AUGUST OF THE GOLDEN AGE

Concerning the virtues of authoritarianism, as opposed to the vices of democracy (for those who may have some doubts about my seriousness in defense of authoritarianism, I must strenuously elucidate the fact that this dissertation is most certainly tongue-in-cheek, but the wholesome grain of truth in it is most certainly flourlessly sprouting!), there is no better historical illustration than the transition of the Roman Republican democracy, plagued by horrific civil wars, taking the lives of many thousands of its citizens to the point of risking a complete depletion of the propertied classes, to the heretofore uncommon phenomenon of peace and prosperity for the Republic’s survivors, under the protective shield of Caesarian and Augustan tyranny. Indeed, the Augustan Golden Age of Rome is unsurpassed by all other despots in the extent of its despotic disposition, except that the subsequent degenerate rulers of Rome have shown us the distorted face of the unenlightened autocracy, which we are always eager to mistake for the face of autocracy an Sich…

Ironically, Mommsen’s enthusiastic opinion of Julius Caesar as “the complete and perfect man” might have been much closer to the truth, had we chosen to pretend that Julius Caesar was not one man, but two, fused together. Such fusion, in historical perspective, should be the most natural thing to do, considering that the other Caesar was everything the first one would have wished for himself to become.

His name was Octavian, but he liked to be called, like his uncle and adoptive father, Caius Julius Caesar. If the first of all Caesars descended from the gods, so did his sole and rightful heir. Careful and cunning, he was a much better judge of character than the original Caesar, but, unlike him, he turned to his advantage the fact of being underestimated by friends and foes alike, riding the last tidal wave of the Roman civil war as if it were a white stallion, carrying him straight into the heart of his beloved trophy city of Rome, as the Imperator Augustus Caesar.

Just as with Caius Julius Caesar the First, a famous story was told about a meeting between Octavian and Alexander the Great, this time not as a statue, but as the physical remains of the real man. Unlike the first Caesar, this one shed no tears. Surrounded by his overawed soldiers, Octavian coolly lifted the skull of the dead Greek conqueror from his coffin, to have a better look at it, allegedly breaking off a part of his nose! There were purportedly gasps of horror, but this time no questions were asked…

The historians who champion democracy at all cost are trying to diminish Augustus Caesar, by pointing to the discrepancy between his claims of divinity and his human frailties. His face was allegedly pock-marked like Stalin’s, he had a weak left hip (Stalin had a withered left arm!), he suffered from a perpetual head cold and had a bladder problem, often embarrassing him in public. Because of a degenerative skin condition, he never took a bath. All these disagreeable details combined were supposed to cut him down to size, that is to represent him as a pitiful invalid with a nasty penchant for murder and revenge. Suetonius however is much more generous in his description of Augustus’s appearance:

“He was unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life though he cared nothing for personal adornment. His expression was calm and mild. He had clear bright eyes, in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power. His teeth were wide apart, small and ill-kept. His hair was slightly curly and inclining to golden; his eyebrows met. His complexion was between dark and fair, he was short of stature, but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry of his figure…”

But even if the first picture be true, the legend of August must be stronger than such insignificant strains of verismo. Moreover, the glory of the Augustan Golden Age speaks well in his behalf. The genii of Vergilius, Horace, Ovid, Livy, and of many others who flourished on his watch, testify for him too. There was a sense of national happiness all around, in sharp contrast to the slaughterhouse years of his Republican predecessors. His brand of Pax Romana throughout the Empire has been lauded for exceptional wisdom and skillful statesmanship, where his genius is undeniable, and generally recognized as such.

The bottom line of all this, summarizing everything said and implied above, is that the legacy of Augustus rests on the recognition of the positive value of his authoritarian reign against the backdrop of a prolonged vicious strife, marring the last years of the Roman Republic, and underscoring the deficiencies of democracy, which comparison is unacceptable to the promoters of democracy at any cost.

On the other hand, his overall role in the history of Rome and generally speaking in the history of mankind, can hardly be appreciated without the continuity, and outside of the conjunction with the inaugural reign of his adoptive father Caius Julius Caesar.

Postscript. Two thousand years after August, what are the prospects of a new “Golden Age”--- today or any time soon? In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago, and the alleged end of the cold war, there were many optimists in America, who saw the stock market going through the roof, their country ostensibly remaining the world’s sole superpower, and they rushed to declare the approaching new twenty-first century “the New American Century,” apparently subscribing to the feeling “Golden Age Now” (not to be confused with the 1979 American movie Apocalypse Now).

But then the twenty-first century really struck with a vengeance, and these days, even the neoconservative inventors of PNAC may not really want to own this bloody mess for America.

So, who owns this new century, anyway? There is clearly no place for Augusts in Washington, to be sure. For a while, Candidate Obama may have seemed like Divus Baracus to his optimistic supporters, but that euphoria was short-lived, and the next American Election will be won by President Obama by default, rather than honoris causa. What happened? The free world has no liking for dictators, that is, for strong, independently-minded soloists, preferring instead a concert performance of commercial musicians, with their obscure orchestra conductors conducting by remote control in a special kind of modern political music…

A new Golden Age? But there can be no Golden Age without an August, and there is no August on the horizon. Is there any hope then for the frustrated awaiters of the Golden Age? Maybe there is, but to elaborate on it any further, I have insufficient imagination…