Such a moderation of feeling, we are almost obliged to consider as a
genuine and unaffected expression of his real nature; for, as an artifice
of policy, it had soon lost its uses. And it is worthy of notice, that
with the army he laid aside those popular manners as soon as possible,
addressing them as _milites_, not (_according_ to his earlier practice) as
_commilitones_. It concerned his own security, to be jealous of
encroachments on his power. But of his rank, and the honors which
accompanied it, he seems to have been uniformly careless. Thus, he would
never leave a town or enter it by daylight, unless some higher rule of
policy obliged him to do so; by which means he evaded a ceremonial of
public honor which was burdensome to all the parties concerned in it.
Sometimes, however, we find that men, careless of honors in their own
persons, are glad to see them settling upon their family and immediate
connections. But here again Augustus showed the sincerity of his
moderation. For upon one occasion, when the whole audience in the Roman
theatre had risen upon the entrance of his two adopted sons, at that time
not seventeen years old, he was highly displeased, and even thought it
necessary to publish his displeasure in a separate edict.
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