Photographed from the Statue in the Vatican by Edne. Alinari.
To face page 108.
CHAPTER VII
ACTIUM
Altera iam teritur bellis civilibus aetas.
Sævis Liburnis, scilicet invidens,
privata deduci superbo
non humilis mulier triumpho.
The early manhood of Augustus and its fruits.
When Sextus fled from Sicily Cæsar was about to complete his 27th year. It was nearly nine years since, while little more than a boy, he had first boldly asserted himself in opposition to men more than twice his own age, and had forced those who had been statesmen before he was born to regard him as their champion or respect him as their master. Since that time he had had little rest from grave anxieties or war. At Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, and in Sicily, he had tasted danger and disaster as well as victory; and had more than once been in imminent hazard. These fatigues had been made more trying by frequent illness, apparently arising from a sluggish liver, to which he had been subject from boyhood. Through all he had been supported by an indomitable persistence and a passionate resolve to avenge his adoptive father, all the more formidable perhaps in a character naturally cold and self-contained. As he went on there gradually awoke in him a nobler ambition, that of restoring and directing the distracted state. Neither now nor afterwards do the more vulgar attributes of supreme power—wealth, luxury, and adulation—seem to have had charms for him. He felt the governing power in him, he believed in his “genius,” what we might call his “mission,” and the difficulties of a divided rule became more and more clear to him. From this time, therefore, he used every means which wise statesmanship or crafty policy could suggest to rid himself of the remaining partner in the Triumvirate, and to gain a free hand in the work of restoration which he had already begun.