Note 78 — Chapter III · Criticism of The Accepted View

See Eduard Meyer, Kleine Schriften, p. 230: “He [Augustus] might have followed the precedent of Caesar and have aspired to world-conquest and absolute monarchy; by shrinking from it, by giving the state a new constitution and retaining for himself only limited powers, he made world-conquest impossible”; Ibid., p. 470 f.; Gardthausen, I, p. 1069; Drumann, Röm. Gesch., IV (1910), p. 300; Gibbon (see above p. 57). It is refuted also by the emperor Julian, who shows himself to be singularly well-informed regarding the history of the early empire (Cf. J. Geffcken, Kaiser Julianus, Leipzig, 1914, p. 150: “Julian zeigt ... wie gründlich er sich mit der Geschichte jener Zeit beschäftigt hat”). In The Caesars, 326 C, he represents Augustus as saying: “For I did not give way to boundless ambition and aim at enlarging her [Rome’s] empire at all costs, but assigned for it two boundaries defined as it were by nature herself, the Danube and the Euphrates. Then after conquering the Scythians and Thracians I did not employ the long reign that you gods vouchsafed me in making projects for war after war, but devoted my leisure to legislation and to reforming the evils that war had caused.” (Trans. by Wilmer Cave Wright).