The Twelve Caesars by Robert Graves
52. Although the voting of temples to popular proconsuls was a commonplace, he would not accept any such honour, even in the provinces, unless his name were coupled with that of Rome. He even more vigorously opposed the dedication of a temple to himself at home, and went so far as to melt down the silver statues previously erected, and to spend the silver coined from them on golden tripods for Palatine Apollo.
When the people would have forced a dictatorship on him he fell on his knee and, throwing back his gown to expose his naked breast, implored their silence.
53. He always felt horrified and insulted when called ‘My Lord’, a form of address used by slaves to their owners. Once, while he was watching a comedy, one of the players spoke the line:
‘O just and generous Lord!’
whereupon the entire audience rose to their feet and applauded, as if the phrase referred to Augustus. An angry look and a peremptory gesture soon quelled this gross flattery, and the next day he issued an edict of stern reprimand. After this he would not let even his adopted children, or grandchildren, use the obsequious word (though it might be only in joke), either when talking to him or about him. Augustus did his best to avoid leaving or entering any city in broad daylight, because that would have obliged the authorities to give him a formal welcome or send-off. During his consulships, he usually went on foot through the streets of Rome, and on other occasions in a closed litter. His morning audiences were open to commoners as well as knights and senators, and he behaved very sociably to all who came with requests—once a petitioner showed such nervousness that Augustus laughed and said: ‘Anyone would think you were offering an elephant a small gratuity!’ On days when the Senate was in session and the members had therefore refrained from paying their customary call at the palace, he would enter the House and greet each of them in turn by name, unprompted; and after the conclusion of business said goodbye in the same fashion, not requiring them to rise. He exchanged social calls with many noblemen, and always attended their birthday celebrations, until he grew elderly and had an uncomfortable experience at a crowded betrothal party. When a senator named Gallus Cerrinius, whom Augustus knew only slightly, went suddenly blind and decided to starve himself to death, he paid him a visit and spoke so consolingly that Gallus changed his mind.
54. Augustus’s speeches in the House would often be interrupted by such remarks as ‘I don’t understand you!’ or ‘I’d dispute your point if I got the chance.’ And it happened more than once that, exasperated by recriminations which lowered the tone of the debates, he left the House in angry haste, and was followed by shouts of: ‘You ought to let senators say exactly what they think about matters of public importance!’ When every senator was required to nominate one other for enrolment in the reformed Order, Antistius Labeo chose Marcus Lepidus, an old enemy of Augustus’s, then living in exile. Augustus asked: ‘Surely there are noblemen more deserving of this honour?’ Labeo answered: ‘A man is entitled to his own opinion.’ Yet Augustus never punished anyone for showing independence of mind on such occasions, or even for behaving insolently.
55. He remained unmoved by the lampoons on him, which were constantly posted up in the House, but took trouble to prove their pointlessness; and instead of trying to discover their authors, merely moved that henceforth it should be a criminal offence to publish any defamatory libel, either in prose or verse, signed with another’s name.
56. Though replying in a public proclamation to various ugly and damaging jokes current at his expense, he vetoed a law that would have suppressed free speech in the preamble to wills. Whenever assisting at the City Elections he used to take the candidates with him on a tour of the wards and canvass for them in the traditional manner. He would also cast a vote himself, in his own tribe, to show that he remained a man of the people. If called upon to give evidence in court he answered questions patiently and did not even mind being contradicted. Augustus’s new Forum is so narrow because he could not bring himself to evict the owners of the houses which would have been demolished had his original plan been carried out. He never nominated his adopted sons for offices of state without adding, ‘If they deserve this honour.’ Once, while they were still boys, and the entire theatre audience stood up to cheer them, he expressed his annoyance in no uncertain terms. Although anxious that his friends should take a prominent share in the administration, he expected them to be bound by the same laws as their fellow-citizens and equally liable to public prosecution. When Cassius Severus had brought a charge of poisoning against Augustus’s close friend Nonius Asprena, Augustus asked the Senate what they wished him to do. ‘I find myself in a quandary,’ he said, ‘because to speak in Nonius’s defence might be construed as an attempt to shield a criminal, whereas my silence would suggest that I was treacherously prejudicing a friend’s chance of acquittal.’ Since the whole House consented to his presence in Court, he sat quietly for several hours among the advocates and witnesses, but abstained even from testifying to Nonius’s character.28 He did, however, appear for some of his own dependants, among them a former staff-officer named Scutarius, who had been accused of slander. Yet he intervened successfully in only one case, and then by a personal appeal to the plaintiff. ‘I should be most grateful if you would drop your charge against the defendant,’ he said. ‘I am deeply in his debt for a timely disclosure of Murena’s conspiracy.’
