Mecaenas in advising him to retain the imperial power, as being the form
of government most suitable to the circumstances of the times.

It is proper in this place to give some account of the two ministers
above-mentioned, Agrippa and Mecaenas, who composed the cabinet of
Augustus at the settlement of his government, and seem to be the only
persons employed by him in a ministerial capacity during his whole reign.

M. Vipsanius Agrippa was of obscure extraction, but rendered himself
conspicuous by his military talents. He obtained a victory over Sextus
Pompey; and in the battles of Philippi and Actium, where he displayed
great valour, he contributed not a little to establish the subsequent
power of Augustus. In his expeditions afterwards into Gaul and Germany,
he performed many signal achievements, for which he refused the honours
of a triumph. The expenses which others would have lavished on that
frivolous spectacle, he applied to the more laudable purpose of
embellishing Rome with magnificent buildings, one of which, the Pantheon,
still remains. In consequence of a dispute with Marcellus, the nephew of
Augustus, he retired to Mitylene, (153) whence, after an absence of two
years, he was recalled by the emperor. He first married Pomponia, the
daughter of the celebrated Atticus, and afterwards one of the Marcellas,
the nieces of Augustus. While this lady, by whom he had children, was
still living, the emperor prevailed upon his sister Octavia to resign to
him her son-in-law, and gave him in marriage his own daughter Julia; so
strong was the desire of Augustus to be united with him in the closest
alliance. The high degree of favour in which he stood with the emperor
was soon after evinced by a farther mark of esteem: for during a visit to
the Roman provinces of Greece and Asia, in which Augustus was absent two
years, he left the government of the empire to the care of Agrippa.
While this minister enjoyed, and indeed seems to have merited, all the