Augustus set before himself, as one of the most important phases of his task of regeneration, the moral purification of this society. He had provided the provinces with a new religion which involved a new social organisation. But the cloak of republicanism in which he had chosen to drape his autocracy forbade him to make himself a god in Rome. On the contrary he steadily forbade extravagant flattery. He was not even to be called “dominus.” It is true that the mayors of the new boroughs into which he divided Rome were allowed to set up altars to the Lares and Genius of Augustus.[47] Outside the city throughout Italy there were temples to Augustus and priests in his service. As usual it was a mere quibble when he declined divine honours in Rome. Vergil had plainly called him a god at the very moment when he was dyeing his hands in Roman blood. Julius Cæsar had been formally deified and Augustus regularly styled himself “divi filius.” The title of “augustus” itself carried the notion of transcendent power. Thus the emperor stood on the threshold of heaven, at any rate for the poorer classes, even in Rome itself. But for the aristocracy something else was needed: it is of little profit to claim divinity in a society of atheists. For Roman society, as typified by Ovid, the gods were little more than a literary convention, and it would do a respectable man little credit to be enrolled in their company.
For the reformation of Roman society Augustus had recourse to three methods—legislation, culture, and example. The legislation consisted of a whole series of laws solemnly passed through senate and comitia in the years 18 and 17 B.C. To give them additional sanctity they were called Julian laws. There was one enacting heavier penalties for adultery, another permitting marriage between citizens and freedwomen, designed to meet the circumstance that men outnumbered women in the ranks of the aristocracy. There were also sumptuary laws to curb extravagance. There were laws imposing penalties on celibacy and discouraging the fortune-hunters who lay in wait for the rich bachelor’s legacies. Fiscal privileges were granted to the fathers of families, and Augustus himself went down to the house and read the senate an old speech of Metellus on the increase of population. Unfortunately the emperor himself had not set a good example in the matter of parentage. He had had three wives but only one child, a daughter. Still he exhibited himself in the theatre in the capacity of a father by collecting the children of Germanicus about his knees. Of course legislation proved quite helpless in the matter, besides arousing a good deal of ill-feeling which was chiefly displayed in the ranks of the knights.
Augustus was in a very difficult position when it came to setting an example. The principal evils which his social code was designed to remedy were the prevalence of adultery, the frequency of divorce, voluntary celibacy and formal marriages contracted without intention of producing offspring, and finally, as a consequence of celibacy, the prevalence of a regular profession of fortune-hunting. There was scarcely one of these necessary reforms to which Cæsar himself came with clean hands. He had begun his matrimonial career by repudiating his young betrothed; he had then married an immature virgin, and divorced her for political reasons before the marriage was consummated; in the third place he had married Scribonia, who had already had two husbands, and whose son was already a man at the time of her marriage to Augustus. She was many years older than he, and the marriage was intended to secure a reconciliation with Sextus Pompeius. This third matrimonial venture was terminated in a manner which shocked even Roman society.
Plate LVIII. RELIEF FROM ARCH OF TITUS
On the very day when Scribonia became a mother by him, Augustus put her away charging her with immorality, though he kept her infant Julia as his own and only child. He had been fascinated, it seems, by the fair face and brilliant abilities of Livia Drusilla. Livia was of the highest ancestry in Rome, a descendant of Appius Claudius, and attached by adoption to another very noble family, the Livii. Also she had married another scion of the illustrious Claudian house, the proudest in Rome, and at the age of fifteen had become the mother of Tiberius. Her father had chosen the losing side at Philippi, and committed suicide after the battle. Her husband, Claudius Nero, had taken arms against Augustus—or Octavian, as he then was—in the Perusine War, and his life was forfeited. His beautiful wife sued the conqueror for mercy, and mercy was granted upon conditions. Nero was compelled not only to divorce his wife, but to act the part of a father and give her away in marriage to Augustus. She was then not only the mother of Tiberius, but just about to become the mother of Drusus, who was born in the house of Augustus three months after the marriage. This, then, was the model family on the Palatine which was to set an example to the Roman aristocracy—a daughter whose mother had been divorced on the day of her birth, a mother who had been sold by her husband, and two stepsons whose father had been divorced. The sequel scarcely improved matters. Julia grew up and was married first to the boy Marcellus, then to Agrippa, by whom she had a large family, and when Agrippa died, Tiberius was forced to put away his wife, Agrippa’s daughter Vipsania, whom he really loved, and marry the widow Julia, whose immorality he knew and detested. At last the profligacy of Julia grew so open and notorious that Augustus was informed of it and compelled to banish her in company with her mother Scribonia, who had survived to see her shame. Later on a second Julia, the daughter of the first, suffered a precisely similar fate.