57. The degree of affection that Augustus won by such behaviour can easily be gauged. The grateful Senatorial decrees may, of course, be discounted as to a certain extent inspired by a sense of obligation. But the Equestrian Order voluntarily and unanimously decided to celebrate his birthday, spreading the festivities over two days; and once a year men of all classes would visit the Curtian Lake, into which they threw the coins previously vowed for his continued well-being. They would also climb to the Capitol on New Year’s Day with money presents, even if he happened to be out of town. With the sum that thus accrued Augustus bought valuable images of the gods, which he set up in each of the City wards: among them the Apollo of Sandal Street, and Juppiter of the Tragedians.
When his Palace on the Palatine Hill burned down, a fund for its rebuilding was started by the veterans, the guilds of minor officials and the City tribes; to which people of every sort made further individual contributions according to their means. Augustus, to show his gratitude for the gift, took a token coin from each heap, but no more than a single silver piece. His homecomings after tours of the Empire were always acclaimed with respectful good wishes and songs of joy as well; and it became a custom to cancel all punishments on the day he set foot in Rome.
58. In a universal movement to confer on Augustus the title ‘Father of his Country’, the first approach was made by the commons, who sent a deputation to him at Antium; when he declined this honour a huge crowd met him outside the Theatre with laurel wreaths, and repeated the request. Finally, the Senate followed suit but, instead of issuing a decree or acclaiming him with shouts, chose Valerius Messala to speak for them all when Augustus entered the House. Messala’s words were:
‘Caesar Augustus, I am instructed to wish you and your family good fortune and divine blessings; which amounts to wishing that our entire City will be fortunate and our country prosperous. The Senate agree with the People of Rome in saluting you as Father of your Country.’
With tears in his eyes, Augustus answered—again I quote his exact words: ‘Fathers of the Senate, I have at last achieved my highest ambition. What more can I ask of the immortal gods than that they may permit me to enjoy your approval until my dying day?’
59. Augustus’s private physician, Antonius Musa, who had pulled him through a serious illness, was honoured with a statue, bought by public subscription and set up beside Aesculapius’s. The will of more than one householder directed that his heirs should take sacrificial victims to the Capitol and carry a placard before them as they went, inscribed with an expression of their gratitude for Augustus’s having been allowed to outlive the testator. Some Italian cities vo
60. Each of the allied kings who enjoyed Augustus’s friendship, founded a city called ‘Caesarea’ in his own dominions; and all clubbed together to provide funds for completing the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, which had been begun centuries before, and dedicating it to his guiding spirit. These kings would often leave home, dressed in the gowns of their honorary Roman citizenship, without any emblems of royalty whatsoever, and visit Augustus at Rome, or even while he was visiting the provinces; they would attend his morning audiences with the simple devotion of family dependants.
61. This completes my account of Augustus’s civil and military career, and of how he governed his wide Empire in peace and war. Now follows a description of his private life, his character, and his domestic fortunes.
At the age of twenty, while Consul for the first time, Augustus lost his mother; and at the age of fifty-four, his sister Octavia. He had been a devoted son and brother while they lived, and conferred the highest posthumous honours on them at their deaths.
