Augustus. Buchan John

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      As Octavius puzzled over the matter one reflection haunted his mind. His great-uncle had already begun his work. Many things had been achieved which could not be undone. Rome was committed to a course which involved some kind of personal sovereignty. Julius was now a man of fifty-eight, and the ailments of age were crowding upon him. On a day not too far distant the gods would send for him. Who would succeed him in the government of the world? Rome would not tolerate a hereditary monarchy in the ordinary sense, but it was certain that Julius must nominate a successor, and many little things of late had suggested on whom his choice would fall. With a thrill in which pride and fear were mingled the young man realized that the world’s next master might be himself.

      III

      On an afternoon in late March a freedman of his mother’s household arrived in Apollonia with a letter for Octavius. It contained fateful news. The date was the 15th of March, and it told him that on that very day Julius had been murdered in the Senate-house. It did not say by whom, only by “his enemies.” “The time has come,” Atia wrote, “when you must play the man, decide, and act, for no one can tell the things that may come forth.” Grave words for one who did not use inflated speech.

      The news leaked out, in an hour the town was full of it, the soldiers heard it, and that evening Octavius’s lodgings were thronged by those who proffered help. The citizens promised him a safe asylum, the troops their help to avenge the murdered Julius and win the heritage that was his by right. Gently he put them by, and till late in the night he was closeted with his friends. Some, like Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus, would have had him strike at once, and march on Rome at the head of the Macedonian legions.¹ Others—perhaps Maecenas was among them—counselled him to play for safety, to go forthwith to Italy and spy out the land before committing himself. He chose the latter course. It took a day or two to get a ship, and when found, it was a poor one, and it was over yeasty seas that he crossed to Hydruntum (Otranto), the nearest point on the Calabrian shore. Already he had adopted a policy of caution, for he avoided the populous Brundisium.

      The day on which Atia’s freedman brought the letter was the last of Octavius’s youth. The news shattered his ease and fevered his mind. For the great Julius he had felt something more than the hero-worship of a boy and the pride of a kinsman; he had formed for him one of the rare affections of a nature not easily kindled to love. The thought of him, pulled down like a noble stag by curs, maddened him and made his first impulse one of hot revenge. That passion he curbed at once. Revenge there would be, but it must be a careful and calculated thing. At present he knew little. He did not know who were the murderers, and he suspected that he might find strange figures in the conspiracy. He did not know if he was Julius’s heir; he was his next of kin, but there had been no formal adoption. He put aside the entreaties of Agrippa and the legions, for he knew little of war, and had no reason to think that he had any special military talent. To appear in Italy as an amateur dynast might end in a grim fiasco. He realized that he stood on a razor edge. He was resolved to win through to fortune, but he must first discover his tools. Somehow or other he would wear the Caesarian mantle, but he must wait for the right moment to don it. Infinite caution, tight-lipped, unshakable patience, these must be his rule.

      Up till now he had been open in manner, easy of access, a little quick of temper but readily appeased, with an engaging boyishness which matched well with his handsome face. Now the gaiety of youth died in him. His countenance became a mask. As a token of mourning he let his beard grow,¹ and did not shave for six years. His health declined and his skin grew blotched. He buttoned himself up, and kept his thoughts secret from even his dearest friends. The seal which he used bore the image of a sphinx.² All the forces of his being were massed behind one imperious resolve.

      ¹ The cognomen, which he never used, was given him in memory of his father’s victory over a band of runaway slaves at Thurii. Suet. Div. Aug., 7.

      ¹ “geminas cui tempora flammas laeta vomunt.”

      Virg. Aen., viii. 680.

      ¹ For Posidonius see Bake’s edition of the fragments (Leyden, 1810); Schmekel’s Die Philosophic der mittleren Stoa (1902); and Bevan’s Stoics and Sceptics, ch. iii.

      ² Suet. Div. Aug., 94.

      ¹ It seems probable that these young men of humble origin, Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus, had already attracted the attention of Julius, who had attached them to Octavius. Other examples were P. Ventidius Bassus and Cornelius Gallus.

      ² See especially the Butrinto bust, C.A.H., iv. (Plates), 154.

      ³ For the elder Octavius see Suet. Div. Aug., 3; Vell., ii. 59; Cic. ad Q. fr., i. 21, 27; C. I. L., 279.

      ¹ In spite of Nicolaus, 8, it seems clear that Julius never adopted him in his lifetime. Cf. Dio. xlv. 3; Vell., ii. 59; Livy, Epit., 116.

      ¹ It should be noted that the failure of the Republic to govern an empire was due to defects in the administrative machine, not in doctrine and principle. The special court, administering the jus gentium, was established as early as 242 B.C. The theory behind this remarkable innovation will be found in Cicero’s famous definition of true law, de Rep., iii. 2, one of the few passages in the work which, previous to the discovery of the Vatican palimpsest in 1822, was known to the world through its quotation by Lactantius.

      ² This point has been fully treated by Prof. Marsh in The Founding of the Roman Empire, ch. i.

      ¹ Tac. Ann., xv. 32.

      ² in Verr iii. 87.

      ³ For the extra-ordinary commands see Hammond, The Augustan Principate, 14 sqq.

      ⁴ Greenidge, Rom. Public Life, 146.

      ¹ This is the view of Tenney Frank (based upon vol. vi. of the C. I. L.), Econ. Hist. of Rome, 213, Cf. Cic. pro Flacco, 17,

      ¹ See Ward Fowler, Soc. Life at Rome, ch. iii. The locus classicus is Polyb., vi. 17.

      ² Greenidge, op. cit., 261.

      ¹ Cicero in his de Republica and de Legibus, basing himself upon Panaetius and Polybius, found the nearest approach to the ideal “mixed” polity in the pre-Gracchan Republic—“Tenuit igitur hoc in statu senatus rem publicam temporibus, illis ut in populo libero pauca per populum, pleraque senatus auctoritate . . . gererentur, atque uti consules potestatem haberent tempore dumtaxat annuam, genere ipso ac jure regiam.” de Rep., ii. 56. Cf. Polyb. vi. 3, 7, 11.

      ¹ He gave the franchise to Cisalpine Gaul, while it remained a province, which shows that he saw no inconsistency between provincial status and full Roman citizenship. For the very different attitude of Augustus see the story of Suet. Div. Aug., 40.

      ¹ Vell., ii. 59, 5; App., iii. 10; Nic., 16.

      ¹ That is to say, he postponed the ceremony of the “depositio barbae,” which in the great Roman families accompanied the attainment of manhood.

      ² Suet. Div. Aug., 50.

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