Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire

by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh

Marriage with Livia, B.C. 38.

In private life he had taken a step which was the source of a lifelong happiness to him. The political marriage with Scribonia in B.C. 40, contracted with the idea of conciliating Sextus Pompeius, had been ended by divorce on the very day of the birth of his only daughter Iulia. The reason alleged was her disagreeable disposition; but, besides the change in the political situation, there was another reason of a more personal nature. The peace of Misenum had permitted many partisans of Brutus, Cassius, or Lucius Antonius, who had fled to Sextus Pompeius, to return to Rome. Among others came Tiberius Nero,[191] with his young wife, Livia Drusilla. Unless statues and coins are more than usually false, she was possessed of rare beauty. In B.C. 38 she was twenty years old, and had one son (the future Emperor Tiberius) now in his fourth year, and was within three months of the birth of her second son Drusus. Even to the lax notions of divorce and re-marriage then current this seemed somewhat scandalous. A year was held to be the necessary interval for a woman between one marriage and another. But the object of this convention was to prevent ambiguity as to the paternity of children; and when Cæsar consulted the pontifices, they told him that, if there was no doubt as to the paternity of the child with which Livia was pregnant, the marriage might lawfully take place at once. No opposition seems to have been made by Livia’s husband, who was at least twenty years her senior.[192] He acted as a father in giving her to her new husband, and entertained the bridal pair at a banquet. The marriage was so prompt that a favourite page of Livia’s, seeing her take her place on the same dinner couch as Cæsar, whispered to his mistress that she had made a mistake, for her husband was on the other couch. On the birth of Drusus, Cæsar sent the infant to its father, thus complying with the conditions of the pontifices. That the two men should have been on good terms is not incredible in view of the prevailing sentiment as to divorce. We find Cicero, for instance, writing effusively to Dolabella almost directly after he had compelled his daughter to divorce him for gross misconduct, and there are other instances. At any rate Tiberius Nero, on his death-bed in B.C. 33, left the guardianship of his sons to Cæsar; and in spite of such a beginning the marriage proved permanently happy. Cæsar was devoted to Livia to the day of his death; his last conscious act was to kiss her lips.[193]

Honours voted to Cæsar.

The victory in Sicily left him supreme in the West, and he at once devoted himself to the re-establishment of order and prosperity. The relief to Italy and Rome was immense; for with Pompeius master of the sea the city was always in danger of famine, and the Italian coast of devastation. This feeling of relief found expression in the proceedings of the Senate, which now began those votes of special honours and powers to Cæsar, which in the course of the next ten or twelve years gradually clothed him with every attribute of supremacy in the state. On his return from Sicily he was decreed an ovation, as after Philippi,[194] as well as statues and a triumphal arch. On the day of the victory over Pompeius (2nd of September), there were to be feriæ and supplicationes for ever; he and his wife and family were to be feasted on the Capitol; and he was to have the perpetual right of wearing the laurel wreath of victory. He refused the office of Pontifex Maximus, as long as Lepidus lived, but he accepted the privileges of the tribuneship—the personal sanctity which put any one injuring or molesting him under a curse, and the right of sitting with the tribunes in the Senate. This it seems gave him practically the full tribunicia potestas within the city. But it was a novel measure, and its full consequences were not perhaps foreseen.[195] He had twice before wished to be elected tribune, but his “patriciate” stood in his way. This was meant as a kind of compromise, and it furnishes the keynote to his later plans for absorbing the powers of the republican offices.

Measures of conciliation and restoration.

The wars for security of frontiers.

