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. There were setbacks: Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus’ threat that, if elected consul for 55, he would demand Caesar’s recall to Rome to answer charges about his behaviour in 59, a curtailment and an indictment the latter dare not countenance; and the revolt of the Gaulish chieftain Vercingetorix, king of the Arverni, in 52, backed by a large coalition of the tribes of central Gaul. The remain This prodigy was the immediate reason, they say, for Caesar's desire that his grand-nephew, and no one else, should succeed him. Suetonius commends his horsemanship, his skill in arms, that vitality which never flagged: On the march he headed his army, sometimes on horseback but oftener on foot, bareheaded both in the heat of the sun and in rain. Covetousness killed him: the longing for absolute power. 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. In this character sketch I need not omit his eating habits. When Cassius Severus had brought a charge of poisoning against Augustus's close friend Nonius Asprena, Augustus asked the Senate what they wished him to do. Augustus turned the kingdom of Egypt into a Roman province; and then, to increase its fertility and its yield of grain for the Roman market, set troops to clean out the irrigation canals of the Nile Delta which had silted up after many years' neglect. Openly Caesar regarded himself as the leading man of the state. or 'I'd dispute your point if I got the chance.' Defence of his dignitas is the only justification he offers for a war in which his own countrymen will suffer and die – that self-seeking cause is victorious, of course. On all but special occasions he wore house clothes woven and sewn for him by either Livia, Octavia, Julia, or one of his grand-daughters. Some found Augustus a good deal too fond of expensive furniture, Corinthian bronzes, and the gaming table. His marriage law being more rigorously framed than the others, he found himself unable to make it effective because of an open revolt against several of its clauses. A year after the triumvirate’s meeting at Luca, in August 54, Pompey’s wife and Caesar’s daughter, Julia, died in childbirth. That the teenage war hero should have consented to be buggered by a geriatric royal pederast – one version has Caesar arrayed in purple robes, recumbent and alluring on a golden couch, an image better suited to his future mistress Cleopatra – would continue to titillate Caesar’s enemies for the next four decades. Messala's words were: With tears in his eyes, Augustus answered — again I quote his exact words: 59. Suetonius does an excellent job in painting an objective picture of the lives of the twelve Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian. To withdraw your consent, see Your Choices. ‘Soon Gaius Marius, from the lowest class, and Lucius Sulla, the most savage of the nobles, turned free government, conquered by arms, into tyranny,’ Tacitus wrote. That last functionary delaying, Caesar himself organized their death by crucifixion. 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. At such dinner parties he would sometimes arrive late and leave early, letting his guests start and finish without him. This energetic action delighted Caesar, who soon formed a high estimate of Augustus's character. After luncheon he used to rest for a while without removing clothes or shoes; one hand shading his eyes, his feet uncovered. All important statements made to individuals, and even to his wife Livia, were first committed to notebooks and then repeated aloud; he was haunted by a fear of saying either too much or too little if he spoke off hand. After this he would not let even his adopted children, or grandchildren, use the obsequious word (though it might be only in joke), either when talking to him or about him. First, Jupiter 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. He had a weakness in his left hip, thigh, and leg, which occasionally gave him the suspicion of a limp; but this was improved by the sand-and-reed treatment. ‘There appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and beauty, who sat and played upon a reed … [T]he apparition snatched a trumpet … rushed to the river, and sounding the war-note with mighty blast, strode to the opposite bank.’ The ancient sources vie with one another in their presentation of Caesar’s historic transgression. The property qualification for senators was now increased from 8,000 to 12,000 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. At the beginning of his reign he kept in close touch with provincial affairs by relays of runners strung out at short intervals along the highways; later, he organized a chariot service, based on posting stations — which has proved the more satisfactory arrangement, because post-boys can be cross-examined on the situation as well as delivering written messages. Our story is rich in such apparent contradictions and ambiguities. His standards of discipline were high without approaching that martinet cruelty which afterwards proved Galba’s undoing: he closed his eyes to minor misdemeanours. Perhaps. Then there is a story which I found in a book called Theologumena, by Asclepias of Mendes. Thanks to Shakespeare, who rendered that dying cadence ‘Et tu, Brute?’, the murdered tyrant became a tragic hero. But a man so lavishly endowed with dynamism could scarcely embrace the treading-water prevarication of a system whose impotence he had explicitly recognized in the triumvirate. 16. 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. He argued that 'Augustus' was both a more original and a more honourable title, since sanctuaries and all places consecrated by the augurs are known as 'august' — the word being either an enlarged form of auctus, implying the 'increase' of dignity thus given such places, or a worn-down form of the phrase aviuw gestus gustus-ve, 'the behaviour and appetite of birds', which the augurs observed. 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. As soon as the Civil Wars were over Augustus discontinued his riding and fencing exercises on the Campus Martius and used, instead, to play catch with two companions, or hand-ball with several. Spain had served as the location for Caesar’s quaestorship, his first proconsulship and the award of an (albeit uncelebrated) triumph. In the service of the Republic he had won victories unrivalled in its history: he refused to countenance the possibility of arraignment for transgressions of the previous decade. Either way, the import was clear. Some of his galleys went down on both occasions; the rigging of his own vessel carried away and her rudder split. 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. I was admittedly anticipating a biased account considering that Suetonius was the chief secretary to Hadrian during his reign. Their style has yet to evolve that bland idealization which will transform the public face of his successor Augustus from autocratic wunderkind to ageless marble dreamboat. Where even the qualified democracy of the senate was powerless, iron-fisted authoritarianism promised to break through every impasse. They extended Caesar’s proconsulship of Gaul for a further five years and devised on their own behalf a bill that was passed by the tribune Trebonius. 