had elapsed. Such was his reputation for courage and clemency that the very Indians and Scythians - nations of whom we then knew by hearsay alone - voluntarily sent envoys to Rome, pleading for his friendship and that of his people. The Parthians also were ready to grant Augustus' claims on Armenia and, when he demanded the surrender of the Eagles captured from Crassus and Antony not only returned them but offered hostages into the bargain; and once, because several rival princes were claiming the Parthian throne, announced that they would elect whichever candidate he chose.

22. The gates of the Temple of Janus Quirinus, which had been closed no more than twice since the foundation of Rome,2 he closed three times during a far shorter period, as a sign that the Empire was at peace on land and at sea. He enjoyed a triumphal ovation after Philippi, and again after his Sicilian successes - and celebrated three full triumphs, on three successive days, for his victories won in Dalmatia, off Actium, and at Alexandria.

23. He suffered only two heavy and disgraceful defeats, both in Germany, the generals concerned being Lollius and Varus.3 Lollius' defeat was ignominious rather than of strategic importance; but Varus' nearly wrecked the Empire, since three legions with their general and all their officers and auxiliary forces, and the general stay, were massacred to a man. When the news reached Rome, Augustus ordered patrols of the city at night to prevent any rising; then prolonged the terms of the provincial governors, so that the allies should have men of experience, whom they trusted, to confirm their allegiance. He also vowed to celebrate Games in honour of Jupiter Greatest and Best as soon as the political situation improved; similar vows had been made during the Cimbrian and Marsian Wars. [indeed, it is said that he took the disaster so deeply to heart that he left his hair and beard untrimmed for months; he would often beat his head on a door, shouting:'Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions ! ' and always kept the anniversary as a day of deep mourning.

24. Augustus introduced many reforms into the Army, besides reviving certain obsolete practices, and exacted the strictest discipline. He grudged even his generals home-leave to visit their wives, and

I- 53, 40, 36 B-C2. In the reign of King Nova and in 235 B.C., after the first Punic War. 3- I5B.c.;A.D.g.

granted this only during the winter. When a Roman knight cut off thumbs of his two young sons to incapacitate them for Army set

Augustus had him and his property publicly auctioned; but, realizing that a group of tax-collectors were bidding for the man, knocked him down to an imperial freedman - with instructions that he should be sent away and allowed a free existence in some country place. He@, gave the entire Tenth Legion an ignominious discharge because off their insolent behaviour, and when some other legions also demanded their discharge in a similarly riotous manner, he disbanded them, with_ holding the bounty which they would have earned had they continued loyal. If a cohort broke in battle, Augustus ordered the survivors to draw lots, then executed every tenth man, and fed the remainder on barley bread instead of the customary wheat ration. Centurions found absent from their posts were sentenced to death, like other ranks, and any lesser dereliction of duty earned them one of several degrading punishments - such as being nude to stand all day long in front of general headquarters, sometimes wearing tunics without sword-belts, sometimes carrying ten-foot poles, or even sods of turf£

25- When the Civil Wars were over, Augustus no longer addressed the troops as ' Comrades ', but as ' Soldiers '; and had his sons and step sons follow suit. He thought ' Comrades' too flattering a term:consonant neither with military discipline, nor with peacetime service, nor with the respect due to himself and his family. Apart from the city fire-brigades, and militia companies raised to keep order during food shortages, he enlisted freedmen in the Army only on two occasions. The first was when the veteran colonies on the borders of Illyricum needed protection; the second, when the Roman bank of the Rhine had to be held in force. These soldiers were recruited, as slaves, from the households of well-to-do men and women, and then immediately freed; but he kept them segregated in their original units, not allowing them either to associate with soldiers of free birth or to carry arms of standard pattern.

