ry, and when Caius Julius Caesar was dead, the people called
him God.

Beardless Octavius, his sister's daughter's son, barely eighteen years
old, brings in by force the golden age of Rome. As Triumvir, with Antony
and Lepidus, he hunts down the murderers first, then his rebellious
colleagues, and wins the Empire back in thirteen years. He rules long
and well, and very simply, as commanding general of the army and by no
other power, taking all into his hands besides, the Senate, the chief
priesthood, and the Majesty of Rome over the whole earth, for which he
was called Augustus, the 'Majestic.' And his strength lay in this, that
by the army, he was master of Senate and people alike, so that they
could no longer strive with each other in perpetual bloodshed, and the
everlasting wars of Rome were fought against barbarians far away, while
Rome at home was prosperous and calm and peaceful. Then Virgil sang, and
Horace gave Latin life to Grecian verse, and smiled and laughed, and
wept and dallied with love, while Livy wrote the story of greatness for
us all to this day, and Ovid touched another note still unforgotten.
Then temple rose by temple, and grand basilicas reared their height by
the Sacred Way; the gold of the earth poured in and Art was queen and
mistress of the age. Julius Caesar was master in Rome for one year.
Augustus ruled nearly half a century. Four and forty years he was sole
monarch after Antony's fall at Actium. About the thirtieth year of his
reign, Christ was born.

All men have an original claim to be judged by the standard of their own
time. Counting one by one the victims of the proscription proclaimed by
the triumvirate in which Augustus was the chief power, some historians
have brought down his greatness in quick declination to the level of a
cold-blooded and cruel selfishness; and they account for his subsequent
just and merciful conduct on the ground that he foresaw political
advantage in clemency, and extension of power in the exercise of
justice. The death of Cicero, sacrificed to Antony's not unreasonable
vengeance, is magnified into a crime that belittles the Augustan age.

Yet compared with the wholesale murders done by Marius and Sylla, and by
the patricians themselves in their struggles with the people, the few
political executions ordered by Augustus sink into comparative
insignificance, and it will generally be seen that those who most find
fault with him are ready to extol the murderer