ved him, the people publicly
applied to him an epithet which does not look well in print.

After Philippi and the suicide of Brutus; after Actium and Antony's
death, for the first time in ages, the gates of the Temple of Janus
were closed. There was peace in the world; but it was the sword of
Caesar, not of Augustus, that brought the insurgents to book. At each
of the victories he was either asleep or ill. At the time of battle
there was always some god warning him to be careful. The battle won, he
was brave enough, considerate even. A father and son begged for mercy.
He promised forgiveness to the son on condition that he killed his
father. The son accepted and did the work; then he had the son
despatched. A prisoner begged but for a grave. "The vultures will see
to it," he answered. When at the head of Caesar's legions, he entered
Rome to avenge the latter's death, he announced beforehand that he
would imitate neither Caesar's moderation nor Sylla's cruelty. There
would be only a few proscriptions, and a price--and what a price,
liberty!--was placed on the heads of hundreds of senators and thousands
of knights. And these people, who had more slaves than they knew by
sight, slaves whom they tossed alive to fatten fish, slaves to whom
they affected never to speak, and who were crucified did they so much
as sneeze in their presence--at the feet of these slaves they rolled,
imploring them not to deliver them up. Now and then a slave was
merciful; Augustus never.

Successes such as these made him ambitious. Having vanquished with the
sword, he tried the pen. "You may grant the freedom of the city to your
barbarians," said a wit to him one day, "but not to your solecisms."
Undeterred he began a tragedy entitled "Ajax," and discovering his
incompetence, gave it up. "And what has become of Ajax?" a parasite
asked. "Ajax threw himself on a sponge," replied Augustus, whose
father, it is to be regretted, did not do likewise. Nevertheless, it
were pleasant to have assisted at his funeral.

A couch of ivory and gold, ten feet high, draped with purple, stood for
a week in the atrium of the palace. Within the couch, hidden from view,
the body of the emperor lay, ravaged by poison. Above was a statue,
recumbent, in wax, made after his image and dressed in imperial robes.
Near by a little slave with a big fan protected the statue from flies.
Each day physicians came, gazed at the closed wax mouth, and murmured,
"He is worse." In th