The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]

THE PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF AUGUSTUS

We are indebted to C. Suetonius Tranquillus, who lived at Rome about the close of the first century A.D., for most that we know of the personal characteristics of Augustus, and of his immediate successors. Thanks to him, we are enabled to gain a personal acquaintance, as it were, with the Cæsars; which is very unusual with the great characters of antiquity in general. The biographies of Plutarch and of Cornelius Nepos are about the only other extensive repositories of information concerning the character of celebrities as men rather than as mere historical personalities. We turn now to Suetonius’ estimate of Augustus:

Augustus was slow in forming friendships, but when once they were contracted, he maintained them with great constancy; not only rewarding very handsomely the virtues and good services of his friends, but bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that they were 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 governor of Egypt, both of them men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged in a design to excite a rebellion, he delivered up to the senate, that he might be condemned; and the other, on account of his ungrateful and malicious temper, he dismissed from his family and the provinces under his government. But when Gallus, by the threats of his accusers, and the votes of the senate against him, was driven to the desperate extremity of laying violent hands upon himself, he commended indeed the attachment of the senate, that had expressed so much indignation on his account; but he shed tears, and lamented his unhappy condition, “that I alone,” said he, “cannot be permitted to be angry with my friends to such a degree as I think proper.” The rest of his friends continued during their whole lives to make a distinguished figure in their several orders, both in power and estate, notwithstanding some occasional incidents of a disagreeable nature. For to say nothing of others, he would sometimes complain of impatience in Agrippa, and of loquacity in Mæcenas: the former, from a suspicion of a coolness in Augustus towards him, and because Marcellus received greater marks of favour, having withdrawn himself from all concern in the government, and retired to Mytilene; and the latter having confidentially imparted to his wife Terentia the discovery of Murena’s conspiracy. He likewise expected from his friends, both living and dying, a mutual proof of their benevolence. For though he was far from coveting their estates (as he never would accept of any legacy left him by a stranger), yet he examined their last sentiments of him, expressed in their wills, with an anxious attention; not being able to conceal his chagrin, if 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 what was left him by such as had children, he used to restore to the latter, either immediately, or if they were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly habit, or of their marriage, with interest.

As a patron and master, his behaviour in general was mild and conciliating; but when occasion required it, he could be severe. He employed many of his freedmen in considerable posts about him, as Licinius, 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, as they were walking together, left him exposed to a wild boar, which came suddenly upon them, he chose rather to charge him with cowardice than any ill design, and turned an incident of no small hazard to his person into a jest, because it had proceeded from no treachery. Proculus, who was one of his greatest favourites amongst all his freedmen, he put to death, 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 a letter of his. And his son Caius’ tutor, and other attendants, upon the occasion of his sickness and death behaving with great insolence, and committing acts of rapaciousness, he tied great weights about their necks and threw them into a river.

In his youth he lay under the infamy of various aspersions. Sextus Pompeius reproached him as an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, that he had earned his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. L. Antony likewise upbraids him with the same; and that he had, for a gratification of three hundred thousand sesterces, submitted to A. Hirtius in the same way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with the flame of nutshells, to make the hair become softer.

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 policy, to discover more easily the designs of his enemies by their wives.