Cæsar’s chief difficulties now came from the large military forces of which he found himself possessed, either by his own enlistment or from that of the various defeated leaders. To disband them was neither safe in view of possible complications with Antony, nor possible without finding large sums of money or great tracts of unoccupied land with which to reward the men; whereas his object now was to put an end to confiscation, fines, and unusual imposts, and to bring back confidence and security. After suppressing more than one incipient mutiny, he contrived to secure enough land for those who had served their full time, partly by purchases from Capua, where there was still a good deal of unassigned land. He repaid the colony by granting it revenues from lands at Cnossus in Crete, which had become ager publicus on the defeat of the pirates, and on some of which a Roman colony was not long afterwards established.[196] Some of the men, again, who had been most clamorous and mutinous he sent to Gaul as a supplementum to colonies already existing, or to found new colonies.[197] He was thus able to make remission of taxation, as well as of arrears due from the lists of forfeiture published by the triumvirs. His enemies said that his object was to throw the odium of their original imposition upon Antony and Lepidus; or to make a merit of necessity, since in most cases it would have been impossible to collect the money. These motives may have had a share in his policy, but he doubtless also wished to restore confidence and cause an oblivion of the miseries of the civil wars. For the soldiers who remained various other employments were found. The weakness of the central government had long been shewn by the existence of marauding bands in various parts of Italy. The civil wars had aggravated the evil, till travelling had become dangerous almost everywhere, and even the streets of Rome were unsafe. Cæsar now organised a police force of soldiers under Sabinus Cotta to patrol the city and Italy, and within a few months the evil was much mitigated.[198] Besides this, Statilius Taurus was sent with an army to restore order in the two African provinces—Proconsularis and Numidia.[199] Another expedition was sent against the Salassi, inhabiting the modern Val d’Aosta, who had for two years been holding out against Antistius Vetus. He had driven them into their mountain fastnesses; but when he left the district they once more descended and expelled the Roman garrisons. The war was entrusted to Valerius Messalla, who reduced them at least to temporary submission (B.C. 35-34).[200] Another similar war was that against the Iapydes, living in what is now Croatia, who in their marauding expeditions had come as far as Aquileia and plundered Roman colonies. To this Cæsar went in person. He destroyed their capital, Metulum, on the Colapis (mod. Kolpa), after a desperate resistance, in the course of which he was somewhat severely injured by the fall of a bridge. The rest of the country then submitted.[201] The Iapydes had no doubt provoked the attack. But that does not seem to be the case with the Pannonians, whom Cæsar proceeded to invade. They were a mixed Illyrian and Celtic tribe, dwelling in forests and detached villages without great towns, and appear to have lived peaceably. But Cæsar resolved to take their one important town, Siscia, at the junction of the Kolpa and Save, partly as a convenient magazine in wars against the Daci, and partly for the mere object of keeping his army employed and paid at the expense of a conquered country. The siege of the town lasted thirty days, and after its fall he returned to Rome, leaving Fufius Geminus to continue the campaign. So again in the spring of B.C. 34 Agrippa was sent against the Dalmatians, and when later in the season he was joined by Cæsar in person, their chief towns were taken and burnt; and this people, who since their defeat of Gabinius in B.C. 44-43, had been practically independent, had again to submit and pay tribute, with ten years’ arrears, and restore the standards taken from Gabinius. Their submission was followed by that of other tribes, and by the middle of B.C. 33, the whole of Illyricum was restored to obedience.

These were the sort of successes to make a man popular at Rome; for they were not costly in blood or treasure, and they affected the interests of a large number of merchants and men of business. Nor was this all. One of his legates, Statilius Taurus, was so successful in Africa, and another, C. Norbanus, in Spain, that both were decreed triumphs in B.C. 34, and in the same year Mauretania was made a Roman province. Cæsar had declined a triumph after the Pannonian war, but accepted honours for Octavia and Livia, who were exempted from the tutela, to which all women were subject; and during these two years his name was becoming associated with success and with the expansion of the Empire and of trade.

Improvements in the city.

This was accompanied by restorations and improvements in the city calculated to appeal still more strongly to popular imagination. In B.C. 33 Agrippa as ædile reformed the water supply of Rome, constructing 700 basins, 500 fountains, and repairing the aqueducts.[202] He also cleansed the cloacæ, adorned the circus, distributed oil and salt free, and opened the baths gratis throughout his year of office, besides throwing among the spectators at the theatre tesseræ (tickets) entitling the holders to valuable presents. Cæsar himself, who was consul for a few months at the beginning of B.C. 33, erected the Porticus Octaviæ, named in honour of his sister, with the spoils of the Illyrian and Pannonian wars,[203] and began the building of the temple of Apollo and the two libraries, on the site bought for a house on the Palatine before B.C. 36, when that of Hortensius had been granted to him by the Senate,[204] and while he was still living in the house of Calvus near the Forum.