she had often experienced such violent shocks from popular tumults or the
factions of the great, as had threatened her with imminent destruction:
that a republican government was only accommodated to a people amongst
whom the division of property gave to no class of citizens such a degree
of pre-eminence as might prove dangerous to public freedom: that there
was required in that form of political constitution, a simplicity (152)
of life and strictness of manners which are never observed to accompany a
high degree of public prosperity: that in respect of all these
considerations, such a form of government was utterly incompatible with
the present circumstances of the Romans that by the conquest of so many
foreign nations, by the lucrative governments of provinces, the spoils of
the enemy in war, and the rapine too often practised in time of peace, so
great had been the aggrandizement of particular families in the preceding
age, that though the form of the ancient constitution should still remain
inviolate, the people would no longer live under a free republic, but an
aristocratical usurpation, which was always productive of tyranny: that
nothing could preserve the commonwealth from becoming a prey to some
daring confederacy, but the firm and vigorous administration of one
person, invested with the whole executive power of the state, unlimited
and uncontrolled: in fine, that as Rome had been nursed to maturity by
the government of six princes successively, so it was only by a similar
form of political constitution that she could now be saved from
aristocratical tyranny on one hand, or, on the other, from absolute
anarchy.

On whichever side of the question the force of argument may be thought to
preponderate, there is reason to believe that Augustus was guided in his
resolution more by inclination and prejudice than by reason. It is
related, however, that hesitating between the opposite opinions of his
two counsellors, he had recourse to that of Virgil, who joined with