Augustus | Page 8

his lieutenants the liberty to visit their wives, except
reluctantly, and in the winter season only. A Roman knight having cut
off the thumbs of his two young sons, to render them incapable of
serving in the wars, he exposed both him and his estate to public sale.
But upon observing the farmers of the revenue very greedy for the
purchase, he assigned him to a freedman of his own, that he might send
him into the country, and suffer him to retain his freedom. The tenth
legion becoming mutinous, he disbanded it with ignominy; and did the
same by some others which petulantly demanded their discharge;
withholding from them the rewards usually bestowed on those who had

served their stated time in the wars. The cohorts which yielded their
ground in time of action, he decimated, and fed with barley. Centurions,
as well as common sentinels, who deserted their posts when on guard,
he punished with death. For other misdemeanors he inflicted upon them
various kinds of disgrace; such as obliging them to stand all day before
the praetorium, sometimes in their tunics only, and without their belts,
sometimes to carry poles ten feet long, or sods of turf.
XXV. After the conclusion of the civil wars, he never, in any of his
military harangues, or proclamations, addressed them by the title of
"Fellow-soldiers," but as "Soldiers" only. Nor would he suffer them to
be otherwise called by his sons or step-sons, when they were in
command; judging the former epithet to convey the idea of a degree of
condescension inconsistent with military discipline, the maintenance of
order, and his own majesty, and that of his house. Unless at Rome, in
case of incendiary fires, or under the apprehension of public
disturbances during a scarcity of provisions, he never employed in his
army slaves who had been made freedmen, except upon two occasions;
on one, for the security of the colonies bordering upon Illyricum, and
on the other, to guard (88) the banks of the river Rhine. Although he
obliged persons of fortune, both male and female, to give up their
slaves, and they received their manumission at once, yet he kept them
together under their own standard, unmixed with soldiers who were
better born, and armed likewise after different fashion. Military rewards,
such as trappings, collars, and other decorations of gold and silver, he
distributed more readily than camp or mural crowns, which were
reckoned more honourable than the former. These he bestowed
sparingly, without partiality, and frequently even on common soldiers.
He presented M. Agrippa, after the naval engagement in the Sicilian
war, with a sea-green banner. Those who shared in the honours of a
triumph, although they had attended him in his expeditions, and taken
part in his victories, he judged it improper to distinguish by the usual
rewards for service, because they had a right themselves to grant such
rewards to whom they pleased. He thought nothing more derogatory to
the character of an accomplished general than precipitancy and
rashness; on which account he had frequently in his mouth those
proverbs:
Speude bradeos, Hasten slowly,

And
'Asphalaes gar est' ameinon, hae erasus strataelataes. The cautious
captain's better than the bold.
And "That is done fast enough, which is done well enough."
He was wont to say also, that "a battle or a war ought never to be
undertaken, unless the prospect of gain overbalanced the fear of loss.
For," said he, "men who pursue small advantages with no small hazard,
resemble those who fish with a golden hook, the loss of which, if the
line should happen to break, could never be compensated by all the fish
they might take."
XXVI. He was advanced to public offices before the age at which he
was legally qualified for them; and to some, also, of a new kind, and
for life. He seized the consulship in the twentieth year of his age,
quartering his legions in a threatening manner near the city, and
sending deputies to demand it for him in the name of the army. When
the senate demurred, (89) a centurion, named Cornelius, who was at the
head of the chief deputation, throwing back his cloak, and shewing the
hilt of his sword, had the presumption to say in the senate-house, "This
will make him consul, if ye will not." His second consulship he filled
nine years afterwards; his third, after the interval of only one year, and
held the same office every year successively until the eleventh. From
this period, although the consulship was frequently offered him, he
always declined it, until, after a long interval, not less than seventeen
years, he voluntarily stood for the twelfth, and two years after that, for
a thirteenth; that he might successively introduce into the forum, on
their entering