any harm to herself: but when she saw that Octavian would not on any account let her come before him, but treated her like a slave; when she got no answer to her prayers, that she might still have the countries given to her by Antony,—for Egypt, for her treasures, nay even for a life of freedom,—then it was, that after having tried several sorts of poison, or not having ventured to try them, she put the asps on her bosom, and so killed herself. Thus ended the civil war and the triumvirate: in fact, there had for the last years already been no more triumvirate, as Lepidus had been set aside. Augustus was now sole ruler of the Roman world. The first of August was by a decree of the senate appointed for ever as a holiday, under the name of _Feriæ Augustæ_:[25] the month of Sextilis henceforth had the name of August, even as Quintilis, in which Julius Cæsar was born, had been called after him July. Augustus would have liked better to have had September, in which he was born, named after him; but as all the great events of his life had happened in August, and in that month he had also first entered upon the consulship, the preference was given to it. These Feriæ were celebrated with banquets, festivities, garlands of flowers, and the like, and were still observed in the days of Placidia, and even down to the reign of Pope Leo the Great. It was in fact a political festival, but accompanied with libations and other religious ceremonies, all of which were kept up on that day to the latest times. For this reason, the festival of Vincula Petri[26] was (according to Beda and Biondo of Forli) appointed for the first of August. In the church of S. Pietro in Vincola on the Esquiline, in the baths of Trajan, the chains with which the apostle St. Peter was bound in Rome, as well as those which he wore at Jerusalem, are deposited; and the public secular holiday, with its feasting and revelry, still remains, just as it was on the _Feriæ Augustæ_ of old. Even now, whoever is in any sort of clientship in the later meaning of the word, visits his patron on this day; the servants in the houses of acquaintances have presents given them, as it is with us on the first of January; and the people spend the money which they get in treating themselves. When first I lived in Italy, I was very much annoyed at this impudence, until I found in Biondo that it was the keeping up of a most ancient custom. There are many of these usages in modern Rome, which have their origin from the remotest antiquity. Down to the last century, it was still the practice to carry a carved image of the Virgin on a certain day out of the city, and to wash it in the river Almo, as was formerly done with the image of Cybele. A number of such old customs are now become obsolete; for instance, an image was carried from one church to another, and back again, by way of paying a visit. The festival of the first of August has been called, all through the middle ages to this very day, _Feragosto_.