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LXI. Now that I have shown how he conducted himself in civil and military
positions, and in ruling the State in all parts of the world in peace and in war, I shall
next give an account of his private and domestic life, describing his character and his
fortune at home and in his household from his youth until the last day of his life. He
lost his mother during his first consulship [43 B.C.]and his sister Octavia in his
fifty-fourth year [9 B.C.]. To both he showed marked devotion during their lifetime, and
also paid them the highest honours after their death.
LXII. ln his youth he was betrothed to the daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, but
when he became reconciled with Antonius after their first quarrel, and their troops begged
that the rivals be further united by some tie of kinship, he took to wife Antonius'
stepdaughter Claudia, daughter of Fulvia by Publius Clodius [43 B.C.], although she was
barely of marriageable age; but because of a falling out with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he
divorced her before they had begun to live together. Shortly after that he married
Scribonia [40 B.C.], who had been wedded before to two ex-consuls, and was a mother by one
of them. He divorced her also, "unable to put up with her shrewish disposition,"
as he himself writes, and at once [38 B.C.] took Livia Drusilla from her husband Tiberius
Nero, although she was with child at the time; and he loved and esteemed her to the end
without a rival.
LXIII. By Scribonia he had a daughter Julia, by Livia no children at all, although he
earnestly desired issue. One baby was conceived, but was prematurely born. He gave Julia
in marriage first to Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia and hardly more than a boy, and
then after his death to Marcus Agrippa, prevailing upon his sister to yield her son-in-law
to him; for at that time Agrippa had to wife one of the Marcellas and had children from
her. When Agrippa also died, Augustus, after considering various alliances for a long
time, even in the equestrian order, finally chose his stepson Tiberius, obliging him to
divorce his wife, who was with child and by whom he was already a father. Marcus Antonius
writes that Augustus first betrothed his daughter to his son Antonius and then to Cotiso,
king of the Getae, at the same time asking for the hand of the king's daughter for himself
in turn.
LXIV. From Agrippa and Julia he had three grandsons, Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and
two granddaughters, Julia and Agrippina. He married Julia to Lucius Paulus, the censor's
son, and Agrippina to Germanicus, his sister's grandson. Gaius and Lucius he adopted at
home, privately buying them from their father by a symbolic sale [the form of purchase
consisted in thrice touching a balance with a penny in the presence of the praetor], and
initiated them into administrative life when they were still young, sending them to the
provinces and the armies as consuls elect. In bringing up his daughter and his
granddaughters he even had them taught spinning and weaving, and he forbade them to say or
do anything except openly and such as might be recorded in the household diary [a record
of the imperial household, which apparently dated from the time of Augustus]. He was most
strict in keeping them from meeting strangers, once writing to Lucius Vinicius, a young
man of good position and character: "You have acted presumptuously in coming to Baiae
to call on my daughter." He taught his grandsons reading, swimming, and the other
elements of education, for the most part himself, taking special pains to train them to
imitate his own handwriting; and he never dined in their company unless they sat beside
him on the lowest couch, or made a journey unless they preceded his carriage or rode close
by it on either side.
LXV. But at the height of his happiness and his confidence in his family and its
training, Fortune proved fickle. He found the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter,
guilty of every form of vice, and banished them [in 9 and 2 B.C., respectively]. He lost
Gaius and Lucius within the span of eighteen months, for the former died in Lycia [2 A.D.]
