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What people over the ages say about him
These are some of the comments made by contemporaries and historians of Augustus, arranged by authors or speakers. This is not about his era nor his policies per se.
[I purposely added typos, left out the exact citations and where passages begin and end, so students should refer to the books or papers.]
Mark Antony
You, boy, who owe everything to a name. (Cicero Philippic 13.11)
Baring-Gould. The tragedy of the Caesars: a study of the characters of the Caesars of the Julian and Claudian houses.
To my mind, this young face [of a bust of Augustus] is very instructive. The first impression produced is that of the abnormal development of the upper portion of the head, either the result of disease or of a great amount of brain. This remained through life, and marks Caesar Augustus out as a man of very exceptional well-balanced intellectual power, but destitute of imagination, The face is cold; it is self-controlled, The mouth is not sensitive, and there is not the trace of a smile on it. Julius Caesar was self-controlled, but his contrail was over deep feelings and passions that had swept through his soul, and had been grappled with and subdued. There are no deep feelings, no tempestuous passions in Octavius. The face is not insincere, but it is not frank.
Barrow. The Romans.
Octavianus, now Caesar Augustus, strove by every measure, direct and indirect, to ensure that the Roman tradition should triumph. He dammed up the flood of Hellenistic influence, and opened every gate which would admit the Roman genius and its accumulated experience. He rebuilt the temples, he restored standards in morals and conduct, he set a new fashion of work and devotion to duty. He left his mark on every branch of administration; his praise encouraged poets and historians to spread abroad the old Roman ideals and pride in them, his good sense attached to him the middle classes of Italy, still sound at heart, and recruited from them honest administrators and provincial governors. His efforts in large measure succeeded because men wished them to succeed. Eventually they contributed to bring about the unity of mankind—as far as it then could be—from the West by means of Western ideas of human personality and ordered freedom; and those ideas were not conspicuous in the past history of the East.
[H]e rebuilt the state, using the materials of the Republic, and claimed, with ample justice in theory, that he had 'restored the Republic', while he excelled others only in 'authority' (auctoritas), a word with a long and honoured Republican tradition.
Buchan. Augustus.
The mainspring of his life was the Stoic precept: “We also must be soldiers, and in a campaign where there is no intermission and no discharge.”
Carter. Battle of Actium.
Where Antony had observed the strictest Octavian was ready to pay a political trump card in order to win a proscribed and exiled enemy of long standing to his side. The difference was typical of the attitudes of the two men, the one reluctant to pick a quarrel, the other making sure it would turn out in his favour.
Not the least of Augustus’s contributions to the stability of Rome in the next two centuries was to debilitate the ancient tradition whereby military achievement was the high road to success in public life. But his supreme feat was undoubtedly to put real political power beyond reach of competition...
Peace, prosperity, and justice were the noble, if unexciting, objectives of Augustus’s mature years. In large measure he achieved them, and for all the unpleasant nature of his rise to power, his rule brought nothing but good to the millions of ordinary citizens of the Roman world.
Cary and Scullard. A history of Rome down to the reign of Constantine.
The reign of Augustus was as much the turning-point of Roman history as Roman history was the pivot of ancient history in general. Yet the central figure in Roman history was one of its least heroic personages. Augustus had none of the immense vitality, the wide imagination and' the quick decision that distinguished Caesar. Neither was he carried along by any strong sense of a religious mission. His piety, though sincere, was that of the old-fashioned Italian type which might sustain but could not compel. It is note-worthy that in the Res Gestae or summary of his achievements, which he caused to be inscribed on the portals of his Mausoleum, he nowhere represented himself as the chosen instrument of a divine purpose. He possessed little of that personal charm with which some of the world's successful rulers have made up for their natural deficiencies.
If we seek to explain how such an unimpressive person could leave such a deep mark on history we must in the first place make a liberal allowance for the element of luck. In his first mad gamble for power Augustus enjoyed the support of Caesar's old soldiers. During the Triumvirate Antony played into his hands, both as a colleague and as an enemy. At this period and in the early years of his reign Augustus was well served by his fighting man and first minister, Agrippa, and his confidential adviser, Maecenas. Finally, he had forty years of unopposed power, during which his political system had time to be well tested and amended in its details.
