M. Vipsanius Agrippa (B.C. 63-13), differed widely from Mæcenas, but was like him in constant attachment and fidelity to Augustus. He was with him in Apollonia, and on the news of the murder of Iulius advised an appeal to the army. Even before this he had accompanied him to Spain when he went to join his uncle in B.C. 45, and ever afterwards served him with unswerving fidelity and conspicuous success. In the war with Sextus Pompeius, at Perusia, in Gaul, Spain and Illyria, in the organisation of the East, and on the Bosporus, it was his energy and ability that decided the contest in favour of his master, or secured the settlement that he desired. He was the organiser of the Roman navy, and though his great work at the Lucrine lake proved to be only temporary, the squadrons that guarded the seas at Misenum, Ravenna and Forum Iulii were the result of his activity and foresight. His acts of splendid liberality in Rome have been already noticed. He shewed the same magnificence in Gaul and elsewhere, and seems also to have largely assisted in the great survey of the empire instituted by Augustus. Not only did he support all the plans and ideas of his master, he was ready to take any position and make any personal sacrifice to further his views. After his first marriage to Pomponia, by whom he was the father of Vipsania, he was married to Marcella, the Emperor’s niece. To support his master’s plans for the succession he submitted to divorce her and marry Iulia, after having previously made way for the rise of Marcellus by accepting a command in the East. The Emperor shewed his confidence in him on every occasion. In B.C. 23 when he thought himself dying he placed his seal in his hands, in B.C. 18 he caused him to be admitted to share his tribunician power for five years, which was renewed again in B.C. 13; so that though his two sons were adopted by Augustus, the succession would almost certainly have fallen to him had the Emperor died in their minority. This elevation however did not give him rest: the last years of his life were spent in the East, on the Bosporus and in Pannonia, from which last he only returned to die. This faithful service had been rendered in spite of the fact that he had advised against the acceptance of the principate. He had urged the financial difficulties, the irreconcilable nature of the opposition, the impossibility of drawing back, and Octavian’s own weak health. But when his master preferred the advice of Mæcenas, he took his part in the undertaking without faltering and with splendid loyalty. Though Augustus owed much of his success to his own cautious statesmanship, he owed even more to the man who failed in nothing that he undertook, and would claim no honour for himself in return. The Emperor delivered the funeral oration over this loyal servant, and, deposited his ashes in the Mausoleum which he had built for his own family.
Mæcenas.
Photographed from the Head in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, by Edne. Alinari.
To face page 279.
P. Vergilius Maro.
Photographed from the Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome, by Edne. Alinari.
C. Cilnius Mæcenas (circ. B.C. 65-B.C. 8), was probably a few years older than Augustus, but near enough to his age to have been one of his companions at Apollonia. His influence was maintained till about B.C. 16. It is most conspicuous from the time immediately following the Perusian war. He negotiated the marriage with Scribonia, the peace of Brundisium with Antony (B.C. 40), and the subsequent reconciliation of B.C. 38. In the war against Sextus Pompeius (B.C. 38-36), he was partly with Augustus, but partly at Rome, with full powers to act for him and even to alter his despatches and letters as seemed necessary, having the triumvir’s private seal entrusted to him for that purpose. This was possible from the fact of such letters being written by amanuenses and being therefore only recognisable by the seal. Thus Cicero often commissions Atticus to write formal letters to his friends for him. This position—it was no definite office, or perhaps was more like being legatus to Octavian than anything else—he seems to have retained till after the battle of Actium, at which he probably was not present, though that has been disputed. He detected the conspiracy of the younger Lepidus, and sent him to Octavian to be judged. In B.C. 29, on Octavian’s return from the East, he recommended the establishment of a despotism, as a republic was no longer possible. The speech preserved by Dio (52, 14-40) may very well be genuine, in view of the habit of the day, and of Augustus himself, of reading addresses even in comparatively private conferences on matters of importance.[318] Even if it is not the genuine speech, it correctly represents many of the principles on which Augustus did act, and as to which he doubtless consulted Mæcenas. It counsels him to keep in his hands legislation, foreign affairs, elections, executive appointments and the courts of law, and to hear cases of appeal himself: exactly what Augustus did under various disguises. It argues that it was necessary both for his own safety and that of the state that he should remain in power, the glory being well worth the risk. Other recommendations are a reform of Senate and equites, the maintenance of the old republican magistrates for home service, the establishment of a præfectus urbi, the exercise by himself of censorial functions, the subordination of provincial governors to the Emperor, and their payment by a fixed salary, with the appointment of procurators to superintend the finances of the provinces. A system of education for the equites is also suggested, which does not seem to have been carried out; but many of the financial proposals were adopted, as well as the idea of keeping the people amused by games and shows. The advice to abolish the comitia Augustus could not follow consistently with his policy of compromise. They remained and were the causes of more than one trouble and disturbance, but their freedom of election was gradually but surely destroyed, and one of the first measures of Tiberius was to abolish them as no longer a reality. The reform of the Senate was, as we have seen, carried out. As for the judicia, the Senate became a high court for cases of treason (maiestas), before which alone Senators could be tried; the decuriæ iudicum were reformed, and Augustus himself performed the functions of a court of appeal in various ways, sometimes by his tribunician power of “interceding” against the sentences of magistrates or Senate, and sometimes by hearing cases from the provinces of citizens who disputed the competence of provincial courts and claimed to be heard at Rome. Mæcenas holding no office never became a Senator; but he represented the Emperor in his absence, unless Agrippa was appointed to do so instead. In this capacity he really exercised a greater power than any definite office would have given him, and the whole business of the Empire passed through his hands.[319]
But it was not only as the ostensible representative of the Emperor that he worked for his support. In the comparative retirement of his palace on the Esquiline he contributed to that object by gathering round him the best intellects and first men of letters of the day, whom he induced to devote their talents not only to glorify the Emperor personally, but to popularise his policy and magnify his service to the state. How far this may have been effectual by making it the fashion to accept and admire the principate may perhaps be questioned, but that he should have secured such writers as Vergil, Horace, and Propertius on his side says much for his insight and literary taste. One of the weaknesses of the position of Iulius had been that he had the literary class mostly against him. The present reputation and future fame of Augustus were to be better safeguarded. Personally Mæcenas was luxurious and effeminate, always a valetudinarian, and in his later years afflicted with almost constant insomnia. This accounts well enough for the retirement from public business during the last eight years of his life without those other causes of the Emperor’s displeasure which have been already discussed. His wife was a beauty, much younger than himself, wilful and wayward; and if it is true that she intrigued with Augustus, it seems also true that her husband repaid her in kind. There were frequent quarrels and reconciliations, so that Seneca says that he married her “a thousand times;” and once at any rate the family trouble found its way into the law courts, where, however, the bona fides of the divorce which she was alleged to have made was questioned.[320] In spite of some coldness between them in later years, and the physical infirmities which removed him from public business, Augustus sincerely mourned his loss, as of a counsellor who never betrayed his confidence or spoke idle words. He had no real successor. From the time of his death the Emperor seems more and more to have become his own prime minister, or to have looked to his own family for assistance as well as for a successor. Tacitus (Ann. 3, 30) says that his place was taken by Sallustius Crispus, great-nephew of the historian; but Augustus does not seem to have thought highly of his ability, and the part he took in affairs was not prominent enough to have secured mention by either Suetonius or Dio. Mæcenas wrote himself both in prose and verse, but in an affected and obscure style, which Augustus playfully ridiculed. The stoic Seneca is particularly severe on a poem in which he declares that he clings to life in spite of all physical sufferings however painful:—