Augustus was a short man (just under five feet seven inches), but so well proportioned that the defect in height was not noticed unless he was standing by much taller men. He was remarkably handsome at all periods of his life, with an expression of calm dignity, whether silent or speaking, which involuntarily inspired respect. His eyes were grey, and so bright and keen that it was not easy to meet their gaze. If he had a personal vanity it was in regard to them. He liked to think that they dazzled those on whom he looked, and he was pleased at the answer of the Roman eques, who, when asked why he turned away, replied, “Because I could not bear the lightning of your eyes.” Vergil gratified this vanity of his patron when in the description of the battle of Actium (Æn., viii. 650) he pictures him,
Stans celsa in puppi; geminas cui tempora flammas
Læta vomunt.
And the Emperor Iulian, in “The Banquet of the Emperors,” laughs not unkindly at the same weakness when he introduces him, “changing colour like a chameleon, and wishing that the beams darting from his eyes should be like those of the mighty sun.” The busts, statues, and coins of Augustus fully confirm this statement as to his beauty; and in the triumphal statue found in Livia’s villa at Prima Porta, the artist has succeeded in suggesting the brightness and keenness of his eyes. He was usually clean shaven, but from his uncle’s death to B.C. 38, according to Dio (48, 34), he grew his beard as a sign of mourning; though coins showed him with a slight whisker till about B.C. 36. These portraits are full of life and character. The clear-cut features, the firm mouth and chin, the steady eyes, the carelessly ordered hair, the lines on forehead and cheeks, suggest a man who had suffered and laboured, who was yet self-controlled, calm, and clear-headed. It is a face not without some tenderness, but capable of firing up into hot indignation and even cruelty. There is an air of suffering but of determined victory over pain; altogether a face of a man who had done a great work and risen to a high place in the world and knew it; who had confidence, lastly, in his star. On taking leave of Gaius Cæsar, it is said, he wished him “the integrity of Pompey, the courage of Alexander, and his own good fortune.” On some of his coins beneath the head crowned with the crown of twelve rays, is the Iulian star, first observed at the funeral of Iulius Cæsar, and which he adopted as the sign of his own high fortunes: on others the Sphinx, which he at first adopted as his signet—emblem perhaps of a purpose unbetrayed. Augustus was accomplished in the subjects recognised in the education of his time, though he neither wrote nor spoke Greek with ease. He had studied and practised rhetoric, and had a good and correct taste in style, avoiding the use of far-fetched or obsolete words and expressions, or affected conceits. He ridiculed Antony for his “Asiatic” style of oratory, full of flowers of speech and flamboyant sentences; and writing to his granddaughter, Agrippina, while praising her abilities he warns her against pedantic expressions whether in conversation or writing. Without being an orator, he spoke clearly and to the point, assisted by a pleasant voice, which he took pains to preserve and improve. In the Senate, the camp, and private conferences, he preferred to read his speeches, though he could also speak well on the spur of the moment. In domestic life, though somewhat strict, he was generally simple and charming. He lived much with wife and children, associating himself with their employments, and even joining in the games of the latter. He personally superintended the education of his adopted sons, taught them his own method of shorthand, and interested himself in their reading. He had old-fashioned ideas about the proper employment of the women in his family. They were expected to busy themselves in weaving for the use of the household, to visit and receive visits only with his approval, and not to converse on subjects that could not with propriety be entered on the day’s journal. Though his daughter and granddaughters were well educated, and had a taste for literature, it may well be that a home thus conducted was so dull as partly to account for their aberrations in the fuller liberty of married life.
His attachments were warm and constant, and he was not illiberal to his friends or disinclined to give them his full confidence. But he was always his own master. No friend or freedman gained control over him or rose to the odious position of “favourite.” He allowed and even liked freedom of speech, but it was always without loss of dignity. He was not a man with whom liberties were taken even by the most intimate. He was quick tempered, but knew it, and was ready to admit of caution and advice, as in the well-known story of Mæcenas, watching him in court about to condemn a number of prisoners (probably in the civil war times), and throwing across to him a note with the words, Surge tandem carnifex! “Tis time to rise, hangman!” Or when he received with complaisance the advice of Athenodorus (hero of the covered sedan) that when he was angry he should say over the letters of the alphabet before coming to a decision.
His ultra-Roman views.
In later times he was always looked back upon by his successors as the true founder of the Empire, and the best model for their guidance; yet it is doubtful how far he had wide and far-reaching views. He was a statesman who dealt with facts as he found them and did the best he could. He was deeply impressed with the difficulty of his task. Commenting on the fact of Alexander the Great having accomplished his conquests by the age of 32, and then feeling at a loss what to do for the rest of his life, he remarked that he “was surprised that Alexander did not regard the right ordering of the empire he possessed a heavier task than winning it.” But in one important respect at least he was wrong in his idea of what he had done. He never conceived of an empire filled with citizens enjoying equal rights, or in which Rome could possibly occupy a secondary place. He was ultra-Roman in his views; and worked and schemed to maintain the supremacy of the Eternal City. That supremacy may indeed be said to have remained to this day in the region of spiritual affairs. But it was destined to disappear politically, except in name, before many generations had passed away, and as a logical consequence of much that he had himself done. A new Rome and a new Empire—though always resting on the old title and theory—were to arise, in which Italy would be a province like the rest, and old Rome but the shadow of a mighty name.