Most of the decorations with which Augustus rewarded distinguished conduct in the field were valuable silver and gold plaques or collars, rather than the superior distinction of mural crowns.I These

I. So called because traditionally earned by the first man who scaled an enemy wall.
crowns he awarded as rarely as possible and with due regard to merit; private soldiers sometimes won them. Marcus Agrippa earned the right to fly a blue ensign in recognition of his naval victory of Sicily. The only fighting men whom Augustus held ineligible for decorations were generals who had already celebrated triumphs, even though they might have fought beside him and shared in his victories; he explained that they themselves had the right to confer such awards at their discretion. The two faults which he condemned most strongly in a military commander were haste and recklessness, and he constantly quoted such Greek proverbs as 'More haste, less speed,' and 'Give me a safe commander, not a rash one,' and the Latin tag:'Well done is quickly done.' It was a principle of his that no campaign or battle should ever be fought unless the hope of victory was clearly greater than the fear of defeat; and he would compare those who took great risks in the hope of gaining some small advantage to a man who fishes with a golden hook, though aware that nothing he can catch will be valuable enough to justify its loss.

26. Among the public appointments and honours conferred on Augustus before he was officially old enough to receive them were some extraordinary ones and some granted him for life. At the age of nineteen' he created himself Consul, marched on Rome as though it were an enemy city, and sent messengers ahead in the name of his army to demand that the appointment should be confirmed. When the Senate hesitated to obey, one Cornelius, a centurion leading his deputation, opened his military cloak, displayed the hilt of his sword, and boldly said:' If you do not make him Consul, this will ! ' Nine years later Augustus undertook his second consulship,2 and his third after an interval of a year. Having held the next nine in sequence, he declined any more for as many as seventeen years; then demanded a twelfth term,3 and two years later a thirteenth - but only because he wanted to be holding the highest office when his adopted sons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, successively came of age. He held his sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth consulships for a full year each, and the remainder for nine months, or six, or four, or three - except for the second; that was the occasion of his seating himself on the curule chair in front of the Temple of CapitolineJupiter early on New Year's Day, and resigning his office to a substitute a few hours later. He was

I-43B-C 2-33B-C 3-5B.C
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absent from Rome at the beginning of his fourth consulship, whim found him in As a; of his fifth, which found him in Samos; and of h:eighth and ninth, when he was visiting Tarraco. /;

27. For ten years Augustus remained a member of the Triumvirate commissioned to reorganize the Government, and though at first opposing his colleagues' plan for a proscription, yet, once this had been decided upon, carried it out more ruthlessly than either of then. They often relented under the pressure of personal influence, or when the intended victims appealed for pity; Augustus alone demanded that no one was to be spared, and even added to the list of proscribed persons the name of his guardian Gaius Toranius, who had been an aedile at the same time as his father Octavius. Julius Saturninus has more to say on this subject:when the proscription was over and Marcus Lepidus, in an address to the House, justified the severe measures that had been taken but encouraged the hope that greater leniency would now be shown, since enough blood had been shed, Augustus spoke in a quite opposite sense. ' I consented to close the list,' he said, 'on condi tion that I should be allowed a free hand in future.' Later, however, he emphasized his regret for this rigorous attitude by creating Titus Vinius Philopoemen a knight - Phil op oemen had, it appears, secretly harboured his patron who was on the list of the proscribed.

Under the Triumvirate, many of Augustus' acts won him the hatred of the people. Once, for instance, while addressing a soldiers' assembly at which a crowd of civilians were also present, he saw a Roman knight named Pinarius transcribing his speech; and had him stabbed there and then as taking too close an interest in the proceedings. Again, a spiteful comment by Tedius Afer, Consul-elect, on some act of Augustus', provoked him to such frightful threats that Afer committed suicide by jumping from a height. There was also the case of Quintus Gallius the praetor who, while paying Augustus his respects, clutched a set of writing-tablets underneath his robe. Augustus suspected that he had a sword, but dared not have him searched on the spot, for fear of being mistaken; so presently ordered an officer's party to drag him away from the tribunal. Gallius was tortured as if he were a slave; and though he confessed to nothing, Augustus himself tore out his eyes and sentenced him to death. In his own account of the incident, however, Augustus records that Gallius
asked for an audience, attacked him unexpectedly, and was removed to prison; that, being then banished from Italy, he disappeared on the way to his place of exile, but whether he was shipwrecked or ambushed by bandits, nobody knew.

The commons awarded Augustus lifelong tribunician power, and on two occasions he chose a colleague to share it with him for a five year period. The Senate also voted him the task of supervising public morals and scrutinizing the laws - another lifelong appointment. Thus, although he did-not adopt the title of Censor, he was privileged to hold a public census, and did so three times, assisted by a colleague on the first and third occasions, though not the second.

