posterity, whether from their circumstances or their choice, remained in the equestrian order until the father of Augustus. The great-grandfather of Augustus served as a military tribune in the second Punic war in Sicily, under the command of Aemilius Pappus. His grandfather contented himself with bearing the public offices of his own municipality, and grew old in the tranquil enjoyment of an ample patrimony. Such is the account given (72) by different authors. Augustus himself, however, tells us nothing more than that he was descended of an equestrian family, both ancient and rich, of which his father was the first who obtained the rank of senator. Mark Antony upbraidingly tells him that his great-grandfather was a freedman of the territory of Thurium [107], and a rope-maker, and his grandfather a usurer. This is all the information I have any where met with, respecting the ancestors of Augustus by the father’s side.
III. His father Caius Octavius was, from his earliest years, a person both of opulence and distinction: for which reason I am surprised at those who say that he was a money-dealer [108], and was employed in scattering bribes, and canvassing for the candidates at elections, in the Campus Martius. For being bred up in all the affluence of a great estate, he attained with ease to honourable posts, and discharged the duties of them with much distinction. After his praetorship, he obtained by lot the province of Macedonia; in his way to which he cut off some banditti, the relics of the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who had possessed themselves of the territory of Thurium; having received from the senate an extraordinary commission for that purpose. In his government of the province, he conducted himself with equal justice and resolution; for he defeated the Bessians and Thracians in a great battle, and treated the allies of the republic in such a manner, that there are extant letters from M. Tullius Cicero, in which he advises and exhorts his brother Quintus, who then held the proconsulship of Asia with no great reputation, to imitate the example of his neighbour Octavius, in gaining the affections of the allies of Rome.
IV. After quitting Macedonia, before he could declare himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, leaving behind him a daughter, the elder Octavia, by Ancharia; and another daughter, Octavia the younger, as well as Augustus, by Atia, who was the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus, and Julia, sister to Caius Julius Caesar. Balbus was, by the father’s (73) side, of a family who were natives of Aricia [109], and many of whom had been in the senate. By the mother’s side he was nearly related to Pompey the Great; and after he had borne the office of praetor, was one of the twenty commissioners appointed by the Julian law to divide the land in Campania among the people. But Mark Antony, treating with contempt Augustus’s descent even by the mother’s side, says that his great grand-father was of African descent, and at one time kept a perfumer’s shop, and at another, a bake-house, in Aricia. And Cassius of Parma, in a letter, taxes Augustus with being the son not only of a baker, but a usurer. These are his words: “Thou art a lump of thy mother’s meal, which a money-changer of Nerulum taking from the newest bake-house of Aricia, kneaded into some shape, with his hands all discoloured by the fingering of money.”
V. Augustus was born in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Caius Antonius [110], upon the ninth of the calends of October [the 23rd September], a little before sunrise, in the quarter of the Palatine Hill [111], and the street called The Ox-Heads [112], where now stands a chapel dedicated to him, and built a little after his death. For, as it is recorded in the proceedings of the senate, when Caius Laetorius, a young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the senators for a lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged, besides his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon his coming into the world; and entreated that (74) he might find favour, for the sake of that deity, who was in a peculiar manner his; an act of the senate was passed, for the consecration of that part of his house in which Augustus was born.
VI. His nursery is shewn to this day, in a villa belonging to the family, in the suburbs of Velitrae; being a very small place, and much like a pantry. An opinion prevails in the neighbourhood, that he was also born there. Into this place no person presumes to enter, unless upon necessity, and with great devotion, from a belief, for a long time prevalent, that such as rashly enter it are seized with great horror and consternation, which a short while since was confirmed by a remarkable incident. For when a new inhabitant of the house had, either by mere chance, or to try the truth of the report, taken up his lodging in that apartment, in the course of the night, a few hours afterwards, he was thrown out by some sudden violence, he knew not how, and was found in a state of stupefaction, with the coverlid of his bed, before the door of the chamber.
VII. While he was yet an infant, the surname of Thurinus was given him, in memory of the birth-place of his family, or because, soon after he was born, his father Octavius had been successful against the fugitive slaves, in the country near Thurium. That he was surnamed Thurinus, I can affirm upon good foundation, for when a boy, I had a small bronze statue of him, with that name upon it in iron letters, nearly effaced by age, which I presented to the emperor [113], by whom it is now revered amongst the other tutelary deities in his chamber. He is also often called Thurinus contemptuously, by Mark Antony in his letters; to which he makes only this reply: “I am surprised that my former name should be made a subject of reproach.” He afterwards assumed the name of Caius Caesar, and then of Augustus; the former in compliance with the will of his great-uncle, and the latter upon a motion of Munatius Plancus in the senate. For when some proposed to confer upon him the name of Romulus, as being, in a manner, a second founder of the city, it was resolved that he should rather be called Augustus, a surname not only new, but of more dignity, because places devoted to religion, and those in which anything (75) is consecrated by augury, are denominated august, either from the word auctus, signifying augmentation, or ab avium gestu, gustuve, from the flight and feeding of birds; as appears from this verse of Ennius:
When glorious Rome by august augury was built. [114]
VIII. He lost his father when he was only four years of age; and, in his twelfth year, pronounced a funeral oration in praise of his grand-mother Julia. Four years afterwards, having assumed the robe of manhood, he was honoured with several military rewards by Caesar in his African triumph, although he took no part in the war, on account of his youth. Upon his uncle’s expedition to Spain against the sons of Pompey, he was followed by his nephew, although he was scarcely recovered from a dangerous sickness; and after being shipwrecked at sea, and travelling with very few attendants through roads that were infested with the enemy, he at last came up with him. This activity gave great satisfaction to his uncle, who soon conceived an increasing affection for him, on account of such indications of character. After the subjugation of Spain, while Caesar was meditating an expedition against the Dacians and Parthians, he was sent before him to Apollonia, where he applied himself to his studies; until receiving intelligence that his uncle was murdered, and that he was appointed his heir, he hesitated for some time whether he should call to his aid the legions stationed in the neighbourhood; but he abandoned the design as rash and premature. However, returning to Rome, he took possession of his inheritance, although his mother was apprehensive that such a measure might be attended with danger, and his step-father, Marcius Philippus, a man of consular rank, very earnestly dissuaded him from it. From this time, collecting together a strong military force, he first held the government in conjunction with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, then with Antony only, for nearly twelve years, and at last in his own hands during a period of four and forty.
IX. Having thus given a very short summary of his life, I shall prosecute the several parts of it, not in order of time, but arranging his acts into distinct classes, for the sake of (76) perspicuity. He was engaged in five civil wars, namely those of Modena, Philippi, Perugia, Sicily, and Actium; the first and last of which were against Antony, and the second against Brutus and Cassius; the third against Lucius Antonius, the triumvir’s brother, and the fourth against Sextus Pompeius, the son of Cneius Pompeius.
X. The motive which gave rise to all these wars was the opinion he entertained that both his honour and interest were concerned in revenging the murder of his uncle, and maintaining the state of affairs he had established. Immediately after his return from Apollonia, he formed the design of taking forcible and unexpected measures against Brutus and Cassius; but they having foreseen the danger and made their escape, he resolved to proceed against them by an appeal to the laws in their absence, and impeach them for the murder. In the mean time, those whose province it was to prepare the sports in honour of Caesar’s last victory in the civil war, not daring to do it, he undertook it himself. And that he might carry into effect his other designs with greater authority, he declared himself a candidate in the room of a tribune of the people who happened to die at that time, although he was of a patrician family, and had not yet been in the senate. But the consul, Mark Antony, from whom he had expected the greatest assistance, opposing him in his suit, and even refusing to do him so much as common justice, unless gratified with a large bribe, he went over to the party of the nobles, to whom he perceived Sylla to be odious, chiefly for endeavouring to drive Decius Brutus, whom he besieged in the town of Modena, out of the province, which had been given him by Caesar, and confirmed to him by the senate. At the instigation of persons about him, he engaged some ruffians to murder his antagonist; but the plot being discovered, and dreading a similar attempt upon himself, he gained over Caesar’s veteran soldiers, by distributing among them all the money he could collect. Being now commissioned by the senate to command the troops he had gathered, with the rank of praetor, and in conjunction with Hirtius and Pansa, who had accepted the consulship, to carry assistance to Decius Brutus, he put an end to the war by two battles in three months. Antony writes, that in the former of these he ran away, and two days afterwards made his appearance (77) without his general’s cloak and his horse. In the last battle, however, it is certain that he performed the part not only of a general, but a soldier; for, in the heat of the battle; when the standard-bearer of his legion was severely wounded, he took the eagle upon his shoulders, and carried it a long time.
XI. In this war [115], Hirtius being slain in battle, and Pansa dying a short time afterwards of a wound, a report was circulated that they both were killed through his means, in order that, when Antony fled, the republic having lost its consuls, he might have the victorious armies entirely at his own command. The death of Pansa was so fully believed to have been caused by undue means, that Glyco, his surgeon, was placed in custody, on a suspicion of having poisoned his wound. And to this, Aquilius Niger adds, that he killed Hirtius, the other consul, in the confusion of the battle, with his own hands.
XII. But upon intelligence that Antony, after his defeat, had been received by Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the generals and armies had all declared for the senate, he, without any hesitation, deserted from the party of the nobles; alleging as an excuse for his conduct, the actions and sayings of several amongst them; for some said, “he was a mere boy,” and others threw out, “that he ought to be promoted to honours, and cut off,” to avoid the making any suitable acknowledgment either to him or the veteran legions. And the more to testify his regret for having before attached himself to the other faction, he fined the Nursini in a large sum of money, which they were unable to pay, and then expelled them from the town, for having inscribed upon a monument, erected at the public charge to their countrymen who were slain in the battle of Modena, “That they fell in the cause of liberty.”
XIII. Having entered into a confederacy with Antony and Lepidus, he brought the war at Philippi to an end in two battles, although he was at that time weak, and suffering from sickness [116]. In the first battle he was driven from his camp, (78) and with some difficulty made his escape to the wing of the army commanded by Antony. And now, intoxicated with success, he sent the head of Brutus [117] to be cast at the foot of Caesar’s statue, and treated the most illustrious of the prisoners not only with cruelty, but with abusive language; insomuch that he is said to have answered one of them who humbly intreated that at least he might not remain unburied, “That will be in the power of the birds.” Two others, father and son, who begged for their lives, he ordered to cast lots which of them should live, or settle it between themselves by the sword; and was a spectator of both their deaths: for the father offering his life to save his son, and being accordingly executed, the son likewise killed himself upon the spot. On this account, the rest of the prisoners, and amongst them Marcus Favonius, Cato’s rival, being led up in fetters, after they had saluted Antony, the general, with much respect, reviled Octavius in the foulest language. After this victory, dividing between them the offices of the state, Mark Antony [118] undertook to restore order in the east, while Caesar conducted the veteran soldiers back to Italy, and settled them in colonies on the lands belonging to the municipalities. But he had the misfortune to please neither the soldiers nor the owners of the lands; one party complaining of the injustice done them, in being violently ejected from their possessions, and the other, that they were not rewarded according to their merit. [119]
XIV. At this time he obliged Lucius Antony, who, presuming upon his own authority as consul, and his brother’s power, was raising new commotions, to fly to Perugia, and forced him, by famine, to surrender at last, although not without having been exposed to great hazards, both before the war and during its continuance. For a common soldier having got into the seats of the equestrian order in the theatre, at the public spectacles, Caesar ordered him to be removed by an officer; and a rumour being thence spread by his enemies, that he had (79) put the man to death by torture, the soldiers flocked together so much enraged, that he narrowly escaped with his life. The only thing that saved him, was the sudden appearance of the man, safe and sound, no violence having been offered him. And whilst he was sacrificing under the walls of Perugia, he nearly fell into the hands of a body of gladiators, who sallied out of the town.
XV. After the taking of Perugia [120], he sentenced a great number of the prisoners to death, making only one reply to all who implored pardon, or endeavoured to excuse themselves, “You must die.” Some authors write, that three hundred of the two orders, selected from the rest, were slaughtered, like victims, before an altar raised to Julius Caesar, upon the ides of March [15th April] [121]. Nay, there are some who relate, that he entered upon the war with no other view, than that his secret enemies, and those whom fear more than affection kept quiet, might be detected, by declaring themselves, now they had an opportunity, with Lucius Antony at their head; and that having defeated them, and confiscated their estates, he might be enabled to fulfil his promises to the veteran soldiers.
XVI. He soon commenced the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey’s cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given him for the oar, he formed the Julian harbour at Baiae, by letting the sea into the Lucrine and Avernian lakes; and having exercised his forces there during the whole winter, he defeated Pompey betwixt Mylae and Naulochus; although (80) just as the engagement commenced, he suddenly fell into such a profound sleep, that his friends were obliged to wake him to give the signal. This, I suppose, gave occasion for Antony’s reproach: “You were not able to take a clear view of the fleet, when drawn up in line of battle, but lay stupidly upon your back, gazing at the sky; nor did you get up and let your men see you, until Marcus Agrippa had forced the enemies’ ships to sheer off.” Others imputed to him both a saying and an action which were indefensible; for, upon the loss of his fleets by storm, he is reported to have said: “I will conquer in spite of Neptune;” and at the next Circensian games, he would not suffer the statue of that God to be carried in procession as usual. Indeed he scarcely ever ran more or greater risks in any of his wars than in this. Having transported part of his army to Sicily, and being on his return for the rest, he was unexpectedly attacked by Demochares and Apollophanes, Pompey’s admirals, from whom he escaped with great difficulty, and with one ship only. Likewise, as he was travelling on foot through the Locrian territory to Rhegium, seeing two of Pompey’s vessels passing by that coast, and supposing them to be his own, he went down to the shore, and was very nearly taken prisoner. On this occasion, as he was making his escape by some bye-ways, a slave belonging to Aemilius Paulus, who accompanied him, owing him a grudge for the proscription of Paulus, the father of Aemilius, and thinking he had now an opportunity of revenging it, attempted to assassinate him. After the defeat of Pompey, one of his colleagues [124], Marcus Lepidus, whom he had summoned to his aid from Africa, affecting great superiority, because he was at the head of twenty legions, and claiming for himself the principal management of affairs in a threatening manner, he divested him of his command, but, upon his humble submission, granted him his life, but banished him for life to Circeii.
