III
Octavian
To the student of even the clearest narrative of the events which followed the assassination of Cæsar, the impression conveyed is one of absolute chaos; officials are appointed and removed, decrees passed and rescinded, provinces assigned and redistributed, leaders combine and separate only to combine again; it is difficult to distinguish any guiding principle, any organized force, by which order might be restored. War and spoliation seem to be universal and continuous, and the direction of the march of events to be subject to the caprices of a licentious soldiery, led by rapacious adventurers, who can keep hold of their troops only by extravagant largess and promises of plunder. Licensed brigandage rules the world. And yet this turmoil was immediately succeeded, and in part accompanied by such prosperity as the civilized world had not yet known; trade flourished in spite of piracy, great public improvements were designed and completed, young men went to universities, travellers passed from one end of the Empire to the other.
The exact date of the journey which Horace took from Rome to Brundisium in attendance upon Mæcenas is still a subject of dispute among scholars, but it certainly cannot be placed later than the battle of Actium, and is generally assigned to a time before Sextus Pompeius had been driven from Sicily; neither Italy nor the world were at peace, and Italy had recently been the scene of civil war. There is, however, nothing in the description of this journey to suggest a ruined or disordered country; before Horace caught up the suite of his patron he travelled by the ordinary conveyances along the road or the canal to the South; the misadventures of his journey are only such as happen to travellers in a well ordered country in times of the profoundest peace. The ordinary routine of life can have been but little disturbed by the marchings and counter-marchings of armies; and the habits of order must have been too firmly established to be much shaken by the apparent anarchy at the capital.
In one respect the accounts of these times are necessarily misleading; as our information comes from Rome and Rome alone, we forget the enormous area over which the transactions took place. We should not to-day be surprised to find France prosperous when war was raging in Italy; we should not expect Spain to be affected by occurrences in the Balkan Peninsula, or Egypt to be ruined by marauders in Asia Minor; and we can even imagine a war in Lombardy which would leave Calabria undisturbed. Roman history gives us all the military operations of all the countries in Europe South of the Alps and West of the Rhine, and of all the East that is washed by the Mediterranean, as the history of one state, and we forget that large though the armies were which disputed the Empire of the world, they fought over a very large area, and that the greater part of the Empire was only for short periods or indirectly affected. Even inside Italy the fighting was carried on at a distance from the capital; the scenes of actual war were Lombardy or Northern Tuscany or again the coast opposite Sicily; the marching of the troops along the great roads did not disturb the country between the scenes of operations. In all periods of social disturbance the attention is drawn so exclusively to the sensational events, that the continuance of the ordinary routine alongside of the confusion escapes notice. A community which has long been settled parts unwillingly with its fixed habits; it is only very long periods of war that leave their mark permanently on a country. Perpetual disorder and perpetual invasions prevent progress, but even such violent outbreaks of disorder as the early years of the French Revolution may be followed by a speedy recovery.
Julius Cæsar did not hold absolute power for more than four years; during those years he had time to remove obstructions, but not to build; his death did not involve a general collapse of the Government; the permanent officials continued in their places, the ordinary routine of public and private business remained much as before. The real danger which threatened society was the domination of the army under the command of a licentious adventurer such as Antonius, or the breaking up of the Empire and its distribution among similar leaders. That this did not happen is due chiefly to the personal qualities of one man, and that man a youth, who at the present day would be just leaving school to begin his career at the University.
It is possible to overrate as well as to underrate Octavian, to ascribe to him much that he could not possibly have done, as well as to refuse to him the credit due for what he actually performed.
In contrast with the achievements of his adoptive father, Octavian stands out in history as the great civilian; he hardly ever fought a successful battle; even his personal courage was suspected, but he succeeded where a long line of predecessors had failed and his success was in part due to the fact that he was not a soldier; he was never tempted to conquer for the sake of conquest, or to enter on campaigns in order that he might win glory; he was entirely free from the weaknesses of a Napoleon.
