Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Augustus, as
much from natural taste as policy, was glad to dissemble it, and by every
means to withdraw it from public notice. But he had passed his youth as
citizen of a republic; and in the state of transition to autocracy, in his
office of triumvir, had experimentally known the perils of rivalship, and
the pains of foreign control, too feelingly to provoke unnecessarily any
sleeping embers of the republican spirit. Tiberius, though familiar from
his infancy with the servile homage of a court, was yet modified by the
popular temper of Augustus; and he came late to the throne. Caligula was
the first prince on whom the entire effect of his political situation was
allowed to operate; and the natural results were seen--he was the first
absolute monster. He must early have seen the realities of his position,
and from what quarter it was that any cloud could arise to menace his
security. To the senate or people any respect which he might think proper
to pay, must have been imputed by all parties to the lingering
superstitions of custom, to involuntary habit, to court dissimulation, or
to the decencies of external form, and the prescriptive reverence of
ancient names.
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