d by degrees he poured a new
force and meaning into them; which, in time, would necessarily
destroy them; but mean-while others would have been growing.
He took no step without laboriously ascertaining that there
were precedents for it. Rome had been governed by Consuls
and Tribunes; well, he would accept the consulate, and the
tribuniciary power; because it was necessary now, for the time
being at any rate, that Rome should be governed by Augustus. It
is as well to remember that it was the people who insisted
on this last. The Republican Party might subsist among the
aristocracy, the old governing class; but Augustus was the hero
and champion of the masses. Time and again he resigned: handed
back his powers to the senate, and what not;--whether as a matter
of form only, and that he might carry opinion along with him; or
with the real hope that he had taught things at last to run
themselves. In either case his action was wise and creditable;
you have to read into him mean motives out of your own nature, if
you think otherwise. Let there be talk of tyrants, and plots
arising, with danger of assassination,--and what was to become of
re-established law, order, and the Augustan Peace? The fact was
that the necessities of the case always compelled the senate to
reinstate him: it was too obvious that things could not run
themselves. If there had been any practicable opposition, it
could always have made those resignations effectual; or at least
it could have driven him to a show of illegalism, and so,
probably, against the point of some fanatic theorist's dagger.
In 23 B.C. there was a food shortage; and the mob besieged the
senate house, demanding that new powers should be bestowed on the
Caesar: they knew well what mind and hands could save them.

But he would run up no new (corrugated iron or reinforced
concrete) astral molds, nor smash down any old ones. There
should be no talk of a king, or, perpetual dictator. Chief
citizen, as you must have a chief,--since a hundred years had
shown that haphazard executives would not work. _Primus inter
Pares_ in the senate: _Princeps,_--not a new title, nor one that
implied royalty,--or meant anything very definite; why define
things, anyhow, now while the world was in flux? Mr. Stobart,
who I think comes very near to showing Augustus as he really was,
still permits himself to speak of him as "chilly and statuesque."
But can you imagine the mob so in love with a chi