The precocity of the young Romans of the great families continually astonishes us, but Octavian would indeed be a marvel if, alone and unaided, he had placed himself among the four competitors for universal dominion at the age of twenty. Had he really been the son of Cæsar, and not a comparatively distant relative, had Cæsar himself been a constitutional monarch, and the monarchy an institution sanctioned by long precedent, his succession would not have surprised us; dynasties are upheld in spite of the youth or feebleness of the successor to the dynasty; but in this case there was no recognized dynasty, no prejudice outside the army in favour of the dynast, and the heir could not expect to inherit anything from his predecessor except his private property. This was his own view of his own position; he claimed no more.
Octavian was probably no less surprised than the Liberators or Cicero by his own popularity; the depth of the affection and admiration inspired by the great Cæsar was not at once comprehended by his contemporaries; they did not realize that he had become a myth in his lifetime, and on his death a god; the strength of the sentiments which he had evoked escaped the notice of the constructors of Utopian Republics and devotees of the rule of the Sacred Senate. Here was a new cult, and even a new incarnation of divinity. So little did Octavian understand the real foundations of his popularity that on his first arrival in Italy he made overtures to Cicero and the Constitutional party, to the men who approved of his adoptive father’s murder; so little did they understand the hold which he had upon the affection of the soldiers that they prepared to use him for their own purposes and then throw him over; they wanted a piece to play against Antonius, Octavian wanted power to force Antonius to disgorge his inheritance. His first important step was a masterly one. Upon Cæsar’s heir devolved the duty of paying Cæsar’s bequests to the Roman people, and expending money upon the great shows in honour of the dead hero. Antonius refused to surrender the treasures which he had seized. Octavian, whose natural father had been a very rich man, sold all his private property, sold all Cæsar’s property that had escaped Antonius, persuaded two of his relatives to forego their own share of the inheritance, and fulfilled the obligations imposed by the will. The contrast between him and Antonius was thus emphasized; Antonius had seized, confiscated, squandered upon his personal pleasures; Octavian gave, and paid for the pleasures of the people. It was this characteristic of Octavian, his indifference to personal display and personal luxury, that was one source of his strength throughout life; nobody could be more magnificent or spend more lavishly when such a course was required by the public interest, but in his personal expenditure he was rigidly economical. No Roman or provincial ever felt that his property was held in jeopardy, because Octavian needed money for his private pleasures. The ruler himself set the example of that moderation in expenditure which Horace so repeatedly commends to his contemporaries.
The moderation of Octavian recommended him to the financiers, and he at once found a valuable friend in the person of C. Cilnius Mæcenas. The Roman historians, in accordance with their invariable custom, ignore this great permanent official; they have no eyes for any man who has not held the great magistracies of the Republic, and the share of Mæcenas in building up the power of Octavian occupies but a small place in their writings; it is in fact only as a patron of literary men that Mæcenas is widely known, and the superficial observer might be tempted to infer that Mæcenas was a private friend of Octavian, whose influence was due solely to the Emperor’s favour. We know when Mæcenas died, but we do not know when he was born; his death occurred twenty-two years before that of Octavian, and as there is no indication that the event was considered premature, we are justified in assuming that he was so much older than Octavian as to have had considerable experience of affairs, and a sufficiently recognized position, when the younger man was seen to be a possible successor to the great Cæsar. Mæcenas was a prominent member of the Equestrian Order, of the body which had been supported in its struggles for recognition against the Senate by the Marian party, and by Cæsar himself; its interests coincided with those of the whole body of permanent salaried officials, who owed their appointments to Cæsar; the collection of the revenue of the Empire was in its hands; of the candidates for power, the one who secured the confidence of the Equestrians was the most likely to be successful. We do not know what had been the previous connexion between Octavian and Mæcenas, but we do no violence to probability by assuming that Mæcenas was known to Cæsar, and had enjoyed a measure of his confidence, that he belonged to the inner circle of financiers whom Cæsar must have repeatedly consulted, and that he had frequent opportunities for forming an opinion as to the capacity of the young Octavian.
