The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
the pursuit of ambition he had large views of political reform or an exalted ideal of statesmanhip. His actions throughout the Civil War indicate the shrewd, cool, and collected mind; they give no token of wide views, no promise of the future greatness. “But his intellect expanded with his fortunes, and his soul grew with his intellect”. When he came to be supreme ruler, he rose to the position; he learned to take a large view of the functions of the lord of the Roman world; and there was born in him a spirit of enthusiasm for the work which history set him to accomplish. He knew too how to bear his fortune with dignity. But he was unlucky when his fortune was most firmly established. It was not given to the founder of the Empire to leave a successor of his own blood; and, as we have seen, his endeavors to settle the succession were doomed to one bitter disappointment after another and led to domestic unhappiness. And it was not given to him to establish a secure frontier for the northern provinces of the Empire. The efforts in that direction, which were made under his auspice and seemed on the eve of being crowned with success, were undone by a stroke of bad luck. Yet, reviewing his whole career as a statesman and reflecting on all that he achieved, we may assuredly say that the Divine Augustus was fortunate with a measure of good fortune that is rarely bestowed on men who live out their life.
The written memorial of his own acts which Augustus composed before his death may be spoken of here. It has been incompletely preserved in a Latin inscription which covers the walls of the pronaos of a temple of Augustus at Ancyra. Owing to this accident it is generally known as the Monumentum Ancyranum, but its proper title was Res gestae divi Augusti. Fragments of the Greek text of the same work have also been found in Pisidia, and have helped scholars in restoring the sense, where the Latin fails. In this document the Emperor briefly describes his acts from his nineteenth to his seventy-seventh year, with remarkable dignity, reserve, and moderation. The great historical value of this memorial, composed by the founder of the empire himself, need hardly be pointed out.
An extract will give an idea of the way in which the great statesman wrote the brief chronicle of the history which he made.
“I extended the frontiers”, he says, “of all those provinces of the Roman people, on whose borders there were nations not subject to our empire. I pacified the provinces of the Gauls and the Spains, and Germany, from Gades to the mouth of the Albis. I reduced to a state of peace the Alps from the district which is nearest the Adriatic Sea to the Tuscan Sea, without wrongful aggressions on any nation. My fleet navigated the ocean from the mouth of the Rhine eastward as far the borders of the Cimbri, whither no Roman before ever passed either by land or sea; and the Cimbri, the Charydes, and the Semnonis and other German peoples of the same region sought the friendship of me and the Roman people. By my command and under my auspices two armies were sent, almost at the same time to Ethiopia and to Arabia, called Eudaemon [Felix], and very large forces of the enemies in both countries were cut to pieces in battle, and many towns taken. The invaders of Ethiopia advanced as far as the town of Nabata, very near Meroe. The army which invaded Arabia marched into the territory of the Sabaei, as far as the town of Mariba”.
Another work compiled by Augustus was the Breviarium Imperii, containing a short statement of all the resources of the Roman State, and including the number of the population of citizens, subjects, and allies. It was in fact a handbook to the statistics of the Roman Empire. At the end of this work he recorded his solemn advice to succeeding sovrans, not to attempt to extend the boundaries of the Empire.
Chapter X.
Rome Under Augustus — His Buildings
The Augustan age marks a new period in the history of the city of Rome. Augustus boasted that he found it a city of brick and left it a city of marble. For the change consisted not only in the large number of new buildings which were erected under his auspices, but in the material which was used. The white marble quarries of Luna had been recently discovered and this rich stone was employed in many of the public edifices; while the aristocrats, stimulated by the example of the Emperor, used bright travertine to adorn the facades of their private houses. The most striking change that took place in the appearance of the city during the reign of Augustus was the transformation of the Forum, and the opening up of the adjacent quarters. In this, as in so much else, Julius Caesar had suggested innovations, which he did not live to carry out himself.
The Roman Forum extends from the foot of the Capitol to the north-west corner of the Palatine. Adjoining it on the north side, but separated from it by the rostrum, was the Comitium, a small enclosed space in which the Curia stood. The first step to the transformation of the Forum, was the removal of the rostrum (42 B.C.), so that the Forum and Comitium formed one place. The Curia had been burnt down ten years before, and Caesar began the building of a new one, which was finished by Augustus and dedicated under the name of Curia Julia. But this was only the beginning of the new splendor that was to come upon the great centre of Roman life. A short description of the chief buildings which adorned it at the death of Augustus will show how much it was changed under the auspices of the first Princeps.
At the north-west corner, close under the Capitolino, where the ascent to the Arx begins, stood the Temple of Concord, rebuilt by Tiberius in 10 A.D. and dedicated in the name of himself and his dead brother Drusus, as aedes Concordiae Augustae. Owing to the nature of the ground this temple had a peculiar cramped shape, the pronaos being only half as broad as the cella. Adjacent on the south side was the Temple of Saturn, between the Clivus Capitolinus and the Vicus Jugarius. It was built anew in 42 B.C. by the munificence of Munatius Plancus. The eight Ionic pillars which still mark the spot where it stood date from a later period. This temple served as the state treasury, which was therefore called the aerarium Saturni.
Between the Vicus Jugarius and the Vicus Tuscus, occupying the greater part of the south side of the Forum, stood the Basilica Julia, which, like the Curia, the elder Caesar had left to his son to finish. Begun in 54 B.C., it was dedicated in 46; but after its completion, some years later, it was burnt down. Then it arose again on a larger and more splendid scale, and was finally dedicated by Augustus a few months before his death, in the name of his unfortunate grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar. East of the Basilica, on the other side of the Vicus Tuscus, was situated the Temple of Castor, of which three Corinthian columns and a splendid Greek entablature still stand. Founded originally in memory of the help which the great twin brethren were said to have given to the Romans at Lake Regillus it was renewed for the second time by Tiberius, under the auspices of Augustus, and, like the Temple of Concord, dedicated in the name of the two sons of Livia.
The Temple of the divine Julius, built on the spot where his body had been burned by the piety of his son, stood at the eastern end of the Forum, facing the new rostra which had been erected at the western side in front of the Temple of Concord. Behind the Aedes Divi Julii and on the north side of the venerable round Temple of Vesta, was the Regia, a foundation of high antiquity, ascribed to Numa, and used under the Republic as the office of the Pontifex Maximus. It had been often destroyed by fire, and in 36 B.C. it was rebuilt in splendid style by Cm. Domitius Calvinus, and there Lepidus transacted the duties of his pontifical office. But when Augustus himself became chief pontiff (12 B.C.), he resigned the Regia to the use of the vestal virgins. On the north side, east of the Curia, stood a building originally designed in 179 B.C. by the censors Fulvius and Aemilius, but built anew by L. Minibus Paullus in 54 B.C. and since then known as the Basilica Aemilia. Burnt down forty years later, it was rebuilt by Augustus, with pillars of Phrygian marble. The Temple of Janus, which Augustus thrice closed, stood somewhere—the exact position is uncertain— near the point where the Argiletum entered the Forum, between the Curia and the Basilica Aemilia.
The Argiletum, a street famous for booksellers, traversed the populous and busy region north of the Forum, which was densely packed with houses and threaded only by narrow streets. Caesar formed the design of opening up tins crowded quarter and establishing a free communication on this side between the Forum and the great suburb of Rome, the Campus Martius. In order to effect this he constructed a new market-place: and it was owing probably to this scheme that the Curia Julia, whose building began about the same time (54 B.C.), was built nearer to the Forum than the old curia. The Forum Julium,