28. Twice Augustus seriously thought of restoring the Republican system:immediately after the fall of Antony, when he remembered that Antony had often accused him of being the one obstacle to such a change; and again when he could not shake off an exhausting illness. He then actually summoned the chief Officers of State, with the rest of the Senate, to his house and gave them a faithful account of the military and financial state of the Empire. On reconsideration, however, he decided that to divide the responsibilities of government among several hands would be to jeopardize not only his own life, but national secur ity; so he did not do so. Tile results were almost as good as his intentions, which he expressed from time to time and even published in an edict:'May I be privileged to build firm and lasting foundations for the Government of the State. May t also achieve the reward to which I aspire:that of being known as the author of the best possible Constitution, and of carrying with me, when I die, the hope that these foundations which I have established for the State will abide secure.' And, indeed, he achieved this success, having taken great trouble to prevent his political system from causing any individual distress.

Aware that the city was architecturally unworthy of her position as capital of the Roman Empire, besides being vulnerable to fire and river floods, Augustus so improved her appearance that he could justifiably boast:'I found Rome built of bricks; I leave her clothed in marble.' He also used as much foresight as could have possibly been provided in guarding against future disasters.

29. Among his very numerous public works three must be singled out for mention :his Forum with the Temple of Avenging Mars; the
Palatine Temple of Apollo; and the Temple of Jupiter the Thunderer J on the Capitoline Hill. He built his Forum because the two already~ in existence could not deal with the recent great increase in thy number of law-suits caused by a corresponding increase in population, 0:'4' which was why he hurriedly opened it even before the Temple of

Mars had been completed. Public prosecutions and the casting of lots 0 for jury service took place only in this Forum. Augustus had vowed to build the Temple of Mars during the Philippi campaign of vengeance against Julius Caesar's assassins. He therefore decreed that the Senate should meet here whenever declarations of war or claims for triumphs were considered; and that this should be both the starting point for military governors, when escorted to their provinces, and the repository of all triumphal tokens when they returned victorious. The Temple of Apollo was erected in the part of his Palace to which, the soothsayers said, the God had drawn attention by having it struck with lightning. The colonnades running out from it housed Latin and Greek libraries; and in his declining years Augustus frequently held meetings of the Senate in the buildings, or revised jury lists there. A lucky escape on a night march in Cantabria prompted him to build the Temple of Jupiter the Thunderer:a flash of lightning had scorched his litter and killed the slave who was going ahead with a torch.

Some of Augustus' public works were undertaken in the names of relatives:such as the colonnade and basilica of his grandsons Gaius and Lucius; the colonnades of his wife Livia and his sister Octavia; the theatre of his nephew Marcellus. He also often urged leading citizens to embellish the city with new public monuments or to restore and improve ancient ones, according to their means. Many responded:thus the Temple of Hercules and the Muses was raised by Marcius Philippus; that of Diana by Lucius Cornificius; the Hall of Liberty by Asinius Pollio; the Temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus; a theatre by Cornelius Balbus; an amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus; and a variety of magnificent buildings by Marcus Agrippa.

30. Augustus divided the city into districts and wards; placing the districts under the control of magistrates annually chosen by lot, and the wards under supervisors locally elected. He organized stations of nlght-watchmen to guard against fires; and, as a precaution against floods, cleared the Tiber channel which had been choked with an accumulation of rubbish and narrowed by projecting houses. Also,
he improved the approaches to the city:repaving the Flaminian Way as far as Ariminum, at his own expense, and calling upon men who had won triumphs to spend their prize money on putting the other main roads into good condition.

Furthermore, he restored ruined or burned temples, beautifying these and others with the most lavish gifts:for instance, a single donation to Capitoline Jupiter of I6,000 lb of gold, besides pearls and precious stones to the value of 500,000 gold pieces.