In any case, and however the connexion was brought about, the man who formed the alliance between Octavian and Mæcenas acted more wisely than Octavian had acted when he placed himself at the feet of Cicero. By himself Octavian might have appeared to be a risky speculation to the orderly men who were gradually attracted to his party; backed by the great financier he was safe; the clients of Cæsar in all parts of the Empire were provided with a guarantee which encouraged them to transfer to the nephew the allegiance which they had previously given to the uncle. Octavian’s merit lies in the fact that he was able to use the wisdom of this cautious adviser and submit to his diplomacy; his head was not turned by the popular declarations in his favour. He is frequently reproached with a lack of initiative, with a cynical indifference to the higher morality, with a cool calculation of his own interests, and of his own interests to the exclusion of all others; but to judge thus is to fall into the common error of condemning a man on his success; there is a natural tendency to ascribe to every man who eventually succeeds a deliberate intention of success from the commencement, and the careful working out of a preconceived plan. Royalists after the Restoration in England could only see in Cromwell a crafty plotter, who had proposed to himself the usurpation of the throne. It is assumed that the power of the men who rise to great positions was at the beginning the same that it was at the end, and that in the first stages of their career they could have refused to do things of which they disapproved.
When Octavian made overtures to Cicero and called him his “father,” he was in earnest, and acted according to his own inclinations, but he took a false step from which he was forced to recede; he quickly learned that he commanded sympathy as the avenger of his father’s murderer, that on those terms he was the darling of the fierce legionaries; he also learned that the Constitutional Party, to whom his temperament inclined him, regarded him as a necessary evil, and that his “father” proposed to use him and then remove him; after the publication of the Second Philippic, in which Cæsar was denounced no less savagely than Antonius, Octavian could no longer keep on terms of friendship with Cicero; he would have been treated as a renegade by his own soldiers; he had not even the alternative of retiring into private life; he was too dangerous to both parties alike; had he rejected the devotion of the legions, the daggers of the Constitutionalists or of the emissaries of Antonius would have struck him down; nominally a leader, he was really a hunted beast. The soldiers forced him into alliance with Antonius, the soldiers forced him to marry the daughter of the tigress Fulvia, the combination of ferocity drove him to his share in the proscription. To Antonius the proscription was a means of filling his ever leaky purse; to Fulvia, the sister of Clodius, it was a vengeance, she had an old score to settle with Cicero, to the soldiers it was the merited punishment of the murderers of Cæsar; Octavian could not hold back; he, however, did the best thing that was permitted by the circumstances, as soon as Antonius departed for the East he let the pursuit of the proscribed lapse; he broke with Fulvia and sent back her daughter; he proved singularly placable to those who wished to make terms with him.
At this period Octavian can hardly have designed the universal dominion to which he afterwards succeeded; it was enough to enjoy comparative security in Italy, and to be recognized as the chief agent in restoring safety to the peninsula; none of his military operations were aggressive, and he preferred diplomacy to war; he was content to let Antonius carry off the richest part of the Empire; he was content to make terms with Sextus Pompeius, and allow him to take his share of the provinces, provided the commercial interests of Rome were respected, and the corn ships allowed to find their way into the harbour. He required time to deal with the most difficult of tasks, the reabsorption of Cæsar’s veterans in the civilian population; in order that Octavian might be personally safe, it was necessary gradually to break up the army which had dictated to him, and replace it by one of which he would be master.
This operation must have required consummate skill and coolness; the financial problem alone must have been serious; it was, however, rendered much easier by the departure of Antonius to the East; to the Roman soldiers, as to ourselves for many centuries, the East was the El Dorado, and service or even settlement in Italy presented small attractions to the legionary compared with service on the Euphrates; the gold which had tempted Crassus still glittered in the imagination of the centurions. Octavian and his advisers were glad to see the more restless spirits stream after Antonius, it lightened their burden.
