Divine can only be shadowy, an imperfect recollection of its reality.' How could I, who heard and believed what my poet told me, have permitted my own statue to be worshipped? It would have been blasphemous. Besides, it was politically inexpedient. A man-God is exposed to the ridicule of both the wise and irreverent. Article XXV: 'I brought back peace to the sea by suppressing the pirates. In that war I turned over to their masters for punishment nearly 30,000 slaves who had run away from their masters and taken up arms against the State. The whole of Italy voluntarily took an oath of allegiance to me and demanded me as its leader in the war in which I was victorious against Actium. The same oath was taken by the provinces of the Gauls, the Spains, Africa, Sicily and Sardinia. More than 700 senators served at that time under my standards: of that number 83 attained the consulship and about 170 obtained priesthoods either before that date or subsequently, up to the date on which this document was written'.
Not even the most critical historians can impugn the merit of my suppression of piracy. Nothing is more necessary for the well-being of Rome than that merchants should be able to sail the Mediterranean in safety. Some may question my statement that 'the whole of Italy voluntarily took an oath of allegiance to me'; they may point at those senators whom I permitted to join Antony; they may suggest that compulsion was applied to some municipalities and they may find the term of the writs I sent out under my seal peremptory. I admit some pressure was applied; but I stand astonished at my own moderation in that year of crisis. Not only did I excuse the citizens of Bononia from the oath on account of that city's long association with Antony's family, but I punished few of the families who adhered to Antony. Besides the fact is that the response of the great part of Italy and the provinces was indeed spontaneous. After a half-century of civil strife, they longed for peace, and they recognized that I, and I alone, was capable of obtaining it. I also, unlike most Roman nobles, realized that Italy and Rome constituted one polity; that the strength of the Empire must henceforth rest on the full and eager consent of Italy. I was the first politician to be Italian as much as Roman. Even Cicero, though himself an Italian rather than a Roman, never realized this; he identified himself completely with the purely Roman politics of the City-State which we had outgrown. The following eight Articles spell out my conquests, the colonies I planted, the standards lost by some of my predecessors which I recaptured, the kings I subdued, the embassies from distant lands such as India which I received, the kings I gave to the Parthians and the Medes. I have been in my heart a man of peace. I have never claimed military genius, but one of my qualities has been the ability to select generals, the greatest of whom have been Agrippa and my stepson (now my adopted son), Tiberius. The Gods promised Aeneas and his seed limitless Empire. I have added more to the Empire of Rome than all the generals of the Republic put together; Caesar's achievements pale in comparison with mine, but I have never shown the beastly cruelty he displayed in Gaul, cruelty you may remember which shocked even Cato, and led him to urge the Senate that Caesar be handed over to the Gauls as a war criminal. As for my policy, Virgil once asked me to sum up Rome's mission as I saw it. I thought for some time and answered: 'to spare the subject and subdue the proud.' I am proud myself that he incorporated my reply in The Aeneid'.
I shall quote the last two Articles in full: without comment, at this point. Article XXXIV: 'In my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had put an end to the civil wars, having attained supreme power by universal consent, I transferred the state from my own power to the control of the Roman Senate and People. For this service of mine I received the title of Augustus by decree of the Senate and the doorposts of my house were publicly decked with laurels, the civic crown was affixed over my doorway, and a golden shield was set up in the Julian senate house, which, as the inscription on this shield testifies, the Roman Senate and People gave me in recognition of my valour, clemency, justice, and devotion. After that time I excelled all in authority, but I possessed no more power than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy.' Article XXXV: 'When I held my thirteenth consulship, the Senate, the equestrian order, and the entire Roman People gave me the title of 'Father of the Country' and decreed that this title should be inscribed in the vestibule of my house, in the Julian senate house, and in the Augustan forum on the pedestal of the chariot which was set up in my honour by the decree of the Senate.' At the time I wrote this document I was in my seventy-sixth year… No man has been more fortunate than I. I have often thought that. Yet I have never forgotten the proverb: 'Call no man fortunate till he is dead'. And in the years since my day of Triumph on which I ended the first volume of these memoirs, I have known bitter misfortunes, cruel disappointment. I have learned that Fate never smiles with constant benignity on any man. We must pay for our fortune, and often the price is such as to make achievement taste like cold ashes and sour wine. O Varus, give me back my legions!
