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he deposited them in two gilt coffers, under the pedestal of the statue of the Palatine Apollo.
and upon that occasion, called the month Sextilis 163, by his own name, August, rather than September, in which he was born;
and many persons made interest that their daughters' names might be omitted in the lists for election, he replied with an oath, "If either of my own grand-daughters were old enough, I would have proposed her."
he was with much difficulty prevailed upon to allow each class of judges a twelve-month's vacation in turn; and the courts to be shut during the months of November and December. 169
He was himself assiduous in his functions as a judge, and would sometimes prolong his sittings even into the night
Sometimes he engaged Roman knights to act upon the stage, or to fight as gladiators; but only before the practice was prohibited by a decree of the senate.
excluded, however, the whole female sex from seeing the wrestlers:
He prohibited combats of gladiators where no quarter was given.
He went so far in restraining the licentiousness of stage-players, that upon discovering that Stephanio, a performer of the highest class, had a married woman with her hair cropped, and dressed in boy's clothes, to wait upon him at table, he ordered him to be whipped through all the three theatres, and then banished him.
There is not, I believe, a province, except Africa and Sardinia, which he did not visit.
Although he knew that it had been customary to decree temples in honour of the proconsuls, yet he would not permit them to be erected in any of the provinces, unless in the joint names of himself and Rome.
He melted down all the silver statues which had been erected to him,
And when the people importuned him to accept the dictatorship, he bent down on one knee, with his toga thrown over his shoulders, and his breast...
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He always abhorred the title of Lord 191, as ill-omen...
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Nor was any one ever molested for his freedom of speech, although it was carried to the extent of insolence.
How much he was beloved for his worthy conduct in all these respects, it is easy to imagine.
When his house on the Palatine hill was accidentally destroyed by fire, the veteran soldiers, the judges, the tribes, and even the people, individually, contributed, according to the ability of each, for rebuilding it; but he would (115) accept only of some small portion out of the several sums collected,
The kings, his friends and allies, built cities in their respective kingdoms, to which they gave the name of Caesarea;
at last resolved upon selecting Tiberius for his step-son; and he obliged him to part with his wife at that time pregnant, and who had already
The two Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, abandoned themselves to such courses of lewdness and debauchery, that he banished them both.
he was so much ashamed of her infamous conduct, that for some time he avoided all company, and had thoughts of putting her to death.
He put to death Proculus, one of his most favourite freedmen, for maintaining a criminal commerce with other men's wives.
In his early youth various aspersions of an infamous character were heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an effeminate fellow; and M. Antony, with earning his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. Lucius Antony, likewise Mark's brother, charges him with pollution by Caesar; and that, for a gratification of three hundred thousand sesterces, he had submitted to Aulus Hirtius in the same way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs with burnt nut-shells, to make the hair become softer 207. Nay, the whole concourse of the people, at some public diversions in the
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Mark Antony, besides the precipitate marriage of Livia, charges him with taking the wife of a man of consular rank from table, in the presence of her husband, into a bed-chamber, and bringing her again to the entertainment, with her ears very red, and her hair in great disorder: that he had divorced Scribonia,
But his amorous propensities never left him, and, as he grew older, as is reported, he was in the habit of debauching young girls, who were procured for him, from all quarters, even by his own wife.
such as, at Capri, the huge limbs of sea-monsters and wild beasts, which some affect to call the bones of giants; and also the arms of ancient heroes.
He never liked to lie awake in the dark, without somebody to sit by him.
If at any time a fit of drowsiness seized him in passing along the streets, his litter was set down while he snatched a few moments' sleep.
his stature but low; though Julius Marathus, his freedman, says he was five feet and nine inches in height.
He had occasionally a complaint in the bladder; but upon voiding some stones in his urine, he was relieved from that pain.
and took to playing at ball, or foot-ball;
For amusement he would sometimes angle, or play with dice, pebbles, or nuts, with little boys, collected from various countries, and particularly Moors and Syrians, for their beauty or amusing talk.
But dwarfs, and such as were in any way deformed, he held in abhorrence, as lusus naturae (nature's abortions), and of evil omen.
great a dread of thunder and lightning that he always carried about him a seal's skin, by way of preservation.
In consequence of a dream, too, he always, on a certain day of the year, begged alms of the people, reaching out his hand to receive the dole which they offered him.
commended his grandson Caius (138) for not paying his devotions at Jerusalem in his passage through Judaea.
Augustus, it was added, was born in the tenth month after, and for that reason was thought to be the son of Apollo.
"Do ye think that I have acted my part on the stage of life well?"
dying a very easy death, and such as he himself had always wished for.
he was all on a sudden much frightened, and complained that he was carried away by forty men.
being seventy-six years of age, wanting only thirty-five days 258.
He left orders that the two Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, if anything happened to them, should not be buried in his tomb
By the long duration of the late civil war, with its concomitant train of public calamities, the minds of men were become less averse to the prospect of an absolute government;
He affected to decline public honours, disclaimed every idea of personal superiority, and in all his behaviour displayed a degree of moderation which prognosticated the most happy effects, in restoring peace and prosperity to the harassed empire.
By this change of conduct, he turned his arms against the supporters of a form of government which he had virtually recognized as the legal constitution of Rome;
through a period of upwards of four hundred and sixty years, the Roman state, with the exception only of a short interval, had flourished and increased with a degree of prosperity unexampled in the annals of humankind: that the republican form of government was not only best adapted to the improvement of national grandeur, but to the security of general freedom, the great object of all political association: that public virtue, by which alone nations could subsist in vigour, was cherished and protected by no mode of administration so much as by that which connected, in the strongest bonds of
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that nothing could preserve the commonwealth from becoming a prey to some daring confederacy, but the firm and vigorous administration of one person, invested with the whole executive power of the state, unlimited and uncontrolled:
On the East it stretched to the Euphrates; on the South to the cataracts of the Nile, the deserts of Africa, and Mount Atlas; on the West to the Atlantic Ocean; and on the North to the Danube and the Rhine;
in conformity to the advice of Augustus, made few additions to the empire. Trajan, however, subdued Mesopotamia and Armenia, east of the Euphrates, with Dacia, north of the Danube; and after this period the Roman dominion was extended over Britain,
the amount of taxes, customs, and every kind of financial resources, Augustus exceeded all sovereigns who had hitherto ever swayed the sceptre of imperial dominion;