XVII. The alliance between him and Antony, which had always been precarious, often interrupted, and ill cemented by repeated reconciliations, he at last entirely dissolved. And to make it known to the world how far Antony had degenerated from patriotic feelings, he caused a will of his, which had been left at Rome, and in which he had nominated Cleopatra’s children, amongst others, as his heirs, to be opened and read in an assembly of the people. Yet upon his being declared an enemy, he sent to him all his relations and friends, among whom were Caius Sosius and Titus Domitius, at that time consuls. He likewise spoke favourably in public of the people of Bologna, for joining in the association with the rest of Italy to support his cause, because they had, in former times, been under the protection of the family of the Antonii. And not long afterwards he defeated him in a naval engagement near Actium, which was prolonged to so late an hour, that, after the victory, he was obliged to sleep on board his ship. From Actium he went to the isle of Samoa to winter; but being alarmed with the accounts of a mutiny amongst the soldiers he had selected from the main body of his army sent to Brundisium after the victory, who insisted on their being rewarded for their service and discharged, he returned to Italy. In his passage thither, he encountered two violent storms, the first between the promontories of Peloponnesus and Aetolia, and the other about the Ceraunian mountains; in both which a part of his Liburnian squadron was sunk, the spars and rigging of his own ship carried away, and the rudder broken in pieces. He remained only twenty-seven days at Brundisium, until the demands of the soldiers were settled, and then went, by way of Asia and Syria, to Egypt, where laying siege to Alexandria, whither Antony had fled with Cleopatra, he made himself master of it in a short time. He drove Antony to kill himself, after he had used every effort to obtain conditions of peace, and he saw his corpse [126]. Cleopatra he anxiously wished to save for his triumph; and when she was supposed to have been bit to death by an asp, he sent for the Psylli [127] to (82) endeavour to suck out the poison. He allowed them to be buried together in the same grave, and ordered a mausoleum, begun by themselves, to be completed. The eldest of Antony’s two sons by Fulvia he commanded to be taken by force from the statue of Julius Caesar, to which he had fled, after many fruitless supplications for his life, and put him to death. The same fate attended Caesario, Cleopatra’s son by Caesar, as he pretended, who had fled for his life, but was retaken. The children which Antony had by Cleopatra he saved, and brought up and cherished in a manner suitable to their rank, just as if they had been his own relations.
XVIII. At this time he had a desire to see the sarcophagus and body of Alexander the Great, which, for that purpose, were taken out of the cell in which they rested [128]; and after viewing them for some time, he paid honours to the memory of that prince, by offering a golden crown, and scattering flowers upon the body [129]. Being asked if he wished to see the tombs of the Ptolemies also; he replied, “I wish to see a king, not dead men.” [130] He reduced Egypt into the form of a province and to render it more fertile, and more capable of supplying Rome with corn, he employed his army to scour the canals, into which the Nile, upon its rise, discharges itself; but which during a long series of years had become nearly choked up with mud. To perpetuate the glory of his victory at Actium, he built the city of Nicopolis on that part of the coast, and established games to be celebrated there every five years; enlarging likewise an old temple of Apollo, he ornamented with naval trophies [131] the spot on which he had pitched his camp, and consecrated it to Neptune and Mars.
(83) XIX. He afterwards [132] quashed several tumults and insurrections, as well as several conspiracies against his life, which were discovered, by the confession of accomplices, before they were ripe for execution; and others subsequently. Such were those of the younger Lepidus, of Varro Muraena, and Fannius Caepio; then that of Marcus Egnatius, afterwards that of Plautius Rufus, and of Lucius Paulus, his grand-daughter’s husband; and besides these, another of Lucius Audasius, an old feeble man, who was under prosecution for forgery; as also of Asinius Epicadus, a Parthinian mongrel [133], and at last that of Telephus, a lady’s prompter [134]; for he was in danger of his life from the plots and conspiracies of some of the lowest of the people against him. Audasius and Epicadus had formed the design of carrying off to the armies his daughter Julia, and his grandson Agrippa, from the islands in which they were confined. Telephus, wildly dreaming that the government was destined to him by the fates, proposed to fall both upon Octavius and the senate. Nay, once, a soldier’s servant belonging to the army in Illyricum, having passed the porters unobserved, was found in the night-time standing before his chamber-door, armed with a hunting-dagger. Whether the person was really disordered in the head, or only counterfeited madness, is uncertain; for no confession was obtained from him by torture.
XX. He conducted in person only two foreign wars; the Dalmatian, whilst he was yet but a youth; and, after Antony’s final defeat, the Cantabrian. He was wounded in the former of these wars; in one battle he received a contusion in the right knee from a stone—and in another, he was much hurt in (84) one leg and both arms, by the fall of a fridge [135]. His other wars he carried on by his lieutenants; but occasionally visited the army, in some of the wars of Pannonia and Germany, or remained at no great distance, proceeding from Rome as far as Ravenna, Milan, or Aquileia.
XXI. He conquered, however, partly in person, and partly by his lieutenants, Cantabria [136], Aquitania and Pannonia [137], Dalmatia, with all Illyricum and Rhaetia [138], besides the two Alpine nations, the Vindelici and the Salassii [139]. He also checked the incursions of the Dacians, by cutting off three of their generals with vast armies, and drove the Germans beyond the river Elbe; removing two other tribes who submitted, the Ubii and Sicambri, into Gaul, and settling them in the country bordering on the Rhine. Other nations also, which broke into revolt, he reduced to submission. But he never made war upon any nation without just and necessary cause; and was so far from being ambitious either to extend the empire, or advance his own military glory, that he obliged the chiefs of some barbarous tribes to swear in the temple of Mars the Avenger [140], that they would faithfully observe their engagements, and not violate the peace which they had implored. Of some he demanded a new description of hostages, their women, having found from experience that they cared little for their men when given as hostages; but he always afforded them the means of getting back their hostages whenever they wished it. Even those who engaged most frequently and with the greatest perfidy in their rebellion, he never punished more severely than by selling their captives, on the terms (85) of their not serving in any neighbouring country, nor being released from their slavery before the expiration of thirty years. By the character which he thus acquired, for virtue and moderation, he induced even the Indians and Scythians, nations before known to the Romans by report only, to solicit his friendship, and that of the Roman people, by ambassadors. The Parthians readily allowed his claim to Armenia; restoring at his demand, the standards which they had taken from Marcus Crassus and Mark Antony, and offering him hostages besides. Afterwards, when a contest arose between several pretenders to the crown of that kingdom, they refused to acknowledge any one who was not chosen by him.
XXII. The temple of Janus Quirinus, which had been shut twice only, from the era of the building of the city to his own time, he closed thrice in a much shorter period, having established universal peace both by sea and land. He twice entered the city with the honours of an Ovation [141], namely, after the war of Philippi, and again after that of Sicily. He had also three curule triumphs [142] for his several victories in (86) Dalmatia, at Actium, and Alexandria; each of which lasted three days.
XXIII. In all his wars, he never received any signal or ignominious defeat, except twice in Germany, under his lieutenants Lollius and Varus. The former indeed had in it more of dishonour than disaster; but that of Varus threatened the security of the empire itself; three legions, with the commander, his lieutenants, and all the auxiliaries, being cut off. Upon receiving intelligence of this disaster, he gave orders for keeping a strict watch over the city, to prevent any public disturbance, and prolonged the appointments of the prefects in the provinces, that the allies might be kept in order by experience of persons to whom they were used. He made a vow to celebrate the great games in honour of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, “if he would be pleased to restore the state to more prosperous circumstances.” This had formerly been resorted to in the Cimbrian and Marsian wars. In short, we are informed that he was in such consternation at this event, that he let the hair of his head and beard grow for several months, and sometimes knocked his head against the door-posts, crying out, “O, Quintilius Varus! Give me back my legions!” And (87) ever after, he observed the anniversary of this calamity, as a day of sorrow and mourning.
XXIV. In military affairs he made many alterations, introducing some practices entirely new, and reviving others, which had become obsolete. He maintained the strictest discipline among the troops; and would not allow even his lieutenants the liberty to visit their wives, except reluctantly, and in the winter season only. A Roman knight having cut off the thumbs of his two young sons, to render them incapable of serving in the wars, he exposed both him and his estate to public sale. But upon observing the farmers of the revenue very greedy for the purchase, he assigned him to a freedman of his own, that he might send him into the country, and suffer him to retain his freedom. The tenth legion becoming mutinous, he disbanded it with ignominy; and did the same by some others which petulantly demanded their discharge; withholding from them the rewards usually bestowed on those who had served their stated time in the wars. The cohorts which yielded their ground in time of action, he decimated, and fed with barley. Centurions, as well as common sentinels, who deserted their posts when on guard, he punished with death. For other misdemeanors he inflicted upon them various kinds of disgrace; such as obliging them to stand all day before the praetorium, sometimes in their tunics only, and without their belts, sometimes to carry poles ten feet long, or sods of turf.
XXV. After the conclusion of the civil wars, he never, in any of his military harangues, or proclamations, addressed them by the title of “Fellow-soldiers,” but as “Soldiers” only. Nor would he suffer them to be otherwise called by his sons or step-sons, when they were in command; judging the former epithet to convey the idea of a degree of condescension inconsistent with military discipline, the maintenance of order, and his own majesty, and that of his house. Unless at Rome, in case of incendiary fires, or under the apprehension of public disturbances during a scarcity of provisions, he never employed in his army slaves who had been made freedmen, except upon two occasions; on one, for the security of the colonies bordering upon Illyricum, and on the other, to guard (88) the banks of the river Rhine. Although he obliged persons of fortune, both male and female, to give up their slaves, and they received their manumission at once, yet he kept them together under their own standard, unmixed with soldiers who were better born, and armed likewise after different fashion. Military rewards, such as trappings, collars, and other decorations of gold and silver, he distributed more readily than camp or mural crowns, which were reckoned more honourable than the former. These he bestowed sparingly, without partiality, and frequently even on common soldiers. He presented M. Agrippa, after the naval engagement in the Sicilian war, with a sea-green banner. Those who shared in the honours of a triumph, although they had attended him in his expeditions, and taken part in his victories, he judged it improper to distinguish by the usual rewards for service, because they had a right themselves to grant such rewards to whom they pleased. He thought nothing more derogatory to the character of an accomplished general than precipitancy and rashness; on which account he had frequently in his mouth those proverbs:
Speude bradeos,
Hasten slowly,
And
‘Asphalaes gar est’ ameinon, hae erasus strataelataes.
The cautious captain’s better than the bold.
And “That is done fast enough, which is done well enough.”
He was wont to say also, that “a battle or a war ought never to be undertaken, unless the prospect of gain overbalanced the fear of loss. For,” said he, “men who pursue small advantages with no small hazard, resemble those who fish with a golden hook, the loss of which, if the line should happen to break, could never be compensated by all the fish they might take.”
XXVI. He was advanced to public offices before the age at which he was legally qualified for them; and to some, also, of a new kind, and for life. He seized the consulship in the twentieth year of his age, quartering his legions in a threatening manner near the city, and sending deputies to demand it for him in the name of the army. When the senate demurred, (89) a centurion, named Cornelius, who was at the head of the chief deputation, throwing back his cloak, and shewing the hilt of his sword, had the presumption to say in the senate-house, “This will make him consul, if ye will not.” His second consulship he filled nine years afterwards; his third, after the interval of only one year, and held the same office every year successively until the eleventh. From this period, although the consulship was frequently offered him, he always declined it, until, after a long interval, not less than seventeen years, he voluntarily stood for the twelfth, and two years after that, for a thirteenth; that he might successively introduce into the forum, on their entering public life, his two sons, Caius and Lucius, while he was invested with the highest office in the state. In his five consulships from the sixth to the eleventh, he continued in office throughout the year; but in the rest, during only nine, six, four, or three months, and in his second no more than a few hours. For having sat for a short time in the morning, upon the calends of January [1st January], in his curule chair [143], before the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, he abdicated the office, and substituted another in his room. Nor did he enter upon them all at Rome, but upon the fourth in Asia, the fifth in the Isle of Samos, and the eighth and ninth at Tarragona. [144]
XXVII. During ten years he acted as one of the triumvirate for settling the commonwealth, in which office he for some time opposed his colleagues in their design of a proscription; but after it was begun, he prosecuted it with more determined rigour than either of them. For whilst they were often prevailed upon, by the interest and intercession of friends, to shew mercy, he alone strongly insisted that no one should be spared, and even proscribed Caius Toranius [145], his guardian; who had (90) been formerly the colleague of his father Octavius in the aedileship. Junius Saturnius adds this farther account of him: that when, after the proscription was over, Marcus Lepidus made an apology in the senate for their past proceedings, and gave them hopes of a more mild administration for the future, because they had now sufficiently crushed their enemies; he, on the other hand, declared that the only limit he had fixed to the proscription was, that he should be free to act as he pleased. Afterwards, however, repenting of his severity, he advanced T. Vinius Philopoemen to the equestrian rank, for having concealed his patron at the time he was proscribed. In this same office he incurred great odium upon many accounts. For as he was one day making an harangue, observing among the soldiers Pinarius, a Roman knight, admit some private citizens, and engaged in taking notes, he ordered him to be stabbed before his eyes, as a busy-body and a spy upon him. He so terrified with his menaces Tedius Afer, the consul elect [146], for having reflected upon some action of his, that he threw himself from a great height, and died on the spot. And when Quintus Gallius, the praetor, came to compliment him with a double tablet under his cloak, suspecting that it was a sword he had concealed, and yet not venturing to make a search, lest it should be found to be something else, he caused him to be dragged from his tribunal by centurions and soldiers, and tortured like a slave: and although he made no confession, ordered him to be put to death, after he had, with his own hands, plucked out his eyes. His own account of the matter, however, is, that Quintus Gallius sought a private conference with him, for the purpose of assassinating him; that he therefore put him in prison, but afterwards released him, and banished him the city; when he perished either in a storm at sea, or by falling into the hands of robbers.