and the latter at Massilia [4 A.D.]. He then publicly adopted [4 A.D.] his third grandson
Agrippa and at the same time his stepson Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae;
but he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and violent temper, and sent him
off to Surrentum. He bore the death of his kin with far more resignation than their
misconduct. For he was not greatly broken by the fate of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed
the Senate of his daughter's fall through a letter read in his absence by a quaestor, and
for very shame would meet no one for a long time, and even thought of putting her to
death. At all events, when one of her confidantes, a freedwoman called Phoebe, hanged
herself at about that same time, he said: "I would rather have been Phoebe's
father." After Julia was banished, he denied her the use of wine and every form of
luxury, and would not allow any man, bond or free, to come near her without his
permission, and then not without being informed of his stature, complexion, and even of
any marks or scars upon his body. It was not until five years later that he moved her from
the island [of Pandataria] to the mainland and treated her with somewhat less rigour. But
he could not by any means be prevailed on to recall her altogether, and when the Roman
people several times interceded for her and urgently pressed their suit, he in open
assembly called upon the gods to curse them with like daughters and like wives. He would
not allow the child born to his granddaughter Julia after her sentence to be recognized or
reared. As Agrippa grew no more manageable, but on the contrary became madder from day to
day, he transferred him to an island [Planasia] and set a guard of soldiers over him
besides. He also provided by a decree of the Senate that he should be confined there for
all time, and at every mention of him and of the Julias he would sigh deeply and even cry
out: "Would that I ne'er had wedded and would I had died without offspring" [Iliad
III.40, where the line is addressed by Hector to Paris]; and he never alluded to them
except as his three boils and his three ulcers.
LXVI. He did not readily make friends, but he clung to them with the utmost constancy,
not only suitably rewarding their virtues and deserts but even condoning their faults,
provided they were not too great. In fact one cannot readily name any of his numerous
friends who fell into disgrace, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he had advanced to a
consul's rank, and Cornelius Gallus, whom he had raised to the prefecture of Egypt, both
from the lowest estate. The former he handed over to the Senate that it might condemn him
to death, because he was plotting revolution; the latter he forbade his house and the
privilege of residence in the imperial provinces because of his ungrateful and envious
spirit. But when Gallus too was forced to undergo death through the declarations of his
accusers and the decrees of the Senate, though commending their loyalty and their
indignation on his account, Augustus yet shed tears and bewailed his lot, because he alone
could not set what limits he chose to his anger with his friends [i.e., while a
private citizen could quarrel and make up with his friends, the emperor's position made
his anger fatal]. All the rest continued to enjoy power and wealth to the end of their
lives, each holding a leading place in his own class, although sometimes differences
arose. Not to mention the others, he occasionally found Agrippa lacking in patience and
Maecenas in the gift of silence; for the former because of a slight suspicion of coolness
and of a preference shewn for Marcellus, threw up everything and went off to Mytilene,
while the latter betrayed to his wife Terentia the secret of the discovery of the
conspiracy of Murena. In return he demanded of his friends affection on their part, both
in life and after death. For though he was in no sense a legacy-hunter, and in fact could
never bring himself to accept anything from the will of a stranger, yet he was highly
sensitive in weighing the death-bed utterances of his friends, concealing neither his
chagrin if he was left a niggardly bequest or one unaccompanied with compliments, nor his
satisfaction, if he was praised in terms of gratitude and affection. Whenever legacies or
shares in inheritances were left him by men of any station who had offspring, he either
turned them over to the children at once, or if the latter were in their minority, paid
the money back with interest on the day when they assumed the gown of manhood or married.
LXVII. As patron and master he was no less strict than gracious and merciful, while he
held many of his freedmen in high honour and close intimacy, such as Licinus, Celadus, and
others. His slave Cosmus, who spoke of him most insultingly, he merely put in irons. When
he was walking with his steward Diomedes, and the latter in a panic got behind him when
they were suddenly charged by a wild boar, he preferred to tax the man with timorousness
rather than with anything more serious, and turned a matter of grave danger into a jest,
because after all there was no evil intent. But he forced Polus, a favourite freedman of
his, to take his own life, because he was convicted of adultery with Roman matrons, and
broke the legs of his secretary Thallus for taking five hundred denarii to betray the
contents of a letter. Because the tutor and attendants of his son Gaius took advantage of
their master's illness and death to commit acts of arrogance and greed in his province, he
had them thrown into a river with heavy weights about their necks.
