hem I
must record curtly that he stopped all factional disputes, transformed
the government in a way to give it power, and strengthened it greatly.
Therefore if any deed of violence is encountered,--as is often bound to
happen when the face of a situation shifts unexpectedly,--one might more
justly blame the circumstances themselves than him.

Not the smallest factor in his glory was the length of his reign. The
majority of those that had lived under a democracy and the more powerful
had time to die. Those who were left, knowing nothing of that form of
government and having been reared entirely or mostly under existing
conditions, were not only not displeased with them,--they had become so
familiar,--but took delight in them, for they saw that these were better
and more free from terror than others of which they heard.

[-45-] Though the people knew this during his life they nevertheless
realized it more fully after his decease. Human nature is so constituted
that in good fortune it does not perceive its prosperity so fully as it
misses it when evil days arrive. This was the case then in regard to
Augustus. When they found his successor Tiberius not the same sort of
man they longed for the previous emperor. Persons with their wits about
them had some immediate evidence of the change in the constitution.
The consul Pompeius, who went out to meet the men bearing the body of
Augustus, received a blow in the leg and had to be carried back with the
body. An owl sat over the senate-house again at the very first sitting of
the senate after his death and uttered many ill-omened cries. The two men
differed so from each other that some suspected that Augustus with full
knowledge of Tiberius's character had purposely appointed him for
successor to the end that he himself might have greater glory. This
began to be rumored at a later date.

[-46-] At this time they declared Augustus immortal and assigned to him
attendants and sacred rites, making Livia (who was already called Julia
and Augusta) his priestess. Permission was granted Livia to employ a
lictor during the services. And she bestowed upon a certain Numerius
Atticus, a senatorial expraetor, twenty-five myriads because he swore that
he had seen Augustus ascending into heaven after the manner described in
the cases of Proclus and of Romulus. A herouem voted by the senate and
built by Livia and Tiberius was erected to the dead emperor in Rome,
and others at many different po