The heavy work of his lofty position was performed under painful conditions of health. Besides at least four serious illnesses[288] of which we hear, he was subject to periodical complaints, generally recurring at the beginning of spring and autumn. Soon after B.C. 30 he gave up the martial exercises of the Campus, then the less fatiguing ball games, and finally confined himself to getting out of his sedan to take short runs or walks. As he grew old his only outdoor amusements (except yachting) seem to have been fishing and playing games with little children.
In the last years of his life he gave up going into Roman society. In the earlier part of his principate he dined out freely, and not always in select company. He seems to have been rather inclined to the vulgar millionaire, perhaps because he could reckon on contributions to the public objects which he had at heart. He did not expect splendid entertainments, and was content with the wine of the district, still he did not like being treated with too little ceremony. To one man who gave him a dinner ostentatiously plain and common, he remarked on leaving—“I did not know that I was such an intimate friend of yours.” At times, too, he had occasion to assume the Emperor with some of these nouveaux riches, as in the celebrated case of Vedius Pollio. This man had a stewpond of lampreys, which he fed with flesh. When he was entertaining Augustus on one occasion the cup-bearer dropped a valuable crystal cup, and his master ordered him at once to be thrown to the lampreys. Augustus tried to beg him off, but when Pollio refused, he ceased to entreat; assuming imperial airs he ordered all the cups of the same sort in the house, and all others of value, to be brought into the room and broken. Licinius, the grasping procurator of Gaul, was another of these rich vulgar people, with whom Augustus was somewhat too intimate, and expected in return for that honour large contributions to his works. On one occasion he even took the liberty of altering the figure in the promissory note sent by him so as to double the sum. Licinius said nothing, but on the next occasion he sent a note thus expressed: “I promise towards the expense of the new work—whatever your Highness pleases.”
Wit is seldom kind, and some of the retorts attributed to him are not always exceptions to the rule. To a humpbacked advocate pleading before him, and often repeating the expression, “If you think I am wrong in any way, pray set me straight,” he said, “I can give you some advice, but I can’t set you straight.” To an officer who made rather too much fuss about his services, and kept pointing to an ugly scar on his forehead, he said, “When you run away you shouldn’t look behind you.” More good-natured are the following. To a young prefect who was being sent home from camp for misbehaviour, and who exclaimed, “How can I go home? What am I to say to my father?” he replied, “Tell him that you did not like me.” To another who was being cashiered, and pleaded to have the usual good-service pension, that people might think he had left the service in the usual way, he said, “Well, give out that you have received the money; I won’t say that I haven’t paid it.”
Though affable to all, and neither an unkind nor unreasonable master to his slaves, or patron to his freedmen, he was enough a man of his age not to hesitate to inflict cruel punishment for certain offences. A secretary who had taken a bribe to disclose some confidential paper, he ordered to have his legs broken. A favourite freedman was forced to commit suicide when detected in intrigues with Roman married ladies. He ordered the personal servants of his grandson Caius, who had taken advantage of his illness and death to enrich themselves in the province of Syria, to be thrown into the sea with weights attached to their feet.
To those who had been his friends there is hardly any instance of extreme severity after the end of the civil wars. It is possible that Muræna died before trial, though his fellow-conspirator was put to death. Cornelius Gallus, the first prefectus of Egypt, committed suicide rather than confront the accusations brought against him and the evident animus of the Senate; but Augustus did not wish it, and exclaimed with tears in his eyes that it was hard that he should be the only man who might not be angry with his friends without the matter going farther than he intended. The coldness that arose between him and his ministers Agrippa and Mæcenas was only temporary and never very grave. He deeply deplored their loss at their death. We shall have to discuss his conduct to his daughter and granddaughter and their paramours in another chapter. But neither in regard to these persons nor the conspirators against his life did he ever act in a way that his contemporaries would think cruel.
These anecdotes of Augustus do not suggest a very heroic figure, very quick wit, or great warmth of heart. They rather indicate what I conceive to be the truer picture, a cool and cautious character, not unkindly and not without a sense of humour; but at the same time as inevitable and unmoved by pity or remorse as nature herself. No one accuses him of having neglected or hurried any task that it was his duty to perform. But neither friend, relation, nor minister ever really influenced him. He issues orders, and they all obey instinctively, without remonstrance, and generally with success. He is providence to them all. Everything succeeds under his hands. He is no soldier, though he knows one when he sees him, but all the nations of the earth seek his friendship. Till the last decade of his life no serious reverse befel his armies; at home all opposition melted away, as the difficulties in a road or course disappear before a skilful driver or steerer. He is not godlike, but there is an air of calm success about him which swayed men’s wills and awakened their reverence.
CHAPTER XII
THE REFORMER AND LEGISLATOR
Quid leges sine moribus
vanæ proficiunt?