Perhaps a partial explanation lies in the fact that we demand always a certain theatrical quality in a man of genius. It has been suggested by an eminent historian (Professor Sloane) that a great man has usually a capacity for inordinate wickedness, as well as for consummate greatness. Alexander loses control of himself on occasion, and in his frenzy kills his friend. Hannibal spends his whole life under the spell of a sworn hatred. Cæsar stops at nothing to attain his selfish ends. In modern times your Frederick, your Napoleon, is not called great because of any moral quality. Public taste seems to demand a rounded character in its favoured heroes: it likes the piquant flavour of immorality. In every direction your hero must be measured by other standards than ordinary mortals. But the life of Augustus is keyed to the tone of a passionless moderation. He is all judgment, no emotion. Between the courses at dinner he listlessly plays games that he may not be annoyed by the persiflage of the jesters who are there to amuse his guests. And he plays the game of life in the same fashion. One cannot imagine him excited, enthusiastic, angry even. He might, indeed, commit a crime, but it would be a carefully measured crime, dictated by policy: not a crime of passion. Even in his liaisons, it was said of him that his chief ambition was to learn the real sentiment of those about him through their wives, rather than merely to gratify a personal appetite. But it must not be forgotten that Augustus, had he not been such a man as this, could not have accomplished the work he did. Had he been full of enthusiasms he would have antagonised too many people; would have made too many powerful enemies; would have invited the fate that befell the man of genius whose nephew he was, and by whose good example he profited. Yet, after all, the measure of capacity is success, and it seems a grudging estimate which withholds the title of “great” from the man who changed the entire complexion of the civilised world and put his stamp indelibly upon the centuries. But whether genius or not in the ordinary acceptance of that loosely applied and somewhat ambiguous word, there is one regard in which Augustus need fear comparison with no leader of any age: in practical statecraft, judged by its result, he has no superior. In a pre-eminent degree he was able to isolate himself from his environment; to visualise the political situation; to see his fellow-men through the clear medium of expediency, undistorted by any aberration of passion or of prejudice. To the theatrical quality of personal vanity, from which Cæsar was by no means free, Augustus was an entire stranger. Because he was master of his own ambition, he came to be master of the world. If because of his placid logicality, posterity has been disposed to speak slightingly of his genius, the same quality won him at least an unchallenged position as the most consummate master of practical politics.[a] FOOTNOTES