The court circle.
Among those who exercised a permanent influence on Augustus, the first place must be given to Livia (B.C. 54-A.D. 29). The writers on Augustus comment on the romantic revolution of her fortunes. After the affair of Perusia she fled with her husband, Nero, and her little son, Tiberius, from Augustus, who was to be her husband, and was to be succeeded by her son. Her divorce and prompt marriage to Augustus, while within a few months of being again a mother, is not only a thing revolting to our ideas, it was strictly against Roman principles and habits, and required all her new husband’s commanding influence to be admitted as legal. Yet Suetonius says, and says truly, that he continued “to love and honour her exclusively to the end” (dilexit et probavit unice et perseveranter). The same writer gives an account of the Emperor’s intrigues with other women. To our ideas the two statements are contradictory, but Suetonius would not have thought so. Conjugal love was not amor; the latter was thought even inconsistent with, or at least undesirable in, conjugal affection. He means that throughout his life Augustus continued to regard her with affection, to respect her character, and give weight to her opinion. For my own part, I believe that something more might be said, and that much of what has come down to us as to the conduct of the Emperor may be dismissed as malignant gossip. But however that may be, the influence of Livia over him seems never to have failed, and it was exercised on the side of clemency and generosity. She set an excellent example of pure and dignified conduct to Roman society, and, though abstaining from interference generally in political matters, was ready to give advice when called upon. She seems usually to have accompanied him, when possible, on his foreign progresses or residences away from Rome. When Herod visited Augustus at Aquileia in B.C. 14, she appears to have shared her husband’s liking for that strange medley of magnificence and cruelty, and sent him costly gifts for the festivity which accompanied the completion of the new city of Cæsarea Sebaste in B.C. 13. The usual allegation against her is that she worked for the succession of her sons, Tiberius and Drusus, as against the Iulian family, represented by the son of Octavia and the children of Iulia. To secure this object she was accused in popular rumour of compassing the deaths successively of Marcellus, of Gaius and Lucius Cæsar, of Agrippa Postumus, and, finally, of having even hastened the end of Augustus himself. This last is not mentioned by Suetonius, and is only related by Dio as a report, for which he gives no evidence, and which he does not appear to have believed. Tacitus records the criticism of her as a gravis noverca to the family of the Cæsars, and seems to accept her guilt in regard to Gaius and Iulius (Ann. 4, 71). But he is also constrained to admit that she exercised a humanising influence over Tiberius, that his victims constantly found refuge and protection in her palace, and that she was benevolent and charitable to the poor—maintaining a large number of orphan boys and girls by her bounty. The most suspicious case against her is the execution of Agrippa Postumus immediately after the death of Augustus—“the first crime of the new reign.” It will never be known whether the order for that cruel deed issued from her or her crafty son. The death of Marcellus was in no way suspicious, as it occurred in a season of exceptional unhealthiness, when large numbers were dying at Rome of malarial fever. As to the deaths of Gaius and Lucius, no suspicion seems to have occurred to Augustus, and he was keenly anxious for their survival. The poisoned fig supposed to have been given to himself is a familiar feature in the stories of great men’s death of every age in Italy. Tacitus in the famous summing up of her character, while acknowledging the purity of her domestic conduct, yet declares that her social manners were more free than was considered becoming among women of an earlier time; that as a mother she was extravagantly fond, as a wife too complaisant; and that her character was a combination of her husband’s adroitness and her son’s insincerity. He by no means intends to draw a pleasing portrait. He seldom does. But what we may take for true is that she was beautiful, loyal to her husband, open-handed and generous to the distressed, merciful and kind to the unfortunate. To those who think such qualities likely to belong to a poisoner and murderess, her condemnation must be left. It is curious that neither Vergil, Horace, nor Propertius mention or allude to Livia; nor does Ovid do so until after the death of Augustus—for the consolatio ad Liviam on the death of Drusus is not his. On some of the inscriptions of a later period in the reign her name appears among the imperial family as wife of the Princeps. That was itself an innovation, and it seems as if the poets abstained from mentioning her under orders. It was improper for a matron of high rank to be made public property in this way. Horace, for instance, only once alludes to the wife of Mæcenas, and then under a feigned name.
Of those who influenced the earlier policy of Augustus, and supported him in the first twenty years of the Principate, the first place must be given to Agrippa and Mæcenas.