The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  85. Augustus wrote numerous prose works on a variety of subjects, some of which he read aloud to a group of his closer friends as though in a lecture-hall: the Reply to Brutus’s Eulogy of Cato, for instance. In this case, however, he tired just before the end—being then already an old man—and handed the last roll to Tiberius, who finished it for him. Among his other works were An Encouragement to the Study of Philosophy and thirteen books of My Autobiography, which took the story only up to the time of the Cantabrian War. He made occasional attempts at verse composition; including Sicily, a short poem in hexameters, and an equally short collection of Epigrams, most of them composed at the Baths. Both these books survive; but growing dissatisfied with the style of his tragedy, Ajax, which he had begun in great excitement, he destroyed it. When friends asked: ‘Well, what has Ajax been doing lately?’ he answered: ‘Ajax has not fallen on his sword, but wiped himself out on my sponge.’

  86. He cultivated a simple and easy oratorical style, avoiding purple passages, artfully contrived prose-rhythms, and ‘the stink of far-fetched phrases’, as he called it; his main object being to say what he meant as plainly as possible. An anxiety not to let his audience or his readers lose their way in his sentences explains why he put such prepositions as to or in before the names of cities, where common usage omits them, and why he often repeated the same conjunction several times where a single appearance would have been less awkward, if more confusing. He expressed contempt for both innovators and archaizers, as equally mischievous, and would attack them with great violence: especially his dear friend Maecenas, whose ‘myrrh-distilling ringlets’ he parodied mercilessly. Even Tiberius, who had a habit of introducing obsolete and difficult phrases into his speeches, did not escape Augustus’s ridicule, and Antony was for him a madman who wrote ‘as though he wanted to be wondered at rather than understood’. He made fun of Antony’s bad taste and inconsistent literary style: ‘Your use of antique diction borrowed by Sallust from Cato’s Origins suggests that you are in two minds about imitating Annius Cimber or Veranius Flaccus. But at other times it looks as though you were trying to acclimatize in Latin the nonsensicalities of those garrulous Asiatic orators.’ And to a letter praising the intelligence of his grand-daughter Agrippina, he adds: ‘But please take great care to avoid affectation in writing or talking.’

  87. Augustus’s everyday language must have contained many whimsical expressions of his own coinage, to judge from autograph letters. Thus, he often wrote ‘they will pay on the Greek Kalends’; which meant ‘never’—because the reckoning by Kalends is a purely Roman convention. Another of his favourite remarks was: ‘Let us be satisfied with this Cato!’—meaning that one should make the most of contemporary circumstances, however poorly they might compare with the past. He also had a favourite metaphor for swift and sudden actions: ‘Quicker than boiled asparagus.’ Here is a list of unusual synonyms which constantly appear in Augustus’s letters:

  baceolus (self-made eunuch) for: stultus (fool)

  pulleiacus (wooden-headed) for: cerritus (crazy)

  vapide se habere (feel flat) for: male se habere (feel bad)

  betizare (be a beetroot) for: languere (be languid)—on the analogy of the colloquial form lachanizare.

  Among his grammatical peculiarities occur the forms simus for sumus (we are), and domos for domus (homes), to which he invariably clung as a sign that they were his considered choice. I have noticed one particular habit of his: rather than break a long word at the end of a line and carry forward to the next whatever letters were left over, he would write these underneath the first part of the word and draw a loop to connect them with it.

  88. Instead of paying a strict regard to orthography, as formulated by the grammarians, he inclined towards phonetic spelling. Of course, most writers make such slips as transposing or omitting whole syllables, as well as single letters; so I should not have mentioned that Augustus often did the same but for my surprise on finding, in more than one book of memoirs, the story that he once retired a proconsular governor for being ill-educated enough to write ixi for ipsi (the same men). When Augustus wrote in cypher he simply substituted the next letter of the alphabet for the one required, except that he wrote AA for X.

