Wairarapa Daily Times (stablished Over 60 Years.) SATURDAY, 1st MAY, 1937. AUGUSTUS CAESAR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 1 May 1937, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times (stablished Over 60 Years.) SATURDAY, Ist MAY, 1937. AUGUSTUS CAESAR.

The period from September next to September, 1938, is to be devoted by Italy to celebration of the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of the'Emperor Augustus. It is. a momentous occasion, and yet, compared Avith his great predecessor, Julius Caesar, Augustus-has had but little attention from biographers. This is mainly because the materials for an adequate life have largely disappeared, and what are left are eoloui’less and impersonal—even the Emperor’s own account of his reign in the Monumentum Aneyranum. And because there is so much room for speculation opinion about him has varied through the whole course of the history of classical scholarship. Mommsen underrated him, Gardthausen reinstated him, but he still needs to be interpreted as a man. In order to do this, and to honour the bimillenary of his birth, Dr. Bernard M. Allen has prepared a study which examines all the known facts and gives due attention to eveiy aspect of his long .career. It emphasises, above all, that it was through sheer force of character that Augustus rose .to be the gi*eatest figure in the world of his day. Even as a youth he showed extraordinary aptitude for leadership. No doubt the weight of Caesar’s name behind him was an immense advantage, but it was not everything. The state was unsettled, and Augustus settled it. In private life he was blessed with an ideal wife in Livia, but cursed with unworthy children, and even grandchildren. The sway passed to the tyrant Tiberius, and later Apgustus’s line became extinct in the execrable Nero. Thei’e is still room for treatment of the ironies Augustus’s line became extinct in len’s book is perhaps a little too resti*ained —though quite suitable for popular appreciation. He might have gone beyond fact and interpreation to comment, to the larger interpretation of one significant part-of the world’s long life. 1