case of Caesar, and was drawing the logical inference in the case of
Octavian when he wrote the first _Eclogue_ and the prooemium of the
_Georgics_. This makes it all the more remarkable that while his
admiration for Augustus increased with the years, he ceased to give any
countenance to the growing cult of "emperor worship." That the restraint
was not simply in obedience to a governmental policy seems clear,
for Horace, who in his youthful work had shown his distrust of the
government, had now learned to make very liberal use of celestial
appellatives.

Augustus, then, is not in any way identified with the semi-divine Aeneas.
Vergil does not even place him at a post of special honor on the mount
of revelations, but rather in the midst of a long line of remarkable
_principes_. With dignity and sanity he lays the stress upon the great
events of the Republic and upon its heroes. We may, therefore, justly
conclude that when he wrote the epic he advocated a constitution of the
type proposed by Cicero, in which the _princeps_ should be a true leader
in the state but in a constitutional republic.

It is the great past, illustrated by the pageant of heroes and the
prophetic pictures of Aeneas's shield, that kindles the poet's
imagination. His sympathies are generous enough to include every race
within the empire and every leader who had shared in Rome's making,
from the divine founder, Romulus, and the tyrannicide, Brutus, to the
republican martyrs, Cato and Pompey, as well as the restorers of peace,
Caesar and Augustus. He has no false patriotism that blinds him to Rome's
shortcomings. He frankly admits with regret her failures in arts and
sciences with a modesty that permits of no reference to his own saving
work. What Rome has done and can do supremely well he also knows: she can
rule with justice, banish violence with law, and displace war by peace.