  89. He had ambitions to be as proficient in Greek as in Latin, and did very well under the tutorship of Apollodorus of Pergamum, who accompanied him to Apollonia, though a very old man, and taught him elocution. Afterwards Augustus spent some time with Areus the philosopher, and his sons Dionysus and Nicanor, who broadened his general education; but never learned to speak Greek with real fluency, and never ventured on any Greek literary composition. Indeed, if he ever had occasion to use the language he would write down whatever it might be in Latin and get someone to make a translation. Yet nobody could describe him as ignorant of Greek poetry, because he greatly enjoyed the so-called ‘Old Comedy’, and often put plays of that period on the stage. His chief interest in the literature of both languages was the discovery of moral precepts, with suitable anecdotes attached, capable of public or private application; and he would transcribe passages of this sort for the attention of his generals or provincial governors, whenever he thought it necessary. He even read whole volumes aloud to the Senate, and issued proclamations commending them to the people—such as Quintus Metellus’s On the Need for Larger Families, and Rutilius’s On the Need for Smaller Buildings—just to prove that he had been anticipated in his recommendations by far earlier thinkers.

  Augustus gave all possible encouragement to intellectuals: he would politely and patiently attend readings not only of their poems and historical works, but of their speeches and dialogues; yet objected to being made the theme of any work unless the author were known as a serious and reputable writer, and often warned the praetors not to let his name be vulgarized by its constant occurrence in prize orations.

  90. As for Augustus’s superstitions: he is recorded to have been scared of thunder and lightning, against which he always carried a piece of seal-skin as an amulet, and to have taken refuge in an underground vault whenever a heavy storm threatened—because, as I have already mentioned, he had once narrowly escaped being struck on a night march.

  91. Warnings conveyed in dreams, either his own or those dreamed by others, were not lost on him: for example, before the Battle of Philippi, when so ill that he decided not to leave his tent, he changed his mind on account of a friend’s dream—most fortunately, too, as it proved. The camp was captured and a party of the enemy, breaking into the tent, plunged their swords through and through his camp-bed under the impression that he was still in it, tearing the bed-clothes to ribbons. Every spring he had a series of ugly dreams, but none of the horrid visions seen in them came true; whereas what he occasionally dreamed at other seasons tended to be reliable. One day, after he had paid frequent visits to the Temple of Juppiter the Thunderer, founded by himself on the Capitoline Hill, Capitoline Juppiter approached him in a dream with a complaint that the newcomer was stealing his worshippers. He replied: ‘I put the Thunderer so close to your Temple because I had decided to give you a janitor.’ When Augustus awoke, he hung a set of bells from the gable of the new building to make it look like a front door. Because of another dream he used to sit in a public place once a year holding out his hand for the people to give him coppers, as though he were a beggar.

  92. Augustus had absolute faith in certain premonitory signs: considering it bad luck to thrust his right foot into the left shoe as he got out of bed, but good luck to start a long journey or voyage during a drizzle of rain, which would ensure success and a speedy return. Prodigies made a particularly strong impression on him. Once, when a palm tree pushed its way between the paving stones in front of the Palace he had it transplanted to the inner court beside his family gods, and lavished care on it. When he visited Capri, the drooping branches of a moribund old oak suddenly regained their vigour, which so delighted him that he arranged to buy the island from the City of Naples in exchange for Ischia. He also had a su
perstition against starting a journey on the day after a market-day, or undertaking any important task on the Nones of a month—although, in this case, as he explained to Tiberius in a letter, it was merely the unlucky non-sound of the word that affected him.

  93. Augustus showed great respect towards all ancient and long-established foreign rites, but despised the rest. Once, for example, after becoming an adept in the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, he judged a case in which the privileges of Demeter’s priests were questioned. Since certain religious secrets had to be quoted in the evidence, he cleared the court, dismissed his legal advisers and settled the dispute in camera. On the other hand, during his journey through Egypt he would not go out of his way, however slightly, to honour the divine Apis bull; and praised his grandson Gaius for not offering prayers to Jehovah when he visited Jerusalem.

  94. At this point it might be well to list the omens, occurring before, on and after the day of Augustus’s birth, from which his future greatness and lasting good fortune could clearly be prognosticated.

