The possession of power had made him better, a thing which is not usual, and after him Roman history only gives us examples of princes depraved by power. From the battle of Philippi to that of Actium, or rather to the moment when he seems formally to ask pardon of the world by abolishing all the acts of the triumvirate, we feel that he is striving to become better, and we can almost follow the steps of his progress. I do not think that we could find another example of so strong an effort at self-conquest, and so complete a success in overcoming one’s natural disposition. He was naturally a coward, and hid himself in his tent in his first battle. I know not how he did it, but he succeeded in acquiring courage; he became inured to war in fighting against Sextus Pompey, and even courageous in the expedition against the Dalmatians, in which he was twice wounded. He was cynical and debauched, and the orgies of his youth, as related by Suetonius, do not yield to Antony’s; yet he corrected himself at the very moment that he became absolute master, that is just when his passions would have met with the fewest obstacles. He was naturally cruel, and coldly cruel, a disposition which does not often change; and yet, after having begun by assassinating his benefactors, he ended by sparing those who attempted his assassination, and the philosopher Seneca could call the same man a clement prince[[389]] whom his best friend, Maecenas, had once called a common executioner. Certainly the man who signed the edict of proscription hardly seems to be the same as the man who wrote the testament, and it is indeed matter for wonder that a man who began as he did was able to change so completely, and to assume a virtuous character, or the appearance of one, in the place of all the vices that were natural to him.
Nevertheless we should find it difficult to love him, whatever justice we are bound to do him. We may be wrong after all; for reason tells us that we ought to appreciate people more for the qualities they acquire by thus triumphing over themselves than for those they have by nature, without taking any trouble. And yet, I hardly know why, it is only the latter that please us; the former lack a certain charm that nature alone gives and which wins our hearts. The effort is too apparent in them, and behind the effort some personal interest; for we always suspect that a man has taken so much pains only because there was some advantage to be gained. This sort of acquired goodness, in which reason has a greater share than nature, attracts no one, because it appears to be the product of a calculating mind, and it is this feeling that causes all the virtues of Augustus to leave us unmoved, and to seem at the most but the results of a profound sagacity. They want a touch of nature and simplicity in order to affect us. These are qualities that this stiff and formal personage never knew, although according to Suetonius he gladly assumed an appearance of plain manners and good-nature in his familiar intercourse. But one is not a good fellow simply through wishing to be it, and his private letters, of which we have a few fragments, show that his pleasantries lacked ease, and that his simplicity was the result of effort. Do we not know, besides, from Suetonius himself, that he wrote down what he meant to say to his friends, in order to leave nothing to chance, and that he even occasionally wrote down his conversations with Livia beforehand?[[390]]
But, after all, that which spoils Augustus in our opinion is that he stands so near Caesar; the contrast between them is complete. Caesar, not to speak of what was really great and brilliant in his nature, attracts us at once by his frankness. His ambition may displease us, but he had at least the merit of not hiding it. I do not know why M. Mommsen exerts himself in his Roman History to prove that Caesar did not care for the diadem, and that Antony, when he offered it, had not consulted him. I prefer to hold to the common opinion which, I think, does not do him wrong. He wished to be king, and to bear the title as well as to exercise the power. He never made pretence of waiting to be asked to accept honours that he passionately desired, as Augustus did. He was not the man to make us believe that he only retained the supreme authority with reluctance, and would not have dared to tell us, at the very moment that he was drawing all powers into his hands, that he had restored the government of the republic to the people and senate. We know, on the contrary, that after Pharsalia he said frankly that “the republic” was a phrase without meaning, and that Sulla was a fool to have abdicated the dictatorship. In everything, even in questions of literature and grammar, he was a bold innovator, and he did not display a hypocritical respect for the past at the very time that he was destroying what had come down from it. This frankness is more to our taste than the false appearance of veneration that Augustus lavished on the senate after reducing it to impotence; and whatever admiration Suetonius may express for him, when he shows him to us, obsequiously saluting each senator by name, before the sittings commenced, I am not sure that I do not prefer the disrespectful behaviour of Caesar to this comedy, Caesar who at last went so far as not to rise when the senate visited him. Both appeared weary of power, but it never came into any one’s mind to think that Augustus was speaking the truth when he asked so earnestly to be restored to private life. The distaste of Caesar was deeper and more sincere. That sovereign power, that he had sought after for more than twenty years with an indefatigable persistence, through so many perils, and by means of dark intrigues the remembrance of which must have made him blush, did not answer to his expectations, and appeared unsatisfying to him though he had so eagerly desired it. He knew that he was detested by the men whose esteem he most desired; he was constrained to make use of men whom he despised, and whose excesses dishonoured his victory; the higher he rose, the more unpleasing did human nature appear to him, and the more clearly did he see the base greed and cowardly treachery of those who intrigued at his feet. He came at last, through disgust, to have no interest in life; it seemed to him to be no longer worth the trouble of preserving and defending. It is, therefore, the same man who said, even at the period when Cicero delivered the pro Marcello: “I have lived long enough for nature or for glory;” who later, when he was pressed to take precautions against his assassins, answered in a tone of despondency: “I would rather die at once than live in fear;” who might well have said with Corneille:
“I desired the empire and I have attained to it;
But I knew not what it was that I desired:
In its possession I have found, instead of delights,
Appalling cares, continual alarms,
A thousand secret enemies, death at every turn,
No pleasure without alloy, and never repose.”
These fine lines please me less, I admit, put into the mouth of Augustus. This cautious politician, so cold, so self-possessed, does not seem to me to have really known that noble sadness that reveals the man in the hero, that melancholy of a heart ill at ease, notwithstanding its successes, and disgusted with power through the very exercise of power. Whatever admiration I may feel for that fine scene in which Augustus proposes to abdicate the empire, I cannot avoid being a little vexed with Corneille that he took so seriously and depicted so gravely that solemn piece of acting which deceived nobody in Rome, and when I wish to render my pleasure complete in reading the tragedy of Cinna, I am always tempted to replace the character of Augustus by that of Caesar.