3 I. Finally, on assuming the office of Chief Priest vacated by the death of Marcus Lepidus - he could not bring himself to divest his former colleague of it, even though he were an exile - Augustus collected all the copies of Greek and Latin prophetic verse then current, the work of either anonymous or unrespected authors, and burned more than two thousand. He kept only the Sibylline Books, and edited even these before depositing them in two gilded cases under the pedestal of Palatine Apollo's image. Since official negligence had allowed the Calendar, reformed by Julius Caesar, to fall into confusion, he put it straight again; and while doing so renamed the month of Sextilis 'August' (although he had been born in September), because it was during Sextilis that he had won his first consulship and his most decisive victories. He increased the priesthood in numbers and dignity, and in privileges, too, being particularly generous to the College of Vestal Virgins. Moreover, when the death of a Virgin caused a vacancy in this College, and many citizens busily tried to keep their daughters' names off the list of candidates - one of whom would be chosen by lot - Augustus took a solemn oath that if any of his granddaughters had been of eligible age he would have proposed her.

He also revived certain obsolescent rites and appointments:the augury of the Goddess Safety, the office of Flamen Dialis, the Lupercalian Festival, the Saecular Games, and the Cross-Roads Festival. But at the Lupercalia he forbade any boys to run who had not yet shaved off their first beards; and at the Saecular Games no young people might attend a night performance unless accompanied by an adult relative. The images of the Cross-Road gods were to be crowned twice a year, with wreaths of spring and summer flowers.

Next to the Immortals, Augustus most honoured the memory of those citizens who had raised the Roman people from small begin
nings to their present glory; which was why he restored many public buildings erected by men of this calibre, complete with their original dedicatory inscriptions, and raised statues to them, wearing triumph dress, in the twin colonnades of his Forum. Then he proclaimed:'Tip has been done to make my fellow-citizens insist that both I (while I live), and my successors, shall not fall below the standard set by those great men of old.' He also transferred Pompey's statue from the hall in which Julius Caesar had been assassinated to a marble arch facing the main entrance of the Theatre.

32. Many of the anti-social practices that endangered public order were a legacy of lawlessness from the Civil Wars; but some had originated in times of peace. For example, bandit parties infested the roads armed with swords, supposedly worn in self-defence, which they used to overawe travellers - whether free-born or not - and force them into slave-barracks built by the landowners.2 Numerous so called 'workmen's guilds', in reality organizations for committing every sort of crime, had also been formed. Augustus now stationed armed police in bandit-ridden districts, had the slave-barracks inspected, and dissolved all workmen's guilds except those that had been established for some time and were carrying on legitimate business. Since the records of old debts to the Public Treasury had become by far the most profitable means of blackmail, Augustus burned them; also granting title-deeds to the occupants of city sites wherever the State's claim to ownership was disputable. When persons had long been awaiting trial on charges that were not pressed, and therefore continued to wear mourning in public - with advantage to nobody, except their gleeful enemies - Augustus struck the cases off the lists and forbade any such charge to be renewed unless the plaintiff agreed to suffer the same penalty, if he lost the case, as the defendant would have done. To prevent actions for damages, or business claims, from either not being heard or being postponed, he increased the legal term by another thirty days - a period hitherto devoted to public games in honour of distinguished citizens. He added a fourth inferior division of jurors to the three already existing; these so-called 'Ducenarii'3 judged cases which involved only small monetary claims. The minimum age for enrolment in a jury was

I. See Julius Caesar 8I. 2. See Tiberius 8.

3. Men whose property amounted to 200,000 sestertii (2,000 gold pieces).
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reduced from thirty-five to thirty years; but, observing a general movement to evade jury service, he grudgingly granted each of the four divisions in turn one year's exemption, and closed all courts throughout the months of November and December.

33. Augustus proved assiduous in his administration of justice, often remaining in court until nightfall; and, if he happened to be unwell, would have his litter carried up to the tribunal. Sometimes he even judged eases from his sick-bed in his house. As a judge he was both conscientious and lenient:once, to save a man who-had obviously committed parricide from being sewn up in a sack - he is said to have asked the accused:'I may assume, of course, that you did not kill your father?'

On another occasion the witnesses to a forged will were punishable under the Comelian Law but, besides the usual two tablets for recording their verdict of'guilty' or 'not guilty', Augustus handed the jurors a third, for acquitting any of the accused whose signature had, in their opinion, either been obtained by false pretences or attached in error. Every year he referred to the city Praetor cases in which Roman citizens had exercised their right of appeal; foreigners' appeals would be handled by particular ex-Consuls whom he had appointed to look after the affairs of the province concerned.