TWO
My happiest memory of my Triumph remains that of Marcellus, my nephew, who rode on the trace-horse on the right of my chariot. Livia was displeased because her son Tiberius was placed on the left. But there were two reasons for this, both good ones. In the first place, Marcellus was the elder, and connected to me by blood. Secondly, the war of Actium and the conquest of Egypt represented for me revenge for the insults which Antony had paid to Marcellus' mother, my dear sister Octavia. The children of Antony and Cleopatra walked chained in the procession, while Marcellus, whom Antony had despoiled, rode a black steed in my triumph. A man would have to be dull to the fitness of things not to take pleasure in this.
But there was another reason. I became middle-aged the year of my Triumph. True, I was no more than thirty-six, but I had suffered seventeen years of war and perpetual crisis since Julius' murder. War and politics had eaten up the youth I had never had leisure to enjoy. It seemed to me, even as my chariot trundled over the paving stones of the Sacred Way, as the crowds cheered and wondered, and the noon sun beat down, and the tramp of the legions raised clouds of dust in the swimming air, it seemed to me, as if a cloud had crossed the sun, that I had thrown away my youth only for this vain show of power. I experienced an awful moment; a sense of waste, futility, of a life as barren and infertile as the desert, swept over me. That hour of glory which soldiers dream of tasted like stale bread. I caught an intimation of the vast and ponderous vanity of war and politics. And then I turned my head, and saw Marcellus, his eyes dancing, his smile wide, accepting, and altogether happy, as he caught the crowd's huzzas and threw them back again; and I felt refreshed. Tiberius, on my other flank, rode carefully, stern-faced, as indifferent to the mob then at the age of – what? – thirteen, fourteen, I really cannot remember – as he would always be. In time I have come to respect Tiberius' steely indifference to popularity, even his contempt for the mob, I respect and understand it as an expression of his nature, even while I see its danger, and would myself always be incapable of his Claudian superiority; but then, it irritated me that a boy should be so cold, and I delighted all the more in Marcellus' own delight.
And I loved Marcellus. There was nothing shameful in my love, nothing perverse; but it made Livia jealous and it was on account of Marcellus that she remained withdrawn from me. I loved him indeed for his beauty, for his straight limbs (he was an inch taller than I when he was fifteen, but stopped growing that year), for the dancing life in his dark blue eyes, for the curve of his lips, for the way in which his dark-gold hair curled into his nape, for his candid expression. I loved his beauty as it is right to love any beauty given us on earth, but I did so purely, as I would later love the beauty of my grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, whom I adopted as my sons. I relished his conversation too; it was a perpetual fountain of wit and fancy. I loved his speculations which reached beyond his intellect's range. I loved him for his loving lack of respect, for the way he teased me, and called me 'nuncle'. And yes, I saw in him the future of our house. But Livia, jealous of my love for Octavia, as she had always been, was still more jealous of my love for Marcellus. He seemed to her to stand between her sons and the light. She believed the worst, and continued to do so even after I had proved the nature of my love for the boy by giving him in marriage to my daughter Julia.
Throughout my life I have been puzzled by the perversity with which others view love; as if there were only one kind of love. As a matter of fact, sexual love has never been of great importance to me. I can divorce the body from emotions. Naturally, when Livia withdrew herself from me, I took mistresses: slave-girls, professional courtesans, the occasional married woman (but never free-born virgins; that is wrong). They were of little importance save as a means of physical relaxation. None of them touched my heart which was still given first to Livia, and then to other members of my family. Nevertheless these years after Actium were difficult ones in my marriage, as they were in other respects too.
