148 DOMESTIC RELATIONS OF AUGUSTUS—LIVIA.
sucli ns Augustus’ conduct in the war of Philippi; but there
are circumstances in which he showed undoubted courage, as
in the war against Sext. Pompeius He was a bad general,
and was not favoured by fortune either on the field of battle
or in his domestic relations. I have already described to you
his dishonesty and cruelty, but a redeeming feature in his
character is that he was a friend to his friends, and even bore
patiently from them things which others would not have
brooked. Thus he acted towards Agrippa and Maecenas, to
whom he was both grateful and faithful.
Iu his domestic relations he acted as a man without character
or principle. He had been betrothed at first to Clodia, a step-
daughter of M. Antony, but the connexion was dissolved, and
he married Scribonia, who became by him the mother of the
ill-famed Julia. He subsequently divorced her and married
Livia Drusilla, the wife of Tiberius Claudius Aero, who was
proscribed and attached to the cause of Brutus, and who seems
to me to have been one of the better men of the Claudian
family. He was obliged by Augustus to give up Livia, a
woman of a fearful character; she was so ambitious to raise
the members of her own family to power and influence, that
she never scrupled to commit any crime, if she thought it a fit
means to attain her ends. She contrived very gradually to
acquire unlimited power over Augustus. Notwithstanding
the strict moral laws of his censorship and his other measures,
Augustus himself was a dissolute man; and Livia connived at
his conduct, in order to establish her influence over him the
more firmly. Her success was most complete, and the older
she grew (she was his wife for nearly fifty years) the greater
was the power she exercised over her imperial husband. She
was exceedingly clever and intelligent, and, in her younger
years, must have been a woman of extraordinary beau tv. She
worked perseveringly for a long scries of years to secure the
ascendancy to the members of her own family, and to isolate
Augustus from his own relatives. She never bore Augustus
any children, except a son who was still-born. So long as
Octavia, the half-sister of Augustus, and the most honourable
among the later ladies of Bome, lived and had any prospects
for her son M. Marcellus, who was married to Augustus’
daughter Julia, Livia seemed to stand in the back ground;
but, as soon as Marcellus died, and Augustus gave Julia in
AGRIPPA
149
marriage to Agrippa, a man who, even before this, had raised
himselfso high that, if Augustus had not loved him he would
have feared him, things assumed a different appearance. Julia
had by Marcellus only a daughter.
Agrippa was considerably older than Augustus; he had
accompanied him to Apollonia as a sort of tutor, and Caesar
had probably intended to take him, together with his nephew,
on his eastern expedition, as was the custom when young
Romans of the age of seventeen entered upon their first
campaign, as we see in the case of Lollius and C. Caesar.
Previously to the time when he went to Apollonia nothing is
mentioned about Agrippa, and he is said to have been descended
from a very obscure family2, and was probably born in some
country place. In the wars of Caesar he is not mentioned.
In his later years he displayed all the qualities of an expe-
rienced general, and much good may be said of him. Thebest
period of the reign of Augustus was unquestionably that during
which he had Agrippa by his side; that is, the first eighteen
years, from the battle of Actium till the death of Agrippa,-
and no writer charges Agrippa with having had any share in
the early cruelties of Augustus. The new regulations of the
state after the battle of Actium were made principally by
Agrippa, and he rather than Augustus must be regarded as
the author of all the wise and useful arrangements made
during that period; many of his measures were very cunning,
but all were certainly beneficial. All that Agrippa did is
characterised by a certain grandeur. There is only one build-
ing which originated with him : his Panthcon is still standing,
and furnishes an example of the greatness of his conceptions:
it is the most splendid remnant of ancient Rome. He made
roads and canals; built aqueducts and baths; and the whole
arrangement of the Campus Martius with all its beauties, des-
cribed with delight by Strabo3, was the work of Agrippa.
Great architectural works were his element. His ability as a
military commander had been tried in the war against Sext.
Pompeius, in the course of which he built fleets, and formed
the Julian port near Baiae. He was conscious of his great
powers: he never concealed that he was proud, for he laid
claim to the highest honours, and was anything but humble
2 Tacitus, Annal, i. 3; Veil. Paterc. ii. 96; Scneca, Controv. ii. 12,
3 v. p. 235, foil.