intellect perpetually dissembling; keen enough to deceive Anthony, to decieve the senate, to decieve Cicero and all the world; cruel for policy’s sake, without ever a twinge of remorse or compunciton:  a marble-cold impassive mind, and no heart al all, with master-subtlety achieving mastery of the world.—­Alas! a boy in his late teens and early twenties, so nearly friendless, and with enemies so many and so great...  A boy “up aginst” so huge and difficult circumstances always, that (you would say) there was no time, no possibility, for him to look ahead:  in every moment the next agonizing perilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;—­ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back and back to contain them,—­a harrowing painful process, as we may read on his busts...  As to the proscriptions, Dio, a writer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, “never willing to allow a good quality to one of the Caesars, or to put their conduct in other than an unfavorable light,” says that they were brought about mainly—­“by Lepidus and Anthony, who, having been long in honor under Julius Caesar, and having held many offices in state and army, had acquired many enemies.  But as Octavian was associated with them in power, an appearance of complicity attached to him.  But he was not cruel by nature, and he had no occasion for putting many to death; moreover, he had resolved to imitate the example of his adoptive father.  Added to this, he was young, was just entering on his career, and sought rather to gain hearts than to alienate them.  No sooner was he in sole power than he showed no signs of severity, and at that time he caused the death of very few, and saved very many.  He proceeded with the utmost severity against such as betrayed their [proscribed?] masters or friends; but was most favorable to such as helped the proscribed to escape.”

It was that “appearance of complicity” that wrote the anguish on his face:  the fact that he could not prevent, and saw no way but to have a sort of hand in, things his nature loathed.  In truth he appears to us now rather like a pawn, played down the board by some great Chess-player in the Unseen:  moving by no volition or initiative of its own through perils and peace-takings to Queenhood on the seventh square.  But we know that he who would enter the Path of Power must use all the initiative, all the volition, possible in any human being, to attain the balance, to master the personality, to place himself wholly and unreservedly in the power, under the control, of the Higher thing that is “within and yet without him"’ The Voice of his Soul, that speaks also through the lips of his Teacher; whether that Teacher be embodied visibly before men or not.  He obeys; he follows the gleam; he sufferes, and strives, and makes no question; and his striving is all for more power to obey and to follow.  In this, I think, we have our clue to the young Octavian.—­’Luck’ always favored him; not least when, in dividing the world, Anthony chose the East, gave Lepidus Africa, and left the most difficult and dangerous Italy to the youngest partner of the three.