34. The existing laws that Augustus revised, and the new ones that he enacted, dealt, among other matters, with extravagance, adultery, unchastity, bribery, and the encouragement of marriage ill the Senatorial and Equestrian Orders. His marriage law being more rigor ously framed than the others, he found himself unalike to make it effective because of an open revolt against several of its clauses. He was therefore obliged to withdraw or amend certain penalties exacted for a failure to marry; to increase the rewards he offered for large families; and to allow a widow, or widower, three years' grace before having to marry again. Even this did not satisfy the knights, who demonstrated against the law at a public entertainment, de:manding its repeal; whereupon Augustus sent for the children whom his grand-daughter Agrippina had borne to Germanicus, and publicly displayed them, some sitting on his own knee, the rest on their father's - and made it quite clear by his affectionate looks and gestures

I. Parricides were sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake, and a monkey, and cast into a river or the sea
that It would not be at all a bad thing if the knights imitated the young man's example. When he then discovered that bachelors were getting betrothed to little girls, which meant postponing the responsibilities of fatherhood, and that married men were frequently changing their wives, he dealt with these evasions of the law by shortening the permissible period between betrothal and marriage, and by limiting the number of lawful divorces.

3 5. The Senatorial Order now numbered more than I,000 persons, some of whom were popularly known as the 'Orcus Men',l having secured admission after Caesar's death through influence or bribery. Tile sight of this sad and ill-assorted rabble decided Augustus to restore the Order to its former size and repute by two new acts of enrolment. First, each member was allowed to nominate one other; then Augustus and Agrippa together reviewed the list and announced their own choice. When Augustus presided on this second occasion he is said to have worn a sword and a steel corselet beneath his tunic, with ten burly senatorial friends crowding around him. According to Cremutius Cordus, the senators were not even then permitted to approach Augustus' chair, except singly and after the folds of their robes had been carefully searched. Though shaming some of them into resignation, he did not deny them the right to wear senatorial dress, or to watch the Games from the orchestra seats, or to attend the Order's public banquets. He then encouraged those selected for service to a more conscientious (and less inconvenient) discharge of their duties,by ruling that each members should offer incense and wine at the altar of whatever temple had been selected for a meeting; that such meetings should not be held more than twice a month - at the beginning and in the middle - and that, during September and October, no member need attend apart from the few whose names were drawn by lot to provide a quorum for the passing of decrees. He also arranged that a Council of the Senate should be created and its members chosen by lot every six months, their duty being to study the drafts of bills which would later be laid before the House as a whole. During debates of critical importance Augustus shelved the custom of calling on members in order of seniority, and instead singled out speakers arbitrarily; this was intended to make all present take an alert interest in proceedings and feel responsible for conI- After Orcus (Pluto), the god of the underworld.
structive thought, instead of merely rising to remark:'I agree with the last speakers.'

36. Among Augustus' other innovations were:a ban on the publication of Proceedings of the Senate;I a statutory interval between the conclusion of city magistracies and their holders' departure to appointments abroad; a fixed mule-and-tent allowance to provincial governors, replacing the system by which they contracted for these necessities and charged them to the Public Treasury; the transference of the Treasury from the control of city quaestors to that of expraetors or Tractors; and the ruling that the Board of Ten, instead of the ex-quaestors, should convoke the so-called Centumviral Court.

37. To give more men some experience of governmental duties he created new offices dealing with the upkeep of public buildings, roads and aqueducts; the clearing of the Tiber channel; and the distribution of grain to the people - also a prefecture of the city, a Board of Three for choosing new senators, and another for inspecting the troops of knights, whenever this was needed. He also revived the long obsolete Customs of appointing Censors; increased the number of praetors; and requested not one colleague blat two whenever he held a consulship. The Senate, however, refused this last pica:everyone shouting that it was suf;ficient detraction from his supreme dignity to acknowledge even a single colleague.

38. Augustus showed equal generosity in recognizing military talent, by letting full triumphs be voted to more than thirty of his generals, and triumphal regalia to an even larger number.

