CHAPTER I. The Foundations of the Imperial Power. Octavian, who was born in the year of Cicero's consulship and Catiline's conspiracy, was only thirty-five years of age when, in the year B.C. 28, he seriously took in hand that immense reorganisation not only of Rome and Italy but also of the Roman world which is indelibly associated with his name. He had travelled far since the day when he landed in Italy, a friendless and almost powerless boy, in order to take up the heritage of the great Julius, his uncle and adoptive father. The assassins had been hunted to their death, and every man who had disputed his exclusive right to take his father's place was either dead or only allowed to live because, like Lepidus, he had become completely insignificant. These surprising results had been achieved by a man who was neither a great soldier nor a great demagogue, who had little of the genius and nothing of the fascination of Julius Cæsar. What is the explanation? It lies partly in the fact that Octavian, though not a great man, was a highly capable one, and read character shrewdly enough to use good instruments, but most of all no doubt in the nature of the time. It is easy to be unjust to Octavian, who after all did nothing really badly, and who even as a soldier had been quite respectable. In the hard fought Dalmatian war of B.C. 36 he had shown distinguished personal bravery, and, military success being essential to every Roman who aspired to stand in the first rank, but above all essential to the heir-apparent of the greatest soldier that Rome produced, he commanded armies in the field, and commanded them tolerably well. Moreover his deficiencies in that line were made good by his old schoolfriend and tested comrade Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Agrippa, a veteran commander and a soldier before all things, was at least the equal of Antony in the art of war, and he had no Cleopatra to distract him. Octavian was not only fortunate in such friends and subordinates as Agrippa and Maecenas; he was also fortunate in his enemies. Antony threw away magnificent opportunities, and Octavian profited more by his rival's mistakes than by his own achievements. It was characteristic of Octavian that he never failed to make the most of an opportunity. A cold-blooded man of Northern temperament, who never lost his head, he had peculiar qualifications for playing the game of intrigue calculated violence and calculated clemency, which finally left him the undisputed master of the Southerns who obeyed and feared but never really liked him. He was cruel when it suited him, both in the days of the Proscriptions and after Actium, and, as his cruelty was supposed to be deliberate and cold-blooded, it attracted incomparably more odium than did the hot wrath of the gallant Antony. The pale, lymphatic man, with bad teeth and weak health, who never unbent and was never quite natural, who even in the privacy of his own home was always dressed in readiness to appear in public, and who, when he had anything important to say to his wife, put it down on paper first so that he might use neither one word more nor one word less than he intended, was not the man to be beloved. But he was the man to fill those whom he had to manage with fear, uneasiness and almost awe. The kingly serenity of his gaze was such that it is said to have deterred a would-be assassin from his purpose, |