Augustus | Page 2

relics of the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who had
possessed themselves of the territory of Thurium; having received from
the senate an extraordinary commission for that purpose. In his
government of the province, he conducted himself with equal justice
and resolution; for he defeated the Bessians and Thracians in a great
battle, and treated the allies of the republic in such a manner, that there
are extant letters from M. Tullius Cicero, in which he advises and
exhorts his brother Quintus, who then held the proconsulship of Asia
with no great reputation, to imitate the example of his neighbour
Octavius, in gaining the affections of the allies of Rome.
IV. After quitting Macedonia, before he could declare himself a

candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, leaving behind him a
daughter, the elder Octavia, by Ancharia; and another daughter,
Octavia the younger, as well as Augustus, by Atia, who was the
daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus, and Julia, sister to Caius Julius
Caesar. Balbus was, by the father's (73) side, of a family who were
natives of Aricia [109], and many of whom had been in the senate. By
the mother's side he was nearly related to Pompey the Great; and after
he had borne the office of praetor, was one of the twenty
commissioners appointed by the Julian law to divide the land in
Campania among the people. But Mark Antony, treating with contempt
Augustus's descent even by the mother's side, says that his great
grand-father was of African descent, and at one time kept a perfumer's
shop, and at another, a bake-house, in Aricia. And Cassius of Parma, in
a letter, taxes Augustus with being the son not only of a baker, but a
usurer. These are his words: "Thou art a lump of thy mother's meal,
which a money-changer of Nerulum taking from the newest bake-house
of Aricia, kneaded into some shape, with his hands all discoloured by
the fingering of money."
V. Augustus was born in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and
Caius Antonius [110], upon the ninth of the calends of October [the
23rd September], a little before sunrise, in the quarter of the Palatine
Hill [111], and the street called The Ox-Heads [112], where now stands
a chapel dedicated to him, and built a little after his death. For, as it is
recorded in the proceedings of the senate, when Caius Laetorius, a
young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the senators for a
lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged, besides
his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the
guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon
his coming into the world; and entreated that (74) he might find favour,
for the sake of that deity, who was in a peculiar manner his; an act of
the senate was passed, for the consecration of that part of his house in
which Augustus was born.
VI. His nursery is shewn to this day, in a villa belonging to the family,
in the suburbs of Velitrae; being a very small place, and much like a
pantry. An opinion prevails in the neighbourhood, that he was also born
there. Into this place no person presumes to enter, unless upon
necessity, and with great devotion, from a belief, for a long time

prevalent, that such as rashly enter it are seized with great horror and
consternation, which a short while since was confirmed by a
remarkable incident. For when a new inhabitant of the house had, either
by mere chance, or to try the truth of the report, taken up his lodging in
that apartment, in the course of the night, a few hours afterwards, he
was thrown out by some sudden violence, he knew not how, and was
found in a state of stupefaction, with the coverlid of his bed, before the
door of the chamber.
VII. While he was yet an infant, the surname of Thurinus was given
him, in memory of the birth-place of his family, or because, soon after
he was born, his father Octavius had been successful against the
fugitive slaves, in the country near Thurium. That he was surnamed
Thurinus, I can affirm upon good foundation, for when a boy, I had a
small bronze statue of him, with that name upon it in iron letters, nearly
effaced by age, which I presented to the emperor [113], by whom it is
now revered amongst the other tutelary deities in his chamber. He is
also often called Thurinus contemptuously, by Mark Antony in his
letters; to which he makes only this reply: "I am surprised that my
former name should be made a subject of reproach." He afterwards
assumed the name of Caius Caesar, and then of Augustus; the