62. As a young man he was betrothed to the daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, but on his reconciliation with Mark Antony, after their first disagreement, the troops insisted that they should become closely allied by marriage; so, although Antony’s step-daughter Claudia—borne by his wife Fulvia to her ex-husband Publius Clodius—was only just nubile, Augustus married her; however, he quarrelled with Fulvia and divorced Claudia before the union had been consummated. Soon afterwards he married Scribonia, both of whose previous husbands had been ex-consuls, and by one of whom she had a child. Augustus divorced her, too, ‘because,’ as he wrote, ‘I could not bear the way she nagged at me’—and immediately took Livia Drusilla away from her husband, Tiberius Nero, though she was pregnant at the time. Livia remained the one woman whom he truly loved until his death.
63. Scribonia bore him a daughter, Julia; but to his great disappointment the marriage with Livia proved childless, apart from a premature birth. Julia was betrothed first to Mark Antony’s son and then to Cotiso, King of the Getans, whose daughter Augustus himself proposed to marry in exchange; or so Antony writes. But Julia’s first husband was Marcellus, his sister Octavia’s son, then hardly more than a child; and, when he died, Augustus persuaded Octavia to let her become Marcus Agrippa’s wife—though Agrippa was now married to one of Marcellus’s two sisters, and had fathered children on her. At Agrippa’s death, Augustus cast about for a new son-in-law, even if he were only a knight, eventually choosing Tiberius, his step-son; this meant, however, that Tiberius must divorce his wife, who had already given him an heir.
64. Julia bore Agrippa three sons—Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa Postumus; and two daughters—Julia the Younger, and Agrippina the Elder. Augustus married this Julia to Lucius Paulus whose father, of the same name, was Censor; and Agrippina to Germanicus—the son of Octavia’s daughter Antonia by Tiberius’s younger brother Drusus. He then adopted Gaius and Lucius, and brought them up at the Palace; after buying them from Agrippa at a token sale—touching the scales three times with a bronze coin in the presence of the City praetor. He trained his new sons in the business of government while they were still young, sending them as commanders-in-chief to the provinces when only consuls-elect. The education of his daughter and grand-daughters included even spinning and weaving; they were for bidden to say or do anything, either publicly or in private, that could not decently figure in the imperial day-book. He took severe measures to prevent them forming friendships without his consent, and once wrote to Lucius Vinicius, a young man of good family and conduct: ‘You were very ill-mannered to visit my daughter at Baiae.’ Augustus gave Gaius and Lucius reading, swimming and other simple lessons, for the most part acting as their tutor himself; and was at pains to make them model their handwriting on his own. Whenever they dined in his company he had them sit at his feet on the so-called lowest couch; and, while accompanying him on his travels, they rode either ahead of his carriage, or one on each side of it.
65. His satisfaction with the success of this family training was, however, suddenly dashed. He found out, to his misfortune, that the Elder and the Younger Julia had both been indulging in every sort of vice; and banished them. When Gaius then died in Lycia, and Lucius eighteen months later at Marseilles, Augustus publicly adopted his remaining grandchild, Agrippa Postumus and, at the same time, his step-son Tiberius; a special bill to legalize this act was passed by a people’s court, consisting of thirty lictors under the Chief Pontiff. Yet he soon disinherited Postumus, whose behaviour had lately been vulgar and brutal, and packed him off to Sorrento in disgrace.
