Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [189]
While fighting for dominance, he paid little attention to legality or to the normal civilities of political life. He was devious, untrustworthy, and bloodthirsty. But once he had established his authority, he governed efficiently and justly, generally allowed freedom of speech, and promoted the rule of law. He was immensely hardworking and tried as hard as any democratic parliamentarian to treat his senatorial colleagues with respect and sensitivity. He suffered from no delusions of grandeur.
Augustus lacked the flair of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, but he possessed one valuable quality to which Caesar could not lay claim: patience. He had the practical common sense of an Italian country gentleman, for it was from that stock that he grew. He made haste slowly, seeking permanent solutions rather than easy answers. He did not revel in power; he sought to understand it. Plutarch has an anecdote that sums up Augustus’ approach to his responsibilities. Hearing that Alexander the Great had been at a loss about what to do next after his vast conquests, the princeps remarked: “I am surprised the king did not realize that a far harder task than winning an empire is putting it into order once you have won it.”
Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Augustus’ approach to politics was his twin recognition that in the long run power was unsustainable without consent, and that consent could best be won by associating radical constitutional change with a traditional and moralizing ideology.
And what of the man himself? His public persona, the imperturbably calm young man of the statues, is unrevealing—to borrow Tennyson’s phrase, “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.” But luckily some of the ancient literary sources—above all, Suetonius—reveal the princeps in undress. Here is someone who loved his sister and spent fifty years happily married to his childless wife. In his personal life, he was not greatly interested in appearances, was a good friend, and had a self-deprecating sense of humor and sound judgment. It is impossible not to warm to the old man who adored his “little donkey” Gaius, and to sense the depth of his tragedy when, in their various ways, his closest relatives turned their backs on him—all except Livia.
The contrast between the splendor of state ceremonial and Rome’s restored monumental center, on the one hand, and Augustus’ austere lifestyle on the other, was, of course, a conscious policy, which magnified Rome while seeking to counter individual decadence. It would appear, though, that his simple habits had a basis in modest personal tastes.
Of course, there were two sides to Augustus’ personality, which looked Janus-like in opposing directions: the affectionate family man was also the ancient lecher; the plain-living Roman built a secret holiday palazzo; loyal to his intimates, he was blind to their excesses and sometimes criminal failings; the loving parent with high expectations sometimes behaved like a demanding bully who insisted on having his own way; the cultivated patron of the arts could be a heartless killer when crossed in politics.
One senses, above all, that the suppression of ordinary human emotions which his public duties demanded of the princeps pulled against deep and powerful currents of feeling for those closest to him. This internal struggle may have fueled the fury with which he reacted to betrayals of trust.
But for all his flaws, the balance sheet ends in credit. For the most part,