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

by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh

And again:

“What a warm recollection I retain of you, you will be able to learn from Septimius among others, as I happened to be talking about you in his presence the other day. For you need not suppose, because you were so high and mighty as to reject my friendship, that I am on the high horse too to pay you back.”

Augustus, in fact, had a great opinion of Horace, and predicted his immortality. He selected him to write the ode for the secular games, pressed him later in life to immortalise the achievements of Tiberius and Drusus, and was desirous of his own name appearing as the recipient of one of his Satires or Epistles.

“I am quite angry, let me tell you, that you don’t give me the preference as a person to address in your writings of that kind. Are you afraid that an appearance of intimacy with me will damage your reputation with posterity?”

Horace made the Emperor a return in full for such condescension. How far the genius of a poet is warmed or chilled by patronage it is not easy to decide. So far as he is tempted away from his natural bent, or confined in the free expression of thought, he suffers: so far as he is saved from sordid cares, he is a gainer. Horace, in early youth, sympathised with the republican party in whose ranks he had served, and probably in later life still felt a theoretical preference for it, and could speak of the nobile letum and atrox animus of Cato with a true note of admiration, But he was a man of his time. The policy of Octavian had made the supremacy of Augustus inevitable, and it at least secured peace and safety. The patronage and liberality of Mæcenas assuredly helped to turn the scale, but I see no reason to doubt that the poet was convinced, though, perhaps, without enthusiasm, that the new régime was one to be supported by reasonable men. The kindness of the Emperor naturally enhanced the effect of his commanding personality, but it would be difficult for a poet so placed to write with greater dignity and less fulsomeness than Horace does in the first epistle of the second book, addressed to Augustus at his own request. But it is in the Odes that we must trace the unbroken sympathy with the career and policy of Augustus. If they are closely examined, with an eye to chronological arrangement, the ingenuity with which these imitations of Greek models are framed to support and recommend the purposes or celebrate the successes of the Emperor, will stand revealed in a striking manner. The Epodes and the first three books of the Odes were apparently written between B.C. 35 and B.C. 25. Dropped in among a number of poems of fancy, or passion, or mere literary tours de force, are compositions that follow not only the actual achievements of Augustus, but his ideals, his intentions, and his aspirations, from the years just before Actium to his return from Spain in B.C. 25. We begin with the Second Epode, which refers with regret to the abandoned intention of invading Britain in B.C. 35, and expresses his alarm at the prospect of a renewed civil war. In the Sixteenth Epode this terror has become a reality; the civil war has begun, and the poet, foreseeing the downfall of the state, turns longing eyes to the peace and calm of the fabled islands of the West. From Italy and all its horrors they must at any rate depart. In the Ninth Epode the relief has come; the shameful servitude of a Roman imperator and Roman soldiers to a foreign queen is over; Antony and Cleopatra are in full flight (B.C. 31). In another year it is known that Antony has fallen by his own hand, and that Cleopatra has saved herself the indignity of the triumphal procession by the adder’s aid (Od. i. 39). The discharge of the legions follows, and their settlement in Italian and Sicilian lands (2 Sat., 6, 54). In the other odes of the first book the devotion to Augustus proceeds apace. The Iulian star is in the ascendant (1, 2, 20); Augustus is pater and princeps, anticipating the future titles (1, 2, 20); he is again contemplating the invasion of Britain (1, 35, 29); the Arabian expedition is being planned with all its futile hopes of wealth (1, 29; 1, 35). In the second book of the Odes, beginning with reflections on the evils of civil war (2, 1), the poet notices one after the other the triumphs of Augustus or his generals in B.C. 27-24. The Cantabrian war (2, 6, 2; 2, 11, 1); the triumphal arch at Susa (2, 9, 19); the success of his diplomacy in Scythia, Armenia, and Parthia (ib.) In the third book the embassy of British chiefs is treated as though the island were annexed (3, 5, 2); the Cantabrians are regarded as conquered after the expedition of Augustus (3, 8, 22; 3, 14). Then succeeds a period of statesmanship and reform. The Emperor’s Roman policy, and his determination to keep Rome the centre of government, are warmly supported (3, 3); the moral evils, the extravagance and debauchery of the age must be cured, and Horace proceeds to support the abortive legislation of B.C. 27, and to foreshadow the censorial acts, and the legislation of B.C. 18. There is a protest against the magnificence and extent of country houses (2, 15); against the effeminacy of youth (iii. 2); against the immorality of women and the licentiousness that led to civil strife (3, 24). The Carmen sæculare speaks of the legislation as effected, and foretells its success (20); while in the fourth book he asserts that, at any rate while Augustus is with them, that success has been secured (4, 5), and that he has not only given them peace, but a great moral reform (4, 15). The policy of the Emperor in regard to the bugbear of the East, the Parthian power, is also followed step by step. They are the dangerous enemy whose subjection will make Augustus divine (3, 5, 1-4), and whose threatened invasions keep his ministers in constant anxiety (3, 29, 27). This is before B.C. 20; but in B.C. 19 they have made submission and restored the standards and prisoners (Epist. i. 18, 56), and this is one of the triumphs of Augustus that requires a master hand to record (Epist. ii. 1, 255); it is the glory of the Augustan age (Od. 4, 15, 6), and as long as Augustus is safe, no one will fear them more (4, 5, 25). Finally, at the Emperor’s request, he celebrated the victories of Drusus and Tiberius over the Vindelici and Rhæti (4, 4 and 14), and especially the defeat of the Sugambri who had routed Lollius (4, 2, 34; 4, 14, 51), with a compliment to Augustus himself for having gone to Gaul to support Tiberius and Drusus with reinforcements and advice (4, 14, 33), and for having at length closed the door of Ianus (4, 15, 9). The lyrical career of Horace, therefore, corresponds remarkably with the activities of Augustus. His genius presented those activities to his fellow citizens (and Horace’s verses were soon read in schools) exactly in the light in which the Emperor wished them to be viewed. If we lay aside some expressions of overstrained compliment, which favoured the growing fashion of paying the Emperor divine honours, it cannot be said that the language is fulsome or degrading to the poet. The “parasitic table” of Mæcenas may, as M. Beulé asserts, have been a misfortune to the poets, and attenuated their vein of inspiration: but a man must have something in practical life on which to pin his faith; and Horace might have done worse than devote his genius to promote loyalty to the great statesman who had saved Roman society and given peace and prosperity to an empire. Just as Vergil, if he had followed his own impulse, might have perhaps produced a fine poem on the Epicurean cosmogony, but not one that lives and breathes with the noble glow of patriotism.

