Augustus. Buchan John
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it. He had already quietly shelved the Senate, though he treated it with elaborate respect. He and the new civil service which he was creating would be the mechanism of rule. He himself would appoint all the provincial governors and would be responsible for their honesty and competence. He would rebuild the empire on a basis of reason and humanity.
It was to be a new kind of empire. Something had been drawn from the dreams of Alexander, but for the most part it was the creation of his own profound and audacious mind. There were to be wide local liberties. He proposed to decentralize, to establish local government in Italy as the beginning of a world-wide system of free municipalities. Rome was to be only the greatest among many great and autonomous cities. There was to be a universal Roman nation, not a city with a host of servile provinces, and citizenship in it should be open to all who were worthy.1 The decadence of the Roman plebs would be redeemed by the virility of the new peoples.
It was a great conception, and, as expounded by Julius’s eager, winning voice, with his famous “facultas dicendi imperatoria,” it had at first fired the young man’s fancy. It was practical too, not the whimsy of a philosopher but the policy of an experienced statesman. Combined with it were elaborate legal and financial reforms. There was a broad scheme of economic development, of which Octavius was getting word from correspondents who knew his interest in such things; colonizing on the grand scale, state help for Italian agriculture and empire commerce, new ports and harbours, the reclamation of waste lands, a ship canal through the isthmus of Corinth, the rebuilding of derelict cities which were commercial key-points. The spirit which had conquered a world was busy re-shaping that world.
The first impact of this policy on Octavius’s mind had left it in bewildered and docile admiration. But, as he thought over it during the winter months, he had begun to doubt not the wisdom but the feasibility of some of it. He did not care greatly for the imperial citizenship idea. He believed that the Italian race was immeasurably the superior of any other, and he did not wish to see it lost in a polyglot welter. He came of a business stock which prided itself on its tact des choses possibles. Conservative stock, too, for at least half of his kin had been on the side of the Optimates. He loved the old ways of the land, and had no natural craving for revolution. Militarism in itself he distrusted. So did Julius, who had often declared that no nation could be permanently ruled by martial law; but was the military element not dominant in his great-uncle’s plan? He had cordially disliked the wild talk he had heard in the camp from excited soldiers and in Rome from Caesarian demagogues. As he read the case, the world demanded peace and law, not liberties and privileges. That meant a return to the settled ways with which men were familiar, which in turn meant the restoration in some form of the Republic. Now to the ordinary Roman the Republic was meaningless without the Senate, and the Senate Julius had turned into a farce. There was a deep-seated public opinion which even genius could not flout with impunity. If Julius had not had this preponderantly on his side after he crossed the Rubicon he would never have defeated Pompey. In the long run popular sentiment would wear down the glory of any conqueror. The tough, exclusive urban conservatism of the old city-state was still a potent thing. Was it wise to begin by neglecting it? Could not some way be found to preserve at any rate the old forms, and to conciliate the aristocracy, for some governing class there must be, even if it were on a new and better basis? He found himself almost in agreement with old Cicero, whom Julius was apt to treat with a kindly contempt.
As Octavius puzzled over the matter one reflection haunted his mind. His great-uncle had already begun his work. Many things had been achieved which could not be undone. Rome was committed to a course which involved some kind of personal sovereignty. Julius was now a man of fifty-eight, and the ailments of age were crowding upon him. On a day not too far distant the gods would send for him. Who would succeed him in the government of the world? Rome would not tolerate a hereditary monarchy in the ordinary sense, but it was certain that Julius must nominate a successor, and many little things of late had suggested on whom his choice would fall. With a thrill in which pride and fear were mingled the young man realized that the world’s next master might be himself.
III
On an afternoon in late March a freedman of his mother’s household arrived in Apollonia with a letter for Octavius. It contained fateful news. The date was the 15th of March, and it told him that on that very day Julius had been murdered in the Senate-house. It did not say by whom, only by “his enemies.” “The time has come,” Atia wrote, “when you must play the man, decide, and act, for no one can tell the things that may come forth.” Grave words for one who did not use inflated speech.
The news leaked out, in an hour the town was full of it, the soldiers heard it, and that evening Octavius’s lodgings were thronged by those who proffered help. The citizens promised him a safe asylum, the troops their help to avenge the murdered Julius and win the heritage that was his by right. Gently he put them by, and till late in the night he was closeted with his friends. Some, like Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus, would have had him strike at once, and march on Rome at the head of the Macedonian legions.1 Others—perhaps Maecenas was among them—counselled him to play for safety, to go forthwith to Italy and spy out the land before committing himself. He chose the latter course. It took a day or two to get a ship, and when found, it was a poor one, and it was over yeasty seas that he crossed to Hydruntum (Otranto), the nearest point on the Calabrian shore. Already he had adopted a policy of caution, for he avoided the populous Brundisium.
The day on which Atia’s freedman brought the letter was the last of Octavius’s youth. The news shattered his ease and fevered his mind. For the great Julius he had felt something more than the hero-worship of a boy and the pride of a kinsman; he had formed for him one of the rare affections of a nature not easily kindled to love. The thought of him, pulled down like a noble stag by curs, maddened him and made his first impulse one of hot revenge. That passion he curbed at once. Revenge there would be, but it must be a careful and calculated thing. At present he knew little. He did not know who were the murderers, and he suspected that he might find strange figures in the conspiracy. He did not know if he was Julius’s heir; he was his next of kin, but there had been no formal adoption. He put aside the entreaties of Agrippa and the legions, for he knew little of war, and had no reason to think that he had any special military talent. To appear in Italy as an amateur dynast might end in a grim fiasco. He realized that he stood on a razor edge. He was resolved to win through to fortune, but he must first discover his tools. Somehow or other he would wear the Caesarian mantle, but he must wait for the right moment to don it. Infinite caution, tight-lipped, unshakable patience, these must be his rule.
Up till now he had been open in manner, easy of access, a little quick of temper but readily appeased, with an engaging boyishness which matched well with his handsome face. Now the gaiety of youth died in him. His countenance became a mask. As a token of mourning he let his beard grow,1 and did not shave for six years. His health declined and his skin grew blotched. He buttoned himself up, and kept his thoughts secret from even his dearest friends. The seal which he used bore the image of a sphinx.2 All the forces of his being were massed behind one imperious resolve.
1 The cognomen, which he never used, was given him in memory of his father’s victory over a band of runaway slaves at Thurii. Suet. Div. Aug., 7.
1 “geminas cui tempora flammas laeta vomunt.”
Virg. Aen., viii. 680.
1 For Posidonius see Bake’s edition of the fragments (Leyden, 1810); Schmekel’s Die Philosophic der mittleren Stoa (1902); and Bevan’s Stoics and Sceptics, ch. iii.
2 Suet. Div. Aug., 94.
1 It seems probable that these young men of humble origin, Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus, had already attracted the attention of Julius, who had attached them to Octavius. Other examples were P. Ventidius Bassus and Cornelius Gallus.
2 See especially the Butrinto bust, C.A.H., iv. (Plates), 154.
3 For the elder Octavius see Suet. Div. Aug., 3; Vell., ii. 59; Cic. ad Q. fr., i. 21, 27; C. I. L., 279.
1 In spite of Nicolaus, 8, it seems clear that Julius never adopted