But over and above his good fortune Augustus possessed two personal qualities which I in a statesman outweigh all others. On the one' hand he was remarkably candid to himself as ~ to his own limitations. He was content to take one step at a time, and then to pause until he could see his way more clearly. He did not keep in his own hands, but willingly delegated to others, tasks for which he had no skill or leisure. On the other, once he had decided that a given task was in his power, he pursued it with stead- fast determination. He refused to be discouraged by his mistakes, but tried one key after another until he had fitted the lock.
Cicero.
The young man should be praised, honoured, and immortalised. (Cicero Ad Fam. 11.20.1, translated by Pat Southern)
Crook. "Augustus: Power, Authority, Achievement."
He stands between what we recognize (or have created for our own convenience) as two ages of European history, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. But was he, after all, the 'architect' of the Empire? Or was he just the culminating 'dynast' thrown up by the 'Roman Revolution', a process of change that began with Sulla, or even the Gracchi, and had its own momentum, so that even if Antony had won at Actium or Augustus had died in 2.3 B.C. the Roman Republic would still have been succeeded by the Roman Empire? What specific contribution is it possible to attribute to Augustus within that massive historical process? Perhaps just this much (if only by slipping back into biography): if Julius Caesar or Antony had been the culminating dynast there would, very likely, still have been a Roman Empire, but it would, very likely, have had a different face. The characteristic structure of the Empire, in which so much of what was new was based so firmly on what was old, is likely to have owed something to the particular cast of mind of its first ruler - narrow, pragmatic and traditionalist. Augustus was equated, in his time, with most of the gods of the Roman pantheon; today, we might think him best fitted by one he was not equated with, Janus, as he steered the Roman world into the future with his eyes fixed on the values of the past. Plutarch records a saying of his (it matters little whether vero or ben trovato): when somebody told him that Alexander, after his conquests, had been at a loss what to do next, Augustus said he was surprised that Alexander had not realized that a greater job than acquiring empire was getting it into shape when you had acquired it. The shape of the Roman Empire was his contribution.
Eck. The Age of Augustus.
His actions were at no time uncontroversial, even if no one dared to criticize them publicly from the end of the twenties BC onward. In his Annals Tacitus allows both opponents and allies of the princeps to speak at Augustus’ funeral, but it is characteristic that even in this sharp characterization the differing judgments are limited almost exclusively to the period of the triumvirate. The accusations raised include cruelty, duplicity and a craving for power. Even Augustus’ most vocal critics could not place his political achievements in doubt, however. He refounded the res publica in the form of a monarchy, granted a new political status to the provinces, and achieved a solid peace for most of the empire. None of his successors as ruler of the Roman empire could present a similar balance sheet. And what statesman of later ages could enter into competition with him?
Firth, John D. Augustus Caesar and the organization of the empire of Rome.
Fortune certainly favoured him, and the phrase "Sis felicior Augusto" became the recognised salutation to the Throne. But he deserved fortune because he put himself in Fortune's way. He owed nothing to good luck in his patient reorganisation of the Empire. While others would have remained in Rome to enjoy in ease the fruits of victory, Augustus spent many years in journeying through his dominions and setting the crooked straight.
We have said that Augustus was without imagination. Perhaps that is too sweeping a judgment to pass upon the man who rebuilt Rome on so splendid a scale. Yet even here we suspect that his main idea was to impress the imagination of others.
He had, in a word, the practical imagination which goes to make a successful business man and a practical statesman. Chateaubriand has said that Augustus did not belong to the select company of that first class of men who make revolutions, but rather to the second class who profit by them. There is much truth in that saying. If there had been no Julius, there would have been no Augustus. But this does not derogate from his greatness. His work endured—there lies its justification.
Holmes. Architect of the Roman Empire.
Two great benefits were alone enough to render his principate memorable: the happiness of the provinces...[the establishment] for generations the Pax Romana.
Jones. Augustus.
Under the Republic leading statesmen had been called princeps civitatis, now there was one princeps who overshadowed all the rest. The title was admirably fitted to Augustus’ policy; it implied no powers, but only authority.
Galinsky. Augustan Culture.
Few cultural periods in the history of the world have taken their name from their rulers for intrinsic rather than convenient reasons: political power and cultural creativity are not often related. The age of Augustus was different: when Horace said tua aetas, Caesar (‘your era, Augustus”), he had more than politics in mind.
All this would have sufficed for Augustus’ reign not only to gain the gratitude of his contemporaries...but to secure a firm place in Roman history. The distinctive aspect of Augustan culture, however, is precisely that it went beyond purely material aspects and satisfaction and was inspired by ideas, ideals, and values. These found their expression across the wide spectrum of government, social policy, art, literature, and religion. At their core was the revitalization of the mores of the res publica; a program of moral legislation, to give but one example had already been urged by Cicero on Caesar.
