[134] Id. § 4.

[135] Cic., ad Fam. xi. 10.

[136] He was perhaps deceived by the report that Octavian’s legions had taken an oath not to fight against any that had served under Iulius Cæsar. This applied to some men at present with Antony. But Dio implies that the oath was at the secret instigation of Octavian himself (Dio, 46, 42).

[137] Cic., ad Fam. xi. 13.

[138] Id. xi. 19.

[139] Id. xi. 20.

[140] Id. xi. 14.

[141] Cic., ad Fam. x. 23.

[142] Id. x. 24.

[143] Id. xi. 12 and 14.

[144] Cic., ad Fam. x. 16.

[145] Id. x. 35; xii. 35.

[146] Id. xi. 26, cp. xi. 13.

[147] Id., ad. Brut. i. 10.

[148] A similar technical difficulty had occurred in B.C. 49 (both consuls being absent, and unwilling, of course, to name a dictator), and had been got over by the nomination of a dictator by the prætor under a special law. See p. 8; Cic., ad Fam. x. 26; ad M. Brut. i. 5.

[149] Plancus (Cic., ad Fam. x. 29) expresses surprise that Cæsar wished to give up the glory of defeating Antony for the sake of “a two months’ consulship.” But this only shows that Plancus did not understand Octavian’s object or policy.

[150] Suet., Aug. 26; Dio, 46, 43; Plut., Pomp. 58. Appian (b. c. 3, 82), without alluding to this scene, regards the application itself as the result of a secret intrigue with Cicero, and Cicero’s exclamation, if made, may have been intended as encouraging and not sarcastic.

[151] The number given by Appian (b. c. iii. 88). Octavian had five legions when he went to Gaul: two raised in Campania of veterans, one of tirones, the Martia and Quarta (App., b. c. iii. 47). The other three must have been made up from the armies of Pansa and Hirtius. None of the veteran legions in these two armies would consent to follow Decimus Brutus (Cic., ad Fam. xi. 19).

[152] Cic., ad Brut. 1, 18.

[153] Ib. and App., b. c. iii. 90.

[154] The panic had been increased by some damage done by his soldier on the march to properties of known anti-Cæsareans.

[155] Confiscation of property and the forbidding of “fire and water” followed as a matter of course. One of the assassins—P. Servilius Casca—was tribune, and as such could not legally be condemned, but he vacated his tribuneship by flying from Rome and was condemned with the rest.

[156] The Senate had nothing to do with this quæstio, which was established by a lex, but its attitude to Octavian amounted to a condonation if not an active approval.

[157] According to Appian (b. c. iii. 97), Pollio for some time declined to join Antony and Lepidus. He seems to have done so when their outlawry was removed.

[158] Decimus Brutus first tried to reach Ravenna, hoping to sail to Macedonia and join M. Brutus. Headed back by Cæsar’s advance, he recrossed the Alps (being gradually deserted by his men) and trusted himself to a Gaul, who had received favours from him of old. But his host communicated with Antony, and by his orders put him to death. There were other versions of his death. Perhaps neither Antony nor Cæsar cared to ask questions so long as he was dead. (App., b. c. iii. 97-98; Dio, 46, 53; Velleius Pat., ii. 64; Livy, Ep. 120.)

[159] Plancus did not accompany Antony into Italy; he stayed in Gaul, busying himself with the foundation of Lugdunum, and apparently suppressing some movements in the Eastern Alps, for at the end of the year coming home to enter on his consulship, he celebrated a triumph ex Rhætis [Inscrip. Neap., 4089; Fast. Capitol. 29 Dec. A. V. 711.] Pollio, who had presently to assent to the proscription of his father-in-law, L. Quintius, was left in charge of Transpadane Gaul, to arrange for lands for the veterans. It was in this business that he came across Vergil and his farm.

[160] Daughter of Fulvia by her first husband, P. Clodius.

[161] Plut., Ant. 19; App., b. c. iv. 6; Dio, 46, 44.

[162] The usual interval (tres nundinæ) for promulgatio was dispensed with.

[163] Appian, b. c. iv. 5; Livy, Ep. 120. Of the 69 names given by Appian, he records the escape of 31. This tallies roughly with the discrepancy between his and Livy’s reckoning.

[164] Appian, b. c. iv. 36.

[165] Suet., Aug. 27.

[166] Dio, 47, 14.

[167] Id. 47, 16-17.

[168] App., b. c. 4, 34.

[169] Lassam crudelitatem, Sen. de Clem. 1, 9, 2. The other opinions referred to are Velleius, ii. 66; App., b. c. iv. 42, 45; Plut., Ant. 21; Dio, 47, 7; Sueton., Aug. 27. For Toranius, see Nic. Dam. 2.

[170] Sueton., Aug. 61; Dio, 47, 17; [Tacit.] de orat. 29.

[171] Cicero, 13 Phil. §§ 8-12, 50; Velleius, ii. 73. The decree was passed on the 20th of March, B.C. 43.

[172] Dio, 48, 17 sq.; Livy, Ep. 123.

[173] App., b. c. iv. 85; Dio, 47, 36; Livy, Ep. 123.

[174] Dio, 51, 2; Suet., Aug. 13.

[175] At any rate the head never reached Rome, but was lost at sea. App., b. c. iv. 135; Dio, 47, 49; Plut., Ant., 22; Brut. 53; Sueton., Aug. 13.

[176] Ulpian (dig. 48, 24) quotes this lost autobiography; see Mon. Ancyr. § 3.

[177] The first meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, when the queen was rowed up the Cydnus in her barge, dressed as Venus with attendant cupids, seems to have been in the autumn of B.C. 42 (Plut., Anton. 25-6.). He had seen her once before in B.C. 56 when he accompanied Gabinius to restore her father. But she must have been a mere child then.

[178] These legions had behaved badly at Placentia, demanding a sum of money from the inhabitants. Calenus and Ventidius may have justified their action on this score (Dio, 48, 10).

[179] From caliga, “a soldier’s boot.”

[180] Dio, 48, 12.

[181] Appian, b. c. 4, 30; Dio, 48, 31. Livy, however (Ep. 121), says M. Lepido fuso, as though he had resisted and had been beaten.

[182] Livy, Ep. 126; Velleius, ii. 74; App., b. c. v. 48-49; Dio, 48, 14; Seneca, de Clem. 1, 11, 1. The uncertainty of historical testimony is illustrated by the fact that both Dio and Appian name C. Canutius (Tr. Pl. B.C. 44) among the victims at Perusia, while Velleius (ii. 64) says that he was the first to suffer under the proscription in B.C. 43.

[183] C. I. L., i. 697.

[184] This was to safeguard Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. There is some doubt, however, as to his having been an assassin. Cocceius denied it (App., b. c. v. 62). Suetonius (Nero 3) does the same. But Cicero (2 Phil. §§ 27, 30) says that he was; and Appian himself does the same (b. c. v. 59). Dio thrice speaks of him as a σφαγεύς (48, 7, 29, 54). At any rate he was condemned by the lex Pedia, as though he had been an assassin. He may have been one of those who joined the assassins on the Capitol after the murder.

[185] Appian, b. c. v. 65. It has been doubted whether this or the meeting of B.C. 37 was the one to which Horace accompanied his patron Mæcenas. In favour of this one is the mention of Cocceius Nerva by Horace (Sat. 1 v. 28, 50), against it is the way in which he is mentioned with Mæcenas as aversos soliti componere amicos, as if he had been so engaged before. But though in the second meeting he is not mentioned by Appian, he may have been there. Something has been made of the mention of the croaking frogs (l. 14), as this meeting could hardly have been earlier than July, when the Italian frogs are said to be silent. For the Ovations see C. I. L., i. p. 461.

[186] This was one of the chief grievances. Hor., Ep. ix. 9, minatus urbi vincla, que detraxerat servis amicus perfidis.

[187] Hor., Od. ii. 1, 15-16; Dio, 48, 41; C. I. L., i. p. 461. Pollio after this withdrew from active political life and devoted himself to literature. He seems to have taken no part in the subsequent quarrels between Antony and Augustus.

[188] Dio, 48, 19, 48; Hor., Epod. 9, 17.

[189] The first period ended on the last day of B.C. 38; but neither Antony nor Cæsar had laid down their imperium of office. They now assumed that it went on from the first day of B.C. 37, the want of legal sanction during the intervening months being ignored. There is no certain trace of this second triumvirate having been confirmed by a lex; yet one would think that they would have taken care to have that formality observed. See p. 143.

[190] Cicero, ad Fam. xi. 9; Cicero himself calls him levissimus, ad Brut. 1, 15, § 9.

[191] In B.C. 52 Cicero had wished to give his daughter Tullia in marriage to Tiberius Claudius Nero (Cic., Att. 6, 6.).

[192] He was quæstor in B.C. 48, and therefore was not born later than B.C. 78. Livia was born B.C. 58.

[193] Even Suetonius, not much inclined to speak good of Augustus, admits that he dilexit et probavit unice ac perseveranter.

[194] Suetonius (c. 22) says that he had two ovations—after Philippi and after the bellum Siculum. But if an ovation was decreed after Philippi, it was not celebrated till B.C. 40, upon the reconciliation with Antony. The second was this. Another had been voted in B.C. 43 after Mutina, but not celebrated (C. I. L. i. p. 461). See also p. 100.

[195] Appian (b. c. v. 132) says that they elected him perpetual tribune (αὐτὸν ... εἕλοντο δήμαρχον ἐς ἀεί). Dio (49, 15) only says that they gave him the personal sacredness of the tribunes and the right of sitting on their bench. Orosius (6, 18, 34) says that the Senate voted ut in perpetuum tribuniciæ potestatis esset. We shall have to discuss this later on, but it must be said at once that Augustus was never tribune, and that it seems doubtful whether the tribunicia potestas was given in its full sense at this time.

[196] Dio, 49, 14; Strabo, x. 4, 9.

[197] Dio, 49, 34.

[198] App., b. c. v. 132; Suet., Aug. 32.

[199] Or, as they were also called Vetus, and Nova Africa. The former was the old province formed of the territory of Carthage, the latter the new province formed after the battle of Thapsus (B.C. 46) of which the first governor was the historian Sallust. See pp. 23-4.

[200] Appian, Illyr. 17; Dio, 49, 34, 38.

[201] Appian, Illyr. 18-21; Dio, 49, 37. The Iapydes (a wild tribe) had first been attacked in B.C. 129 by C. Sempronius and subdued after some disasters. (Livy, Ep. 59.)

[202] Pliny, N. H. 36 § 121.

[203] The Porticus Octaviæ, of which an arch remains, was a rectangular cloister enclosing the temples of Jupiter Stator and Iuno Regina.

[204] Dio, 49, 15; Sueton., Aug. 72.

[205] Horace, Epod. ix. ii.; cp. Ov., Met. 15, 826.

[206] An anecdote has been preserved illustrating the policy of “sitting on the hedge,” which must have prevailed among many while the contest between the two leaders was still undecided. After Actium, when Cæsar landed (the time and place are charmingly vague), a man offered a cornix which had been taught to say, “Ave, Cæsar, imperator et victor.” He bought the bird at a large price, whereat the man’s partner, being jealous, urged that he should be forced to bring another bird, which when brought repeated as it had been taught, “Ave, Antoni, imperator et victor.”

[207] Dio, 50, 5; but Suetonius, Aug. 17, says that he was declared a hostis.

[208] Dio, 50, 5. Thus Horace, on hearing the rumours of Antony’s defeat, exclaims (somewhat prematurely), Epod. ix. 27:

[209] Bocchus of Mauretania, Tarchondemus of Cilicia Aspera, Archilaus of Cappadocia, Amyntas of Lycaonia and Galatia, Philadelphus of Paphlagonia, Malchus of Arabia, Herod of Judæa, Sadalas of Thrace, Polemon of Pontus. (Plut., Ant. 61.)

[210] Dio, 50, 14-23.

[211] Dio, 50-31, says, ὑετός τε ἐν τούτῳ λαβρὸς καὶ ζάλη πολλή. But Plutarch, Ant. 65, says that after four days of stormy weather on the day of battle νηνεμίας καὶ γαλὴνης γενομένης συνῄεσαν.

[212] Suet., Aug. 17.

[213] The earlier writers, Horace (Od. i. 37, 27) and Velleius (2, 87), seem to have no doubt about the snake story. Livy (as we have him) says nothing either way except that she died by suicide (Ep. 133). It is the later writers who express the doubt, Suet., Aug. 17; Plut., Ant. 86; Dio, 51, 14.

[214] This word—one of the financial terms borrowed from Sicily (lit. “a basket”)—was perhaps not commonly used in the restricted sense in the time of Augustus, though the thing existed. Into the emperor’s fisc went the revenues of the imperial provinces; but the balance in the case of most was not large. Cicero indeed (pro lege Manil, § 14) says that none of the provinces except Asia did much more than pay its expenses. This was probably an exaggeration, but not a very great one.

[215] This, it should be remembered, was exclusive of the legions regularly raised for certain provinces and stationed in them.

[216] Mon. Ancyr. 3, 16.

[217] Traces of the work of Augustus in provincial towns may still be seen, as at Nismes and other towns in South-eastern France.

[218] Horace, Odes iii. 3.

[219] In the Mon. Ancyr. 20, he says that he repaired 82 temples in B.C. 28, and the Flaminian road with all but two of its bridges in B.C. 27.

[220] The foundations of the triple arch at Rome were discovered in 1888 between the temple of Cæsar and that of the Castores. For the inscription see C. I. L. vii. 872. SENATUS . POPULUSQUE . ROMANUS . IMP . CÆSARI . DIVI . IULI . F . COS . QUINCT . COS . DESIG . SEXT . IMP . SEPT . REPUBLICA . CONSERVATA. The date here indicated is B.C. 29. See Lanciani, Ruins of Ancient Rome, p. 270. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome, vol. i. p. 284. There does not appear to be any record of the arch at Brundisium.

[221] Vergil, Georg. iv. 560, Cæsar dum magnus ad altum fulminat Euphratem bello. Horace, Od. 1, 12, 53:

Similar exaggerations will be found scattered throughout the poems of Propertius (ii. 7, 3; iii. 1, 13; iii. 23, 5; iv. 3, 4; iv. 4, 48; iv. 11, 3). Still more exaggerated language was used afterwards on the restoration of the standards (B.C. 20).

[222] A good deal of confusion in our authorities has arisen by a failure to distinguish between a censoria potestas granted like the tribunicia by special vote and the censoria potestas inherent in the consulship, from which it had been devolved in B.C. 444. In the Monumentum, ch. 8, Augustus himself says nothing about the censoria potestas, but in the Venusian fasti (C. I. L. ix. 422) we find imp. Cæsar vi. M. Agrippa II. Cos. idem censoria potestate lustrum fecerunt. Suetonius (c. 27) knew that he was not Censor, but supposed him to have acted under a decree granting him morum legumque regimen perpetuum, an office, however, which Augustus expressly says that he declined (Mon., ch. 6). Dio (52, 42) describes him as τιμητεύσας σὺν τῷ Ἀγρίππᾳ, a direct confusion between the censorial power possessed by a Consul and that bestowed independently. He, however, apparently did receive censoria potestas (never the censorship) in B.C. 19 for five years.

[223] Rex sacrorum, the greater flamens, the Salii had still to be patricians. An interrex also must be a patrician, but that office was now practically at an end. The last case of an interrex was in B.C. 52.

[224] A jest that was reproduced in London when country peers came up to vote against the Home Rule Bill and were said by gossips to be obliged to ask their way to the House of Lords. A popular ballad also was sung about the streets—

Sueton., Cæs. 72, 80. See also Cicero, 9 Phil. § 12; 13 Phil. § 27; ad Fam. vi. 18; Bell. Afr. 28; Dio, 42, 51; 43, 27. Compare the career of P. Ventidius Bassus, brought a prisoner from Asculum to adorn the triumph of Pompey after the Social war, then a mule contractor to Cæsar, and afterwards going through all the offices to the consulship in B.C. 43.

[225] On the analogy of slaves enfranchised by will. Suet., Aug. 35; Plutarch, Ant. 15.

[226] Cicero calls such a man a voluntarius Senator, 13 Phil. § 28.

[227] Dio, 48, 34.

[228] Suet., Aug. 35; Dio, 52, 42. In the Monumentum (c. 25) he reckons the number of Senators who had served under him as “more than 700.” To them must be added those who had not taken active service and those who were with Antony.

[229] Dio, 52, 42. The regulation had always existed because every Senator was bound to attend if called upon, and therefore must be within reach, unless he was one of those qui reipublicæ causa abessent. (Livy, 43, 11.) Thus Cicero, defending the Senators who crossed over to join Pompey in Epirus, says to Atticus (viii. 15) that there was hardly one who had not a legal right to cross, either as having imperium, or being legatus to an imperator. The usual means of evading this was to obtain a libera legatio for a fixed time. Occasionally a man got himself named an ordinary legatus to a provincial governor, but was allowed to go elsewhere with some colourable commission. But this was an abuse. See Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 21; ad Q. Frat. ii. 9; ad Att. xv. 11. Sicily and Gallia Narbonensis were excepted as being practically Italy, or, as Cicero says, “suburban provinces.”

[230] Sueton., Aug. 36; Dio, 3, 19; Tacitus, Ann. 5, 4.

[231] ὅρον τὴν ἕκτην ὑπάτειαν αὑτοῦ προσθείς. Dio, 53, 2. See Tacitus, Ann. iii. 28.

[232] The doubt was an old one. Appian in one place affirms and in another denies that there was a lex for the second period of the triumvirs (Illyr. 28; b. c. v. 95). No other authority mentions one, and it certainly was not passed in the early months of B.C. 37, that is, till after the triumvirs had already continued their office without legal confirmation for some time. Willems (le Sénat, ii. 761) holds that there was a plebiscitum; Mommsen that there was not.

[233] Mon. Ancyr. ch. 34.

[234] In B.C. 28 he took care to transfer the consular fasces to his colleague Agrippa in alternative months, and when with soldiers to give the watchword jointly with him. (Dio, 53, 1.)

[235] I do not myself see any good reason to doubt that Dio has given at any rate the substance of these documents. It is not perhaps natural to us to suppose two men like Mæcenas and Agrippa solemnly reading speeches to the Emperor; but it was no unusual thing at Rome. Augustus himself is said to have done it, even to his wife, Livia, and frequently with others (Sueton., Aug. 84). Tacitus says it was the fashion of the time (Ann. 4, 37), as it seems to have been still earlier, for Cicero complains that his nephew, Quintus, had written an elaborate diatribe against him which he meant to deliver to Iulius Cæsar in Alexandria. (Ad Att. xi. 10.) For similar documents see Dio, 52, 1-40; 53, 3; 55, 15-21.

[236] Dio, 52, 15.

[237] The Imperial provinces were: Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, the Galliæ (beyond the Alps), including the districts afterwards called Germania, superior and inferior, Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, Ægypt.

The Senatorial were: Sicilia, Hispania Bætica, Sardinia, Africa, Numidia, Dalmatia, Greece and Epirus, Macedonia, Asia, Crete and Cyrene, Bithynia and Pontus.

Cisalpine Gaul ceased to be a province, and was included in Italy.

Subsequent changes were:

The provinces added during the lifetime of Augustus: Galatia, Lycaonia, Mœsia, and the minor Alpine provinces were imperial.

