mentioned.  Hence the Romans missed him mightily for these reasons as well as because by mingling monarchy with democracy he preserved their freedom for them and secured orderliness and security, so that their lives, free from the audacities of democracy, free from the wantonness of tyrannies, were cast in a liberty of moderation and under a monarchy without terrors; they were subjects of royalty, yet not slaves, and democratic citizens without discord. [-44-] If any of them remembered his former deeds in the course of the civil wars, they laid them to the pressure of circumstances, and they thought it fair to look for his real disposition, which had given him undisputed authority.  This offered, in truth, a mighty contrast.  Any one who goes carefully into each of his separate actions will find this true.  In regard to the mass of them I must record curtly that he stopped all factional disputes, transformed the government in a way to give it power, and strengthened it greatly.  Therefore if any deed of violence is encountered,—­as is often bound to happen when the face of a situation shifts unexpectedly,—­one might more justly blame the circumstances themselves than him.

Not the smallest factor in his glory was the length of his reign.  The majority of those that had lived under a democracy and the more powerful had time to die.  Those who were left, knowing nothing of that form of government and having been reared entirely or mostly under existing conditions, were not only not displeased with them,—­they had become so familiar,—­but took delight in them, for they saw that these were better and more free from terror than others of which they heard.

[-45-] Though the people knew this during his life they nevertheless realized it more fully after his decease.  Human nature is so constituted that in good fortune it does not perceive its prosperity so fully as it misses it when evil days arrive.  This was the case then in regard to Augustus.  When they found his successor Tiberius not the same sort of man they longed for the previous emperor.  Persons with their wits about them had some immediate evidence of the change in the constitution.  The consul Pompeius, who went out to meet the men bearing the body of Augustus, received a blow in the leg and had to be carried back with the body.  An owl sat over the senate-house again at the very first sitting of the senate after his death and uttered many ill-omened cries.  The two men differed so from each other that some suspected that Augustus with full knowledge of Tiberius’s character had purposely appointed him for successor to the end that he himself might have greater glory.  This began to be rumored at a later date.