  In ancient days part of the city wall of Velitrae had been struck by lightning and the soothsayers prophesied that a native Velitraean would one day rule the world. Confidence in this prediction led the citizens to declare immediate war against Rome, and to keep on fighting until they were nearly wiped out; only centuries later did the world-ruler appear in the person of Augustus.

  According to Julius Marathus, a public portent warned the Roman people some months before Augustus’s birth that Nature was making ready to provide them with a king; and this caused the Senate such consternation that they issued a decree which forbade the rearing of any male child for a whole year. However, a group of senators whose wives were expectant prevented the decree from being filed at the Treasury and thus becoming law—for each of them hoped that the prophesied King would be his own son.

  Then there is a story which I found in a book called Theologumena, by Asclepias of Mendes. Augustus’s mother, Atia, with certain married women friends, once attended a solemn midnight service at the Temple of Apollo, where she had her litter set down, and presently fell asleep as the others also did. Suddenly a serpent glided up, entered her, and then glided away again. On awakening, she purified herself, as if after intimacy with her husband. An irremovable coloured mark in the shape of a serpent, which then appeared on her body, made her ashamed to visit the public baths any more; and the birth of Augustus nine months later suggested a divine paternity. Atia dreamed that her intestines were carried up to Heaven and overhung all lands and seas; and Octavius, that the sun rose from between her thighs.

  Augustus’s birth coincided with the Senate’s famous debate on the Catilinarian conspiracy, and when Octavius arrived late, because of Atia’s confinement, Publius Nigidius Figulus the astrologer, hearing at what hour the child had been delivered, cried out: ‘The ruler of the world is now born.’ Everyone believes this story.

  Octavius, during a subsequent expedition through the wilder parts of Thrace, reached a grove sacred to Father Dionysus, where he consulted the priests about his son’s destiny. After performing certain barbaric rites, they gave him the same response as Figulus; for the wine they had poured over the altar caused a pillar of flame to shoot up far above the roof of the shrine—a sign never before granted except to Alexander the Great when he sacrificed at that very altar. That night Octavius had another dream: his son appeared in superhuman majesty, armed with the thunderbolt, sceptre, and regal ornaments of Juppiter Greatest and Best, crowned with a solar diadem, and riding in a belaurelled chariot drawn by twelve dazzlingly white horses.

  Gaius Drusus records that, one evening, the infant Augustus was placed by the nurse in his cradle on the ground-floor, but had vanished by daybreak; at last a search party found him lying on the top of a lofty tower, his face turned towards the rising sun. Once, when he was just learning to talk at his grandfather’s country seat, the frogs broke into a loud chorus of croaking: he told them to stop, and it is locally claimed that no frog has croaked there since. On a later occasion, as he sat lunching in a copse beside the Appian Way, close to the fourth mile-stone, an eagle, to his great surprise, swooped at him, snatched a crust from his hand, carried it aloft—and then, to his even greater surprise, glided gently down again and restored what it had stolen.

  Quintus Catulus, after rededicating the Capitol,32 dreamed two dreams on successive nights. First, Juppiter Greatest and Best beckoned to one of several noblemen’s sons who were playing near his altar, and slipped an image of the Goddess Rome into the fold of his gown. Then Catulus dreamed that he saw the same boy sitting in the lap of Capitoline Juppiter; he tried to have him removed, but the God countermanded the order because the boy was being reared as the saviour of Rome. Next day, Catulus met Augustus, looked at him with startled eyes—they had never met before—and pronounced him the identical boy of his dreams. Another version of Catulus’s first dream is that a crowd of noblemen’s children were begging Juppiter for a guardian; the God then pointed to one of them, saying: ‘Whatever you need, ask him!’, lightly touched the boy’s mouth and conveyed a kiss from them to his own lips.

  On a New Year’s Day, Cicero escorted Julius Caesar, as Consul, to the Capitol and happened to tell his friends what he had dreamed the night before: a boy of noble features, let down from Heaven by a golden chain, stood at the Temple door, and was handed a whip by Capitoline Juppiter. At that moment, Cicero’s eye caught Augustus, whom his grand-uncle Caesar had brought to the ceremony but whom few of those present knew by sight. He cried: ‘There goes the very boy!’

