Chapter 14 ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN CLEAR THAT AUGUSTUS'S POWERS were failing and that he had not many m

Chapter 14,cheap adidas shoes for sale
ALTHOUGH IT HAS BEEN CLEAR THAT AUGUSTUS'S POWERS were failing and that he had not many more years to live, Rome could not accustom itself to the idea of his death. It is not an idle comparison to say that the City felt much as a boy feels when he loses his father. Whether the father has been a brave man or a coward, just or unjust,Moncler Jackets For Men, generous or mean, signifies little: he has been that boy's father, and no uncle or elder brother can ever take his place. For Augustus's rule had been a very long one and a man had to be already past middle age to remember back behind it. It was therefore not altogether unnatural that the Senate met to deliberate whether the divine honours which had, even in his lifetime, been paid him by the provinces should now be voted him in the City itself.
Pollio's son. Callus-hated by Tiberius because he had married Vipsania (Tiberius's first wife, you will recall, whom he had been forced to divorce on Julia's account), and because he had never given a public denial of the rumour which made him the real father of Castor, and because he had a witty tongue-this Gallus was the only senator who had dared to question the propriety of the motion. He rose to ask what divine portent had occurred to suggest that Augustus would be welcomed in the Heavenly Mansions-merely at the recommendation of his mortal friends and admirers?
There followed an uncomfortable silence but at last Tiberius rose slowly and said: "One hundred days ago, it will be recalled, the pediment of my rather Augustus's statue was struck by lightning. The first letter of his name was blotted out, which left the words ESAR AUGUSTUS. What is the meaning of the letter C? It is the sign for one hundred. What does ESAR mean? I will tell you. It means God, in the Etruscan tongue. Clearly, in a hundred days from that lightning stroke Augustus is to become a God in Rome. What clearer portent than this can you require?" Though Tiberius took the sole credit for this interpretation it was I who had first given meaning to ESAR (the queer word had been much discussed), being the only person at Rome who was acquainted with the Etruscan language,Moncler Jackets For Women. I told my mother about it and she called me a fanciful fool,http://www.moncleroutletonlinestore.com/; but she must have been sufficiently impressed to repeat what I said to Tiberius; for I told nobody but her.
Gallus asked why Jove should give his message in Etruscan rather than in Greek or Latin? Could nobody swear to having observed any other more conclusive omen? It was all very well to decree new gods to ignorant Asiatic provincials, but the honourable House ought to pause before ordering educated citizens to worship one of their own number, however distinguished. It is possible that Gallus would have succeeded in blocking the decree by this appeal to Roman pride and sanity had it not been for a man called Atticus, a senior magistrate. He solemnly rose to say that when Augustus's corpse had been burned on Mars Field he had seen a cloud descending from heaven and the dead man's spirit then ascending on it, precisely in the way in which tradition relates that the spirits of Romulus and Hercules ascended. He would swear by all the Gods that he was testifying the truth.