Senator's' sons were slow encouraged to familiarize themselves with the administration; they might wear purple-striped gowns immediately upon coming of age and attend meetings of the house. When their military careers began, they were not merely given colonelcies in regular legions, but the command of cavalry squadrons; and Augustus usually appointed two to the command of each squadron, thus ensuring that none of them lacked experience in this arm of the

service.

He frequently inspected the troops of knights, and revived the long forgotten custom of making them ride in procession; yet he withdrew from accusers their right of challenging knights to dismount while the parade was in progress; and those who were so old or infirm that they I- See Julius Caesar 20.
would look ridiculous, if they took part, might now send their riders less mounts to the starting point and report to Augustus on foot Later, all knights over thirty-five years of age who did not wish to retain their chargers, were excused the embarrassment of publicly surrendering them.

39. With the assistance of ten senators, Augustus cross-examined every knight on his personal affairs. Some, whose lives proved to have been scandalous, were punished; others were degraded; but in most cases he was content to reprimand culprits with greater or less severity. Idle luckiest were those whom he obliged merely to take the tablets handed them, and read his censure in silence where they stood. Knights who had borrowed money at a low rate of interest, in order to invest it at a higher, earned Augustus' particular displeasure.

40. If insufficient candidates of the required senatorial rank presented themselves for election as tribunes of the people, Augustus nominated knights to fill the vacancies; but allowed them, when their term of office had expired, either to remain members of the Equestrian Order or to become senators, whichever they preferred. Since many knights had lost so much money during the Civil Wars that for fear of penalization under the law regarding theatres they refrained from taking their seats in the fourteen rows reserved for the Order, he announced that they were not liable to punishment under this law - which did not apply to anyone who had once been a knight, or who was a knight's son.

Augustus revised the roll of citizens, ward by ward; and tried to obviate the frequent interruptions of their trades or businesses which the public grain-distribution entailed, by handing out tickets, three times a year, valid for a four months' supply; but was implored to resume the former custom of monthly distributions, and consented. He also revived the traditional election privileges and attempted to suppress bribery by the imposition of various penalties; besides distributing on Election Day a bounty of ten gold pieces from the Privy Purse to every member both of the Fabian tribe - the Octavian family were Fabians - and of the Scaptian tribe, which included the Julians. His object was to protect the candidates against demands for further emoluments.

Augustus thought it most important not to let the native Roman stock be tainted with foreign or servile blood, and was therefore very
unwilling to create new Roman citizens, or to permit the manumission of more than a limited number of slaves. Once, when Tiberius requested that a Greek dependant of his should be granted the citizenship, Augustus wrote back that he could not assent unless the man put in a personal appearance and convinced him that he was worthy of the honour. When Livia made the same request for a Gaul from a tributary province, Augustus turned it down, saying that he would do no more than exempt the fellow from tribute - 'I would far rather forfeit whatever he may owe the Privy Purse than cheapen the value of the Roman citizenship.' Not only did he make it extremely difficult for slaves to be freed, and still more difficult for them to attain full independence, by strictly regulating the number, condition, and status of freedmen; but he ruled that no slave who had ever been in irons or subjected to torture could become a citizen, even after the most honourable form of manumission.

Augustus set himself to revive the ancient Roman dress and once, on seeing a group of men in dark cloaks among the crowd, quoted Virgil indignantly:

'Behold them, conquerors of the world, all clad in Roman gowns!'

and instructed the aediles that no one should ever again be admitted to the Forum, or its environs, unless he wore a gown and no cloak.

4I. His generosity to all classes was displayed on many occasions. For instance, when he brought the treasures of the Ptolemies to Rome at his Alexandria]l triumph, so enough cash passed into private hands that the interest rate on loans dropped sharply, while real estate values soared. Later, he made it a rule that whenever estates were confiscated and the funds realized by their sale exceeded his requirements, he would grant interest-free loans for fixed periods to anyone who could offer security for twice the amount. The property qualification for senators was now increased from 8,000 to I2,000 gold pieces, and if any member of the Order found that the value of his estate fell short of this, Augustus would make up the deficit from the Privy Purse. His awards of largesse to the people were frequent, but differed in size:sometimes it was four gold pieces a head, sometimes three, sometimes two and a half; and even little boys benefited, though hitherto eleven years had been the minimum age for a recipient. In times of food shortage he often sold grain to every man on
~ S

the citizens' list at a very cheap rate; occasionally he supplied it S t and doubled the number of free money-coupons. ;

