CodalSearch this book — or all of Codal…⌘K
nydus/The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, CompletePublic
Page 143 of 752
Table of Contents

D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS.

resolved to finish, at their common expense, the temple of Jupiter Olympius, at Athens, which had been begun long before, and consecrate it to his Genius. They frequently also left their kingdoms, laid aside the badges of royalty, and assuming the toga, attended and paid their respects to him daily, in the manner of clients to their patrons; not only at Rome, but when he was travelling through the provinces.

LXI. Having thus given an account of the manner in which he filled his public offices both civil and military, and his conduct in the government of the empire, both in peace and war; I shall now describe his private and domestic life, his habits at home and among his friends and dependents, and the fortune attending him in those scenes of retirement, from his youth to the day of his death. He lost his mother in his first consulship, and his sister Octavia, when he was in the fifty-fourth year of his age 197. He behaved towards them both with the utmost kindness whilst living, and after their decease paid the highest honours to their memory.

(117) LXII. He was contracted when very young to the daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus; but upon his reconciliation with Antony after their first rupture 198, the armies on both sides insisting on a family alliance between them, he married Antony’s step-daughter Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia by Publius Claudius, although at that time she was scarcely marriageable; and upon a difference arising with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her untouched, and a pure virgin. Soon afterwards he took to wife Scribonia, who had before been twice married to men of consular rank 199, and was a mother by one of them. With her likewise he parted 200, being quite tired out, as he himself writes, with the perverseness of her temper; and immediately took Livia

143