Augustus

Caesar Augustus, thwarted by a storm at sea, resolved to defy Neptune and, to take his revenge, had his effigy removed from among those of all the gods in the game ceremonies of the circus.

”The Emperor Augustus, being in Gaul, had certain information of a conspiracy L.

” Augustus was well pleased that he had met with an advocate of his own humor;

“Thou dost not keep thy promise, Cinna,” continued Augustus, “that thou wouldst not interrupt me.

“Why,” proceeded Augustus, “to what end wouldst thou do it?

Now, from the time of this accident which befell Augustus in the fortieth year of his age, he never had any conspiracy or attempt against him, and so reaped the due reward of this his so generous clemency.

Livia preferred the passions of Augustus to her own interest;

In the naval engagement that Augustus won of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily, just as they were to begin the fight, he was so fast asleep that his friends were compelled to wake him to give the signal of battle:

Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared that thirty years old was sufficient for a judge.

Augustus dismissed them at forty-five;

Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he has slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics.

And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberius did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate.

Nothing can be added to the beauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favorite of Augustus:

Augustus having discovered that he had vented an important secret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his court, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him.

On Honorary Awards They who write the life of Augustus Caesar, observe this in his military discipline, that he was wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true recompenses of honor he was as sparing;

Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other, insomuch that honor is a privilege which derives its principal essence from rarity;

Many are of opinion that in the great and last naval engagement that Antony lost to Augustus, his admiral galley was stayed in the middle of her course by the little fish the Latins call remora, by reason of the property she has of staying all sorts of vessels to which she fastens herself.

Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served with as much religion and belief of miracles.

and were to be wished that we had the journals of Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus, Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions;

All the kingdoms that Augustus gained by the right of war, he either restored to those who had lost them or presented them to strangers.

Augustus confiscated the estate of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the armies;

which his successor, Augustus, reformed, supposing he had only done it upon necessity, and to cajole those who merely followed him as volunteers;

He had so particular a grace in speaking, that his intimates, and Augustus among others, hearing those orations read, could distinguish even to the phrases and words that were not his.

” Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio, and “I,” said Pollio, “say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest with him who has power to proscribe.

’Tis said that this regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear:

Therefore it is that at my own house, though the meals there are of the shortest, I usually sit down a little while after the rest, after the manner of Augustus;

in summer, and at a relishing meal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thrice, precisely;