and Agrippa, so that there is no need of my
enumerating the names. Augustus had two qualities, too, which were never
united in any one else. Some conquerors, I know, have spared their
enemies and others have refused to allow their companions to give way
to license. But both sorts of behavior at once, continually without any
exception, were never found in the same man. Here is evidence. Sulla and
Marius treated as enemies even the children of those who fought against
them. Why need I cite the other less important men? Pompey and Caesar were
in general guiltless of this conduct, but permitted their friends to do
not a few things that were contrary to their own principles. But this
man had each of the two virtues so fused and intermingled that to his
adversaries he made defeat look like victory and to his comrades he
showed a happiness in excellence.

[-39-] "After doing this and quieting by kindness all that remained of
factional disputes and imposing temperance by his benefits upon the
victorious military, he might as a result of this and the weapons and the
money at his command have been indisputably the sole lord of everything,
as, indeed, he had been made by the very course of events. Yet he
refused, and like a good physician, who takes in hand a disease-ridden
body and heals it, he restored everything to you after making it well.
And to what this action amounted you can best realize from the fact that
our fathers spoke in praise of Pompey and Metellus, who was formerly
prominent, because they voluntarily disbanded the forces with which they
had been engaged in war. Now if they, who had but a small force and a
merely temporary one and besides saw opponents who would not allow them
to do otherwise,--if they received praise for doing this,--how could one
speak fittingly of the magnanimity of Augustus? He held all your forces,
however great, he was master of all your funds, vast in amount, had no
one to fear or suspect: but whereas he might have ruled alone with the
approval of all, he would not accept such a course, but laid the arms,
the provinces, the money at your feet. Wherefore you with wise insistence
and proper prudence would not have it nor allow him to retire to private
life; you knew well that democracy would never accommodate itself to such
tremendous interests, but that the superintendence of a single person
would most surely preserve them, and so refused what was nominally
independence but really factional d