wards placed by his son in the sacrarium of the palace,[1] he had twice served as military tribune, had been quæstor, plebeian, ædile, iudex quæstionum, and prætorship (b.c. 61) he governed Macedonia with conspicuous ability and justice. He is quoted by Cicero as a model administrator of a province; and he was sufficiently successful against the Bessi and other Thracian tribes—constant scourges of Macedonia—to be hailed as "imperator" by his soldiers. He returned to Italy late in b.c. 59, intending next year to be a candidate for the consulship, but early in b.c. 58 he died suddenly in his villa at Nola, in the same chamber as that in which his son, seventy-two years later, breathed his last.[2]
The mother of
Augustus
The mother of the young Gaius Octavius was Atia, daughter of M. Atius Balbus,[3] of Velitræ, and Iulia, sister of Gaius Iulius Cæsar. This connection with Cæsar—already rising in political importance—may have made his birth of some social interest, but the ominous circumstances said to have accompanied it are doubtless due to the curiosity or credulity of the next generation. The people of Velitræ, it is reported, had been told by an oracle that a master of the Empire was to be born there. Rumours, it is said, were current in Rome shortly before his birth that a "king of the Roman people" was about to be born. His mother dreamed strange dreams, and the learned Publius Nigidius prophesied the birth of a lord of the world; while Catulus and Cicero had visions.[4] But there was, in fact, nothing mysterious or unusual in his infancy, which was passed with his foster-nurse at Velitræ. When he was two years
- ↑ C. I. L, vol. i. p. 279.
- ↑ Cicero, ad Q. Fr. 1, 1, 21; 1, 2, 7. Velleius Pat., 2, 59; Sueton., Aug. 3.
- ↑ The plebian Atii Balbi do no tseem seem to have been important. M. Atius Balbus was prætor in b.c. 62 (with Cæsar), governor of Sardinia b.c. 61-60, and in b.c. 59 was one of the xx viri under the Juian land law (Cic., ad Att. ii. 4).
- ↑ These and other stories will be found in Sueton., Aug. 94 and Dio, 45, 2. Veril makes skilful use of them in Æn., vi. 797, sqq.