LXVIII. In early youth he incurred the reproach of sundry shameless acts. Sextus
Pompeius taunted him with effeminacy; Marcus Antonius with having earned adoption by his
uncle through unnatural relations; and Lucius, brother of Marcus Antonius, that after
sacrificing his honour to Caesar he had given himself to Aulus Hirtius in Spain for three
hundred thousand sesterces, and that he used to singe his legs with red-hot nutshells, to
make the hair grow softer. What is more, one day when there were plays in the theatre, all
the people took as directed against him and loudly applauded the following line, spoken on
the stage and referring to a priest of the Mother of the Gods, as he beat his timbrel:
"See'st how a wanton's finger sways the world?" [a double word-play on orbem
"round drum" and "world," and temperat, "beats" and
"sways"].
LXIX. That he was given to adultery not even his friends deny, although it is true that
they excuse it as committed not from passion but from policy, the more readily to get
track of his adversaries' designs through the women of their households. Marcus Antonius
charged him, besides his hasty marriage with Livia, with taking the wife of an ex-consul
from her husband's dining room before his very eyes into a bed-chamber, and bringing her
back to the table with her hair in disorder and her ears glowing; that Scribonia was
divorced because she expressed her resentment too freely at the excessive influence of a
rival; that his friends acted as his panders, and stripped and inspected matrons and
well-grown girls, as if Toranius the slave-dealer were putting them up for sale. Antonius
also writes to Augustus himself in the following familiar terms, when he had not yet
wholly broken with him privately or publicly: "What has made such a change in you?
Because I lie with the queen? She is my wife. Am I just beginning this, or was it nine
years ago? What then of you---do you lie only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you
read this letter you have not been with Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia
Titisenia, or all of them. Does it matter where or with whom you take your pleasure?"
LXX. There was besides a private dinner of his, commonly called that of the
"twelve gods," which was the subject of gossip. At this the guests appeared in
the guise of gods and goddesses, while he himself was made up to represent Apollo, as was
charged not merely in letters of Antonius, who spitefully gives the names of all the
guests, but also in these anonymous lines, which everyone knows: "As soon as that
table of rascals had secured a choragus [the choragus at Athens had charge of the
costuming and stage setting of plays], and Mallia [according to some, the choragus;
others regard it as the name of a place] saw six gods and six goddesses, while Caesar
impiously plays the false role of Apollo and feasts amid novel debaucheries of the gods;
then all the deities turned their faces from the earth and Jupiter himself fled from his
golden throne." The scandal of this banquet was the greater because of dearth and
famine in the land at the time, and on the following day there was an outcry that the gods
had eaten all the grain and that Caesar was in truth Apollo, but Apollo the Tormentor, a
surname under which the god was worshipped in one part of the city. He was criticized too
as over fond of costly furniture and Corinthian bronzes and as given to gaming. Indeed, as
early as the time of the proscriptions there was written on his statue--- "In silver
once my father dealt, now in Corinthians I" [Corinthiarius: coined in jest on
the analogy of argentarius: used in inscriptions of slaves in charge of the vasa
Corinthia], since it was believed that he caused some men to be entered in the list of
the proscribed because of their Corinthian vases. Later, during the Sicilian war, this
epigram was current: "After he has twice been beaten at sea and lost his ships, he
plays at dice all the time, in the hope of winning one victory."