42. However, to show that he did all this not to win popularity buttes to improve public welfare, he once sharply reminded the people, when they complained of the scarcity and high price of wine, that:'Marcus Agrippa, my son-in-law, has made adequate provision for thirsty citizens by building several aqueducts.' Again, he replied to a demand for largesse which he had, in fact, promised:'I always keep my word.' But when they demanded largesse for which no such promise had been given, he issued a proclamation in which he called them a pack of shameless rascals, and added that though he had intended to make them a money present, he would now tighten his purse-strings. Augustus showed equal dignity and strength of character on another occasion when, after announcing a distribution of largesse, he found that the list of citizens had been swelled by a considerable number of recently freed slaves. He gave out that those to whom he had promised nothing were entitled to nothing, and that he refused to increase the total sum; thus the original beneficiaries must be content with less. In one period of exceptional scarcity he found it impossible to cope with the public distress except by c~;pelling every useless mouth from the city, such as the slaves in the slave-market, all members of gladiatorial schools, all foreign residents with the exception of physicians and teachers, and a number of household-slaves. He writes that when at last the grain supply improved:'I had a good mind to discontinue permanently the supply of grain to the city, reliance on which had discouraged Italian agriculture; but refrained because some politician would be bound one day to revive the dole as a means of ingratiating himself with the people.' Nevertheless, in his handling of the food problem he now began to consider the interest of farmers and grain merchants as much as the needs of city dwellers.

43. None of Augustus' predecessors had ever provided so many, so different, or such splendid public shows. He records the presentation of four Games in his own name and twenty-three in the names of other city magistrates who were either absent or could not afford the expense. Sometimes plays were shown in all the various city districts, and on several stages, the actors speaking the appropriate local language; and gladiators fought not only in the Forum or the Amphi
theatre, but in the Circus and Enclosure as well; or the show might, on the contrary, be limited to a wild-beast hunt. He also held athletic competitions in the Campus Martius, for which he put up tiers of wooden seats; and dug an artificial lake beside the Tiber, where the present Caesarian Grove stands, for a mock sea-battle. On these occasions he posted guards in different parts of the city to prevent ruffians from turning the emptiness of the streets to their own advantage. Chariot-races and foot-races took place in the Circus, and among those who hunted the wild beasts were several volunteers of distinguished family. Augustus also ordered frequent performances of the Troy Games by two troops, of older and younger boys; it was an admirable tradition, he held, that the scions of noble houses should make their public debut in this way. When Nonius Asprenas fell from his horse at one performance and was crippled, Augustus comforted him with a golden torque and the hereditary surname of 'Torquatus'. Soon afterwards, however, he discontinued the Troy Game, because Asinius Pollio the orator attacked it bitterly in the House; his grandson, Aeseminus, having broken a leg too.

Even Roman knights sometimes took part in stage-plays and gladi atorial shows until a Senatorial decree put an end to the practice. After this, no person of good family appeared in any show, with the exception of a young man named Lycius; he was a dwarf, less than two feet tall and weighing only I7 lb but had a tremendous voice. At one of the Games Augustus allowed the people a sight of the first group of Parthian hostages ever sent to Rome by leading them dowel

the middle of the arena and seating them two rows behind himself£ And whenever anything strange or remarkable was brought to the city, he tried to exhibit it in some convenient place on days when no public shows were being given:for instance, a rhinoceros in the Enclosure; a tiger on the stage of the Theatre; and a serpent nearly ninety feet long in front of the Comitium.

Once Augustus happened to be ill on the day that he had vowed to hold Games in the Circus, and was obliged to lead the sacred procession lying in a litter; and when he opened the Games celebrating the dedication of Marcellus' Theatre, and sat down in his chair of state, it gave way and sent him sprawling on his back. A panic started in the Theatre during a public performance in honour of Gaius and Lucius; I. See Julius Caesar 39.