  When Augustus celebrated his coming of age, the seams of the senatorial gown which Caesar had allowed him to wear split and it fell at his feet. Some of the bystanders interpreted the accident as a sign that the senatorial Order itself would some day be brought to his feet.

  As Julius Caesar was felling a wood near Munda in Spain to clear a site for his camp, he noticed a palm-tree and ordered it to be spared, palm-fronds being a presage of victory. The tree then suddenly put out a new shoot which, a few days later, had grown so tall as to overshadow it. What was more, a flock of doves began to nest in the fronds, although doves notoriously dislike hard, spiny foliage. This prodigy was the immediate reason, they say, for Caesar’s desire that his grand-nephew, and no one else, should succeed him.

  At Apollonia, Augustus and Agrippa together visited the house of Theogenes the astrologer, and climbed upstairs to his observatory; they both wished to consult him about their future careers. Agrippa went first and was prophesied such almost incredibly good fortune that Augustus expected a far less encouraging response, and felt ashamed to disclose his nativity. Yet when at last, after a deal of hesitation, he grudgingly supplied the information for which both were pressing him, Theogenes rose and flung himself at his feet; and this gave Augustus so implicit a faith in the destiny awaiting him that he even ventured to publish his horoscope, and struck a silver coin stamped with Capricorn, the sign under which he had been born.

  95. When he returned to Rome from Apollonia at news of Caesar’s assassination, the sky was clear of clouds, but a rainbow-like halo formed around the sun; and suddenly lightning struck the tomb of Caesar’s daughter, Julia the Elder. Then, when he first took the auspices as Consul, twelve vultures appeared, as they had appeared to Romulus at the foundation of the City; and the livers of all the sacrificial victims were seen to be doubled inwards at the bottom—an omen which, experts in soothsaying agreed, presaged a wonderful future for him.

  96. Augustus even foreknew the successful conclusion of his wars. At Bologna, where the army of the Triumvirs Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus was stationed, an eagle perched on Augustus’s tent and defended itself vigorously against the converging attack of two ravens, bringing both of them down. This augury was understood by the troops as portending a rupture between their three leaders; the outcome of which would be obvious. On Augustus’s way to Philippi, a Thessalian stopped him to report having been assured of victory by Caesar’s
ghost, whom he met on a lonely road. Sacrificing one day before the walls of Perugia, Augustus had failed to secure a satisfactory omen, and sent for more victims; at this point the enemy made a sudden sortie from the beleaguered city, and carried off the entire sacrificial apparatus, including the carcasses. The soothsayers unanimously reassured him that whatever disasters had been threatened by the omens would fall upon their present possessors; and this proved to be true.

  On the eve of the naval battle off Sicily, Augustus was walking along the shore when a fish leaped from the sea and fell at his feet. Before Actium, he was about to board his ship and give the signal for hostilities to begin, when he met a peasant driving an ass, and asked his name. The peasant replied: ‘I am Eutychus (“Prosper”) and my ass is called Nicon (“Victory”).’ To commemorate the victory Augustus set up bronze statues of Eutychus and his ass on the camp site, which he now dedicated to Mars and Neptune.

  97. Next, we come to Augustus’s death and subsequent deification, both of which were predicted by evident signs. While he was closing a lustrum, or five-year period, with a purificatory ceremony in the crowded Campus Martius, an eagle circled around him several times, then flew to the near-by temple and perched above the first ‘A’ of Agrippa’s name. As soon as Augustus noticed this he ordered Tiberius, who was acting as his colleague in the Censorship, to read out the usual vows for the next five-year period; because, though having composed and recorded them on a tablet, he would not make himself responsible for vows payable after his death. At about the same time lightning melted the initial letter of his name on the inscription below one of his statues. This was interpreted to mean that he would live only another hundred days, since the remainder of the word, namely AESAR, is the Etruscan for ‘god’—c being the Roman numeral 100.