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. But attempts against Augustus's life were made by men from even the lowest walks of life; so I must not forget one Telephus, a slave, whose task it had been to remind a noble mistress of her engagements; he nursed a delusion that he was fated to become emperor, and planned an armed attack on the Senate as well. It also promised to place him once again nearer to that position from which he could bypass senatorial constitutionalism in pursuit of his own goals. Caesar’s heirs enjoyed riches and empire. He was so anxious to save Cleopatra as an ornament for his triumph that he actually summoned Psyllian snake-charmers to suck the poison from her self-inflicted wound, supposedly the bite of an asp. Plutarch has the best coverage of Marc Antony and Cleopatra and the war with Augustus, but he does bend history to tell a "morality tale": it's not just facts, he's leading you along a path to make a point in the end. This was possible only if he retained proconsular imperium, which obtained only so long as he remained outside Rome. The meal usually consisted of three courses, though in expansive moods Augustus might serve as many as six. These historical details are not derived from Augustus's own memoirs, which merely record that he came of a rich old equestrian family, and that his father had been the first Octavian to enter the Senate. In February 44 Caesar was named dictator for life – as Plutarch describes it, ‘confessedly a tyranny, since the monarchy, beside the element of irresponsibility, now took on that of permanence’. On awakening, she purified herself, as if after intimacy with her husband. He also made powerful enemies. Instead, Sulla ordered him to divorce his wife (Cinna’s daughter) and forfeit her dowry to the state’s depleted coffers. He was a stranger to idleness and the greater part of reasonable fear. Augustus also ordered frequent performances of the Troy Game 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. As the written sources confirm, Caesar’s was not the appearance of a hero (nor was blandness among his characteristics). It shows him as a boy, and a rusty, almost illegible inscription in iron letters gives him this name. On the advice of certain aristocrats, Augustus actually engaged assassins to murder Antony and, when the plot came to light, spent as much money as he could raise on enlisting a force of veterans to protect himself and the Constitution. It is the sort of detail by which the Romans habitually found out their heroes’ feet of clay and we may choose to disregard it if we will. The family into which he was born on 13 July 100 BC was ancient, obscure and of slender means: patricians, members of the city’s oldest aristocratic class. He found out, to his misfortune, that the Elder and the Younger Julia had both been indulging in every sort of vice; and banished them. 85. husband was Marcellus, his sister Octavia's son, then hardly more than a child; and, when he died, Augustus persuaded Octavia to let her become Marcus Agrippa's wife — though Agrippa was now married to one of Marcellus's two sisters, and had fathered children on her. 17. When the people would have forced a dictatorship on him he fell on his knee and, throwing back his gown to expose his naked breast, implored their silence. He also used as much foresight as could have been expected in guarding against future disasters. 20. 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. 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 17 lb but had a tremendous voice. While he was closing a lustrum, or five-year period, with a purificatory ceremony in the crowded Campus Martins, an eagle circled around him several times, then flew to the nearby temple and perched above the first 'A' of Agrippa's name. In old age, however, his left eye had only partial vision. Another of his favourite remarks was: 'Let us be satisfied with this Cato !' He cared so little about his hair that, to save time, he would have two or three barbers working hurriedly on it together, and meanwhile read or write something, whether they were giving him a haircut or a shave. 29. The Senate afterwards consecrated that part of the building by decree. It was genocide in the service of self-promotion; at best the killings were political. A secret, if informal, alliance between Rome’s leading militarist and that magnate whose vast riches had bankrolled several of Caesar’s election bids, it demonstrated a recognition on Caesar’s part that, in 60 BC, power in Rome rested on twin foundations of money and might. Sometimes the forefinger of his right hand would be so numbed by cold that it hardly served to guide a pen, even when strengthened with a long horn finger-stall. To perpetuate the glory of his victory at Actium, he founded a city close to the scene of the battle and named it Nicopolis — or 'City of Victory' — and made arrangements for the celebration of Games there every five years. 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. Plancus supported his point by a quotation from Ennius's Annals: 8. For its protagonists it offered action and progress. He also made use of his aedileship in 65 BC to challenge convention by hosting, after a delay of twenty years, funeral games in honour of his father, another Gaius Julius Caesar. Augustus burst out laughing and made great fun of Thrasyllus. To maintain the number of knights he allowed any township to nominate men capable of taking up such senior Army commands as were reserved for the Equestrian Order; and, to encourage the birth-rate of the Roman commons, offered a bounty of ten gold pieces for every legitimate son or daughter whom a citizen could produce, on his tours of the City wards. On more than one occasion, a soothsayer called Spurinna warned Caesar to beware of danger that would come to him no later than the Ides of March. 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. Fastidiousness bordering on vanity reputedly extended to depilation of his pubic hair. Having recovered possession of Spain, Caesar planned a war against the Dacians and Parthians, and sent Augustus ahead to Apollonia, in Illyria, where he spent his spare time studying Greek literature. It is a combination which recurs throughout Suetonius’ Lives: oscillating good and bad – leavened with scurrilous details, tittle-tattle and superstition – alternately humanize and demonize the author’s portraits of Rome’s rulers. After adventures, acclaim and a degree of notoriety, it represented a point of embarkation, first steps on that ladder of magistracies which constituted the senatorial career of many of Rome’s aristocratic young men, the cursus honorum, or course of honours. In the last years of the family’s aristocratic obscurity, a daughter of the Julii married a man considered by Romans a novus homo or ‘new man’ (one whose family had not previously entered the senate and held the consulship): Gaius Marius. 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