He accepted of the tribunitian power for life, but more than once chose a colleague in that office for two lustra [147] successively. He also had the supervision of morality and observance of the laws, for life, but without the title of censor; yet he thrice (91) took a census of the people, the first and third time with a colleague, but the second by himself.
XXVIII. He twice entertained thoughts of restoring the republic [148]; first, immediately after he had crushed Antony, remembering that he had often charged him with being the obstacle to its restoration. The second time was in consequence of a long illness, when he sent for the magistrates and the senate to his own house, and delivered them a particular account of the state of the empire. But reflecting at the same time that it would be both hazardous to himself to return to the condition of a private person, and might be dangerous to the public to have the government placed again under the control of the people, he resolved to keep it in his own hands, whether with the better event or intention, is hard to say. His good intentions he often affirmed in private discourse, and also published an edict, in which it was declared in the following terms: “May it be permitted me to have the happiness of establishing the commonwealth on a safe and sound basis, and thus enjoy the reward of which I am ambitious, that of being celebrated for moulding it into the form best adapted to present circumstances; so that, on my leaving the world, I may carry with me the hope that the foundations which I have laid for its future government, will stand firm and stable.”
XXIX. The city, which was not built in a manner suitable to the grandeur of the empire, and was liable to inundations of the Tiber [149], as well as to fires, was so much improved under his administration, that he boasted, not without reason, that he “found it of brick, but left it of marble.” [150] He also rendered (92) it secure for the time to come against such disasters, as far as could be effected by human foresight. A great number of public buildings were erected by him, the most considerable of which were a forum [151], containing the temple of Mars the Avenger, the temple of Apollo on the Palatine hill, and the temple of Jupiter Tonans in the Capitol. The reason of his building a new forum was the vast increase in the population, and the number of causes to be tried in the courts, for which, the two already existing not affording sufficient space, it was thought necessary to have a third. It was therefore opened for public use before the temple of Mars was completely finished; and a law was passed, that causes should be tried, and judges chosen by lot, in that place. The temple of Mars was built in fulfilment of a vow made during the war of Philippi, undertaken by him to avenge his father’s murder. He ordained that the senate should always assemble there when they met to deliberate respecting wars and triumphs; that thence should be despatched all those who were sent into the provinces in the command of armies; and that in it those who returned victorious from the wars, should lodge the trophies of their triumphs. He erected the temple of Apollo [152] in that part of his house on the Palatine hill which had been struck with lightning, and which, on that account, the soothsayers declared the God to have chosen. He added porticos to it, with a library of Latin and Greek authors [153]; and when advanced in years, (93) used frequently there to hold the senate, and examine the rolls of the judges.
He dedicated the temple to Apollo Tonans [154], in acknowledgment of his escape from a great danger in his Cantabrian expedition; when, as he was travelling in the night, his litter was struck by lightning, which killed the slave who carried a torch before him. He likewise constructed some public buildings in the name of others; for instance, his grandsons, his wife, and sister. Thus he built the portico and basilica of Lucius and Caius, and the porticos of Livia and Octavia [155], and the theatre of Marcellus [156]. He also often exhorted other persons of rank to embellish the city by new buildings, or repairing and improving the old, according to their means. In consequence of this recommendation, many were raised; such as the temple of Hercules and the Muses, by Marcius Philippus; a temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius; the Court of Freedom by Asinius Pollio; a temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus; a theatre by Cornelius Balbus [157]; an amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus; and several other noble edifices by Marcus Agrippa. [158]
(94) XXX. He divided the city into regions and districts, ordaining that the annual magistrates should take by lot the charge of the former; and that the latter should be superintended by wardens chosen out of the people of each neighbourhood. He appointed a nightly watch to be on their guard against accidents from fire; and, to prevent the frequent inundations, he widened and cleansed the bed of the Tiber, which had in the course of years been almost dammed up with rubbish, and the channel narrowed by the ruins of houses [159]. To render the approaches to the city more commodious, he took upon himself the charge of repairing the Flaminian way as far as Ariminum [160], and distributed the repairs of the other roads amongst several persons who had obtained the honour of a triumph; to be defrayed out of the money arising from the spoils of war. Temples decayed by time, or destroyed by fire, he either repaired or rebuilt; and enriched them, as well as many others, with splendid offerings. On a single occasion, he deposited in the cell of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, sixteen thousand pounds of gold, with jewels and pearls to the amount of fifty millions of sesterces.
XXXI. The office of Pontifex Maximus, of which he could (95) not decently deprive Lepidus as long as he lived [161], he assumed as soon as he was dead. He then caused all prophetical books, both in Latin and Greek, the authors of which were either unknown, or of no great authority, to be brought in; and the whole collection, amounting to upwards of two thousand volumes, he committed to the flames, preserving only the Sibylline oracles; but not even those without a strict examination, to ascertain which were genuine. This being done, he deposited them in two gilt coffers, under the pedestal of the statue of the Palatine Apollo. He restored the calendar, which had been corrected by Julius Caesar, but through negligence was again fallen into confusion [162], to its former regularity; and upon that occasion, called the month Sextilis [163], by his own name, August, rather than September, in which he was born; because in it he had obtained his first consulship, and all his most considerable victories [164]. He increased the number, dignity, and revenues of the priests, and especially those of the Vestal Virgins. And when, upon the death of one of them, a new one was to be taken [165], and many persons made interest that their daughters’ names might be omitted in the lists for election, he replied with an oath, “If either of my own grand-daughters were old enough, I would have proposed her.”
He likewise revived some old religious customs, which had become obsolete; as the augury of public health [166], the office of (96) high priest of Jupiter, the religious solemnity of the Lupercalia, with the Secular, and Compitalian games. He prohibited young boys from running in the Lupercalia; and in respect of the Secular games, issued an order, that no young persons of either sex should appear at any public diversions in the night-time, unless in the company of some elderly relation. He ordered the household gods to be decked twice a year with spring and summer flowers [167], in the Compitalian festival.
Next to the immortal gods, he paid the highest honours to the memory of those generals who had raised the Roman state from its low origin to the highest pitch of grandeur. He accordingly repaired or rebuilt the public edifices erected by them; preserving the former inscriptions, and placing statues of them all, with triumphal emblems, in both the porticos of his forum, issuing an edict on the occasion, in which he made the following declaration: “My design in so doing is, that the Roman people may require from me, and all succeeding princes, a conformity to those illustrious examples.” He likewise removed the statue of Pompey from the senate-house, in which Caius Caesar had been killed, and placed it under a marble arch, fronting the palace attached to Pompey’s theatre.
XXXII. He corrected many ill practices, which, to the detriment of the public, had either survived the licentious habits of the late civil wars, or else originated in the long peace. Bands of robbers showed themselves openly, completely armed, under colour of self-defence; and in different parts of the country, travellers, freemen and slaves without distinction, were forcibly carried off, and kept to work in the houses of correction [168]. Several associations were formed under the specious (97) name of a new college, which banded together for the perpetration of all kinds of villany. The banditti he quelled by establishing posts of soldiers in suitable stations for the purpose; the houses of correction were subjected to a strict superintendence; all associations, those only excepted which were of ancient standing, and recognised by the laws, were dissolved. He burnt all the notes of those who had been a long time in arrear with the treasury, as being the principal source of vexatious suits and prosecutions. Places in the city claimed by the public, where the right was doubtful, he adjudged to the actual possessors. He struck out of the list of criminals the names of those over whom prosecutions had been long impending, where nothing further was intended by the informers than to gratify their own malice, by seeing their enemies humiliated; laying it down as a rule, that if any one chose to renew a prosecution, he should incur the risk of the punishment which he sought to inflict. And that crimes might not escape punishment, nor business be neglected by delay, he ordered the courts to sit during the thirty days which were spent in celebrating honorary games. To the three classes of judges then existing, he added a fourth, consisting of persons of inferior order, who were called Ducenarii, and decided all litigations about trifling sums. He chose judges from the age of thirty years and upwards; that is five years younger than had been usual before. And a great many declining the office, he was with much difficulty prevailed upon to allow each class of judges a twelve-month’s vacation in turn; and the courts to be shut during the months of November and December. [169]
XXXIII. He was himself assiduous in his functions as a judge, and would sometimes prolong his sittings even into the night [170]: if he were indisposed, his litter was placed before (98) the tribunal, or he administered justice reclining on his couch at home; displaying always not only the greatest attention, but extreme lenity. To save a culprit, who evidently appeared guilty of parricide, from the extreme penalty of being sewn up in a sack, because none were punished in that manner but such as confessed the fact, he is said to have interrogated him thus: “Surely you did not kill your father, did you?” And when, in a trial of a cause about a forged will, all those who had signed it were liable to the penalty of the Cornelian law, he ordered that his colleagues on the tribunal should not only be furnished with the two tablets by which they decided, “guilty or not guilty,” but with a third likewise, ignoring the offence of those who should appear to have given their signatures through any deception or mistake. All appeals in causes between inhabitants of Rome, he assigned every year to the praetor of the city; and where provincials were concerned, to men of consular rank, to one of whom the business of each province was referred.
XXXIV. Some laws he abrogated, and he made some new ones; such as the sumptuary law, that relating to adultery and the violation of chastity, the law against bribery in elections, and likewise that for the encouragement of marriage. Having been more severe in his reform of this law than the rest, he found the people utterly averse to submit to it, unless the penalties were abolished or mitigated, besides allowing an interval of three years after a wife’s death, and increasing the premiums on marriage. The equestrian order clamoured loudly, at a spectacle in the theatre, for its total repeal; whereupon he sent for the children of Germanicus, and shewed them partly sitting upon his own lap, and partly on their father’s; intimating by his looks and gestures, that they ought not to think it a grievance to follow the example of that young man. But finding that the force of the law was eluded, by marrying girls under the age of puberty, and by frequent change of wives, he limited the time for consummation after espousals, and imposed restrictions on divorce.
XXXV. By two separate scrutinies he reduced to their former number and splendour the senate, which had been swamped by a disorderly crowd; for they were now more than a (99) thousand, and some of them very mean persons, who, after Caesar’s death, had been chosen by dint of interest and bribery, so that they had the nickname of Orcini among the people [171]. The first of these scrutinies was left to themselves, each senator naming another; but the last was conducted by himself and Agrippa. On this occasion he is believed to have taken his seat as he presided, with a coat of mail under his tunic, and a sword by his side, and with ten of the stoutest men of senatorial rank, who were his friends, standing round his chair. Cordus Cremutius [172] relates that no senator was suffered to approach him, except singly, and after having his bosom searched [for secreted daggers]. Some he obliged to have the grace of declining the office; these he allowed to retain the privileges of wearing the distinguishing dress, occupying the seats at the solemn spectacles, and of feasting publicly, reserved to the senatorial order [173]. That those who were chosen and approved of, might perform their functions under more solemn obligations, and with less inconvenience, he ordered that every senator, before he took his seat in the house, should pay his devotions, with an offering of frankincense and wine, at the altar of that God in whose temple the senate then assembled [174], and that their stated meetings should be only twice in the month, namely, on the calends and ides; and that in the months of September and October [175], a certain number only, chosen by lot, such as the law required to give validity to a decree, should be required to attend. For himself, he resolved to choose every six (100) months a new council, with whom he might consult previously upon such affairs as he judged proper at any time to lay before the full senate. He also took the votes of the senators upon any subject of importance, not according to custom, nor in regular order, but as he pleased; that every one might hold himself ready to give his opinion, rather than a mere vote of assent.
XXXVI. He also made several other alterations in the management of public affairs, among which were these following: that the acts of the senate should not be published [176]; that the magistrates should not be sent into the provinces immediately after the expiration of their office; that the proconsuls should have a certain sum assigned them out of the treasury for mules and tents, which used before to be contracted for by the government with private persons; that the management of the treasury should be transferred from the city-quaestors to the praetors, or those who had already served in the latter office; and that the decemviri should call together the court of One hundred, which had been formerly summoned by those who had filled the office of quaestor.
XXXVII. To augment the number of persons employed in the administration of the state, he devised several new offices; such as surveyors of the public buildings, of the roads, the aqueducts, and the bed of the Tiber; for the distribution of corn to the people; the praefecture of the city; a triumvirate for the election of the senators; and another for inspecting the several troops of the equestrian order, as often as it was necessary. He revived the office of censor [177], which had been long disused, and increased the number of praetors. He likewise required that whenever the consulship was conferred on him, he should have two colleagues instead of one; but his proposal (101) was rejected, all the senators declaring by acclamation that he abated his high majesty quite enough in not filling the office alone, and consenting to share it with another.
XXXVIII. He was unsparing in the reward of military merit, having granted to above thirty generals the honour of the greater triumph; besides which, he took care to have triamphal decorations voted by the senate for more than that number. That the sons of senators might become early acquainted with the administration of affairs, he permitted them, at the age when they took the garb of manhood [178], to assume also the distinction of the senatorian robe, with its broad border, and to be present at the debates in the senate-house. When they entered the military service, he not only gave them the rank of military tribunes in the legions, but likewise the command of the auxiliary horse. And that all might have an opportunity of acquiring military experience, he commonly joined two sons of senators in command of each troop of horse. He frequently reviewed the troops of the equestrian order, reviving the ancient custom of a cavalcade [179], which had been long laid aside. But he did not suffer any one to be obliged by an accuser to dismount while he passed in review, as had formerly been the practice. As for such as were infirm with age, or (102) any way deformed, he allowed them to send their horses before them, coming on foot to answer to their names, when the muster roll was called over soon afterwards. He permitted those who had attained the age of thirty-five years, and desired not to keep their horse any longer, to have the privilege of giving it up.