Meanwhile Octavian had the good fortune to find a War Minister of rare genius and unexampled personal devotion; if the career of Octavian is marvellous, that of his friend Agrippa is no less so; the two men were of the same age; they were fellow students at Apollonia when the death of Cæsar summoned Octavian to Rome; they had already laid the foundations of a friendship which is among the most noteworthy in history.
Agrippa as a military genius has received scant consideration; but the man must have been a genius, who at the age of twenty-seven made a navy for Rome and re-organized an army, and who further contrived to place that army on a footing, which restored it to its proper position of subordination to the civil administration. All Agrippa’s projects bear witness to the mind of a daring planner and a consummate master of detail. It was necessary to build and train a fleet in the face of the opposition of Sextus Pompeius, who held the command of the sea; Agrippa at once bethought himself of an inland lake in which his ships could be built and then manœuvred; when the work of preparation was complete he cut a channel into the Mediterranean, and sailed out to attack and defeat his enemy. In preparation for the subsequent operations against Antonius at Actium, he was not misled by the example of the naval experts of the day; he saw that rapidity of manœuvring was more important in a man-of-war than size and weight, and instead of competing with the ship builders of Alexandria, constructed a large number of light galleys, and manned them with skilled crews.
The one great building for which Agrippa was responsible survives to our time, and still testifies to the originality of his genius; the dome of the Pantheon is remarkable even now; in its own day it was unexampled.
Agrippa was even greater in his moral qualities, in the self-restraint, or perhaps absence of a morbid ambition, which forbade him to become a rival to the man whose superiority he had elected to recognize. In the later days of the Republic a man could hardly become a great general without threatening the balance of the constitution; the death of Cæsar brought into prominence ambitious soldiers; it seemed that it was enough to be a successful leader of troops in order to enter upon the enjoyment of all things that ambitious men most covet; but to this kind of ambition Agrippa was superior; if he had a conscious ambition over and above the satisfaction of doing his work well, it was to make Octavian.
His example was most valuable to the fortunes of the Empire; his character impressed itself upon the young men at a later time, upon the youthful Tiberius his son-in-law among others. Henceforth the old loyalty to the Republic which restored victorious consuls to their proper place in civil life, when their wars were finished, was replaced by the loyalty of the army to a possibly civilian Imperator, whose military work was delegated to subordinate commanders; it was possible for a man to command an army without feeling that he lost dignity by submitting to the control of the head of the State.
If Octavian is to be admired for learning in a few years the trade of a statesman, Agrippa is no less to be admired for the celerity with which he acquired the detailed knowledge of a naval and military commander; both young men started with a rare power of submitting themselves to the guidance of men of experience; the eventual result was a combination of administrative ability, which was able to use other men without impairing its own supremacy.
After Sextus Pompeius had disappeared, and Lepidus had found himself in the unenviable position of a general without an army, and a provincial governor without a province, the delimitation of authority which followed may well have seemed to the sharers in power to be final.
Octavian took what was practically in later days the Western Empire, Antonius the Eastern. The marriage of Octavian’s sister with Antonius was held to render hostilities between them impossible; and there are few modern potentates who would not be content with the share which fell to Octavian; to be supreme ruler of France, Spain, Italy, the large islands of the Mediterranean, and the Western portion of the North Coast of Africa, would have satisfied Francis I. or Charles V. Nor were the Spain and Gaul of those days relatively in such a state of barbarism that the ruler of Italy could think of them as semi-savage frontier colonies. Parts of Spain were still imperfectly civilized, but the relation which they bore to the more settled regions was little different from that held by the Celtic fringes of our own islands till comparatively late in our history. Gaul was more united than the France of Louis XI., and no more subject to internal disturbances. Gaul, in fact, began almost from the time of Cæsar’s conquests to advance to a dominant position in the Empire; she supplied soldiers, statesmen, and rhetoricians to Italy; the balance of power gradually inclined to the country, which had not been exhausted by successive wars, and whose population was relatively homogeneous; the time was to come when the Emperors would be Gallic rather than Italian. The Gauls quickly assimilated Roman culture and Roman discipline; two of the greatest writers of the Augustan age, Virgil and Livy, one of an earlier date, Catullus, were natives of Cis-Alpine Gaul, if not Celtic in their nationality; Cornelius Gallus, a Transalpine Gaul, was not only estimated at a high value among the poets of his day, but was the first Viceroy appointed to Egypt by Octavian. In fact, though it may have appeared to the men of the day that Antonius had taken to himself the best share of the Empire, and left Octavian a valueless appanage, the sequel proved that the latter had the best of the bargain; the central part of his dominions was the longest organized and the best organized, while the outlying territories had no time-honoured reputation to set against the extension of Roman civilization; they had everything to gain by closer incorporation with the Empire; they even accepted its language, whereas the Eastern Empire never ceased to be Greek.
