It is as an enlightened and munificent patron of letters that Maecenas holds his place in popular estimation, but he was much more than this. He had been since Caesar's death the trusty agent and the intimate adviser of Augustus; a hidden hand, directing the most delicate manoeuvres of his master. In adroit resource and suppleness no diplomatist could match him. His acute prevision of events and his penetrating insight into character enabled him to create the circumstances and to mould the men whose combination was necessary to his aims. By the tact and moderation of his address, the honied words which averted anger, the dexterous reticence which disarmed suspicion, he reconciled opposing factions, veiled arbitrary measures, impressed alike on nobles and on populace the beneficence of imperial despotism, while he kept its harshness out of sight. Far from parading his extensive powers, he masked them by ostentatious humility, refusing official promotion, contented with the inferior rank of "Knight," sitting in theatre and circus below men whom his own hand had raised to station higher than his own. Absorbed in unsleeping political toil, he wore the outward garb of a careless, trifling voluptuary. It was difficult to believe that this apparently effeminate lounger, foppish in dress, with curled and scented hair, luxuriating in the novel refinement of the warm bath, an epicure in food and drink, patronizing actors, lolling in his litter amid a train of parasites, could be the man on whom, as Horace tells us, civic anxieties and foreign dangers pressed a ceaseless load. He had built himself a palace and laid out noble gardens, the remains of which still exist, at the foot of the Esquiline hill. It had been the foulest and most disreputable slum in Rome, given up to the burial of paupers, the execution of criminals, the obscene rites of witches, a haunt of dogs and vultures. He made it healthy and beautiful; Horace celebrates its salubrity, and Augustus, when an invalid, came thither to breathe its air. (Sat. I, viii, 8, 14.) There Maecenas set out his books and his gems and his Etruscan ware, entertained his literary and high born friends, poured forth his priceless Caecuban and Chian wines. There were drops of bitter in these cups. His beautiful wife Terentia tormented him by her temper and her infidelities; he put her away repeatedly, as often received her back. It was said of him that he had been married a hundred times, though only to a single wife: "What is the latest conjugal news?" men asked as his sumptuous litter passed by, "is it a marriage or a divorce?" And he was haunted by terror of death. "Prolong my life," was his prayer, in words which Seneca has ridiculed and La Fontaine translated finely, yet missing the terseness of the original, "life amid tortures, life even on a cross, only life!"