These guiding ideas, which do not amount to an ideology in the modern sense, received further elaboration from all sides and therefore their expression was anything but uniform. It ranged from assent to disagreement, but the ideas themselves stood at the centre of much of the discussion and thus contributed greatly to the intellectual and cultural vitality of the period. The shape they were given to especially in Augustan poetry and art transcended the time and made such concepts models for subsequent developments in Western culture.
King and Cohen. “Asthma among the famous: Augustus Caesar (63 B.C.-A.D. 14): First Emperor of Rome.”
True, "Rome was not built in one day", but how much more time would have been required for bringing the goal to fruition had it not been for Augustus' imaginative, foresighted, and effective initiatives. For he ". . . found Rome built of bricks; (and left) her clothed in marble.”
Lacey. Augustus and the Principate: The Evolution of the System.
In the simplest analysis Octavian/Augustus fought his way to the position of Princeps without scruple or pity; civil war, as Tacitus remarked (Ann 1.9.3) does not admit of civilised behaviour. Whether he could have worked in a system in which he was not sole ruler is a matter of psychology, guesswork or the political philosophy of the observer and other imponderable factors; whether a less ruthless or less crafty man could have done it remains in the same field of guesswork.
His methods were based on a cold realism in identifying the essential in each situation, his caution and his gift for public relations.
Le Glay, et al. A History of Rome.
His political genius lay precisely in his grasp of the fact that, the better to establish his personal power, he had to preserve the Republic, even to consolidate the outward appearance of its institutions in order to empty them of their content.
McCullough. October Horse. [Fiction]
Octavian in a conversation with Julius Caesar:
"Oh, yes. In my heart I am a Caesar."
"A Gaius Julius Caesar?"
"No, merely a Julian of the Caesares."
"Who are your heroes?"
"You," Octavius said simply. Just you." He slid off the back of the couch. "Please excuse me, Uncle
Gaius, Cousin Lucius. My mother made me promise that I'd go home early."
The two men left on the lectus medius watched the slight figure leave the room without drawing attention to himself.
"Well, well, well," drawled Lucius.
"What do you think of him, Lucius?"
"He's a thousand years old."
"Give or take a century or two, yes. Do you like him?"
"It's plain you do, but do I? Yes—with reservations."
"Expatiate."
"He's not a Julian of the Caesares, much though he may think he is. Oh, there are echoes of the old Patriciate, but also echoes of a mind never shaped in the patrician mold. I can't catalogue his style, yet I know he has one. It may well be that Rome hasn't seen his style before."
"You're saying he's going to go far."
The vivid blue eyes twinkled. "A fool I am not, Gaius!...”
When Maecenas got his breath back, he stared at his furniture through a veil of tears. Several fell when his eyes reached his big, comfortable bed, but Gaius Maecenas was no fool. The lovely lad had exuded a strange authority. No arrogance, no hauteur, no coldness...
So when Salvidienus returned several hours later, he found the room stripped of its trappings, and Gaius Maecenas seated at a plain folding table, his ample behind on a folding stool.
Out came a manicured hand. "I apologize, my dear Quintus Salvidienus," said Maecenas. "If we're to live together for many moons, then we'd best learn to get along. I'm soft, but I'm not a fool. If I annoy you, tell me. I'll do the same."
"1 accept your apology," said Salvidienus, who understood a few things about behavior too. "Octavius visited, did he?"
"Who is he?" Maecenas asked
"Caesar's nephew. Have you been issued orders?"
"Oh, no," said Maecenas. "That's not his style."
Museum of Fine Arts—“Two Marble Heads of the Emperor”
Probably no man of ancient times was more generally honored by the dedication of portrait statues than the Emperor Augustus, whose diplomatic and military genius, enforced by an indomitable will, restored civil order after a generation of conflict, and imposed the pax Romana on the Mediterranean world.
Orosius.
