kept by him a slave who should kill him when his hour had come; anarchy
had been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished
to laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was
ransacked for its entertainment. The mountain sent its lions, the
desert giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the
plains, and hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas
patricians descended; in the amphitheatre there were criminals from
Gaul; in the Forum philosophers from Greece. On the stage, there were
tragedies, pantomimes and farce; there were races in the circus, and in
the sacred groves girls with the Orient in their eyes and slim waists
that swayed to the crotals. For the thirst of the sovereign there were
aqueducts, and for its hunger Africa, Egypt, Sicily contributed grain.
Syria unveiled her altars, Persia the mystery and magnificence of her
gods.

Such was Rome. Augustus was less noteworthy; so unnecessary even that
every student must regret Actium, Antony's defeat, the passing of
Caesar's dream. For Antony was made for conquests; it was he who,
fortune favoring, might have given the world to Rome. A splendid, an
impudent bandit, first and foremost a soldier, calling himself a
descendant of Hercules whom he resembled; hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus,
in Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, and Teuton in his capacity
for drink; vomiting in the open Forum, and making and unmaking kings;
weaving with that viper of the Nile a romance which is history; passing
initiate into the inimitable life, it would have been curious to have
watched him that last night when the silence was stirred by the hum of
harps, the cries of bacchantes bearing his tutelary god back to the
Roman camp, while he said farewell to love, to empire and to life.

Augustus resembled him not at all. He was a colorless monarch; an
emperor in everything but dignity, a prince in everything but grace; a
tactician, not a soldier; a superstitious braggart, afraid of nothing
but danger; seducing women to learn their husband's secrets; exiling
his daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other
lovers than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end
poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of
speech, and coarse of manner--a hypocrite and a comedian in one--so
guileful and yet so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the
gods to be thanked that Augustus survi