Propertius.

Sextus Propertius (circ. B.C. 45-circ. B.C. 15) was another of the Mæcenas circle of poets who did something to glorify Augustus. He is not (but that is a personal opinion) on anything like the same level as either Vergil or Horace as an artist. He is said to have died young, perhaps at thirty years of age, and there is no evidence of personal intimacy with Augustus, but there is some indication of his having been on bad terms with Horace. His elegies also are nearly all poems of passion. Politics and emperors are mere episodes, and were introduced in deference to Mæcenas. Still many points in the career of Augustus are referred to in the same spirit as that of Horace. The siege of Perusia—described in tones of horror, which would scarcely have been acceptable—precedes his conversion (1, 21), and the failure of the marriage law of B.C. 27 is only referred to with relief (2, 7, 1). In more complimentary terms he speaks of the victory of Actium (3, 7, 44), and of the downfall of Antony and Cleopatra (4, 8, 56; 4, 10, 32, sqq.; 4, 7, 56); and the end of the civil wars is attributed to Augustus (illa qua vicit condidit arma manu, 3, 8, 41). Then came the intended invasion of Britain (3, 23, 5); the Arabian expedition and the Indian envoys (3, 1, 15; 4, 3 1); the opening and description of the Palatine Library—the best extant (3, 29); the raids of the Sugambri and their suppression (5, 6, 77); while he has the Parthians frequently on his lips, though rather as predicting what is to be done with them than as recording the return of the standards.[321] In the fifth book there are signs of a beginning of a Fasti like that of Ovid as a record of events in Roman history; and it is possible that this was in obedience to a wish of Augustus, who, on his death, transferred the task to Ovid. Thus his voice also was secured, in part at least, in support of the imperial régime.