The personal qualities of Antonius brought about the union of the Empire; so long as he served under the direction of the great Cæsar he passed for a politician and administrator, no less than for a dashing general; deprived of his great model, he quickly showed himself to be nothing but a greedy soldier. The East learned by successive bitter experiences what it lost in Cæsar; first came little Dolabella to harry Syria, then Cassius and even Brutus extorted all that they could lay their hands on in the rich cities of the Levant and Asia Minor; then came Antonius with further fines and confiscations; there was a general sense of relief when Cleopatra carried him off to Alexandria, only however to prompt him to fresh extortions.
The alliance of Antony and Cleopatra was the salvation of the Roman Empire; it frightened the West into union, and its failure brought about the final submission of the East. This was no mere question of rivalry between two eminent Roman statesmen; it was a turning point in civilization; the issue was once again whether the Mediterranean was to be governed on Oriental or Western lines. The halo of not particularly edifying romance which shines round the figure of Cleopatra averts the attention from the statesman-like qualities which she really possessed; her residence in Rome in the capacity of Cæsar’s mistress was not a glorious episode in the career of the Egyptian Queen, but it taught her, as a similar experience had taught Juba, the weakness of Rome from an Oriental point of view. Cleopatra saw that Rome wanted a despot; on the death of her admirer she went back to Egypt to wait on events; when Antonius appeared in the East, she proposed to annex Italy through Antonius, as Cæsar had through herself annexed Egypt; but, like many others, she had misjudged the man; Antonius was no Cæsar; and though Cleopatra could form magnificent schemes of ambition, she lacked the self-control necessary to carry them out; unfortunately for herself, in the attempt to annex Antonius she fell violently in love with him, and statesmanship became a secondary consideration; she could not deny herself the companionship of her lover; he, too, more than once forgot all the duties of a soldier in his impatience to return to her arms. Their plans for extended conquests in the East were foiled by their maladministration; and even a temporary success proved in its results worse than a series of defeats; for Antonius celebrated his victory over the Parthians by parodying at Alexandria the solemn ritual of a triumph at Rome. This event, more even than a fleeting descent of Antonius at a previous date upon the coast of Iapygia in conjunction with Sextus Pompeius, consolidated the power of Octavian; he became no longer the leader of a party, but the representative of Latin civilization. Nor is it contrary to probability that the luxurious excesses of the Court at Alexandria, at Smyrna, at Samos, frightened the Greek cities, and that frequent emissaries gave Octavian good reason for supposing that the Greek cities were ready to throw themselves into his hands; Cæsar had never acted in the spirit of a Greek tyrant, but the type was abundantly manifested in Antonius. Octavian waited till he was ready; he then produced a document, the will of Antonius, which clearly informed the Roman people of the destiny prepared for them, and when the right moment came, allowed a dispute about his claims over certain cities to end in a declaration of war.
The battle of Actium was the result, and the victory was followed by what was practically a triumphant progress of Octavian round the Mediterranean; the Roman Empire was one again, the unity of civilization was complete. Henceforth the wars of the Empire were conducted on its frontiers, and though they occasionally resulted in an extension of territory, their primary object was self-defence, the maintenance of the ring fence of the “civilized world.” The short war of the Succession, which followed on the death of Nero, hardly disturbed the peace of Gaul and Italy.