XXXIX. With the assistance of ten senators, he obliged each of the Roman knights to give an account of his life: in regard to those who fell under his displeasure, some were punished; others had a mark of infamy set against their names. The most part he only reprimanded, but not in the same terms. The mildest mode of reproof was by delivering them tablets [180], the contents of which, confined to themselves, they were to read on the spot. Some he disgraced for borrowing money at low interest, and letting it out again upon usurious profit.
XL. In the election of tribunes of the people, if there was not a sufficient number of senatorian candidates, he nominated others from the equestrian order; granting them the liberty, after the expiration of their office, to continue in whichsoever of the two orders they pleased. As most of the knights had been much reduced in their estates by the civil wars, and therefore durst not sit to see the public games in the theatre in the seats allotted to their order, for fear of the penalty provided by the law in that case, he enacted, that none were liable to it, who had themselves, or whose parents had ever, possessed a knight’s estate. He took the census of the Roman people street by street: and that the people might not be too often taken from their business to receive the distribution of corn, it was his intention to deliver tickets three times a year for four months respectively; but at their request, he continued the former regulation, that they should receive their (103) share monthly. He revived the former law of elections, endeavouring, by various penalties, to suppress the practice of bribery. Upon the day of election, he distributed to the freemen of the Fabian and Scaptian tribes, in which he himself was enrolled, a thousand sesterces each, that they might look for nothing from any of the candidates. Considering it of extreme importance to preserve the Roman people pure, and untainted with a mixture of foreign or servile blood, he not only bestowed the freedom of the city with a sparing hand, but laid some restriction upon the practice of manumitting slaves. When Tiberius interceded with him for the freedom of Rome in behalf of a Greek client of his, he wrote to him for answer, “I shall not grant it, unless he comes himself, and satisfies me that he has just grounds for the application.” And when Livia begged the freedom of the city for a tributary Gaul, he refused it, but offered to release him from payment of taxes, saying, “I shall sooner suffer some loss in my exchequer, than that the citizenship of Rome be rendered too common.” Not content with interposing many obstacles to either the partial or complete emancipation of slaves, by quibbles respecting the number, condition and difference of those who were to be manumitted; he likewise enacted that none who had been put in chains or tortured, should ever obtain the freedom of the city in any degree. He endeavoured also to restore the old habit and dress of the Romans; and upon seeing once, in an assembly of the people, a crowd in grey cloaks [181], he exclaimed with indignation, “See there,
Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatem.” [182]
Rome’s conquering sons, lords of the wide-spread globe,
Stalk proudly in the toga’s graceful robe.
And he gave orders to the ediles not to permit, in future, any Roman to be present in the forum or circus unless they took off their short coats, and wore the toga.
(104) XLI. He displayed his munificence to all ranks of the people on various occasions. Moreover, upon his bringing the treasure belonging to the kings of Egypt into the city, in his Alexandrian triumph, he made money so plentiful, that interest fell, and the price of land rose considerably. And afterwards, as often as large sums of money came into his possession by means of confiscations, he would lend it free of interest, for a fixed term, to such as could give security for the double of what was borrowed. The estate necessary to qualify a senator, instead of eight hundred thousand sesterces, the former standard, he ordered, for the future, to be twelve hundred thousand; and to those who had not so much, he made good the deficiency. He often made donations to the people, but generally of different sums; sometimes four hundred, sometimes three hundred, or two hundred and fifty sesterces upon which occasions, he extended his bounty even to young boys, who before were not used to receive anything, until they arrived at eleven years of age. In a scarcity of corn, he would frequently let them have it at a very low price, or none at all; and doubled the number of the money tickets.
XLII. But to show that he was a prince who regarded more the good of his people than their applause, he reprimanded them very severely, upon their complaining of the scarcity and dearness of wine. “My son-in-law, Agrippa,” he said, “has sufficiently provided for quenching your thirst, by the great plenty of water with which he has supplied the town.” Upon their demanding a gift which he had promised them, he said, “I am a man of my word.” But upon their importuning him for one which he had not promised, he issued a proclamation upbraiding them for their scandalous impudence; at the same time telling them, “I shall now give you nothing, whatever I may have intended to do.” With the same strict firmness, when, upon a promise he had made of a donative, he found many slaves had been emancipated and enrolled amongst the citizens, he declared that no one should receive anything who was not included in the promise, and he gave the rest less than he had promised them, in order that the amount he had set apart might hold out. On one occasion, in a season of great scarcity, which it was difficult to remedy, he ordered out of the city the troops of slaves brought for sale, the gladiators (105) belonging to the masters of defence, and all foreigners, excepting physicians and the teachers of the liberal sciences. Part of the domestic slaves were likewise ordered to be dismissed. When, at last, plenty was restored, he writes thus “I was much inclined to abolish for ever the practice of allowing the people corn at the public expense, because they trust so much to it, that they are too lazy to till their lands; but I did not persevere in my design, as I felt sure that the practice would some time or other be revived by some one ambitious of popular favour.” However, he so managed the affair ever afterwards, that as much account was taken of husbandmen and traders, as of the idle populace. [183]
XLIII. In the number, variety, and magnificence of his public spectacles, he surpassed all former example. Four-and-twenty times, he says, he treated the people with games upon his own account, and three-and-twenty times for such magistrates as were either absent, or not able to afford the expense. The performances took place sometimes in the different streets of the city, and upon several stages, by players in all languages. The same he did not only in the forum and amphitheatre, but in the circus likewise, and in the septa [184]: and sometimes he exhibited only the hunting of wild beasts. He entertained the people with wrestlers in the Campus Martius, where wooden seats were erected for the purpose; and also with a naval fight, for which he excavated the ground near the Tiber, where there is now the grove of the Caesars. During these two entertainments he stationed guards in the city, lest, by robbers taking advantage of the small number of people left at home, it might be exposed to depredations. In the circus he exhibited chariot and foot races, and combats with wild beasts, in which the performers were often youths of the highest rank. His favourite spectacle was the Trojan game, acted by a select number of boys, in parties differing in age and station; thinking (106) that it was a practice both excellent in itself, and sanctioned by ancient usage, that the spirit of the young nobles should be displayed in such exercises. Caius Nonius Asprenas, who was lamed by a fall in this diversion, he presented with a gold collar, and allowed him and his posterity to bear the surname of Torquati. But soon afterwards he gave up the exhibition of this game, in consequence of a severe and bitter speech made in the senate by Asinius Pollio, the orator, in which he complained bitterly of the misfortune of Aeserninus, his grandson, who likewise broke his leg in the same diversion.
Sometimes he engaged Roman knights to act upon the stage, or to fight as gladiators; but only before the practice was prohibited by a decree of the senate. Thenceforth, the only exhibition he made of that kind, was that of a young man named Lucius, of a good family, who was not quite two feet in height, and weighed only seventeen pounds, but had a stentorian voice. In one of his public spectacles, he brought the hostages of the Parthians, the first ever sent to Rome from that nation, through the middle of the amphitheatre, and placed them in the second tier of seats above him. He used likewise, at times when there were no public entertainments, if any thing was brought to Rome which was uncommon, and might gratify curiosity, to expose it to public view, in any place whatever; as he did a rhinoceros in the Septa, a tiger upon a stage, and a snake fifty cubits lung in the Comitium. It happened in the Circensian games, which he performed in consequence of a vow, that he was taken ill, and obliged to attend the Thensae [185], reclining on a litter. Another time, in the games celebrated for the opening of the theatre of Marcellus, the joints of his curule chair happening to give way, he fell on his back. And in the games exhibited by his (107) grandsons, when the people were in such consternation, by an alarm raised that the theatre was falling, that all his efforts to re-assure them and keep them quiet, failed, he moved from his place, and seated himself in that part of the theatre which was thought to be exposed to most danger.
XLIV. He corrected the confusion and disorder with which the spectators took their seats at the public games, after an affront which was offered to a senator at Puteoli, for whom, in a crowded theatre, no one would make room. He therefore procured a decree of the senate, that in all public spectacles of any sort, and in any place whatever, the first tier of benches should be left empty for the accommodation of senators. He would not even permit the ambassadors of free nations, nor of those which were allies of Rome, to sit in the orchestra; having found that some manumitted slaves had been sent under that character. He separated the soldiery from the rest of the people, and assigned to married plebeians their particular rows of seats. To the boys he assigned their own benches, and to their tutors the seats which were nearest it; ordering that none clothed in black should sit in the centre of the circle [186]. Nor would he allow any women to witness the combats of gladiators, except from the upper part of the theatre, although they formerly used to take their places promiscuously with the rest of the spectators. To the vestal virgins he granted seats in the theatre, reserved for them only, opposite the praetor’s bench. He excluded, however, the whole female sex from seeing the wrestlers: so that in the games which he exhibited upon his accession to the office of high-priest, he deferred producing a pair of combatants which the people called for, until the next morning; and intimated by proclamation, “his pleasure that no woman should appear in the theatre before five o’clock.”
XLV. He generally viewed the Circensian games himself, from the upper rooms of the houses of his friends or freedmen; sometimes from the place appointed for the statues of the gods, and sitting in company with his wife and children. He (108) occasionally absented himself from the spectacles for several hours, and sometimes for whole days; but not without first making an apology, and appointing substitutes to preside in his stead. When present, he never attended to anything else either to avoid the reflections which he used to say were commonly made upon his father, Caesar, for perusing letters and memorials, and making rescripts during the spectacles; or from the real pleasure he took in attending those exhibitions; of which he made no secret, he often candidly owning it. This he manifested frequently by presenting honorary crowns and handsome rewards to the best performers, in the games exhibited by others; and he never was present at any performance of the Greeks, without rewarding the most deserving, according to their merit. He took particular pleasure in witnessing pugilistic contests, especially those of the Latins, not only between combatants who had been trained scientifically, whom he used often to match with the Greek champions; but even between mobs of the lower classes fighting in streets, and tilting at random, without any knowledge of the art. In short, he honoured with his patronage all sorts of people who contributed in any way to the success of the public entertainments. He not only maintained, but enlarged, the privileges of the wrestlers. He prohibited combats of gladiators where no quarter was given. He deprived the magistrates of the power of correcting the stage-players, which by an ancient law was allowed them at all times, and in all places; restricting their jurisdiction entirely to the time of performance and misdemeanours in the theatres. He would, however, admit, of no abatement, and exacted with the utmost rigour the greatest exertions of the wrestlers and gladiators in their several encounters. He went so far in restraining the licentiousness of stage-players, that upon discovering that Stephanio, a performer of the highest class, had a married woman with her hair cropped, and dressed in boy’s clothes, to wait upon him at table, he ordered him to be whipped through all the three theatres, and then banished him. Hylas, an actor of pantomimes, upon a complaint against him by the praetor, he commanded to be scourged in the court of his own house, which, however, was open to the public. And Pylades he not only banished from the city, but from Italy also, for pointing with his finger at a spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the audience upon him.
(109) XLVI. Having thus regulated the city and its concerns, he augmented the population of Italy by planting in it no less than twenty-eight colonies [187], and greatly improved it by public works, and a beneficial application of the revenues. In rights and privileges, he rendered it in a measure equal to the city itself, by inventing a new kind of suffrage, which the principal officers and magistrates of the colonies might take at home, and forward under seal to the city, against the time of the elections. To increase the number of persons of condition, and of children among the lower ranks, he granted the petitions of all those who requested the honour of doing military service on horseback as knights, provided their demands were seconded by the recommendation of the town in which they lived; and when he visited the several districts of Italy, he distributed a thousand sesterces a head to such of the lower class as presented him with sons or daughters.
XLVII. The more important provinces, which could not with ease or safety be entrusted to the government of annual magistrates, he reserved for his own administration: the rest he distributed by lot amongst the proconsuls: but sometimes he made exchanges, and frequently visited most of both kinds in person. Some cities in alliance with Rome, but which by their great licentiousness were hastening to ruin, he deprived of their independence. Others, which were much in debt, he relieved, and rebuilt such as had been destroyed by earthquakes. To those that could produce any instance of their having deserved well of the Roman people, he presented the freedom of Latium, or even that of the City. There is not, I believe, a province, except Africa and Sardinia, which he did not visit. After forcing Sextus Pompeius to take refuge in those provinces, he was indeed preparing to cross over from Sicily to them, but was prevented by continual and violent storms, and afterwards there was no occasion or call for such a voyage.
XLVIII. Kingdoms, of which he had made himself master by the right of conquest, a few only excepted, he either restored to their former possessors [188], or conferred upon aliens. Between (110) kings of alliance with Rome, he encouraged most intimate union; being always ready to promote or favour any proposal of marriage or friendship amongst them; and, indeed, treated them all with the same consideration, as if they were members and parts of the empire. To such of them as were minors or lunatics he appointed guardians, until they arrived at age, or recovered their senses; and the sons of many of them he brought up and educated with his own.
XLIX. With respect to the army, he distributed the legions and auxiliary troops throughout the several provinces, he stationed a fleet at Misenum, and another at Ravenna, for the protection of the Upper and Lower Seas [189]. A certain number of the forces were selected, to occupy the posts in the city, and partly for his own body-guard; but he dismissed the Spanish guard, which he retained about him till the fall of Antony; and also the Germans, whom he had amongst his guards, until the defeat of Varus. Yet he never permitted a greater force than three cohorts in the city, and had no (pretorian) camps [190]. The rest he quartered in the neighbourhood of the nearest towns, in winter and summer camps. All the troops throughout the empire he reduced to one fixed model with regard to their pay and their pensions; determining these according to their rank in the army, the time they had served, and their private means; so that after their discharge, they might not be tempted by age or necessities to join the agitators for a revolution. For the purpose of providing a fund always ready to meet their pay and pensions, he instituted a military exchequer, and appropriated new taxes to that object. In order to obtain the earliest intelligence of what was passing in the provinces, he established posts, consisting at first of young men stationed at moderate distances along the military roads, and afterwards of regular couriers with fast vehicles; which appeared to him the most commodious, because the persons who were the bearers of dispatches, written on the spot, might then be questioned about the business, as occasion occurred.
