aliud viti apportes tecum, cum
advenis, unum id sat est quod diu
vivendo multa quæ non volt videt.
The situation in B.C. 20-17.
After the restoration of the standards and prisoners from the Parthians in B.C. 20, and when the peaceful settlement of the Eastern provinces and subordinate kingdoms had been carried through or fairly started, Augustus appears to have thought that the greater part of his life’s work had been accomplished. The frontiers of the Empire had been settled and secured. The Eastern provinces had been visited, necessary reforms introduced, and great works of public utility set on foot. He wrote word to the Senate that the Empire was sufficiently extensive, and that he had no intention of adding to it by further annexations. He returned to Rome the following year (B.C. 19) to find that the renewed trouble in Northern Spain had been settled, or was on the point of being settled, by Agrippa. He proposed to devote himself henceforth to internal reforms and the superintendence of the peaceful improvements which he contemplated in the provinces. He no doubt had in mind the necessity of a personal visitation of distant parts of the Empire from time to time; but by associating the able and trustworthy Agrippa with himself in the tribunician power (B.C. 18) he might feel that he would always have a support in the administration at home or abroad on which he could rely. It was at this time, therefore, that the reforms and restorations were accomplished which have been described in the last chapter, crowned by the national festival, the ludi sæculares, in which he and Agrippa stood side by side as mouthpieces of the whole people before the gods.
We have seen, however, how these peaceful hopes were disappointed. Scarcely were the secular games over than news came of the serious disturbances in Gaul, Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Thrace, which led to his three years’ absence from Rome and his long residence in Gaul and Spain. He had only returned to Rome from this absence little more than a year when he lost Agrippa, who died in March, B.C. 12, and he was obliged to fall back upon the support of Tiberius, as his two grandsons were only eight and five years old respectively. It was in B.C. 11 that he compelled him to divorce his wife, Vipsania, to whom he was devotedly attached, and marry Iulia, left a widow by Agrippa. The change was thoroughly distasteful to Tiberius. He loved Vipsania, and he had good reason to suspect Iulia of at least levity. So strong were his feelings for his divorced wife that means had to be taken to prevent the two meeting, for on a chance rencontre he was observed to follow her with straining eyes and tears. The arrangement, indeed, was wholly the work of Augustus, with a view to a possible failure in the succession (which did actually occur), for by this time he had evidently imbibed the idea of a dynasty, and of the necessity of having some one connected with him to take his place, who would be regarded as a natural successor by all classes of citizens. But it proved the origin of a sorrow and mortification which did much to overcloud his later days.
Julia, Daughter of Augustus.
From the Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
To face page 234.