As for Livia the empress, if we choose to call her by that title, there is no doubt that she was a singularly beautiful and clever woman, who managed to retain the affections of Augustus for over forty years—in itself a remarkable feat in Roman society. History records in her favour many acts of royal mercy and charity. She seconded her husband’s efforts at reform, and established a powerful ascendancy over him and over Tiberius. There is no whisper against her chastity when once she entered the household of Augustus. But on the other hand there are very serious charges of crime made by contemporaries and recorded by Tacitus, charges which are supported by the strongest circumstantial evidence. The suspicion is that she was fighting all her life long without remorse or scruple for the succession of her son Tiberius. Augustus did not intend to be succeeded by a Claudius. This he showed again and again in the most public manner. His aim, as soon as he knew that he was destined to leave no male offspring of his own body, was to leave the succession in the sacred Julian line, the family descended from Venus, the house of the star. But that could only be secured through the female line. His first choice was the brilliant young Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia. Marcellus, who had been the first husband of Julia, died of a mysterious complaint just as he came of age. Then Augustus married Julia to Agrippa, and two of her sons, Gaius and Lucius, were next chosen for the succession. They grew up and came of age. Just as they were beginning public life, Tiberius having been banished to make way for them, they too died in the same year, Lucius on board ship as he was sailing to Marseilles, Gaius as the sequel to an assassin’s blow given him in Armenia. In the first case we have no details. In the second, Gaius was recovering from his wound, but he turned aside to an obscure town on the southern coast of Asia Minor, refused the warship which had been sent to convey him home, and begged to be allowed to live there in obscurity. The circumstance is full of suspicion and mystery. Moreover, before his rivals were dead Tiberius had word, from a well-informed prophet, of their approaching decease, and returned to Rome. He himself, living in banishment, must be acquitted of active complicity in the crime. Julia was banished to a lonely island. Her third son was also put out of sight for no crime but sulkiness and grumbling against his stepmother. Deprived of all his hopes, Augustus with very marked reluctance adopted Tiberius, but in his old age he still cherished the idea of a reconciliation with Julia’s third son, Agrippa Postumus, and actually visited in secret the remote island where he was interned. But as soon as Augustus was dead—and his death was carefully concealed as long as possible—Agrippa Postumus was murdered, and this time we have direct evidence that the crime was Livia’s. This sort of domestic intrigue, marked by hideous murders, is one of the blackest features of imperial history at Rome. It arose very largely from the illegitimate character of the imperial throne, and the absence of any legalised system of succession.
Nevertheless, out of these unpromising materials Augustus endeavoured to organise a model Roman family of the old style. Livia and Julia were set to work at spinning and weaving. Augustus would wear no cloaks but of their making. Julia was solemnly counselled never to do or say anything which she would be ashamed to write in her diary. Once when she built a palace for herself Augustus had it demolished. The house on the Palatine was of the simplest character, with a humble portico of the local tufa from Alba and no decorated pavements. In food and drink he was most abstemious, and indeed the prodigious industry of his life left little time for banquets. A slice of bread made from inferior flour, with a relish of pickled fish or dates or olives, often served him for the day. He never drank more than a pint of wine. He slept winter and summer in the same room, and spent most of the year in the city, unless he was travelling. His favourite country seat was on the island of Capri where he could be sure of freedom. His pleasures were simple and almost childish. He liked a little mild gambling, he was fond of playing knuckle-bones with little slave-boys. He attended the circus as a matter of duty and was very strict in enforcing decency of behaviour there. He set his face against changes of fashion and insisted that Roman citizens should wear the old-fashioned toga in public. All his instincts seem to have been for simplicity and clemency. He never permitted a freedman to appear at his dinner-table, but when a slave of his once pushed his master into the way of a charging wild boar in order to shield himself Augustus dismissed the matter with a joke. On the other hand, when the tutor and servants of Gaius showed themselves tyrannical and overbearing to the provincials after their young master’s death, Cæsar had them drowned like rats. Towards personal abuse of himself he was singularly indifferent. It remains difficult to visualise the character of Augustus. Originally he was a typical Roman, as callous towards bloodshed and suffering as the rest of them and quite unscrupulous in his progress towards power. But when he had attained it he had the greatness of mind to perceive that his work of repair could only be done by setting an example of virtuous living and moderation. Self-control was perhaps his most powerful quality.
Twice his self-command broke down. Once when he heard of the defeat of Varus in Germany with the loss of his three legions, and again when some one, probably Livia, revealed to him the scandal concerning Julia. Apart from the blow to his honour as a man, it was the undoing of all his measures for reform and the open publication of their futility. “Her orgies,” men said, “had been conducted upon the very rostra whence her father’s laws against adultery had been proclaimed.” Her accomplices included the flower of the old aristocracy, a Scipio and a Gracchus. Augustus hid himself from the sight of men, banished his daughter to a remote island and officially informed the senate by letter of her disgrace. He was heard to cry out that he envied the father of Phœbe, one of Julia’s slaves who had hanged herself when the scandal went abroad. He quoted a Greek verse: