Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire

Augustus has been much less attractive to biographers than Iulius; perhaps because the soldier is more interesting than the statesman; perhaps because the note of genius conspicuous in the Uncle was wanting in the Nephew. Yet Augustus was the most successful ruler known to us. He found his world, as it seemed, on the verge of complete collapse. He evoked order out of chaos; got rid one after the other of every element of opposition; established what was practically a new form of government without too violent a breach with the past; breathed fresh meaning into old names and institutions, and could stand forth as a reformer rather than an innovator, while even those who lost most by the change were soothed into submission without glaring loss of self-respect. He worked ceaselessly to maintain the order thus established, and nearly every part of his great empire had reason to be grateful for increased security, expanding prosperity, and added amenity of life. Nor can it be said that he reaped the credit due in truth to ministers. He had excellent ministers and agents, with abilities in this or that direction superior to his own; but none who could take his place as a whole. He was the centre from which their activities radiated: he was the inspirer, the careful organiser, the unwearied manipulator of details, to whom all looked, and seldom in vain, for support and guidance. We may add this to a dignity never forgotten, enhanced by a physical beauty and grace which helped to secure reverence for his person and office, and established a sentiment which the unworthiness of some of his successors could not wholly destroy. He and not Iulius was the founder of the Empire, and it was to him that succeeding emperors looked back as the origin of their power.

Yet his achievements have interested men less than the conquest of Gaul and the victories in the civil war won by the marvellous rapidity and splendid boldness of Iulius. Consequently modern estimates of the character and aims of Augustus have been comparatively few. An exhaustive treatise is now appearing in Germany by V. Gardthausen, which will be a most complete storehouse of facts. Without any pretence to such elaboration of detail, I have tried in these pages to do something to correct the balance, and to give a picture of the man as I have formed it in my own mind. The only modest merit which I would claim for my book is that it is founded on a study as complete as I could make it of the ancient authorities and sources of information without conscious imitation of any modern writer. These authorities are better for the earlier period to about B.C. 24, while they had the Emperor’s own Memoirs on which to rely. The multiform activities of his later life are chiefly to be gathered from inscriptions and monuments, which record the care which neglected no part however remote of the Empire. In these later years such histories as we have are more concerned with wars and military movements than with administration. Suetonius is full of good things, but is without chronological or systematic order, and is wanting in the critical spirit to discriminate between irresponsible rumours and historical facts. Dio Cassius, plain and honest always, grows less and less full as the reign goes on. Velleius, who might at least have given us full details of the later German wars, is seldom definite or precise, and is tiresome from devotion to a single hero in Tiberius, and by an irritating style.