And so in the 752nd year from the founding of the city, Caesar Augustus, having organized all peoples under one peace from the East to the West, from the North to the South and throughout the whole circuit of the Ocean, closed the gates of Janus himself for the third time. From that time for almost twelve years it was ever very peaceful, so that rust marked the gates bathed in peace And so, having closed the gates of Janus, zealous to nourish and enlarge the state, which he had sought after in war, he promulgated many laws through which the human race might live morally with self-disciplined reverence And so at that time, that is in the year in which Caesar had established the most secure and truest peace by the dispensation of God, Christ was born, for whose advent this peace was shape. [History Against the Pagans Book 6 chapter 22 (translation from Reinhold)]
Pliny the Elder
Also in the case of his late Majesty Augustus, whom the whole of mankind enrols n the list of happy men, if all the facts were carefully weighed, great revolutions of man's lot could be discovered: his failure with his uncle in regard to the office of Master of the Horse, when the candidate opposing him, Lepidus, was preferred; he hatred caused by the proscription; his association in the triumvirate with the wickedest citizens, and that not with an equal share of power but with Antony predominant; his flight in the battle of Philippi when he was suffering from disease, and his three days' hiding in a marsh, in spite of his illness and his swollen dropsical condition (as stated by Agrippa and Maecenas); his shipwreck off Sicily, and there also another period of hiding in a cave; his entreaties to Proculeius to kill him, in the naval rout when a detachment of the enemy was already pressing close at hand; the anxiety of the struggle at Perugia, the alarm of the Battle of Actium, his fall from a tower in the Pannonian Wars; and all the mutinies in his troops, all his critical illnesses, his suspicion of Marcellus' ambitions, the disgrace of Agrippa's banishment, the many plots against his life, the charge of causing the death of his children; and his sorrows that were not due solely to bereavement, his daughter's adultery and the disclosure of her plots against her father's life, the insolent withdrawal of his stepson Nero, another adultery, that of his grand-daughter; then the long series of misfortunes-lack of army funds, rebellion of Illyria, enlistment of slaves, shortage of man-power, plague at Rome, famine in Italy, resolve on suicide and death more than half achieved by four days' starvation; next the disaster of Varus and the foul slur upon his dignity; the disowning of Postumius Agrippa after his adoption as heir, and the sense of loss that followed his banishment; then his suspicion in regard to Fabius and the betrayal of secrets; afterwards the intrigues of his wife and Tiberius that tormented his latest days. In fine, this god—whether deified more by his own action or by his merits I know not—departed from life leaving his enemy's son his heir. [Natural History 7.147-150 translated by H. Rackham]
Raaflaub and Samons. “Opposition to Augustus.”
[O]n the one hand, the potential impact of the various lectiones of the senate and other mechanisms of control available to the princeps; on the other, his extraordinary political insight and skills-and his humanitas. Only if we combine all these elements in a comprehensive system of interacting factors, shall we be able to understand fully why, contrary to all expectations, opposition to Augustus was scattered, isolated, ineffective, and, overall minimal.
Shotter. Augustus Caesar.
History sees Augustus Caesar as the first Emperor of Rome, who brought the city and the Empire from the chaos of civil war of a system of ordered government. Of this overall achievement there is no doubt, for Augustus provided the firm and stable basis from which sprang the expansion and prosperity of the next two centuries, and which enabled Rome and the Empire to withstand the waywardness of many of the emperors who came after Augustus.
Octavian (as he was then known) displayed a consummate ability to utilise people’s services, to play men off against each other, and to maintain a convincing self-righteousness in the most unpromising of situations. Such were the ingredients of charisma in a man who from his earliest years proved himself to be a mature demagogue and a deft manipulator of opinion.
Still more remarkable was the fact that, having Achieved supremacy by his defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC, Augustus proceeded to provide the Roman state with a form of permanent governmental supervision. Many had come to see this as necessary, but many, more mature than he, had come to grief in the effort to find an acceptable formula for such supervision.
Shuckburg. Augustus Caesar.
Yet Augustus was the most successful ruler known to us. He found his world, as it seemed, on the verge of complete collapse. He evoked order out of chaos; got rid one after the other of every element of opposition; established what was practically a new form of government without too violent a breach with the past; breathed fresh meaning into old names and institutions, could stand forth as a reformer rather than an innovator, while even those who lost most by the change were soothed into submission without glaring loss of self-respect. He worked ceaselessly to maintain the order thus established, and nearly every part of his great empire had reason to be grateful for increased security, expanding prosperity, and added amenity of life. Nor can it be said that he reaped the credit due in truth to ministers He bad excellent ministers and agents, with abilities in this or that direction superior to his own; but none who could take his place a whole. He was the centre from which their activities radiated : he was the inspirer, the careful organiser, the unwearied manipulator of details to whom all looked, and seldom in vain, for supported and guidance. We may add this to a dignity never forgotten, enhanced by a physical beauty and grace which helped to secure reverence for his person and office, and established a sentiment which the unworthiness of some of his successors could not wholly destroy.