L. In sealing letters-patent, rescripts, or epistles, he at first used the figure of a sphinx, afterwards the head of Alexander (111) the Great, and at last his own, engraved by the hand of Dioscorides; which practice was retained by the succeeding emperors. He was extremely precise in dating his letters, putting down exactly the time of the day or night at which they were dispatched.
LI. Of his clemency and moderation there are abundant and signal instances. For, not to enumerate how many and what persons of the adverse party he pardoned, received into favour, and suffered to rise to the highest eminence in the state; he thought it sufficient to punish Junius Novatus and Cassius Patavinus, who were both plebeians, one of them with a fine, and the other with an easy banishment; although the former had published, in the name of young Agrippa, a very scurrilous letter against him, and the other declared openly, at an entertainment where there was a great deal of company, “that he neither wanted inclination nor courage to stab him.” In the trial of Aemilius Aelianus, of Cordova, when, among other charges exhibited against him, it was particularly insisted upon, that he used to calumniate Caesar, he turned round to the accuser, and said, with an air and tone of passion, “I wish you could make that appear; I shall let Aelianus know that I have a tongue too, and shall speak sharper of him than he ever did of me.” Nor did he, either then or afterwards, make any farther inquiry into the affair. And when Tiberius, in a letter, complained of the affront with great earnestness, he returned him an answer in the following terms: “Do not, my dear Tiberius, give way to the ardour of youth in this affair; nor be so indignant that any person should speak ill of me. It is enough, for us, if we can prevent any one from really doing us mischief.”
LII. Although he knew that it had been customary to decree temples in honour of the proconsuls, yet he would not permit them to be erected in any of the provinces, unless in the joint names of himself and Rome. Within the limits of the city, he positively refused any honour of that kind. He melted down all the silver statues which had been erected to him, and converted the whole into tripods, which he consecrated to the Palatine Apollo. And when the people importuned him to accept the dictatorship, he bent down on one knee, with his toga thrown over his shoulders, and his breast exposed to view, begging to be excused.
(112) LIII. He always abhorred the title of Lord [191], as ill-omened and offensive. And when, in a play, performed at the theatre, at which he was present, these words were introduced, “O just and gracious lord,” and the whole company, with joyful acclamations, testified their approbation of them, as applied to him, he instantly put a stop to their indecent flattery, by waving his hand, and frowning sternly, and next day publicly declared his displeasure, in a proclamation. He never afterwards would suffer himself to be addressed in that manner, even by his own children or grand-children, either in jest or earnest and forbad them the use of all such complimentary expressions to one another. He rarely entered any city or town, or departed from it, except in the evening or the night, to avoid giving any person the trouble of complimenting him. During his consulships, he commonly walked the streets on foot; but at other times, rode in a close carriage. He admitted to court even plebeians, in common with people of the higher ranks; receiving the petitions of those who approached him with so much affability, that he once jocosely rebuked a man, by telling him, “You present your memorial with as much hesitation as if you were offering money to an elephant.” On senate days, he used to pay his respects to the Conscript Fathers only in the house, addressing them each by name as they sat, without any prompter; and on his departure, he bade each of them farewell, while they retained their seats. In the same manner, he maintained with many of them a constant intercourse of mutual civilities, giving them his company upon occasions of any particular festivity in their families; until he became advanced in years, and was incommoded by the crowd at a wedding. Being informed that Gallus Terrinius, a senator, with whom he had only a slight acquaintance, had suddenly lost his sight, and under that privation had resolved to starve himself to death, he paid him a visit, and by his consolatory admonitions diverted him from his purpose.
LIV. On his speaking in the senate, he has been told by (113) one of the members, “I did not understand you,” and by another, “I would contradict you, could I do it with safety.” And sometimes, upon his being so much offended at the heat with which the debates were conducted in the senate, as to quit the house in anger, some of the members have repeatedly exclaimed: “Surely, the senators ought to have liberty of speech on matters of government.” Antistius Labeo, in the election of a new senate, when each, as he was named, chose another, nominated Marcus Lepidus, who had formerly been Augustus’s enemy, and was then in banishment; and being asked by the latter, “Is there no other person more deserving?” he replied, “Every man has his own opinion.” Nor was any one ever molested for his freedom of speech, although it was carried to the extent of insolence.
LV. Even when some infamous libels against him were dispersed in the senate-house, he was neither disturbed, nor did he give himself much trouble to refute them. He would not so much as order an enquiry to be made after the authors; but only proposed, that, for the future, those who published libels or lampoons, in a borrowed name, against any person, should be called to account.
LVI. Being provoked by some petulant jests, which were designed to render him odious, he answered them by a proclamation; and yet he prevented the senate from passing an act, to restrain the liberties which were taken with others in people’s wills. Whenever he attended at the election of magistrates, he went round the tribes, with the candidates of his nomination, and begged the votes of the people in the usual manner. He likewise gave his own vote in his tribe, as one of the people. He suffered himself to be summoned as a witness upon trials, and not only to be questioned, but to be cross-examined, with the utmost patience. In building his Forum, he restricted himself in the site, not presuming to compel the owners of the neighbouring houses to give up their property. He never recommended his sons to the people, without adding these words, “If they deserve it.” And upon the audience rising on their entering the theatre, while they were yet minors, and giving them applause in a standing position, he made it a matter of serious complaint.
(114) He was desirous that his friends should be great and powerful in the state, but have no exclusive privileges, or be exempt from the laws which governed others. When Asprenas Nonius, an intimate friend of his, was tried upon a charge of administering poison at the instance of Cassius Severus, he consulted the senate for their opinion what was his duty under the circumstances: “For,” said he, “I am afraid, lest, if I should stand by him in the cause, I may be supposed to screen a guilty man; and if I do not, to desert and prejudge a friend.” With the unanimous concurrence, therefore, of the senate, he took his seat amongst his advocates for several hours, but without giving him the benefit of speaking to character, as was usual. He likewise appeared for his clients; as on behalf of Scutarius, an old soldier of his, who brought an action for slander. He never relieved any one from prosecution but in a single instance, in the case of a man who had given information of the conspiracy of Muraena; and that he did only by prevailing upon the accuser, in open court, to drop his prosecution.
LVII. How much he was beloved for his worthy conduct in all these respects, it is easy to imagine. I say nothing of the decrees of the senate in his honour, which may seem to have resulted from compulsion or deference. The Roman knights voluntarily, and with one accord, always celebrated his birth for two days together; and all ranks of the people, yearly, in performance of a vow they had made, threw a piece of money into the Curtian lake [192], as an offering for his welfare. They likewise, on the calends [first] of January, presented for his acceptance new-year’s gifts in the Capitol, though he was not present with which donations he purchased some costly images of the Gods, which he erected in several streets of the city; as that of Apollo Sandaliarius, Jupiter Tragoedus [193], and others. When his house on the Palatine hill was accidentally destroyed by fire, the veteran soldiers, the judges, the tribes, and even the people, individually, contributed, according to the ability of each, for rebuilding it; but he would (115) accept only of some small portion out of the several sums collected, and refused to take from any one person more than a single denarius [194]. Upon his return home from any of the provinces, they attended him not only with joyful acclamations, but with songs. It is also remarked, that as often as he entered the city, the infliction of punishment was suspended for the time.
LVIII. The whole body of the people, upon a sudden impulse, and with unanimous consent, offered him the title of FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY. It was announced to him first at Antium, by a deputation from the people, and upon his declining the honour, they repeated their offer on his return to Rome, in a full theatre, when they were crowned with laurel. The senate soon afterwards adopted the proposal, not in the way of acclamation or decree, but by commissioning M. Messala, in an unanimous vote, to compliment him with it in the following terms: “With hearty wishes for the happiness and prosperity of yourself and your family, Caesar Augustus, (for we think we thus most effectually pray for the lasting welfare of the state), the senate, in agreement with the Roman people, salute you by the title of FATHER OF YOUR COUNTRY.” To this compliment Augustus replied, with tears in his eyes, in these words (for I give them exactly as I have done those of Messala): “Having now arrived at the summit of my wishes, O Conscript Fathers [195], what else have I to beg of the Immortal (116) Gods, but the continuance of this your affection for me to the last moments of my life?”
LIX. To the physician Antonius Musa [196], who had cured him of a dangerous illness, they erected a statue near that of Aesculapius, by a general subscription. Some heads of families ordered in their wills, that their heirs should lead victims to the Capitol, with a tablet carried before them, and pay their vows, “Because Augustus still survived.” Some Italian cities appointed the day upon which he first visited them, to be thenceforth the beginning of their year. And most of the provinces, besides erecting temples and altars, instituted games, to be celebrated to his honour, in most towns, every five years.
LX. The kings, his friends and allies, built cities in their respective kingdoms, to which they gave the name of Caesarea; and all with one consent resolved to finish, at their common expense, the temple of Jupiter Olympius, at Athens, which had been begun long before, and consecrate it to his Genius. They frequently also left their kingdoms, laid aside the badges of royalty, and assuming the toga, attended and paid their respects to him daily, in the manner of clients to their patrons; not only at Rome, but when he was travelling through the provinces.
LXI. Having thus given an account of the manner in which he filled his public offices both civil and military, and his conduct in the government of the empire, both in peace and war; I shall now describe his private and domestic life, his habits at home and among his friends and dependents, and the fortune attending him in those scenes of retirement, from his youth to the day of his death. He lost his mother in his first consulship, and his sister Octavia, when he was in the fifty-fourth year of his age [197]. He behaved towards them both with the utmost kindness whilst living, and after their decease paid the highest honours to their memory.
(117) LXII. He was contracted when very young to the daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus; but upon his reconciliation with Antony after their first rupture [198], the armies on both sides insisting on a family alliance between them, he married Antony’s step-daughter Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia by Publius Claudius, although at that time she was scarcely marriageable; and upon a difference arising with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her untouched, and a pure virgin. Soon afterwards he took to wife Scribonia, who had before been twice married to men of consular rank [199], and was a mother by one of them. With her likewise he parted [200], being quite tired out, as he himself writes, with the perverseness of her temper; and immediately took Livia Drusilla, though then pregnant, from her husband Tiberius Nero; and she had never any rival in his love and esteem.
LXIII. By Scribonia he had a daughter named Julia, but no children by Livia, although extremely desirous of issue. She, indeed, conceived once, but miscarried. He gave his daughter Julia in the first instance to Marcellus, his sister’s son, who had just completed his minority; and, after his death, to Marcus Agrippa, having prevailed with his sister to yield her son-in-law to his wishes; for at that time Agrippa was married to one of the Marcellas, and had children by her. Agrippa dying also, he for a long time thought of several matches for Julia in even the equestrian order, and at last resolved upon selecting Tiberius for his step-son; and he obliged him to part with his wife at that time pregnant, and who had already brought him a child. Mark Antony writes, “That he first contracted Julia to his son, and afterwards to Cotiso, king of the Getae [201], demanding at the same time the king’s daughter in marriage for himself.”
(118) LXIV. He had three grandsons by Agrippa and Julia, namely, Caius, Lucius, and Agrippa; and two grand-daughters, Julia and Agrippina. Julia he married to Lucius Paulus, the censor’s son, and Agrippina to Germanicus, his sister’s grandson. Caius and Lucius he adopted at home, by the ceremony of purchase [202] from their father, advanced them, while yet very young, to offices in the state, and when they were consuls-elect, sent them to visit the provinces and armies. In bringing up his daughter and grand-daughters, he accustomed them to domestic employments, and even spinning, and obliged them to speak and act every thing openly before the family, that it might be put down in the diary. He so strictly prohibited them from all converse with strangers, that he once wrote a letter to Lucius Vinicius, a handsome young man of a good family, in which he told him, “You have not behaved very modestly, in making a visit to my daughter at Baiae.” He usually instructed his grandsons himself in reading, swimming, and other rudiments of knowledge; and he laboured nothing more than to perfect them in the imitation of his hand-writing. He never supped but he had them sitting at the foot of his couch; nor ever travelled but with them in a chariot before him, or riding beside him.
LXV. But in the midst of all his joy and hopes in his numerous and well-regulated family, his fortune failed him. The two Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, abandoned themselves to such courses of lewdness and debauchery, that he banished them both. Caius and Lucius he lost within the space of eighteen months; the former dying in Lycia, and the latter at Marseilles. His third grandson Agrippa, with his step-son Tiberius, he adopted in the forum, by a law passed for the purpose by the Sections [203]; but he soon afterwards discarded Agrippa for his coarse and unruly temper, and confined him at Surrentum. He bore the death of his relations with more patience than he did their disgrace; for he was not overwhelmed by the loss of Caius and Lucius; but in the case of his daughter, he stated the facts to the senate in a message read to them by (119) the quaestor, not having the heart to be present himself; indeed, he was so much ashamed of her infamous conduct, that for some time he avoided all company, and had thoughts of putting her to death. It is certain that when one Phoebe, a freed-woman and confidant of hers, hanged herself about the same time, he said, “I had rather be the father of Phoebe than of Julia.” In her banishment he would not allow her the use of wine, nor any luxury in dress; nor would he suffer her to be waited upon by any male servant, either freeman or slave, without his permission, and having received an exact account of his age, stature, complexion, and what marks or scars he had about him. At the end of five years he removed her from the island [where she was confined] to the continent [204], and treated her with less severity, but could never be prevailed upon to recall her. When the Roman people interposed on her behalf several times with much importunity, all the reply he gave was: “I wish you had all such daughters and wives as she is.” He likewise forbad a child, of which his grand-daughter Julia was delivered after sentence had passed against her, to be either owned as a relation, or brought up. Agrippa, who was equally intractable, and whose folly increased every day, he transported to an island [205], and placed a guard of soldiers about him; procuring at the same time an act of the senate for his confinement there during life. Upon any mention of him and the two Julias, he would say, with a heavy sigh,
Aith’ ophelon agamos t’ emenai, agonos t’ apoletai.