The extraordinary success of the man, who at the age of two and thirty was recognized as the supreme arbiter of the civilized world, tempts us, as it tempted his contemporaries, to look for qualities in him beyond the reach of an ordinary man; some who have looked for these qualities and failed to discover them have gone in the opposite direction, and speak of him with scant respect.
Whether Octavian or any other man who has occupied a similar position was a person whose example could be safely recommended to our children, is a less interesting question than that relation between his personal qualities and the needs of the time, which placed him at the head of affairs. The Senate of Rome had failed to produce a great civilian, and a great civilian was precisely what was needed by Greater Rome. The men who, from the time that the problem of the administration of the Empire had begun to make itself felt, had held the chief power successively, were soldiers in the first place, and only in the second, if at all, civil administrators: Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Cæsar himself imposed their will upon Rome, because they had the legions behind them; relying upon the force of organized armies, they were tempted to overlook all the other forces by which society is held together. An army is so convincing, so obvious, that men who can organize an army may well be excused in their blindness to the existence of any other power. Cæsar was the most enlightened of generals, and had a clearer appreciation of civilian problems than his predecessors, but even Cæsar relied ultimately upon the appeal to force; holding, as he believed, the strongest weapon in his hands, he prepared to change and reconstruct society as appeared most reasonable to his clear scientific intelligence; confident in the integrity of his purposes, he believed that he had only to demonstrate his common sense and benevolence in order to secure adhesion to all his reforms; he did not weigh public opinion; he did not study the currents of prepossession and conviction; wishing well to all men, he never waited to consider whether his actions might wound the self-esteem of any man; he chose his subordinates without inquiry into their private opinions; it was enough for him to have ascertained that they possessed the qualities essential in his opinion to good administration. In one sense the clemency of Cæsar was never tested; had he lived another ten years, and been forced to realize the nature of the opposition which was excited by his reforms, he, like Cromwell, might have been forced to supersede the civil organization by a purely military organization; like Napoleon, he might have been compelled to protect his person and his Government by an army of spies, and meet plots by counterplots; but the opposition declared itself only to be final; the first intimation of its existence to Cæsar was his own death. Had Octavian needed so striking a lesson, he would have learned from this event that civil power resting on military predominance is no more secure than civil power conferred by a popular vote; but he did not need the lesson; his whole temperament was civilian, and the successive humiliations through which the army led him strengthened his dislike to the army; for the army forced him to the alliance with Antonius, in whom he rightly saw his private enemy; the army forced him to marry the daughter of Fulvia the tigress; the army forced the proscription upon him; the army compelled him to deeds of savage cruelty at Perusia; the army forced him to hand over his sister to the embraces of Antonius; he felt that he could not be a free agent so long as the army was the dominant factor in politics. His ideal was not the magnificent stride of the conqueror from continent to continent. Other young men, finding several thousand veterans ready to follow them, might have been tempted to a career of conquest; not so Octavian; circumstances compelled him to temporize with the army, and to use the army, but he naturally preferred the city to the camp, and the Forum to the field. Year by year, and even month by month, he advanced in the favour of the capitalists and constitutionalists, who dreaded nothing so much as a perpetual cock fight of generals. All over the Empire a new ideal had been steadily growing, the conception of war as a permanent condition of society had been replaced by the conception of peace. In the East for two centuries the internecine wars between city States had disappeared; the Macedonian Empire, though broken up and divided, had established permanent umpires; society was united over larger areas; in the West, after the elimination of the discordant Phœnician factor, Rome had held the same position of supreme umpire; great cities had grown up: Smyrna, Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria in the East, Rome in the West, for whose populations the orderly progress of commerce was a necessity of life; war had ceased to be the only or the most profitable investment; other than military careers were attractive to the ambitious. Octavian presented the combination of qualities which the world wanted; he could command the allegiance of armies without being intoxicated by the possession of that form of power; he respected the civilian, and had