Slaughter. “The Character of Augustus.”
Through the portals of sleep there came a dream to Cicero: A youth, comely in face and figure, let down by a golden chain from heaven, stood by the entrance to the Capitol and there received from the hand of Jupiter a whip of gold. Chancing the next day at the Capitol to meet the young Octavius, who had come up to Rome to witness one of the triumphs of his to witness one of the triumphs of his uncle, Julius Caesar, Cicero recognized in him the youth of his vision and related his dream to the bystanders. Was the whip of gold a scourge with which he was later to chastise his adoptive father’s murderers, or was it symbolical rather of a beneficent power destined to bring peace to the troubled Roman world? Both interpretations are true, despite the apparent contradiction.
Men gaze at the various busts of Augustus that have come down to us and proceed to read into his features their own preconceived notions of his character. Was it Niebuhr who protested that he could not work with calmness and composure in a room where stood the head of the young Augustus, because, forsooth, the youth was too calm and composed?
It is quite impossible to understand Augustus unless his intense earnestness is recognized. The attempt to account for what he did on the grounds of pretence, of play acting, of a conscious and continuous betrayal of the state in his own interest leads nowhere and ends in confusion.
That he failed to restore the republic in any real sense was not so much due to the fact that he himself occupied a unique position and held powers and exercised office in such a way as virtually to annul the constitution or to call for strained interpretations of it as it was due to the faulty human material with which he had to deal. To be the most privileged among the privileged does not necessarily spell monarch or king or feudal lord; it may mean, as Augustus insisted it did mean, in his case, princeps dignitate, and it may mean greatest servant and benefactor.
That Augustus was able to accomplish so much in the way of improving the condition of things in Rome and Italy and the provinces is largely due to his success or good fortune in choosing his helpers. In this respect he is again brought into striking contrast with his far more brilliant uncle. The friends of Julius slew him. Augustus’ friends remained true to him, some of them from his youth to his old age; others, once opponents but later his warm supporters, gave him constant and loyal assistance. It was not an accident that he had as his helpers men like Maecenas and Agrippa, nor that men like Messala and Asinius Pollio, once in open and armed opposition, found it possible to accept service under him in a manner entirely consistent with their dignity and with a high sense of personal honor. Such friends are not made and kept by mere shrewdness nor by the skillful cleverness of a political opportunist.
Anything like the close personal affection that Maecenas won seemed impossible between Augustus and the men of letters who did so much to glorify his deeds. An element of reserve in Augustus, of coldness, if you will, prevented such a relationship. Augustus made no attempt to coerce their wills, but accepted what they could give. To Horace, who had declined the post of private secretary to him, Augustus writes, "Even if you have in your pride spurned my friendship, I do not mean to act haughtily in return." And later, "Are you afraid that to posterity it will be a disgrace to you to have been a friend of mine?"
Southern. Augustus.
He became expert at transferring the blame for any disturbance onto his opponents, while presenting himself as the innocent injured party.
The battle of Actium, so important in modern histories as a terminus or a beginning, both lauded and reviled as the birth of a new era, was actually something of a damp squib when it was fought. It was the preparation, long and thorough, focused and determined, which made it so decisive.
Syme. The Roman Revolution.
It was the avowed purpose of that statesman to suggest and demonstrate a sharp line of division in his career between two periods, the first of deplorable but necessary illegalities, the second of constitutional government. So well did he succeed that in later days, confronted with the separate persons of Octavianus the Triumvir, author of the proscriptions, and Augustus the Princeps, the beneficent magistrate, men have been at a loss to account for the transmutation, and have surrendered their reason to extravagant fancies. Julian the Apostate invoked philosophy to explain it. The problem does not exist: Julian was closer to the point when he classified Augustus as a chameleon. Colour changed, but not substance.
[T]he Princeps stood pre-eminent, in virtue of prestige and authority tremendous and not to be defined. Auctoritas is the word-his enemies would have called it potentia. They were right. Yet the ‘Restoration of the Republic’ was not merely a solemn comedy, staged by a hypocrite.
From the beginning his sense for realities was unerring.