All provinces added afterwards were imperial.

[238] Ovid (F. 1, 587-616) says the Ides of January; the Calendarium Prænestinum gives the 16th. Possibly the one is the date of the SCtum, the other of the plebiscitum.

[239] Augustus himself uses it in the Monumentum (chs. 30, 32), “me principe,” “ante me principem.” Horace (Od. 1, 21, 13; 2, 30; Ep. 2, 1, 256), Propertius (v. 6, 46), both employ it when speaking of Augustus. It occurs in inscriptions referring to Tiberius, and is the common term used by Tacitus. If, therefore, it was not formally bestowed (as seems probable), it soon grew into use as a title in ordinary language. Nor was it altogether a new idea; Cicero had used it as a possible title of honour, with which Pompey or Cæsar, had they been moderate, might have been content. (Cic., ad Fam. vi. 6). Again, though it is not a mere extension of princeps senatus, yet it is clearly connected with it. As the Senatus is the first ordo in the state, the princeps senatus is also princeps civitatis. The two titles were soon confounded. Thus Pliny (N.H. xxxvi. § 116) speaks of M. Æmilius Scaurus as totius princeps civitatis, when he means that he had been several times entered by the Censors on the roll as princeps senatus. But a new connotation became attached to the word from the political powers of the princeps.

[240] Horace, Epode, vii. 7; Odes, i. 21, 15; iii. 5, 2; Propert., iii. 23, 5.

[241] Vergil, Georg. iii. 25; Horace, Odes iii. 4, 33.

[242] Strabo, ii. 5, 8; iv. 6, 4.

[243] Strabo, l. c. In the Monument. (ch. 32) Augustus records the visit of two British princes, Dumnobellaunus and another, of whose name only the letters Tinn remain (perhaps “Tincommius,” a king of what is now Sussex).

[244] The triumph of M. Crassus is dated by the Tab. Triumph. C. I. L. 1, 416; but the defeat of the “Dacian Cotiso” is classed with the Cantabrian war by Horace (Od. 3, 8, 18-24), and Livy, Ep. 135, mentions a second war of M. Crassus “against the Thracians,” as contemporary with the Spanish war.

[245] The Salassi, who had for the last 100 years given much trouble, had twice in recent years been in arms: in B.C. 35 they defeated C. Antistius Vetus, and, in B.C. 34, had, with great difficulty, been partly subdued by Valerius Messalla. Their command of the principal Alpine pass made it important that they should be kept in check.

[246] Hor., Od. 2, 6, 2, Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra.

[247] Odes iii. 8, 21, servit Hispanæ vetus hostis oræ Cantaber sera domitus catena; iii. 14, 3, Cæsar Hispana repetit Penates Victor ab ora.

[248] Perhaps that of which remains exist at Aosta, and cannot now be dated. That at Turbia was built B.C. 6 (Pliny, N. H. 3 § 136). That at Susa in B.C. 8 [C. I. L. v. 7,231]. Horace may refer to it among the Nova Augusti tropæa (Od. 2, 9, 19).

[249] Horace, Odes i. 29, 1; ii. 12, 24; iii. 24, 1; i. 35, 32-40.

[250] Propert., 3, 1, 11.

[251] Middleton (Remains of Ancient Rome, vol. ii. pp. 126-128) seems to have given good reasons against its connection with the Thermæ of Agrippa. Lanciani (Ruins and Excavations, pp. 476-488) asserts that the structure as it now stands is of the age of Hadrian (about A.D. 129), and doubts Agrippa’s original building being of the same shape. Even the portico with its inscription—M. Agrippa l. f. cos. tert. fecit—he thinks was taken to pieces and put up again by Hadrian. The history of the building, however, cannot be regarded as thoroughly ascertained. Agrippa’s third consulship was in B.C. 27, whereas Dio places the completion of the Pantheon under B.C. 25 (53, 27). It may well have been that the external building was finished and dedicated in B.C. 27, and that the inside occupied two more years.