Would I were wifeless, or had childless died! [206]
nor did he usually call them by any other name than that of his “three imposthumes or cancers.”
LXVI. He was cautious in forming friendships, but clung to them with great constancy; not only rewarding the virtues and merits of his friends according to their deserts, but bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that they were (120) of a venial kind. For amongst all his friends, we scarcely find any who fell into disgrace with him, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he raised to the consulship, and Cornelius Gallus, whom he made prefect of Egypt; both of them men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged in plotting a rebellion, he delivered over to the senate, for condemnation; and the other, on account of his ungrateful and malicious temper, he forbad his house, and his living in any of the provinces. When, however, Gallus, being denounced by his accusers, and sentenced by the senate, was driven to the desperate extremity of laying violent hands upon himself, he commended, indeed, the attachment to his person of those who manifested so much indignation, but he shed tears, and lamented his unhappy condition, “That I alone,” said he, “cannot be allowed to resent the misconduct of my friends in such a way only as I would wish.” The rest of his friends of all orders flourished during their whole lives, both in power and wealth, in the highest ranks of their several orders, notwithstanding some occasional lapses. For, to say nothing of others, he sometimes complained that Agrippa was hasty, and Mecaenas a tattler; the former having thrown up all his employments and retired to Mitylene, on suspicion of some slight coolness, and from jealousy that Marcellus received greater marks of favour; and the latter having confidentially imparted to his wife Terentia the discovery of Muraena’s conspiracy.
He likewise expected from his friends, at their deaths as well as during their lives, some proofs of their reciprocal attachment. For though he was far from coveting their property, and indeed would never accept of any legacy left him by a stranger, yet he pondered in a melancholy mood over their last words; not being able to conceal his chagrin, if in their wills they made but a slight, or no very honourable mention of him, nor his joy, on the other hand, if they expressed a grateful sense of his favours, and a hearty affection for him. And whatever legacies or shares of their property were left him by such as were parents, he used to restore to their children, either immediately, or if they were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly dress, or of their marriage; with interest.
LXVII. As a patron and master, his behaviour in general was mild and conciliating; but when occasion required it, he (121) could be severe. He advanced many of his freedmen to posts of honour and great importance, as Licinus, Enceladus, and others; and when his slave, Cosmus, had reflected bitterly upon him, he resented the injury no further than by putting him in fetters. When his steward, Diomedes, left him to the mercy of a wild boar, which suddenly attacked them while they were walking together, he considered it rather a cowardice than a breach of duty; and turned an occurrence of no small hazard into a jest, because there was no knavery in his steward’s conduct. He put to death Proculus, one of his most favourite freedmen, for maintaining a criminal commerce with other men’s wives. He broke the legs of his secretary, Thallus, for taking a bribe of five hundred denarii to discover the contents of one of his letters. And the tutor and other attendants of his son Caius, having taken advantage of his sickness and death, to give loose to their insolence and rapacity in the province he governed, he caused heavy weights to be tied about their necks, and had them thrown into a river.
LXVIII. In his early youth various aspersions of an infamous character were heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, with earning his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. Lucius Antony, likewise Mark’s brother, charges him with pollution by Caesar; and that, for a gratification of three hundred thousand sesterces, he had submitted to Aulus Hirtius in the same way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with burnt nut-shells, to make the hair become softer [207]. Nay, the whole concourse of the people, at some public diversions in the theatre, when the following sentence was recited, alluding to the Gallic priest of the mother of the gods [208], beating a drum [209],
Videsne ut cinaedus orbem digito temperet?
See with his orb the wanton’s finger play!
applied the passage to him, with great applause.
(122) LXIX. That he was guilty of various acts of adultery, is not denied even by his friends; but they allege in excuse for it, that he engaged in those intrigues not from lewdness, but from policy, in order to discover more easily the designs of his enemies, through their wives. Mark Antony, besides the precipitate marriage of Livia, charges him with taking the wife of a man of consular rank from table, in the presence of her husband, into a bed-chamber, and bringing her again to the entertainment, with her ears very red, and her hair in great disorder: that he had divorced Scribonia, for resenting too freely the excessive influence which one of his mistresses had gained over him: that his friends were employed to pimp for him, and accordingly obliged both matrons and ripe virgins to strip, for a complete examination of their persons, in the same manner as if Thoranius, the dealer in slaves, had them under sale. And before they came to an open rupture, he writes to him in a familiar manner, thus: “Why are you changed towards me? Because I lie with a queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with me, or have I not done so for these nine years? And do you take freedoms with Drusilla only? May health and happiness so attend you, as when you read this letter, you are not in dalliance with Tertulla, Terentilla, Rufilla [210], or Salvia Titiscenia, or all of them. What matters it to you where, or upon whom, you spend your manly vigour?”
LXX. A private entertainment which he gave, commonly called the Supper of the Twelve Gods [211], and at which the guests (123) were dressed in the habit of gods and goddesses, while he personated Apollo himself, afforded subject of much conversation, and was imputed to him not only by Antony in his letters, who likewise names all the parties concerned, but in the following well-known anonymous verses:
Cum primum istorum conduxit mensa choragum,
Sexque deos vidit Mallia, sexque deas
Impia dum Phoebi Caesar mendacia ludit,
Dum nova divorum coenat adulteria:
Omnia se a terris tunc numina declinarunt:
Fugit et auratos Jupiter ipse thronos.
When Mallia late beheld, in mingled train,
Twelve mortals ape twelve deities in vain;
Caesar assumed what was Apollo’s due,
And wine and lust inflamed the motley crew.
At the foul sight the gods avert their eyes,
And from his throne great Jove indignant flies.
What rendered this supper more obnoxious to public censure, was that it happened at a time when there was a great scarcity, and almost a famine, in the city. The day after, there was a cry current among the people, “that the gods had eaten up all the corn; and that Caesar was indeed Apollo, but Apollo the Tormentor;” under which title that god was worshipped in some quarter of the city [212]. He was likewise charged with being excessively fond of fine furniture, and Corinthian vessels, as well as with being addicted to gaming. For, during the time of the proscription, the following line was written upon his statue:—
Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius;
My father was a silversmith [213], my dealings are in brass;
because it was believed, that he had put some persons upon the list of the proscribed, only to obtain the Corinthian vessels in (124) their possession. And afterwards, in the Sicilian war, the following epigram was published:—
Postquam bis classe victus naves perdidit,
Aliquando ut vincat, ludit assidue aleam.
Twice having lost a fleet in luckless fight,
To win at last, he games both day and night.
LXXI. With respect to the charge or imputation of loathsome impurity before-mentioned, he very easily refuted it by the chastity of his life, at the very time when it was made, as well as ever afterwards. His conduct likewise gave the lie to that of luxurious extravagance in his furniture, when, upon the taking of Alexandria, he reserved for himself nothing of the royal treasures but a porcelain cup, and soon afterwards melted down all the vessels of gold, even such as were intended for common use. But his amorous propensities never left him, and, as he grew older, as is reported, he was in the habit of debauching young girls, who were procured for him, from all quarters, even by his own wife. To the observations on his gaming, he paid not the smallest regard; but played in public, but purely for his diversion, even when he was advanced in years; and not only in the month of December [214], but at other times, and upon all days, whether festivals or not. This evidently appears from a letter under his own hand, in which he says, “I supped, my dear Tiberius, with the same company. We had, besides, Vinicius, and Silvius the father. We gamed at supper like old fellows, both yesterday and today. And as any one threw upon the tali [215] aces or sixes, he put down for every talus a denarius; all which was gained by him who threw a Venus.” [216] In another letter, he says: “We had, my dear Tiberius, a pleasant time of it during the festival of Minerva: for we played every day, and kept the gaming-board warm. Your brother uttered many exclamations at a desperate run of ill-fortune; but recovering by degrees, and unexpectedly, he in the end lost not much. I lost twenty thousand sesterces for my part; but then I was profusely (125) generous in my play, as I commonly am; for had I insisted upon the stakes which I declined, or kept what I gave away, I should have won about fifty thousand. But this I like better for it will raise my character for generosity to the skies.” In a letter to his daughter, he writes thus: “I have sent you two hundred and fifty denarii, which I gave to every one of my guests; in case they were inclined at supper to divert themselves with the Tali, or at the game of Even-or-Odd.”
LXXII. In other matters, it appears that he was moderate in his habits, and free from suspicion of any kind of vice. He lived at first near the Roman Forum, above the Ring-maker’s Stairs, in a house which had once been occupied by Calvus the orator. He afterwards moved to the Palatine Hill, where he resided in a small house [217] belonging to Hortensius, no way remarkable either for size or ornament; the piazzas being but small, the pillars of Alban stone [218], and the rooms without any thing of marble, or fine paving. He continued to use the same bed-chamber, both winter and summer, during forty years [219]: for though he was sensible that the city did not agree with his health in the winter, he nevertheless resided constantly in it during that season. If at any time he wished to be perfectly retired, and secure from interruption, he shut himself up in an apartment at the top of his house, which he called his Syracuse or Technophuon [220], or he went to some villa belonging to his freedmen near the city. But when he was indisposed, he commonly took up his residence in the house of Mecaenas [221]. Of all the places of retirement from the city, he (126) chiefly frequented those upon the sea-coast, and the islands of Campania [222], or the towns nearest the city, such as Lanuvium, Praeneste, and Tibur [223], where he often used to sit for the administration of justice, in the porticos of the temple of Hercules. He had a particular aversion to large and sumptuous palaces; and some which had been raised at a vast expense by his grand-daughter, Julia, he levelled to the ground. Those of his own, which were far from being spacious, he adorned, not so much with statues and pictures, as with walks and groves, and things which were curious either for their antiquity or rarity; such as, at Capri, the huge limbs of sea-monsters and wild beasts, which some affect to call the bones of giants; and also the arms of ancient heroes.
LXXIII. His frugality in the furniture of his house appears even at this day, from some beds and tables still remaining, most of which are scarcely elegant enough for a private family. It is reported that he never lay upon a bed, but such as was low, and meanly furnished. He seldom wore any garment but what was made by the hands of his wife, sister, daughter, and grand-daughters. His togas [224] were neither scanty nor full; (127) and the clavus was neither remarkably broad or narrow. His shoes were a little higher than common, to make him appear taller than he was. He had always clothes and shoes, fit to appear in public, ready in his bed-chamber for any sudden occasion.
LXXIV. At his table, which was always plentiful and elegant, he constantly entertained company; but was very scrupulous in the choice of them, both as to rank and character. Valerius Messala informs us, that he never admitted any freedman to his table, except Menas, when rewarded with the privilege of citizenship, for betraying Pompey’s fleet. He writes, himself, that he invited to his table a person in whose villa he lodged, and who had formerly been employed by him as a spy. He often came late to table, and withdrew early; so that the company began supper before his arrival, and continued at table after his departure. His entertainments consisted of three entries, or at most of only six. But if his fare was moderate, his courtesy was extreme. For those who were silent, or talked in whispers, he encouraged to join in the general conversation; and introduced buffoons and stage players, or even low performers from the circus, and very often itinerant humourists, to enliven the company.
LXXV. Festivals and holidays he usually celebrated very expensively, but sometimes only with merriment. In the Saturnalia, or at any other time when the fancy took him, he distributed to his company clothes, gold, and silver; sometimes coins of all sorts, even of the ancient kings of Rome and of foreign nations; sometimes nothing but towels, sponges, rakes, and tweezers, and other things of that kind, with tickets on them, which were enigmatical, and had a double meaning [225]. He used likewise to sell by lot among his guests articles of very unequal value, and pictures with their fronts reversed; and so, by the unknown quality of the lot, disappoint or gratify the expectation of the purchasers. This sort of traffic (128) went round the whole company, every one being obliged to buy something, and to run the chance of loss or gain wits the rest.
LXXVI. He ate sparingly (for I must not omit even this), and commonly used a plain diet. He was particularly fond of coarse bread, small fishes, new cheese made of cow’s milk [226], and green figs of the sort which bear fruit twice a year [227]. He did not wait for supper, but took food at any time, and in any place, when he had an appetite. The following passages relative to this subject, I have transcribed from his letters. “I ate a little bread and some small dates, in my carriage.” Again. “In returning home from the palace in my litter, I ate an ounce of bread, and a few raisins.” Again. “No Jew, my dear Tiberius, ever keeps such strict fast upon the Sabbath [228], as I have to-day; for while in the bath, and after the first hour of the night, I only ate two biscuits, before I began to be rubbed with oil.” From this great indifference about his diet, he sometimes supped by himself, before his company began, or after they had finished, and would not touch a morsel at table with his guests.
LXXVII. He was by nature extremely sparing in the use of wine. Cornelius Nepos says, that he used to drink only three times at supper in the camp at Modena; and when he indulged himself the most, he never exceeded a pint; or if he did, his stomach rejected it. Of all wines, he gave the (129) preference to the Rhaetian [229], but scarcely ever drank any in the day-time. Instead of drinking, he used to take a piece of bread dipped in cold water, or a slice of cucumber, or some leaves of lettuce, or a green, sharp, juicy apple.
LXXVIII. After a slight repast at noon, he used to seek repose [230], dressed as he was, and with his shoes on, his feet covered, and his hand held before his eyes. After supper he commonly withdrew to his study, a small closet, where he sat late, until he had put down in his diary all or most of the remaining transactions of the day, which he had not before registered. He would then go to bed, but never slept above seven hours at most, and that not without interruption; for he would wake three or four times during that time. If he could not again fall asleep, as sometimes happened, he called for some one to read or tell stories to him, until he became drowsy, and then his sleep was usually protracted till after day-break. He never liked to lie awake in the dark, without somebody to sit by him. Very early rising was apt to disagree with him. On which account, if he was obliged to rise betimes, for any civil or religious functions, in order to guard as much as possible against the inconvenience resulting from it, he used to lodge in some apartment near the spot, belonging to any of his attendants. If at any time a fit of drowsiness seized him in passing along the streets, his litter was set down while he snatched a few moments’ sleep.
