n who win wealth and honours through civil war. The history of this age is highly controversial, the learned literature o

enefits of peace and by the apparent termination of the revolutionary age , they were willing to acquiesce, if not actively

icero survive in bulk, and Augustus is glorified in the poetry of his age . Apart from flagrant scandal and gossip, there is

owing. That axiom holds both for the political dynasts of the closing age of the Republic and for their last sole heir the

y, actions and influence of the principal among his partisans. In all ages , whatever the form and name of government, be it

m the Dictatorship of Sulla to the Dictatorship of Caesar. It was the age of Pompeius the Great. Stricken by the ambitions,

ory of the Republic, giving their names to its epochs. There was an age of the Scipiones: not less of the Metelli. Thou

way on close scrutiny, at once stands out, solid and manifest. In any age of the history of Republican Rome about twenty or

heir daughters were planted out in dynastic marriages. In their great age the Metelli overshadowed the Roman State, holding

ated by marriage. 2 The virtue and integrity of Catulus, rare in that age , earned general recognition: brilliance and vigou

tern lands acknowledged his predominance. The worship of power, which ages ago had developed its own language and convention

plebeian Claudii Marcelli, who emulated the Scipiones in their great age : obscure for a century, they emerge again into su

by right divine. 2 This extreme simplification of long and diverse ages of history seems to suggest that Caesar alone of

(cos. 92, censor 86) died in the spring of 49 (Dio 41, 14, 5), at the age of ninety-eight, so it was alleged (Pliny, NH 7,

e explained not always by domestic discord and youth’s intolerance of age , but sometimes by deliberate choice, to safeguard

n People they had no sympathy at all. The politicians of the previous age , whether conservative or revolutionary, despised

ard in estimating the change and development between youth and middle age . The personality of Octavianus will best be lef

man was a Roman and a Roman aristocrat. He was only eighteen years of age : but he resolved to acquire the power and the glo

ll that was too long and too slow. He would have to wait until middle age : his laurels would repose on grey hairs or none r

vice with which the most blameless of Roman politicians, whatever his age or party, must expect to find himself assailed, a

ich he derived was never recorded. Philippus wished for a quiet old age . So did Marcellus. But Marcellus, repenting of hi

Agrippae pater ne post Agrippam quidem notus. ’ Agrippa was the same age to within a year as Octavianus, and is said to ha

ollowing; and he might win more respectable backing. ‘But look at his age , his name. ’6 Octavianus was but a youth, he lack

g able to prevail against posterity or the moral standards of another age ), Brutus was not only a sincere and consistent ch

tory, invective and lampoon. Crime, vice and corruption in the last age of the Republic are embodied in types as perfect

nence, if not the primacy, that now at last fell to Cicero in his old age , after twenty years from his famous consulate, af

ent men (L. Aurelius Cotta, L. Caesar and Ser. Sulpicius Rufus), from age , infirmity or despair, were seldom to NotesPage

n safety carried him through well-timed treacheries to a peaceful old age . Plancus wrote dispatches and letters protesting

to be allowed to stand for the consulship ten years before the legal age . Octavianus was now nineteen: he would still have

ith a despotism that made men recall the Dictatorship of Caesar as an age of gold. 4 Thinned by war and proscription, the S

us himself had only recently passed his twentieth birthday: Agrippa’s age was the same to a year. Salvidienus, the earliest

aesar’s assassination, the Fulium sidus, the sign and herald of a new age . 2 Vague aspirations and magical science were qui

lculation. The Etruscan seer Vulcanius announced the end of the ninth age (Servius on Ecl. 9, 47) and died upon the spot: t

had inherited, and the fame of Pompeius Magnus belonged to an earlier age . Pietas was not enough. Greek freedmen were his c

for the eldest son, is unknown. They were surely employed at an early age for dynastic alliances. It is not known whom Cn.

not of their own class, from ambition or for survival in a dangerous age . The young revolutionary was becoming attractive

ially the Pompeians and Republicans, could show no member of consular age or standing. The patricians were sparse enough at

manner of speech would be well matched with the temper of a military age . Some at least of the merits of the plain style,

. 4 Pollio and Messalla were reckoned the greatest orators of the new age . Messalla, his rival, displayed a cultivated harm

ks were plundered, the indefatigable scholar was not deterred. At the age of eighty, discovering, as he said, that it was t

man was eminently qualified to narrate the history of a revolutionary age . Literary critics did not fear to match him wit

Virgil’s art in the service of Caesar’s heir. The heroic and military age demanded an epic poem for its honour; and history

e accident of his presence at a university city, at an impressionable age and in the company of young men of the Roman aris

ace, Sat. 1, 5. PageBook=>255 Horace had come to manhood in an age of war and knew the age for what it was. Others

ok=>255 Horace had come to manhood in an age of war and knew the age for what it was. Others might succumb to black

nto office of new consuls last portended a change in politics a whole age seemed to have elapsed, and most of the principal

easily. It is one of the miracles of Roman history that in subsequent ages the division between West and East was masked so

rder. 4 Italy longed for the final stabilization of the revolutionary age . The War of Actium had been fought and won, the m

m magistratuum ad pristinum redactum modum,' PageBook=>316 one age , but to many men and the long process of time. 1

n sought to refute Sallustius. The tone of literature in the Augustan age is certainly Pompeian rather than Caesarian, just

Principate (1933). 6 Dio 52, ι, ι. He calls the preceding epoch the age of the δυναστεῖαι. Compare Appian, BC 1. 2, 7.