LXXI. Of these charges or slanders (whichever we may call them) he easily refuted that
for unnatural vice by the purity of his life at the time and afterwards; so too the odium
of extravagance by the fact that when he took Alexandria, he kept none of the furniture of
the palace for himself except a single agate cup, and presently melted down all the golden
vessels intended for everyday use. He could not dispose of the charge of lustfulness and
they say that even in his later years he was fond of deflowering maidens, who were brought
together for him from all quarters, even by his own wife. He did not in the least shrink
from a reputation for gaming, and played frankly and openly for recreation, even when he
was well on in years, not only in the month of December [when the freedom of the
Saturnalia allowed it], but on other holidays as well, and on working days too. There is
no question about this, for in a letter in his own handwriting he says: "I dined,
dear Tiberius, with the same company; we had besides as guests Vinicius and the elder
Silius. We gambled like old men during the meal both yesterday and today; for when the
dice were thrown, whoever turned up the 'dog' or the six, put a denarius in the pool for
each one of the dice, and the whole was taken by anyone who threw the 'Venus' [when only
aces appeared, the throw was called 'canis', when all the dice turned up different
numbers, 'Venus']." Again in another letter: "We spent the Quinquatria [the five
day festival of Minerva, March 20-25] very merrily, my dear Tiberius, for we played all
day long and kept the gaming-board warm. Your brother made a great outcry about his luck,
but after all did not come out far behind in the long run; for after losing heavily, he
unexpectedly and little by little got back a good deal. For my part, I lost twenty
thousand sesterces, but because I was extravagantly generous in my play, as usual. If I
had demanded of everyone the stakes which I let go, or had kept all that I gave away, I
should have won fully fifty thousand. But I like that better, for my generosity will exalt
me to immortal glory." To his daughter he writes: "I send you two hundred and
fifty denarii, the sum which I gave each of my guests, in case they wished to play at dice
or at odd and even during the dinner."
LXXII. In the other details of his life it is generally agreed that he was most
temperate and without even the suspicion of any fault. He lived at first near the Forum
Romanum, above the Stairs of the Ringmakers, in a house which had belonged to the orator
Calvus; afterwards, on the Palatine, but in the no less modest dwelling of Hortensius,
which was remarkable neither for size nor elegance, having but short colonnades with
columns of Alban stone, and rooms without any marble decorations or handsome pavements.
For more than forty years too he used the same bedroom in winter and summer; although he
found the city unfavourable to his health in the winter, yet continued to winter there. If
ever he planned to do anything in private or without interruption, he had a retired place
at the top of the house, which he called "Syracusa" [with reference to the study
of Archimedes] and "technyphion" [ "little workshop"]. In this he used
to take refuge, or else in the villa of one of his freedmen in the suburbs; but whenever
he was not well, he slept at Maecenas' house. For retirement he went most frequently to
places by the sea and the islands of Campania, or to the towns near Rome, such as
Lanuvium, Praeneste or Tibur, where he very often held court in the colonnades of the
Temple of Hercules. He disliked large and sumptuous country palaces, actually razing to
the ground one which his granddaughter Julia built on a lavish scale. His own villas,
which were modest enough, he decorated not so much with handsome statues and pictures as
with terraces, groves, and objects noteworthy for their antiquity and rarity; for example,
at Capreae the monstrous bones of huge sea monsters and wild beasts, called the
"bones of the giants," and the weapons of the heroes.
LXXIII. The simplicity of his furniture and household goods may be seen from couches
and tables still in existence, many of which are scarcely fine enough for a private
citizen. They say that he always slept on a low and plainly furnished bed. Except on
special occasions he wore common clothes for the house, made by his sister, wife, daughter
or granddaughters; his togas were neither close nor full, his purple stripe neither narrow
nor broad, and his shoes somewhat high-soled, to make him look taller than he really was.
But he always kept shoes and clothing to wear in public ready in his room for sudden and
unexpected occasions.
LXXIV. He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally, with great regard to the
rank and personality of his guests. Valerius Messala writes that he never invited a
freedman to dinner with the exception of Menas, and then only when he had been enrolled
among the freeborn after betraying the fleet of Sextus Pompeius. Augustus himself writes
that he once entertained a man at whose villa he used to stop, who had been one of his
body-guard. He would sometimes come to table late on these occasions and leave early,
allowing his guests to begin to dine before he took his place and keep their places after
he went out. He served a dinner of three courses or of six when he was most lavish,
without needless extravagance but with the greatest goodfellowship. For he drew into the
general conversation those who were silent or chatted under their breath, and introduced
music and actors, or even strolling players from the circus, and especially story-tellers.
