with the willing collaboration of his fellow citizens, who flinched from staring the truth in the face, he veiled himself in robes garnered from the antique lumber box of the Republic, refusing any magistracy not sanctioned by the past, and often not holding any magistracy at all. Authority, not office, was what counted: that mysterious quality that had given to Catulus or to Cato his prestige. “In all the qualities that make up a man,” Cicero had once acknowledged, “M. Cato was first citizen.”35 “First citizen”—“princeps”: Augustus let it be known that he could wish for no prouder title. The
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