and kept their citizenship; and it was like another little Rome managing
its own affairs, though subject to the mother city. There were many of
these colonies, especially in Gaul on the north coast, to defend it from
the Germans. Cologne was one, and still keeps its name. The tribute was
carefully fixed, and Augustus did his best to prevent the governors from
preying on the people.

He tried to bring back better ways to Rome, which was in a sad state,
full of vice and riot, and with little of the old, noble, hardy ways of
the former times. The educated men had studied Greek philosophy till
they had no faith in their own gods, and, indeed, had so mixed up their
mythology with the Greek that they really did not know who their own
were, and could not tell who were the greater gods whom Decius Mus
invoked before he rushed on the enemy; and yet they kept up their
worship, because their feasts were so connected with the State that
everything depended on them; but they made them no real judges or
helpers. The best men of the time were those who had taken up the Stoic
philosophy, which held that virtue was above all things, whether it was
rewarded or not; the worst were often the Epicureans, who held that we
had better enjoy all we can in this life, being sure of nothing else.

Learning was much esteemed in the time of Augustus. He and his two great
friends, Caius Cilnius Maecenas and Vipsanius Agrippa, both had a great
esteem for scholarship and poetry, and in especial the house of Maecenas
was always open to literary men. The two chief poets of Rome, Publius
Virgilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were warm friends of his.
Virgil wrote poems on husbandry, and short dialogue poems called
eclogues, in one of which he spoke of the time of Augustus in words that
would almost serve as a prophecy of the kingdom of Him who was just born
at Bethlehem. By desire of Augustus, he also wrote the _AEneid_, a poem
on the war-doings of AEneas and his settlement in Italy.

Horace wrote odes and letters in verse and satires, which show the
habits and ways of thinking of his time in a very curious manner; and
there were many other writers whose works have not come down to us; but
the Latin of this time is the model of the language, and an Augustan age
has ever since been a term for one in which literature flourishes.

All the early part of Augustus' reign was prosperous, but he had no son,
only a daughter named Julia. He meant to marry