it to speculate upon the subtleties of legal theory, or to trace from age to age the transmission of perennial maxims of po

peculate upon the subtleties of legal theory, or to trace from age to age the transmission of perennial maxims of political

Autronius Paetus and Sex. Appuleius. PageBook=>328 in his old age , twenty years from his consulate. It was Sex. App

uleius, a kinsman of the Princeps. 1 Nor are the other consuls of the age of the Revolution and the years between Actium an

received dispensations allowing them to hold magistracies at an early age . 2 PageNote. 340 1 Suetonius, Divus Aug. 79,

t. It was bad enough that the young man should become consul at the age of twenty-three: his adoption would be catastroph

on taskmaster was never recorded. The novus homo of the revolutionary age and the heir of the Claudian house were perhaps n

tter of Marcellus. Ultimately Marcellus might become Princeps, when age and merit qualified. For the moment, it did not m

unscrupulous daring had brought the rapid rewards of a revolutionary age . Obscurity of birth or provincial origin was no

in itself no sudden novelty, but deriving from common practice of the age of Pompeius, accelerated by the wars of the Revol

the constitution. Sulla the Dictator had probably fixed thirty as the age at which the quaestorship could be held, forty- t

R. Studien, 285 ff. 2 The dispensations accorded show that the low age limit was in force before 23 B.C.: it was probabl

ho rallied to the Principate, receiving the consulate at the earliest age permissible, if not with dispensations the young

dy to the station and dignity of their ancestors. After long lapse of ages shine forth on the Fasti a Quinctius, a Quinctili

ave usurped rank and forged pedigrees. Over some noble houses of this age hangs the veil of a dubious authenticity, penetra

e Sex. Appuleius and M. Appuleius, both consuls, no doubt at an early age . The schemes devised by Augustus in the ramific

icians had a long start. M. Aemilius Lepidus became a pontifex at the age of twenty-five:1 he was a patrician. The novus ho

The acts and devices whereby the political dynasts of the previous age disposed of provincial commands need no recapitul

d Caesar like Afranius and Labienus and generals of the revolutionary age such as Taurus and Canidius were models and prece

he control of the government. Augustus had grown hard and bitter with age ; and Sallustius Crispus, the successor of Maecena

ions and early distinction, it is true. Tiberius became consul at the age of twenty-nine but that was after service in war,

f the Roman People upon an untried youth in the twentieth year of his age , that was much more than a contradiction of the c

onour, no command in war awaited him, but a dreary and precarious old age , or rather a brief term of despair until Gaius su

poets, he had to go a long way back to find his favourites before the age of the Gracchi. PageNotes. 441 1 Virgil, Aen.

ong as Rome remained her ancient self. In the aristocracy of the last age of the Republic marriage had not always been bles

whole world. The release of the capital hoarded by the Ptolemies for ages , or by apprehensive owners of property in the rec

erstitious. Nor is it evident that the Roman aristocrat of the golden age of the Scipiones was always the paragon of virtue

ruscan and then the Greek: the inevitable romanticism of a prosperous age , based upon the convenient dogma that it retained

for the legions confined to Italy. The practices of the revolutionary age were unobtrusively perpetuated. Caesar had raised

ontemporary Hellenism and from the Alexandrian models of the previous age , by the return to earlier and classic exemplars,

ous age, by the return to earlier and classic exemplars, to the great age of Greece. The new Roman literature was designed

d of the Revolution; and they all repaid Augustus more than he or the age could give them. Horace was the son of a wealth

unior by about ten years, outlasted Augustus and died in exile at the age of sixty. Ovid in his Amores sang of illicit love

certain great houses or permanent factions. The Scipiones had been an age of history. Their power had passed to the Metelli

y of Brutus, his sister, Cassius’ wife, was the last. She died at the age of ninety-three. At her funeral were borne the im

o Nero. 3 Certain noble families, showing their last consuls in the age of Pompeius, became extinct in the Civil Wars. So

their veins and enriched the scandalous history of the Julio-Claudian age , from the blameless M. Silanus, whom Caligula cal

s Afranius and Gabinius. Cicero had been the great novus homo of that age : the family ended with his bibulous son. The ma

llow countrymen. 2 Agricola, one of the principes viri of the Flavian age , and M. Ulpius Traianus, the son of another, were

characteristic remark of this Republican misanthrope. 1 Succeeding ages looked back with regret to the freedom enjoyed un

truggle ’solum id scires, deteriorem fore qui vicisset’. 3 In his old age Tacitus turned again to history and composed the

ius, the unprepossessing Quirinius, bitter, hard and hated in his old age , and Lollius the rapacious intriguer. Nothing is

0 As among the low-born and unprincipled scoundrels of the previous age , there were excellent men to be found in this com

The nobles, emergent from threatened extinction in the revolutionary age , learned from adversity no lesson save the belief

s firm regiment. Tacitus announced an intention of writing in his old age the history of that happy time, when freedom of t

ity had seldom been possible in the political dissensions of the last age of the Republic. Few were the nobiles who passed

olusius Saturninus who survived all the perils of the Julio- Claudian age and died at the age of ninety-three. 2 As for the

ho survived all the perils of the Julio- Claudian age and died at the age of ninety-three. 2 As for the family of the Cocce

irs, 188, 199 f., 243 ff., 372; controlled by Augustus, 325, 370 ff.; age for, 369; qualifications, 374 ff.; elections, 370