But his rule was justified by merit, founded upon consent and tempered by duty. Augustus stood like a soldier, ‘in statione’—for the metaphor, though it may have parallels in the language of the Stoics, is Roman and military. He would not desert his post until a higher command relieved him, his duty done and a successor left on guard. Augustus used the word ‘statio’: so did contemporaries.
Augustus’ rule was dominion over all the world. To the Roman People his relationship was that of Father, Founder and Guardian.
Augustus’ relation to the Roman Commonwealth might also be described as organic rather than arbitrary or formal. It was said that he arrogated to himself all the functions of Senate, magistrates and laws (Tacitus Ann I.2). Truly—but more penetrating the remark that he entwined himself about the body of the Commonwealth. The new member reinvigorated the whole and could not have been severed without damage (Seneca, De clem I,4,3).
His rule was personal, if ever rule was, and his position became ever more monarchic. Yet with all this, Augustus was not indispensable—that was the greatest triumph of all. Had he died in the early years of the Principate, his party would have survived, led by Agrippa, or by a group of the marshals. But Augustus lived on, a progressive miracle of duration.
It had been Augustus’ most fervent prayer that he might lay the foundations of the new order deep and secure. He had done more than that. The Roman State, based firmed on a united Italy and a coherent Empire, was completely renovated, with new institutions, new ideas and even a new literature that was already classical. The doom of Empire had borne on Rome, with threatened ruin. But now the reinvigorated Roman People, robust and cheerful, could bear the burden with pride as well as with security.
Like Augustus, his Res Gestae are unique, defying verbal definition and explaining themselves. From the beginning, from his youthful emergence as a revolutionary leader in public sedition and armed violence, the heir of Caesar had endured to the end. He died on the anniversary of the day when he assumed his first consulate after the march on Rome. Since then, fifty-six years had elapsed. Throughout, in act and policy, he remained true to himself and the career that began when he raised a private army and ‘liberated the State from the domination of a faction’. Dux had become Princeps and had converted a party into a government. For power he had sacrificed everything; he had achieved the height of all mortal ambition and in his ambition he had saved and regenerated the Roman People.
Syme. “A Roman post-mortem: an inquest on the fall of the Roman Republic.”
Compared with what went before and what came after, the Age of Augustus acquires the paradoxical dignity of an obscure and highly controversial period. Recourse must be had to official document—with due caution; to the Augustan poets—again with due caution. And silence itself will revealing. Important truths are often awkward truths, to be covered and disguised, from fear, from complicity, or for comfort.
Tacitus. The Annals.
Book 1.1 – 10.
Waddy. Pax Romana and World Peace.
Augustus, in contrast, always took his time over decisions if it was possible, and carefully went over his facts again and again. He could never be described as a dreamer. Julius almost contemptuously rejected compromise and pretence. Augustus made self-control and patience his unfailing principles, and felt his way by slow experiment towards a constitutional settlement which was admitted to be a compromise. And so, whereas Julius called forth extremes of loyalty and hatred, Augustus only slowly acquired respect and devotion among his subjects—slowly, but very surely. Julius was killed because he aspired to be too great too quickly. Augustus died peacefully, in his seventy-seventh year, after wielding for half a lifetime power greater than even Julius can have contemplated, power which had come to him because he was prepared to wait for it. Julius may have been the greater man, and he certainly had more brilliant gifts; but Augustus was the greater Roman.
[After Actium] So far he had only been able to destroy; it remained to be seen whether he had it in him to create and fulfil. He knew, as everyone else except a few intractables knew, that a single strong hand must guide the Roman world into peace; but he also knew that it must be done with tact, and in such a way as to inspire genuine loyalty.
Wallace-Hadrill. Augustan Rome.
...Augustus would be there to keep an eye on things, as a sort of guardian angel, to exercise what the Romans called a tutela or cura, a role of guardian or protector. He had saved the state in the past, and his job was to keep it safe. That was a role which could not possibly be deemed or circumscribed in legal terms.
His role was more like that of a god than a man: a limitless power, to save human life and bring order to the world. Just as Jupiter and the other gods were vital for Rome's success, and possessed of almost incomprehensibly vast powelli, yet obviously did not owe their powers to the senate and people, so Augustus' power approximated to the divine. His role left him shuttling between the human and the divine. Of course he was mortal, and a Roman citizen, and many of the functions he perfonned were human and traditionally Roman. But one could think of him as being on loan from heaven - a supennan, sent down by Jupiter to help where no ordinary human aid could avail. We should be very careful not to dismiss language like this, which is pervasive in the poets of the day, as a type of rather tasteless flattery. They were struggling to give words to the inexpressible. They were attempting to articulate a relationship which had no real precedent in Roman tradition.