the power to protect him. But Octavian did not carry his dislike of military domination to the point of extravagance; he was no intemperate advocate of peace principles; he did not make the mistake of allowing his army to become inefficient; he knew that a well ordered army was a necessary instrument of sound civil Government; he knew that unless the chief of the State demonstrably enjoyed the support of an efficient army his reign would be short; but he took care that no successful officer should be tempted to play the part of an Antonius, or dream that it was in his power to become a second Cæsar. He had the good fortune to find first in his friend Agrippa, and subsequently in his two stepsons Tiberius and Drusus, able generals, who abstained from interfering with the civil administration. Not the least of the remarkable powers of Octavian was his power of commanding willing service from equals and even from superiors, and his recognition of the men who would be useful to him. As the heir of his father and great-uncle, he inherited not only money but connexions; his father had been an Equestrian, who was cut off in the first stages of a more enterprising political career; he had been Governor of Macedonia; the extent of the connexions of Cæsar needs no demonstration. The head of a great Roman House was in a sense the head of a permanent corporation; he could alienate or retain those individuals, families or cities, both with within and outside of the technical limits of the Empire, who had been used to conduct their private or public business through the agency of his House. The use to which he turned an hereditary advantage of this kind depended on his personal qualities; Octavian had the qualities which breed confidence; self-controlled, industrious, courteous, faithful to obligations even where they were not self-imposed, he quickly showed the adherents of the House that there was no breach in the continuity of the Cæsarian succession. Antonius had similar advantages, but he dissipated or squandered them; men learned that his favour was to be won, or its continuance to be secured by gross flattery, and subservience to his caprices; he demanded derogatory services; the Consular Plancus thought to secure his favour at Alexandria by flopping about at a masquerade in the unwieldy and farcical dress of a marine deity; such an act would have disgusted Octavian; it would have shocked him to see a man of rank doing anything inconsistent with his dignity. A natural instinct for what is dignified is a valuable attribute in a ruler, and a punctilious insistence on ceremonial observances is better than an absence of etiquette; but mere ceremony is apt to degenerate into observances which injure the self esteem of those concerned, and to substitute exaggerated forms of respect for the reality. Octavian grasped the true meaning of dignified behaviour; it was not the person of the ruler but the business in hand which was respected; frivolity was not an insult to his person, but to the work in which he was engaged.
Men who were in earnest about anything found that they were in sympathy with Octavian; he could relax, and be charming in his relaxation, but with him, as with all great rulers, the line was rigidly drawn between business and amusement. He could even pardon a refusal to comply with his request for a personal favour; he invited Horace to leave the service of Mæcenas and become his private secretary; the poet refused, but did not in consequence lose the esteem of the Emperor.
Naturally attracted by what was dignified, Octavian was keenly alive to the prestige of the Senate; Cæsar had found in that body an active impediment to necessary reforms; he broke down the barriers of sanctity by which it was surrounded; he treated it with no more respect than Claudius Pulcher had shown to the sacred chickens; he destroyed its organization and overrode its decrees; he admitted aliens to its honours. Antonius was equally reckless in his contempt of Senatorial prerogatives; but the men of rank and position who successively made terms with Octavian found that they were treated with respect, that there was nothing derogatory in working with him; and while a bitter experience had taught them that there was no other alternative, the pain of submission was alleviated by the personal consideration shown to men who had suffered shipwreck. Octavian was the mediator between the new and the old; his practical sagacity inclined him to make the best of the new; his personal sympathies equally inclined him to deal tenderly with the old. Good counsellors, hereditary connexions, the affection of the veterans, would not have put Octavian permanently at the head of affairs, had he not possessed those qualities which enabled him to make the best of these advantages. He had not the dash, the brilliance, the consummate intellectual ability of his uncle; he could not have done his uncle’s work; but when that work had once been done, he was supremely fitted to rebuild on the new foundations; because he was in many respects inferior to his uncle, he was more truly representative of his time; he was no prodigy; he did not thunder and lighten and turn the universe upside down; he made the best of the world as he found it, and that best was so very good that his work lasted.