Invocation of the Gods_. But except for one law which he caused to be
enacted "concerning the priesthoods," we have no knowledge either of his
accomplishment or of his intentions, and the great task was left
practically untouched for the master-hand of Augustus.

In order that we may understand what Augustus did and how he managed to
succeed in relation to the state religion we must obtain some idea of
the whole scheme of Augustus in relation to the state at large, of which
his religious reorganisation was merely a part. One of the cleverest
characterisations of the Emperor Augustus which has ever been written
was that by the late Professor Mommsen, but its relatively secluded
position in the Latin preface to an edition of Augustus's great
autobiography, the _Res Gestae_, has prevented it from being generally
known. Mommsen describes Augustus as "a man who wore most skilfully the
mask of a great man, though himself not great." This epigrammatic
statement is undoubtedly clever but it is not just, although it is the
opinion concerning Augustus which we would expect a man to hold who,
like Mommsen, had an almost unbounded admiration for Julius Caesar.
There have been scattered through the pages of history even down to our
own day men of whom we say that they were not great men, though they did
a great work. In certain cases doubtless we can separate the man from
his work and justify the assertion, but in other cases we are deceived
by the man himself just as his contemporaries were and as he wished them
to be. For it occasionally happens that a man who is called to rule over
men and to reorganise a disordered government is able best to accomplish
his end by a gentle diplomacy, a conciliatory manner, which is often
misunderstood by those who surround him and who interpret gentleness of
spirit as smallness of spirit and self-restraint as weakness. It would
be truer to describe Augustus as a man who wore most skilfully the mask
of an ordinary man though himself an extraordinary man. The more we
study the chaotic condition of Rome under the Second Triumvirate and the
more fully we realise not only the total disorganisation of the forms of
government but also the absolute demoralisation of the individual
citizen, the more we appreciate the almost impossible task which was set
for Augustus and which he successfully accomplished. For one hundred
years (B.C. 133-31), from Tiberius Gracchus to Actium, hardly a decade
had passed whi