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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. AUGUSTUS: B.C. 31?A.D. 14. The victory of Actium had made Octavianus the undisputed master of the Roman world. One by one rivals and obstacles had been swept away, and the The remark- ., L . . able change patient schemer had now mounted to the top- anusCafter he most round of the ladder of ambition. Dur- gained abso- ing the troublous years of the long struggle for m, P, n, i p0wer his public life had been one course of selfish aims, unscrupulous acts, and makeshift policy; he had yet to prove that there was anything of real and abiding greatness in his schemes to raise him from the ranks of mere political adventurers. But from this time we may trace a seeming change of character, which is the more remarkable because it is so hard to parallel. It was no change of measures only, such as often comes with new conditions, such as that not a mere ' change of which made the founder of the dynasty 90 lcy reverse much of the policy of earlier years. For, spendthrift and prodigal as Julius had been before, he used his power to curtail extravagance, sent police agents to the markets, and even to the houses of the wealthy, to put down luxury by force; the leader of the popular party forbade the growth of guilds and social clubs like those which had often carried the elections in his favour; the favourite of the populace was anxious to check the spread of pauperism by sterner measures; the revolutionary general whose tent had been the refuge of the men of tarnished name and ruined fortunes baffled all their hopes of plunder, by passing stringent measures to restore credit and to curb official greed. Octavianus also in like case resorted to like policy. One of his firstcares was to repeal the unconstitutional acts of his earlier Jife, and so to close the pe...