Augustus | Page 6

in the association with the rest of Italy to support his cause,
because they had, in former times, been under the protection of the
family of the Antonii. And not long afterwards he defeated him in a
naval engagement near Actium, which was prolonged to so late an hour,
that, after the victory, he was obliged to sleep on board his ship. From
Actium he went to the isle of Samoa to winter; but being alarmed with
the accounts of a mutiny amongst the soldiers he had selected from the
main body of his army sent to Brundisium after the victory, who
insisted on their being rewarded for their service and discharged, he
returned to Italy. In his passage thither, he encountered two violent
storms, the first between the promontories of Peloponnesus and Aetolia,
and the other about the Ceraunian mountains; in both which a part of
his Liburnian squadron was sunk, the spars and rigging of his own ship
carried away, and the rudder broken in pieces. He remained only
twenty-seven days at Brundisium, until the demands of the soldiers
were settled, and then went, by way of Asia and Syria, to Egypt, where
laying siege to Alexandria, whither Antony had fled with Cleopatra, he
made himself master of it in a short time. He drove Antony to kill
himself, after he had used every effort to obtain conditions of peace,
and he saw his corpse [126]. Cleopatra he anxiously wished to save for
his triumph; and when she was supposed to have been bit to death by
an asp, he sent for the Psylli [127] to (82) endeavour to suck out the
poison. He allowed them to be buried together in the same grave, and
ordered a mausoleum, begun by themselves, to be completed. The
eldest of Antony's two sons by Fulvia he commanded to be taken by
force from the statue of Julius Caesar, to which he had fled, after many
fruitless supplications for his life, and put him to death. The same fate
attended Caesario, Cleopatra's son by Caesar, as he pretended, who had
fled for his life, but was retaken. The children which Antony had by
Cleopatra he saved, and brought up and cherished in a manner suitable
to their rank, just as if they had been his own relations.
XVIII. At this time he had a desire to see the sarcophagus and body of
Alexander the Great, which, for that purpose, were taken out of the cell
in which they rested [128]; and after viewing them for some time, he
paid honours to the memory of that prince, by offering a golden crown,

and scattering flowers upon the body [129]. Being asked if he wished
to see the tombs of the Ptolemies also; he replied, "I wish to see a king,
not dead men." [130] He reduced Egypt into the form of a province and
to render it more fertile, and more capable of supplying Rome with
corn, he employed his army to scour the canals, into which the Nile,
upon its rise, discharges itself; but which during a long series of years
had become nearly choked up with mud. To perpetuate the glory of his
victory at Actium, he built the city of Nicopolis on that part of the coast,
and established games to be celebrated there every five years; enlarging
likewise an old temple of Apollo, he ornamented with naval trophies
[131] the spot on which he had pitched his camp, and consecrated it to
Neptune and Mars.
(83) XIX. He afterwards [132] quashed several tumults and
insurrections, as well as several conspiracies against his life, which
were discovered, by the confession of accomplices, before they were
ripe for execution; and others subsequently. Such were those of the
younger Lepidus, of Varro Muraena, and Fannius Caepio; then that of
Marcus Egnatius, afterwards that of Plautius Rufus, and of Lucius
Paulus, his grand- daughter's husband; and besides these, another of
Lucius Audasius, an old feeble man, who was under prosecution for
forgery; as also of Asinius Epicadus, a Parthinian mongrel [133], and at
last that of Telephus, a lady's prompter [134]; for he was in danger of
his life from the plots and conspiracies of some of the lowest of the
people against him. Audasius and Epicadus had formed the design of
carrying off to the armies his daughter Julia, and his grandson Agrippa,
from the islands in which they were confined. Telephus, wildly
dreaming that the government was destined to him by the fates,
proposed to fall both upon Octavius and the senate. Nay, once, a
soldier's servant belonging to the army in Illyricum, having passed the
porters unobserved, was found in the night- time standing before his
chamber-door, armed with a hunting-dagger. Whether the person was
really disordered in the head, or