LXXIX. In person he was handsome and graceful, through every period of his life. But he was negligent in his dress; and so careless about dressing his hair, that he usually had it done in great haste, by several barbers at a time. His beard he sometimes clipped, and sometimes shaved; and either read or wrote during the operation. His countenance, either when discoursing or silent, was so calm and serene, that a (130) Gaul of the first rank declared amongst his friends, that he was so softened by it, as to be restrained from throwing him down a precipice, in his passage over the Alps, when he had been admitted to approach him, under pretence of conferring with him. His eyes were bright and piercing; and he was willing it should be thought that there was something of a divine vigour in them. He was likewise not a little pleased to see people, upon his looking steadfastly at them, lower their countenances, as if the sun shone in their eyes. But in his old age, he saw very imperfectly with his left eye. His teeth were thin set, small and scaly, his hair a little curled, and inclining to a yellow colour. His eye-brows met; his ears were small, and he had an aquiline nose. His complexion was betwixt brown and fair; his stature but low; though Julius Marathus, his freedman, says he was five feet and nine inches in height. This, however, was so much concealed by the just proportion of his limbs, that it was only perceivable upon comparison with some taller person standing by him.
LXXX. He is said to have been born with many spots upon his breast and belly, answering to the figure, order, and number of the stars in the constellation of the Bear. He had besides several callosities resembling scars, occasioned by an itching in his body, and the constant and violent use of the strigil [231] in being rubbed. He had a weakness in his left hip, thigh, and leg, insomuch that he often halted on that side; but he received much benefit from the use of sand and reeds. He likewise sometimes found the fore-finger of his right hand so weak, that when it was benumbed and contracted with cold, to use it in writing, he was obliged to have recourse to a circular piece of horn. He had occasionally a complaint in the bladder; but upon voiding some stones in his urine, he was relieved from that pain.
LXXXI. During the whole course of his life, he suffered, at times, dangerous fits of sickness, especially after the conquest of Cantabria; when his liver being injured by a defluxion (131) upon it, he was reduced to such a condition, that he was obliged to undergo a desperate and doubtful method of cure: for warm applications having no effect, Antonius Musa [232] directed the use of those which were cold. He was likewise subject to fits of sickness at stated times every year; for about his birth-day [233] he was commonly a little indisposed. In the beginning of spring, he was attacked with an inflation of the midriff; and when the wind was southerly, with a cold in his head. By all these complaints, his constitution was so shattered, that he could not easily bear either heat or cold.
LXXXII. In winter, he was protected against the inclemency of the weather by a thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a flannel stomacher, and swathings upon his legs and thighs [234]. In summer, he lay with the doors of his bedchamber open, and frequently in a piazza, refreshed by a bubbling fountain, and a person standing by to fan him. He could not bear even the winter’s sun; and at home, never walked in the open air without a broad-brimmed hat on his head. He usually travelled in a litter, and by night: and so slow, that he was two days in going to Praeneste or Tibur. And if he could go to any place by sea, he preferred that mode of travelling. He carefully nourished his health against his many infirmities, avoiding chiefly the free use of the bath; but he was often rubbed with oil, and sweated in a stove; after which he was washed with tepid water, warmed either by a fire, or by being exposed to the heat of the sun. When, upon account of his nerves, he was obliged to have recourse to sea-water, or the waters of Albula [235], he was contented with sitting over a wooden tub, which he called by a Spanish name (132) Dureta, and plunging his hands and feet in the water by turns.
LXXXIII. As soon as the civil wars were ended, he gave up riding and other military exercises in the Campus Martius, and took to playing at ball, or foot-ball; but soon afterwards used no other exercise than that of going abroad in his litter, or walking. Towards the end of his walk, he would run leaping, wrapped up in a short cloak or cape. For amusement he would sometimes angle, or play with dice, pebbles, or nuts, with little boys, collected from various countries, and particularly Moors and Syrians, for their beauty or amusing talk. But dwarfs, and such as were in any way deformed, he held in abhorrence, as lusus naturae (nature’s abortions), and of evil omen.
LXXXIV. From early youth he devoted himself with great diligence and application to the study of eloquence, and the other liberal arts. In the war of Modena, notwithstanding the weighty affairs in which he was engaged, he is said to have read, written, and declaimed every day. He never addressed the senate, the people, or the army, but in a premeditated speech, though he did not want the talent of speaking extempore on the spur of the occasion. And lest his memory should fail him, as well as to prevent the loss of time in getting up his speeches, it was his general practice to recite them. In his intercourse with individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon subjects of importance he wrote on his tablets all he wished to express, lest, if he spoke extempore, he should say more or less than was proper. He delivered himself in a sweet and peculiar tone, in which he was diligently instructed by a master of elocution. But when he had a cold, he sometimes employed a herald to deliver his speeches to the people.
LXXXV. He composed many tracts in prose on various subjects, some of which he read occasionally in the circle of his friends, as to an auditory. Among these was his “Rescript to Brutus respecting Cato.” Most of the pages he read himself, although he was advanced in years, but becoming fatigued, he gave the rest to Tiberius to finish. He likewise read over to (133) his friends his “Exhortations to Philosophy,” and the “History of his own Life,” which he continued in thirteen books, as far as the Cantabrian war, but no farther. He likewise made some attempts at poetry. There is extant one book written by him in hexameter verse, of which both the subject and title is “Sicily.” There is also a book of Epigrams, no larger than the last, which he composed almost entirely while he was in the bath. These are all his poetical compositions for though he begun a tragedy with great zest, becoming dissatisfied with the style, he obliterated the whole; and his friends saying to him, “What is your Ajax doing?” he answered, “My Ajax has met with a sponge.” [236]
LXXXVI. He cultivated a style which was neat and chaste, avoiding frivolous or harsh language, as well as obsolete words, which he calls disgusting. His chief object was to deliver his thoughts with all possible perspicuity. To attain this end, and that he might nowhere perplex, or retard the reader or hearer, he made no scruple to add prepositions to his verbs, or to repeat the same conjunction several times; which, when omitted, occasion some little obscurity, but give a grace to the style. Those who used affected language, or adopted obsolete words, he despised, as equally faulty, though in different ways. He sometimes indulged himself in jesting, particularly with his friend Mecaenas, whom he rallied upon all occasions for his fine phrases [237], and bantered by imitating his way of talking. Nor did he spare Tiberius, who was fond of obsolete and far-fetched expressions. He charges Mark Antony with insanity, writing rather to make men stare, than to be understood; and by way of sarcasm upon his depraved and fickle taste in the choice of words, he writes to him thus: “And are you yet in doubt, whether Cimber Annius or Veranius Flaccus be more proper for your imitation? Whether you will adopt words which Sallustius Crispus has borrowed from the ‘Origines’ of Cato? Or do you think that the verbose empty bombast of Asiatic orators is fit to be transfused into (134) our language?” And in a letter where he commends the talent of his grand-daughter, Agrippina, he says, “But you must be particularly careful, both in writing and speaking, to avoid affectation.”
LXXXVII. In ordinary conversation, he made use of several peculiar expressions, as appears from letters in his own hand-writing; in which, now and then, when he means to intimate that some persons would never pay their debts, he says, “They will pay at the Greek Calends.” And when he advised patience in the present posture of affairs, he would say, “Let us be content with our Cato.” To describe anything in haste, he said, “It was sooner done than asparagus is cooked.” He constantly puts baceolus for stultus, pullejaceus for pullus, vacerrosus for cerritus, vapide se habere for male, and betizare for languere, which is commonly called lachanizare. Likewise simus for sumus, domos for domus in the genitive singular [238]. With respect to the last two peculiarities, lest any person should imagine that they were only slips of his pen, and not customary with him, he never varies. I have likewise remarked this singularity in his hand-writing; he never divides his words, so as to carry the letters which cannot be inserted at the end of a line to the next, but puts them below the other, enclosed by a bracket.
LXXXVIII. He did not adhere strictly to orthography as laid down by the grammarians, but seems to have been of the opinion of those who think, that we ought to write as we speak; for as to his changing and omitting not only letters but whole syllables, it is a vulgar mistake. Nor should I have taken notice of it, but that it appears strange to me, that any person should have told us, that he sent a successor to a consular lieutenant of a province, as an ignorant, illiterate fellow, upon his observing that he had written ixi for ipsi. When he had occasion to write in cypher, he put b for a, c for b, and so forth; and instead of z, aa.
LXXXIX. He was no less fond of the Greek literature, in which he made considerable proficiency; having had Apollodorus (135) of Pergamus, for his master in rhetoric; whom, though much advanced in years, he took with him from The City, when he was himself very young, to Apollonia. Afterwards, being instructed in philology by Sephaerus, he received into his family Areus the philosopher, and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor; but he never could speak the Greek tongue readily, nor ever ventured to compose in it. For if there was occasion for him to deliver his sentiments in that language, he always expressed what he had to say in Latin, and gave it another to translate. He was evidently not unacquainted with the poetry of the Greeks, and had a great taste for the ancient comedy, which he often brought upon the stage, in his public spectacles. In reading the Greek and Latin authors, he paid particular attention to precepts and examples which might be useful in public or private life. Those he used to extract verbatim, and gave to his domestics, or send to the commanders of the armies, the governors of the provinces, or the magistrates of the city, when any of them seemed to stand in need of admonition. He likewise read whole books to the senate, and frequently made them known to the people by his edicts; such as the orations of Quintus Metellus “for the Encouragement of Marriage,” and those of Rutilius “On the Style of Building;” [239] to shew the people that he was not the first who had promoted those objects, but that the ancients likewise had thought them worthy their attention. He patronised the men of genius of that age in every possible way. He would hear them read their works with a great deal of patience and good nature; and not only poetry [240] and history, but orations and dialogues. He was displeased, however, that anything should be written upon himself, except in a grave manner, and by men of the most eminent abilities: and he enjoined the praetors not to suffer his name to be made too common in the contests amongst orators and poets in the theatres.
XC. We have the following account of him respecting his (136) belief in omens and such like. He had so great a dread of thunder and lightning that he always carried about him a seal’s skin, by way of preservation. And upon any apprehension of a violent storm, he would retire to some place of concealment in a vault under ground; having formerly been terrified by a flash of lightning, while travelling in the night, as we have already mentioned. [241]
XCI. He neither slighted his own dreams nor those of other people relating to himself. At the battle of Philippi, although he had resolved not to stir out of his tent, on account of his being indisposed, yet, being warned by a dream of one of his friends, he changed his mind; and well it was that he did so, for in the enemy’s attack, his couch was pierced and cut to pieces, on the supposition of his being in it. He had many frivolous and frightful dreams during the spring; but in the other parts of the year, they were less frequent and more significative. Upon his frequently visiting a temple near the Capitol, which he had dedicated to Jupiter Tonans, he dreamt that Jupiter Capitolinus complained that his worshippers were taken from him, and that upon this he replied, he had only given him The Thunderer for his porter [242]. He therefore immediately suspended little bells round the summit of the temple; because such commonly hung at the gates of great houses. In consequence of a dream, too, he always, on a certain day of the year, begged alms of the people, reaching out his hand to receive the dole which they offered him.
XCII. Some signs and omens he regarded as infallible. If in the morning his shoe was put on wrong, the left instead of the right, that boded some disaster. If when he commenced a long journey, by sea or land, there happened to fall a mizzling rain, he held it to be a good sign of a speedy and happy return. He was much affected likewise with any thing out of the common course of nature. A palm-tree [243] which (137) chanced to grow up between some stone’s in the court of his house, he transplanted into a court where the images of the Household Gods were placed, and took all possible care to make it thrive in the island of Capri, some decayed branches of an old ilex, which hung drooping to the ground, recovered themselves upon his arrival; at which he was so delighted, that he made an exchange with the Republic [244] of Naples, of the island of Oenaria [Ischia], for that of Capri. He likewise observed certain days; as never to go from home the day after the Nundiae [245], nor to begin any serious business upon the nones [246]; avoiding nothing else in it, as he writes to Tiberius, than its unlucky name.
XCIII. With regard to the religious ceremonies of foreign nations, he was a strict observer of those which had been established by ancient custom; but others he held in no esteem. For, having been initiated at Athens, and coming afterwards to hear a cause at Rome, relative to the privileges of the priests of the Attic Ceres, when some of the mysteries of their sacred rites were to be introduced in the pleadings, he dismissed those who sat upon the bench as judges with him, as well as the by-standers, and beard the argument upon those points himself. But, on the other hand, he not only declined, in his progress through Egypt, to go out of his way to pay a visit to Apis, but he likewise commended his grandson Caius (138) for not paying his devotions at Jerusalem in his passage through Judaea. [247]
XCIV. Since we are upon this subject, it may not be improper to give an account of the omens, before and at his birth, as well as afterwards, which gave hopes of his future greatness, and the good fortune that constantly attended him. A part of the wall of Velletri having in former times been struck with thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would some time or other arrive at supreme power; relying on which prediction, the Velletrians both then, and several times afterwards, made war upon the Roman people, to their own ruin. At last it appeared by the event, that the omen had portended the elevation of Augustus.
Julius Marathus informs us, that a few months before his birth, there happened at Rome a prodigy, by which was signified that Nature was in travail with a king for the Roman people; and that the senate, in alarm, came to the resolution that no child born that year should be brought up; but that those amongst them, whose wives were pregnant, to secure to themselves a chance of that dignity, took care that the decree of the senate should not be registered in the treasury.
I find in the theological books of Asclepiades the Mendesian [248], that Atia, upon attending at midnight a religious solemnity in honour of Apollo, when the rest of the matrons retired home, fell asleep on her couch in the temple, and that a serpent immediately crept to her, and soon after withdrew. She awaking upon it, purified herself, as usual after the embraces of her husband; and instantly there appeared upon her body a mark in the form of a serpent, which she never after could efface, and which obliged her, during the subsequent part of her life, to decline the use of the public baths. Augustus, it was added, was born in the tenth month after, and for that reason was thought to be the son of Apollo. The (139) same Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth. His father Octavius, likewise, dreamt that a sun-beam issued from his wife’s womb.