LXXV. Festivals and holidays he celebrated lavishly as a rule, but sometimes only in a
spirit of fun. On the Saturnalia, and at any other time when he took it into his head, he
would now give gifts of clothing or gold and silver; again coins of every device,
including old pieces of the kings and foreign money; another time nothing but hair cloth,
sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading names of double meaning.
He used also at a dinner party to put up for auction lottery-tickets for articles of most
unequal value, and paintings of which only the back was shown, thus by the caprice of
fortune disappointing or filling to the full the expectations of the purchasers, requiring
however that all the guests should take part in the bidding and share the loss or gain.
LXXVI. He was a light eater (for I would not omit even this detail) and as a rule ate
of plain food. He particularly liked coarse bread, small fishes, handmade moist cheese,
and green figs of the second crop; and he would eat even before dinner, wherever and
whenever he felt hungry. I quote word for word from some of his letters: "I ate a
little bread and some dates in my carriage." And again: "As I was on my homeward
way from the Regia in my litter, I devoured an ounce of bread and a few berries from a
cluster of hard-fleshed grapes." Once more: "Not even a Jew, my dear Tiberius,
fasts so scrupulously on his sabbaths as I have today; for it was not until after the
first hour of the night that I ate two mouthfuls of bread in the bath before I began to be
anointed." Because of this irregularity he sometimes ate alone either before a dinner
party began or after it was over, touching nothing while it was in progress.
LXXVII. He was by nature most sparing also in his use of wine. Cornelius Nepos writes
that in camp before Mutina it was his habit to drink not more than three times at dinner.
Afterwards, when he indulged most freely he never exceeded a pint; or if he did, he used
to throw it up. He liked Raetian wine best, but rarely drank before dinner. Instead he
would take a bit of bread soaked in cold water, a slice of cucumber, a sprig of young
lettuce, or an apple with a tart flavour, either fresh or dried.
LXXVIII. After his midday meal he used to rest for a while just as he was, without
taking off his clothes or his shoes, with his feet uncovered and his hand to his eyes.
After dinner he went to a couch in his study, where he remained till late at night, until
he had attended to what was left of the day's business, either wholly or in great part.
Then he went to bed and slept not more than seven hours at most, and not even that length
of time without a break, but waking three or four times. If he could not resume his sleep
when it was interrupted, as would happen, he sent for readers or story-tellers, and when
sleep came to him he often prolonged it until after daylight. He would never lie awake in
the dark without having someone sit by his side. He detested early rising and when he had
to get up earlier than usual because of some official or religious duty, to avoid
inconveniencing himself he spent the night in the room of one of his friends near the
appointed place. Even so, he often suffered from want of sleep, and he would drop off
while he was being carried through the streets and when his litter was set down because of
some delay.
LXXIX. He was unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life,
though he cared nothing for personal adornment. He was so far from being particular about
the dressing of his hair, that he would have several barbers working in a hurry at the
same time, and as for his beard he now had it clipped and now shaved, while at the very
same time he would either be reading or writing something. His expression, whether in
conversation or when he was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men of
the Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it had softened his heart, and kept
him from carrying out his design of pushing the emperor over a cliff, when he had been
allowed to approach him under the pretence of a conference, as he was crossing the Alps.
He had clear, bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of
divine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked keenly at anyone, if he let
his face fall as if before the radiance of the sun; but in his old age he could not see
very well with his left eye. His teeth were wide apart, small, and ill-kept; his hair was
slightly curly and inclining to golden; his eyebrows met. His ears were of moderate size,
and his nose projected a little at the top and then bent slightly inward. His complexion
was between dark and fair. He was short of stature (although Julius Marathus, his freedman
and keeper of his records, says that he was five feet and nine inches in height [Roman
measure, a little less than five feet seven inches American measure]), but this was
concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his figure, and was noticeable only by
comparison with some taller person standing beside him.
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