Book Review: "Augustus" by John Williams

Caesar Augustus (63BC-14AD)

Over the past year or so, I have been reading ancient Roman history and biographies of notable Romans of that time. I have done so out of interest and at the recommendation of my doctor, a good friend who insists I need some “mental popcorn” to balance the nonfiction staple of my literary diet. Rather than the fiction he recommends I have opted for the grandeur that was Rome!

I finished my most recent book, Augustus, this morning, in my bed. I mention where I was to express how grateful I am to be retired and have the time to read as much as I want, of what I want. Happily, government reports and white papers, emails, congressional inquiries, immigration law books, have not appeared before my eyes since November 2007. With that and having in mind my friends many of whom are also in their good, old age, I offer below some excerpts from the last pages of Augustus. Pages that focus on his final days, his summing the counts of his personal life and the accomplishments of his rule. As background, a good summary of Caesar Augustus’s life may be found here.

Augustus was written by John Williams, a native Texan who was educated at the University of Denver. Williams obtained his Ph.D. in English literature at the University of Missouri in 1954, and thereafter returned to the University of Denver to teach literature and creative writing. Williams’s previous books include Butcher’s Crossing (1960) and Stoner (1965). I have read neither.

Augustus was published in 1972 and received the (US) National Book Award in 1973. This book fits best in the category of historical fiction. The contents are factual but the book is no straightforward narrative of events through time. Its format is that of a collection of fictional letters and journal entries by members of Augustus’s family, friends, comrades in arms, enemies, and the prominent poets and historians of his time.

The entries are in an out-of-sequence manner. For example, in one instance you will be reading a letter from 22BC and next a journal entry from 4AD. Then you might go back to 20BC. This took some getting used to for a non-classicist like me, but I adjusted. The method was effective for narrating events and for conveying deeper meanings from the reflective depictions and reminiscences of the writers.

Not being deeply knowledgeable of European classics and geography, I found using Google Maps and Wikipedia useful. I even listed the main characters in chronological order of the dates of their lives. One does not need to go to these lengths to enjoy and learn from this book. It is a true page-turner of mostly short entries written in a clear style, but a notch-up characteristic of the literati of that time. The editors and proofreaders of this great work were meticulous.

From the first page, I simply let my eyes flow and mind relish the vivid imagery of Rome, its people, and their Empire. I did not mark this 305-page masterpiece with marginalia until I reached its final forty pages or so. I then began very minimally placing brackets and asterisks in the margins. I would have begun marking key events in the earlier pages when I was younger. But now, I wanted to focus on writings about living, meaning, dying; understandings of such arrived at by Roman men and women at the close of long, virtuous and often unvirtuous lives.

It is from Augustus’s final letter my excerpts begin. This one is to historian, biographer, and the Emperor’s friend, Nicolaus of Damascus. Nicolaus was a Jewish historian and philosopher and intimate friend to Roman client King Herod the Great of Judea. The following are for all of my friends and readers, young and old.

“It is fortunate that youth never recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to see the folly of his existence.” (p. 271)

Then, on page 292, deep into his letter to Nicolaus, Augustus writes:

“As one grows older, and as the world becomes less and less to him, one wonders increasingly about those forces that propelled him through time. Certainly the gods are indifferent to the poor creature who struggles toward his fate; and they speak to him so obliquely that at last he must determine for himself the meanings they portend. Thus in my role of priest, I have examined the entrails and livers of a hundred beasts, and with the aid of the augurs have discovered or invented whatever portents seemed to me appropriate to my intention; and concluded that the gods, if they do exist, do not matter. And if I encouraged the people to follow these ancient Roman gods, I did so out of necessity rather than any religious conviction that those forces rest very securely in their supposed persons. . . . Perhaps you were right after all, my dear Nicolaus; perhaps there is but one god. But if that is true, you have misnamed him. He is Accident, and his priest is man, and that priest’s only victim must be at last himself, his poor divided self.” (pp. 292-293)

~ ~ ~

“I have come to believe that in the life of every man, late or soon, there is a moment when he knows beyond whatever else he might understand, and whether he can articulate the knowledge or not, the terrifying fact that he is alone, and separate, and that he can be no other than the poor thing that is himself. I look now at my thin shanks, the withered skin upon my hand, the sagging flesh that is blotched with age; and it is difficult for me to realize that once this body sought release from itself in that of another; and that another sought the same from it. To that instant of pleasure some dedicate all their lives, and become embittered and empty when the body fails, as the body must. They are embittered and empty because they have known only the pleasure, and do not know what that pleasure has meant. For contrary to what we may believe, erotic love is the most unselfish of all the varieties; it seeks to become one with another, and hence to escape the self. This kind of love is the first to die, of course, failing as the body that carries it fails; and for that reason, no doubt, it has been thought by many to be the basest of the varieties. But the fact that it will die, and that we know it will die, makes it more precious; and once we have known it, we are no longer irretrievably trapped and exiled within the self.” (pp. 293-294)

~ ~ ~

“It has occurred to me since that meeting with Hirtia that there is a variety of love more powerful and lasting than that union with the other which beguiles us with its sensual pleasure, and more powerful and lasting than that platonic variety in which we contemplate the mystery of the other and thus become ourselves; mistresses grow old or pass beyond us; the flesh weakens; friends die; and children fulfill, and thus betray, that potentiality in which we first beheld them. It is a variety of love in which you, my dear Nicolaus, have found yourself for much of your life, and it is one in which our poets were happiest; it is the love of the scholar for his text, the philosopher for his idea, the poet for his word. Thus Ovid is not alone in his northern exile at Tomis, nor are you alone in your far Damascus, where you have chosen to devote your remaining years to your books. No living object is necessary for such pure love; and thus it is universally agreed that this is the highest form of love, since it is for an object that approaches the absolute.

“And yet in some ways it may be the basest form of love. For if we strip away the high rhetoric that so often surrounds this notion, it is revealed simply as a love of power.” (p. 295)

~ ~ ~

“[A]fter all there has been some symmetry to my life, some point; and that my existence has been of more benefit than harm to this world that I am content to leave.

“Now throughout this world the Roman order prevails. The German barbarian may wait in the North, the Parthian in the East, and others beyond frontiers that we have not yet conceived; and if Rome does not fall to them, it will at last fall to that barbarian from which none escape—Time. Yet now, for a few years, the Roman order prevails. It prevails in every Italian town of consequence, in every colony, in every province—from the Rhine and the Danube to the border of Ethiopia; from the Atlantic shores of Spain and Gaul to the Arabian sands, and the Black Sea. Throughout the world I have established schools so that the Latin tongue and the Roman way may be known, and have seen to it that those schools will prosper; Roman law tempers the disordered cruelty of provincial custom, just as provincial custom modifies Roman law; and the world looks in awe upon that Rome that I found built of crumbling clay and that now is made of marble.

“The despair that I have voiced seems to me now unworthy of what I have done. Rome is not eternal; it does not matter. Rome will fall; it does not matter. The barbarian will conquer; it does not matter. There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die; the barbarian will become the Rome he conquers; the language will smooth his rough tongue; the vision of what he destroys will flow in his blood. And in time that is ceaseless as this salt sea upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is nothing, is less than nothing.” (pp. 299-300)

Other recent Roman histories and biographies I have read and recommend include (Kindle versions):

The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson, 2014.

Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James S. Romm, 2014.

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard, 2015.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays, 2002

Rome’s Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar by Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni, 2012.