Upon the day he was born, the senate being engaged in a debate on Catiline’s conspiracy, and Octavius, in consequence of his wife’s being in childbirth, coming late into the house, it is a well-known fact, that Publius Nigidius, upon hearing the occasion of his coming so late, and the hour of his wife’s delivery, declared that the world had got a master. Afterwards, when Octavius, upon marching with his army through the deserts of Thrace, consulted the oracle in the grove of father Bacchus, with barbarous rites, concerning his son, he received from the priests an answer to the same purpose; because, when they poured wine upon the altar, there burst out so prodigious a flame, that it ascended above the roof of the temple, and reached up to the heavens; a circumstance which had never happened to any one but Alexander the Great, upon his sacrificing at the same altars. And next night he dreamt that he saw his son under a more than human appearance, with thunder and a sceptre, and the other insignia of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, having on his head a radiant crown, mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel, and drawn by six pair of milk-white horses.
Whilst he was yet an infant, as Caius Drusus relates, being laid in his cradle by his nurse, and in a low place, the next day he was not to be found, and after he had been sought for a long time, he was at last discovered upon a lofty tower, lying with his face towards the rising sun [249]. When he first began to speak, he ordered the frogs that happened to make a troublesome noise, upon an estate belonging to the family near the town, to be silent; and there goes a report that frogs never croaked there since that time. As he was dining in a grove at the fourth mile-stone on the Campanian road, an eagle suddenly snatched a piece of bread out of his hand, and, soaring to a prodigious height, after hovering, came down most unexpectedly, and returned it to him.
Quintus Catulus had a dream, for two nights successively after his dedication of the Capitol. The first night he dreamt (140) that Jupiter, out of several boys of the order of the nobility who were playing about his altar, selected one, into whose bosom he put the public seal of the commonwealth, which he held in his hand; but in his vision the next night, he saw in the bosom of Jupiter Capitolinus, the same boy; whom he ordered to be removed, but it was forbidden by the God, who declared that it must be brought up to become the guardian of the state. The next day, meeting Augustus, with whom till that hour he had not the least acquaintance, and looking at him with admiration, he said he was extremely like the boy he had seen in his dream. Some give a different account of Catulus’s first dream, namely, that Jupiter, upon several noble lads requesting of him that they might have a guardian, had pointed to one amongst them, to whom they were to prefer their requests; and putting his fingers to the boy’s mouth to kiss, he afterwards applied them to his own.
Marcus Cicero, as he was attending Caius Caesar to the Capitol, happened to be telling some of his friends a dream which he had the preceding night, in which he saw a comely youth, let down from heaven by a golden chain, who stood at the door of the Capitol, and had a whip put into his hands by Jupiter. And immediately upon sight of Augustus, who had been sent for by his uncle Caesar to the sacrifice, and was as yet perfectly unknown to most of the company, he affirmed that it was the very boy he had seen in his dream. When he assumed the manly toga, his senatorian tunic becoming loose in the seam on each side, fell at his feet. Some would have this to forbode, that the order, of which that was the badge of distinction, would some time or other be subject to him.
Julius Caesar, in cutting down a wood to make room for his camp near Munda [250], happened to light upon a palm-tree, and ordered it to be preserved as an omen of victory. From the root of this tree there put out immediately a sucker, which, in a few days, grew to such a height as not only to equal, but overshadow it, and afford room for many nests of wild pigeons which built in it, though that species of bird particularly avoids a hard and rough leaf. It is likewise reported, that Caesar was chiefly influenced by this prodigy, to prefer his sister’s grandson before all others for his successor.
(141) In his retirement at Apollonia, he went with his friend Agrippa to visit Theogenes, the astrologer, in his gallery on the roof. Agrippa, who first consulted the fates, having great and almost incredible fortunes predicted of him, Augustus did not choose to make known his nativity, and persisted for some time in the refusal, from a mixture of shame and fear, lest his fortunes should be predicted as inferior to those of Agrippa. Being persuaded, however, after much importunity, to declare it, Theogenes started up from his seat, and paid him adoration. Not long afterwards, Augustus was so confident of the greatness of his destiny, that he published his horoscope, and struck a silver coin, bearing upon it the sign of Capricorn, under the influence of which he was born.
XCV. After the death of Caesar, upon his return from Apollonia, as he was entering the city, on a sudden, in a clear and bright sky, a circle resembling the rainbow surrounded the body of the sun; and, immediately afterwards, the tomb of Julia, Caesar’s daughter, was struck by lightning. In his first consulship, whilst he was observing the auguries, twelve vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present, who had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great and wonderful fortune.
XCVI. He certainly had a presentiment of the issue of all his wars. When the troops of the Triumviri were collected about Bolognia, an eagle, which sat upon his tent, and was attacked by two crows, beat them both, and struck them to the ground, in the view of the whole army; who thence inferred that discord would arise between the three colleagues, which would be attended with the like event: and it accordingly happened. At Philippi, he was assured of success by a Thessalian, upon the authority, as he pretended, of the Divine Caesar himself, who had appeared to him while he was travelling in a bye-road. At Perugia, the sacrifice not presenting any favourable intimations, but the contrary, he ordered fresh victims; the enemy, however, carrying off the sacred things in a sudden sally, it was agreed amongst the augurs, that all the (142) dangers and misfortunes which had threatened the sacrificer, would fall upon the heads of those who had got possession of the entrails. And, accordingly, so it happened. The day before the sea-fight near Sicily, as he was walking upon the shore, a fish leaped out of the sea, and laid itself at his feet. At Actium, while he was going down to his fleet to engage the enemy, he was met by an ass with a fellow driving it. The name of the man was Eutychus, and that of the animal, Nichon [251]. After the victory, he erected a brazen statue to each, in a temple built upon the spot where he had encamped.
XCVII. His death, of which I shall now speak, and his subsequent deification, were intimated by divers manifest prodigies. As he was finishing the census amidst a great crowd of people in the Campus Martius, an eagle hovered round him several times, and then directed its course to a neighbouring temple, where it settled upon the name of Agrippa, and at the first letter. Upon observing this, he ordered his colleague Tiberius to put up the vows, which it is usual to make on such occasions, for the succeeding Lustrum. For he declared he would not meddle with what it was probable he should never accomplish, though the tables were ready drawn for it. About the same time, the first letter of his name, in an inscription upon one of his statues, was struck out by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage that he would live only a hundred days longer, the letter C denoting that number; and that he would be placed amongst the Gods, as Aesar, which is the remaining part of the word Caesar, signifies, in the Tuscan language, a God [252]. Being, therefore, about dispatching Tiberius to Illyricum, and designing to go with him as far as Beneventum, but being detained by several persons who applied to him respecting causes they had depending, he cried out, (and it was afterwards regarded as an omen of his death), “Not all the business in the world, shall detain me at home one moment longer;” and setting out upon his journey, he went (143) as far as Astura [253]; whence, contrary to his custom, he put to sea in the night-time, as there was a favourable wind.
XCVIII. His malady proceeded from diarrhoea; notwithstanding which, he went round the coast of Campania, and the adjacent islands, and spent four days in that of Capri; where he gave himself up entirely to repose and relaxation. Happening to sail by the bay of Puteoli, the passengers and mariners aboard a ship of Alexandria [254], just then arrived, clad all in white, with chaplets upon their heads, and offering incense, loaded him with praises and joyful acclamations, crying out, “By you we live, by you we sail securely, by you enjoy our liberty and our fortunes.” At which being greatly pleased, he distributed to each of those who attended him, forty gold pieces, requiring from them an assurance on oath, not to employ the sum given them in any other way, than the purchase of Alexandrian merchandize. And during several days afterwards, he distributed Togae [255] and Pallia, among other gifts, on condition that the Romans should use the Greek, and the Greeks the Roman dress and language. He likewise constantly attended to see the boys perform their exercises, according to an ancient custom still continued at Capri. He gave them likewise an entertainment in his presence, and not only permitted, but required from them the utmost freedom in jesting, and scrambling for fruit, victuals, and other things which he threw amongst them. In a word, he indulged himself in all the ways of amusement he could contrive.
He called an island near Capri, Apragopolis, “The City of the Do-littles,” from the indolent life which several of his party led there. A favourite of his, one Masgabas [256], he used (144) to call Ktistaes. as if he had been the planter of the island. And observing from his room a great company of people with torches, assembled at the tomb of this Masgabas, who died the year before, he uttered very distinctly this verse, which he made extempore.
Ktistou de tumbo, eisoro pyroumenon.
Blazing with lights I see the founder’s tomb.
Then turning to Thrasyllus, a companion of Tiberius, who reclined on the other side of the table, he asked him, who knew nothing about the matter, what poet he thought was the author of that verse; and on his hesitating to reply, he added another:
Oras phaessi Masgaban timomenon.
Honor’d with torches Masgabas you see;
and put the same question to him concerning that likewise. The latter replying, that, whoever might be the author, they were excellent verses [257], he set up a great laugh, and fell into an extraordinary vein of jesting upon it. Soon afterwards, passing over to Naples, although at that time greatly disordered in his bowels by the frequent returns of his disease, he sat out the exhibition of the gymnastic games which were performed in his honour every five years, and proceeded with Tiberius to the place intended. But on his return, his disorder increasing, he stopped at Nola, sent for Tiberius back again, and had a long discourse with him in private; after which, he gave no further attention to business of any importance.
XCIX. Upon the day of his death, he now and then enquired, if there was any disturbance in the town on his account; and calling for a mirror, he ordered his hair to be combed, and his shrunk cheeks to be adjusted. Then asking his friends who were admitted into the room, “Do ye think that I have acted my part on the stage of life well?” he immediately subjoined,
Ei de pan echei kalos, to paignio
Dote kroton, kai pantes umeis meta charas ktupaesate.
If all be right, with joy your voices raise,
In loud applauses to the actor’s praise.
(145) After which, having dismissed them all, whilst he was inquiring of some persons who were just arrived from Rome, concerning Drusus’s daughter, who was in a bad state of health, he expired suddenly, amidst the kisses of Livia, and with these words: “Livia! live mindful of our union; and now, farewell!” dying a very easy death, and such as he himself had always wished for. For as often as he heard that any person had died quickly and without pain, he wished for himself and his friends the like euthanasian (an easy death), for that was the word he made use of. He betrayed but one symptom, before he breathed his last, of being delirious, which was this: he was all on a sudden much frightened, and complained that he was carried away by forty men. But this was rather a presage, than any delirium: for precisely that number of soldiers belonging to the pretorian cohort, carried out his corpse.
C. He expired in the same room in which his father Octavius had died, when the two Sextus’s, Pompey and Apuleius, were consuls, upon the fourteenth of the calends of September [the 19th August], at the ninth hour of the day, being seventy-six years of age, wanting only thirty-five days [258]. His remains were carried by the magistrates of the municipal [259] towns and colonies, from Nola to Bovillae [260], and in the nighttime, because of the season of the year. During the intervals, the body lay in some basilica, or great temple, of each town. At Bovillae it was met by the Equestrian Order, who carried it to the city, and deposited it in the vestibule of his own house. The senate proceeded with so much zeal in the arrangement of his funeral, and paying honour to his memory, that, amongst several other proposals, some were for having the funeral procession made through the triumphal gate, preceded by the image of Victory which is in the senate-house, and the children of highest rank and of both sexes singing the funeral (146) dirge. Others proposed, that on the day of the funeral, they should lay aside their gold rings, and wear rings of iron; and others, that his bones should be collected by the priests of the principal colleges. One likewise proposed to transfer the name of August to September, because he was born in the latter, but died in the former. Another moved, that the whole period of time, from his birth to his death, should be called the Augustan age, and be inserted in the calendar under that title. But at last it was judged proper to be moderate in the honours paid to his memory. Two funeral orations were pronounced in his praise, one before the temple of Julius, by Tiberius; and the other before the rostra, under the old shops, by Drusus, Tiberius’s son. The body was then carried upon the shoulders of senators into the Campus Martius, and there burnt. A man of pretorian rank affirmed upon oath, that he saw his spirit ascend from the funeral pile to heaven. The most distinguished persons of the equestrian order, bare-footed, and with their tunics loose, gathered up his relics [261], and deposited them in the mausoleum, which had been built in his sixth consulship between the Flaminian Way and the bank of the Tiber [262]; at which time likewise he gave the groves and walks about it for the use of the people.
CI. He had made a will a year and four months before his death, upon the third of the nones of April [the 11th of April], in the consulship of Lucius Plancus, and Caius Silius. It consisted of two skins of parchment, written partly in his own hand, and partly by his freedmen Polybius and Hilarian; and had been committed to the custody of the Vestal Virgins, by whom it was now produced, with three codicils under seal, as well as the will: all these were opened and read in the senate. He appointed as his direct heirs, Tiberius for two (147) thirds of his estate, and Livia for the other third, both of whom he desired to assume his name. The heirs in remainder were Drusus, Tiberius’s son, for one third, and Germanicus with his three sons for the residue. In the third place, failing them, were his relations, and several of his friends. He left in legacies to the Roman people forty millions of sesterces; to the tribes [263] three millions five hundred thousand; to the pretorian troops a thousand each man; to the city cohorts five hundred; and to the legions and soldiers three hundred each; which several sums he ordered to be paid immediately after his death, having taken due care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in legacies from his friends, the sum of fourteen hundred millions; almost the whole of which, with his two paternal estates [264], and others which had been left him, he had spent in the service of the state. He left orders that the two Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, if anything happened to them, should not be buried in his tomb [265]. With regard to the three codicils before-mentioned, in one of them he gave orders about his funeral; another contained a summary of his acts, which he intended should be inscribed on brazen plates, and placed in front of his mausoleum; in the third he had drawn up a concise account of the state of the empire; the number of troops enrolled, what money there was in the treasury, the revenue, and arrears of taxes; to which were added the names of the freedmen and slaves from whom the several accounts might be taken.