When members of his family died Augustus bore his loss with far more resignation than when they disgraced themselves. The deaths of Gaius and Lucius did not break his spirit; but after discovering his daughter Julia’s adulteries, he refused to see visitors for some time. He wrote a letter about her case to the Senate, staying at home while a quaestor read it to them. He may even have considered her execution; at any rate, hearing that one Phoebe, a freedwoman in Julia’s confidence, had hanged herself, he cried: ‘I should have preferred to be Phoebe’s father!’ Julia was forbidden to drink wine or enjoy any other luxury during her exile; and denied all male company, whether free or servile, except by Augustus’s special permission and after he had been given full particulars of the applicant’s age, height, complexion, and of any distinguishing marks on his body—such as moles or scars. He kept Julia for five years on the prison island of Pandataria before moving her to Reggio in Calabria, where she received somewhat milder treatment. Yet nothing would persuade him to forgive his daughter; and when the Roman people interceded several times on her behalf, earnestly pleading for her recall, he stormed at a popular assembly: ‘If you ever bring up this matter again, may the gods curse you with daughters as lecherous as mine, and with wives as adulterous!’ While in exile Julia the Younger gave birth to a child, which Augustus refused to let the father acknowledge; it was exposed at his orders. Because Agrippa Postumus’s conduct, so far from improving, grew daily more irresponsible, he was transferred to the island of Planasia, and held there under military surveillance. Augustus then asked the Senate to pass a decree making Postumus’s banishment permanent; but whenever his name, or that of either Julia, came up in conversation he would sigh deeply, and sometimes quote a line from the Iliad:
‘Ah, never to have married, and childless to have died!’
referring to them as ‘my three boils’ or ‘my three running sores’.
66. Though slow in making friends, once Augustus took to a man, he showed great constancy and not only rewarded him as his qualities deserved, but even condoned his minor shortcomings. Indeed, it would be hard to recall an instance when one of Augustus’s friends fell from favour; apart from Salvidienus Rufus and Cornelius Gallus, two nobodies whom he promoted, respectively, to a consulship and the Egyptian prefecture. Rufus, who had taken part in a plot, was handed over to a Senatorial Court and sentenced to death; Gallus, who had shown ingratitude and an envious nature, was at first merely denied access to the Palace, or the privilege of living in any imperial province; but charges were later brought against him, and he, too, died by order of the Senate. Augustus commended the loyal House for feeling as strongly as they did on his behalf, but complained with tears of the unfortunate position in which he was placed: the only man in Rome who could not punish his friends merely by an expression of disgust for them—the matter must always be taken further. However, as I say, the cases of Rufus and Gallus were exceptional. Augustus’s other friends all continued rich and powerful so long as they lived, despite occasional coolnesses; each ranking among the leaders of his Order. It will be enough to mention in this context his annoyance at Marcus Agrippa’s show of impatience and at Maecenas’s inabil
Augustus expected the affection that he showed his friends to be warmly reciprocated even in the hour of death. For, although nobody could call him a legacy-hunter—indeed, he could never bear to benefit under the will of a man personally unknown to him—yet he was almost morbid in his careful weighing of a friend’s death-bed tributes. His disappointment if they economized in their bequests to him, or failed to make at least some highly complimentary mention of his name, was only too apparent; nor could he repress his satisfaction if they remembered him with loving gratitude. But whenever any testator, of whatever Order, left him either legacies or shares in promised inheritances, Augustus at once resigned his rights in favour of the man’s grown-up sons or daughters, if he had any; and, in the case of minors, kept the money until the boys came of age or the girls married, whereupon he handed it over, increased by the accumulated interest.
67. Augustus behaved strictly but kindly towards his dependants and slaves, and honoured some of his freedmen, such as Licinius, Celadus, and others, with his close intimacy. A slave named Cosmus, who had complained of him in the vilest terms, was punished merely by being put in irons. Once, when Augustus and his steward Diomedes were out walking together and a wild boar suddenly charged at them, Diomedes took fright and dodged behind his master. Augustus later made a joke of the incident, though he had been in considerable danger, preferring to call Diomedes a coward than anything worse—after all, his action had not been premeditated. Yet, when one Polus, a favourite freedman, was convicted of adultery with free-born Roman matrons, Augustus ordered him to commit suicide; and sentenced Thallus, an imperial secretary, to have his legs broken for divulging the contents of a dispatch—his fee had been twenty-five gold pieces. And because Gaius Caesar’s tutor and attendants used their master’s sickness and subsequent death as an excuse for arrogant, greedy behaviour in the province of Asia, Augustus had them flung into a river with weights tied around their necks.