Ovid.

Publius Ovidius Naso (B.C. 43-A.D. 18) belongs to the last part of the reign. He had only seen Vergil, and though he had heard Horace recite, he does not profess to have known him. He was quite young when Augustus was winning his position and reforming the constitution, and there are no signs of his coming forward as a court poet till Mæcenas and his circle had disappeared, and if he had attracted the attention of Augustus at all, it was probably not altogether in a favourable manner. His earliest poems—the Amores and Heroidum Epistulæ—do not touch on public affairs; they are poems of passion—the former personal, the latter dramatic. In the Ars Amatoria (about B.C. 2-A.D. 2) for the first time we detect the court poet from a complimentary allusion to the approaching mission of Gaius Cæsar to Syria and Armenia, with his title of princeps iuventutis and that of Augustus as pater patriæ, as also to the naumachia or representation of the battle of Salamis given by Augustus in the flooded nemus Cæsarum in B.C. 2 (A. A., 1, 171-2). The Metamorphoses had been composed before his exile in A.D. 9, but after the death of Augustus he apparently introduced the Epilogue (xv. 745 sq.) containing an eulogy on Tiberius, and on the now finished career of Augustus. It is the Fasti—the Calendar of events in Roman history—that probably was undertaken in obedience to a wish of the Emperor, and in which accordingly we find points in his career touched upon. It was dedicated to Germanicus, and contains an allusion to his own exile, and was therefore, partly at least, composed between B.C. 2 and A.D. 10. His allusions to Augustus are not those of an intimate acquaintance, but of an admiring subject—real or feigned. He mentions the battle of Mutina (iv. 627); the bestowal of the title Augustus (i. 589); the recovery of the standards from the Parthians as a triumph of the Emperor (vi. 467). He alludes to Augustus becoming Pontifex Maximus (iii. 415); to the laurels on his palace front (iv. 957); to the demolition of the house of Vedius Pollio as connected with the reforms and the laws of B.C. 18 (vi. 637); to the division of the city into vici, and the worship of the Lares Augusti (v. 145); to the Forum Augusti and the temple of Mars dedicated in B.C. 2. (v. 551, sqq.). Ovid afterwards protested that his books had been read with pleasure by Augustus, and assumed to have some knowledge of the private chambers of the palace (Trist., 1, 5, 2; 2, 520), but there is nothing in the allusions to matters which he knew that Augustus wished to have recorded that has the air of close or intimate relations. They are the conventional expressions of the outside, and perhaps humble, panegyrist, not those of a friend and supporter, like Horace. The abject expressions in the Tristia and the letters from Pontus need not be taken into account. They are merely bids for a recall, and they often express in the crudest form the growing fashion of worshipping the Emperor or his genius. Perhaps the most subtle of these appeals is that in which he explains why he had spent his youth in writing frivolous poetry instead of celebrating the glories of the Emperor—he was not a good enough poet, and would have dishonoured a subject above his reach (Tr., ii. 335-340). This was using a weapon forged by the Emperor himself, who had always let it be known that he disliked being the subject of inferior artists. The melancholy and feebleness of these later poems of Ovid seem to bear a sort of analogy with the cloud that descended on the later years of Augustus. Vergil and Horace have the freshness of the morning or the vigour of noon, Ovid the gathering sadness of the evening.