William. Augustus. [Fiction]
From a fictitious letter by Maecenas to Livy:
My friend, I must confess to you (though you may not use it) that I was in no profound way impressed with Octavius upon that occasion of our first meeting. I had just come down to Brindisi from Arezzo and after more than ten days of traveling, I was weary to the bone, filthy with the dust of the road, and irritable. I came upon them at the pier from which we were to embark. Agrippa and Salvidienus were talking together, and Octavius stood somewhat apart from them, gazing at a small ship that was anchored nearby. They had given no sign of noticing my approach. I said, somewhat too loudly, I imagine: “I am the Maecenas who was to meet you here. Which of you is which?”
Agrippa and Salvidienus looked at me amusedly and gave me their names; Octavius did not turn; and thinking that I saw arrogance and disdain in his back, I said: “And you must be the other, whom they call Octavius.”
Then he turned, and I knew that I was foolish; for there was an almost desperate shyness on his face. He said: “Yes, I am Gaius Octavius. My uncle has spoken of you.” Then he smiled and offered me his hand and raised his eyes and looked at me for the first time.
Winspear and Geweke. Augustus and the Reconstruction of Roman Government and Society.
The best tribute to the work of Augustus is not the fact that under him the provinces were well and fairly governed, but that under his successor—the morose and unpopular Tiberius, the mad Caligula, the pedantic and ineffectual Claudius,—relative equity and relative justice continued to prevail; the provinces knew little and cared less about the personal qualities of their Caesars. In the unspectacular arts of peaceful and careful government rather that in the unsubstantial glories of war and conquest or the empty thrills of revolution, the real greatness of Caesar Augustus consists. “The right ordering if the empire he had won was a heavier task than the winning of it.”
Yavetz. “The Res Gestae and Augustus’ Public Image.”
I suspect that Augustus would have gloated over the frustration of twentieth- century scholars, still at pains to understand his enigmatic personality, and finding him 'puzzling, elusive, baffling and inscrutable’—like the Sphinx engraved upon his signet ring.
But could they have altogether denied the fact that at a certain moment a vast majority in Rome felt like Favonius, who had to admit that civil war was worse than an illegal monarchy?
Mutatis mutandis, he would have gladly accepted a Guicciardini’s appraisal of a Lorenzo Magnifico: he may have been a tyrant, but it would have been impossible to find ‘Un tiranno migliorc e più piacevolc’–a better and more pleasant tyrant.
Yavetz. “The Personality of Augustus.”
Augustus used to soften his actions with a good joke and to sweeten the pill for his victims with his sense of humor.
His tact served him well in his dealings with the upper classes.
His patience made it easy for him to attend long and boring meetings of the senate and listen to silly and incompetent speeches, which would have driven mad a man of Julius Caesar’s type. Only a tactful man like Augustus could succeed in putting the senators in charge of the traffic likes of the empire—with the assurance that green lights would be turned on whenever his carriage was about to go through.
He got what he wanted front writers and poets without giving explicit orders. His behavior toward the common people won them over,
He never dictated letters during a circus performance, because he kept in mind the most important of Roman political behavior: Idem est quod datur, sed interest quomodo detur.
He hated people who made unreasonable requests of him; therefore he did not pander to the masses in a cheap way and never gave in to extortion. He did only what he promised to do, no less and no more. This was a remarkable achievement, which demanded the utmost tact, flexibility patience, and moderation-four qualities that were conspicuous by their absence in Julius Caesar’s political behavior.
I dare say that Julius Caesar tried to rape Rome and therefore failed. Augustus seduced Rome and Therefore succeeded. This is the only meaning of dulcedine otii cunctos pellexit.
It is not easy to translate into Latin a phrase like ” Lepide et verecunde”, 1 would suggest “He behaved tactfully” conveys it best. This was Augustus’ style.
Zanker. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus.
Yet the figure of Augustus himself had since antiquity been subject to critical appraisal, and not only from "Republicans" like Tacitus, Voltaire, and Theodor Mommsen. Even in the 1930s the craze for Augustus did not go unchallenged. Significantly, Sir Ronald Syme's celebrated book The Roman Revolution appeared in England in 1939.
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