THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY
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THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY |
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AUGUSTUS
HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK
BY
RENE FRANCIS
I. The Development of the Republic II. The Commencement of Individualism
IV. Extinction of the Republic
VIII. The Foreign and Military Policy of Augustus
IX. The Home Policy or Augustus
X. Augustus, the Man and the Prince
INTRODUCTION
TO those who have no more than a general idea of the
history of Rome, the name Augustus, or even Octavian, conveys little more than
the memory of a man who followed Julius Caesar, who won the battle of Actium
against Mark Antony, and who was the first Emperor of Rome.
And indeed Roman history itself, without some degree
of study, does not seem to present more than the rise of a big republic from a
small town on the hills, then a general confusion of wars and horrors, then one
great luminous figure, Julius Caesar, and after him a long succession of
emperors, some good and many bad, and, at the last, a general overthrow, an
inrush of savage Northern tribes and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
But when we look more closely into the history of Rome
we begin to see that one thing seems to lead into another, that there is a
certain chain of events and consequences, almost inevitable in their occurrence
and development, and that certain changes that came about were essential to
Rome’s development.
We then see that Julius Caesar was not in reality the
Maker of the Roman Empire, great as were his deeds, and that the long line of
emperors did not commence automatically or by chance, but that there was a
definite sequence of facts and modifications that led from the Republic to
Julius Caesar, and from Julius Caesar to the emperors. And we see that this
definite sequence was due to an equally definite influence that brought to pass
or at least made use of those facts, that contrived those modifications in a
certain way, and made it possible for the emperors to have their empire.
And when we look for that influence, we see one man,
Augustus. And the more we study Augustus, his work, and his life, the more
clearly do we see how, without him and all he did, the Roman Republic might
have been forgotten, Julius’s work would have been undone, and the long line of
Caesars never would have existed.
The life of Augustus is not the personal life and the
doings, political, historical, or otherwise, of a great individual: it is the
embodiment of a series of political changes, from autocracy to Imperialized
Republicanism, in and due to the person of one man, whose great distinction is
that he realized what changes were necessary and how he must bring them about.
Though we cannot see in him the glory, the genius, the wonder, and the charm of
his great ancestor, we can see that it was his personality, his ability, and
his special genius that really made Rome great and kept her great through the
centuries during which she ruled the world.
The biography of Augustus is then in reality a
political even more than a personal history, and we must not be surprised when
we find that a study of him involves a study of many things and people before
and even after him. Our concern will be not so much what he was and what he
did, as how and why he' did all that is recorded of him.
When we glance at Roman history we see that Rome,
after a brief period of early kingship, settled down to republicanism, strong,
solid, and self-confident. She had all the elements of conquest latent within
her; she beat off every invader, she defeated every opponent, she crushed every
rival.
Even when annihilation seemed to threaten her she was
undismayed; she faced the danger and overcame it: after a reverse she rose
again, all the stronger.
We see that she possessed the gift of assimilation.
The Latins and then the Italians, and at last the whole of the Italian peninsula,
became practically Roman, one united whole against the world.
She seemed to have the gift of world-conquest: Africa,
Greece, Asia, partly by conquest, partly by alliance and friendship, came under
her influence.
Then suddenly she seemed to fail. A series of
adventurers wasted her lands, her money, and her men. At last a leader greater
than all the rest arose, and for a brief space she held the world and was at
peace.
Again she failed: her great man was killed, and
anarchy arose and raged once more. At length came, after thirteen long years,
peace in the person and influence of one other man. Under him she regained all
that she had once had, and yet farther extended her borders. And after him she
widened her influence still farther: but her republic had given place to an
empire.
These are the facts. And it is in the life of the one
man, Augustus, with whom the present work is concerned, that we shall find the
key to them.
Every step and every stage of the life and work of
Augustus deserve study. For he did not invent new material for the great
imperial framework which he built up; he used the old material, the elements of
Rome. And he did not invent any totally new spirit that should, so to speak,
inhabit this framework; he used and revived the ancient spirit of Rome. But he
used both materials and spirit in a new manner: where they had meant limitation
he gave them expansion; where they had meant rigidity he gave them elasticity.
He renovated what was old, and he gave the sanction of tradition, the illusion
of age, to what was new.
However clear it may be that, after his death, Rome
was no longer a republic but an empire, totally changed, totally different from
anything she had ever been or had even promised to be, it was impossible for
any one to say, either during Augustus’s life or after his death: “Here is
Revolution, here is Novelty, here is Creation”. For what he had achieved was
all one gradual but most incomparably thorough and efficient reshaping and
remodelling of the ancient framework, of which no single fragment was wholly
rejected or lost, although no element remained exactly what it had been or
occupied exactly its original position or influence.
Tu regere
imperio, “Thou shalt reign with command”. Even if Virgil was
not thinking of empire as we know the word, yet he chose the right word. We
shall see during the course of this book how impossible it was for Rome as a
republic to attempt what she achieved as an empire; and we shall see, still
more clearly, how impossible it would have been for her to be an empire had she
not had Augustus.
Without Augustus surely the epitaph of Rome would have
speedily been written; and that epitaph would have been, like that of her
legendary mother-city, Roma fuit: “Rome
has been and now is not”.
In conclusion we must remember not only that Augustus
made an empire and made it out of the fragments of a republic, but also that he
gave that empire stability. Even though it changed, tottered, staggered, was
divided, became Christian instead of pagan—and that was indeed a pouring of new
wine into old bottles—it was never overthrown from within.
The one force which could and which did conquer Rome
was the force from without, the resistless inrush of those wild tribes who are
the civilized nations of today. And who shall say how much they learnt from
Rome, how much they would have lost had there been no Rome, had their inrush
been a mere migration to new lands instead of the conquest of the world’s
greatest power?
When we think of what Rome was and of all we owe to
her, not only in lessons of civilization but in lessons of empire, we must
remember that, without Augustus, her civilization would have been lost and her
empire would never have been.
CHAPTER I
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