AUGUSTUS
107
AUNARIUS
Augustus. — The name by which Caius Jdlius
Cesar Octavi.«jus, the first Roman Emperor, in
whose reign Jesus Christ was born, is usually known;
b. at Rome, 62 B. c; d. a. d. 14; It is the title
which he received from the Senate 27 B. c, in grati-
tude for the restoration of some privileges of which
that body had been deprived. The name was after-
wards assumed by all his successors. Augustus
belonged to the gens Octavia and was the son of
Caius Octavius, a prstor. He was the grand-
nephew of (Caius) Julius Ca;sar, and was named in
the latter's will as liis principal heir. After the
murder of Julius Csesar, the young Octavianus
proceeded to Rome to gain possession of his inheri-
tance. Though originally in league with the repub-
lican party, he eventually allied himself with Mark
Antony. Through his own popularity, and in oppo-
sition to the will of the senate he succeeded (43 b. c.)
in obtaining the consulate. In the same year he
entered into a pact with .\ntony and Lepidus by
which it was agreed that for five years they would
control the affairs of Rome. This (second) Trium-
virate (tresi'iri reipubliccE constituenda) so apportioned
the Roman dominions that Lepidus received Spain;
Antony, Gaul; and Augustus, .\frica, Sicily, and
Sardinia. The first concerted move of the Trium-
virate was to proceed against the murderers of
Csesar and the party of the Senate under the leader-
ship of Brutus and Cassius. .\ crushing defeat
was inflicted on the latter at the battle of Philippi
(42 B. c), after which the fate of Rome rested practi-
cally in the hands of two men. Lepidus, always
treated with neglect, sought to obtain Sicily for
himself, but Augustus soon won over his troops, and,
on his submission, sent him to Rome where he spent
the rest of his Hfe as pontifex 7naximus.
A new division of the territory of the Republic between Antony and .\ugustus resulted, by which the former took the East and the latter the West. When Antony put away liis wife Octavia, the sister of Augustus, through infatuation for Cleopatra, civil war again ensued, whose real cause is doubtless to be sought in the conflicting interests of both, and the long-standing antagonism between the East and the West. The followers of Antony were routed in the naval battle of Actium (31 B. c), and Augustus was left, to all intents and purposes, the master of the Roman world. He succeeded in bringing peace to the long-distracted Republic, and by his modera- tion in dealing with the senate, his munificence to the army, and his generosity to the people, he strengthened his position and became in fact, if not in name, the first Emperor of Rome. His policy of preserving intact the republican forms of adminis- tration and of avoiding all semblance of absolute power or monarchy did not diminish his authority or weaken liis control. Whatever may be said in regard to the general character of his administration and liis policy of centralization, it cannot be denied that he succeeded effectually in strengthening and consolidating the loosely organized Roman state into a close and well-knit whole. He was a patron of art, letters, and science, and devoted large sums of money to the embellishment and enlargement of Rome. It was his well-known boast that he "found it of brick and left it of marble ". Under liis manage- ment, industry and commerce increased. Security and rapidity of intercourse were obtained by means of many new liighways. He undertook to remove by legislation the disorder and confusion in hfe and morals brought about, in great measure, by the civil wars. His court life was simple and unosten- tatious. Severe laws were made for the purpose of encouraging marriages and increasing the birth-rate. The immorality of the games and the theatres was curbed, and new laws introduced to regulate the status of freedmen and slaves. The changes wrought
by Augustus in tlie administration of Rome, and his
policy in the Orient are of especial significance to
the liistorian of Christianity. The most important
event of his reign was the birth of Our Lord (Luke,
ii, 1) in Palestine. The details of Christ's life on
earth, from His birth to His death, were very closely
interwoven with the purjjoses and methods pursued
by Augustus. The Emperor died in the seventy-
si.xth year of his age (a. d. 14). After the battle of
Actium, he received into his favour Herod the
Great, confirmed him in his title of King of the Jews,
and granted him the territory between Galilee and
the Trachonitis, thereby winning the gratitude
and devotion of Herod and his house. After the
death of Herod (750, a. v. c), Augustus divided
his kingdom between his sons. One of them, Arche-
laus, was eventually banished, and his territory,
together with Idumaea and Samaria, were added to
the province of Syria (759, a. u. c). On this occa-
sion, Augustus caused a census of the province to
be taken by the legate, Sulpicius Quirinius, the cir-
cumstances of which are of great importance for
the right calculation of the birth of Christ. See
RoM.^N Empire; Luke, Gospel of.
The chief sources for the hfe of Augustus are the Latin writers, Suetonius, Tacitus. Velleius Paterculus, and Cicero (in his Epistles and Philippics); the Greek writers, Nicholas of Damascus, Dio Cassius, and Plutarch. See also his official autobiography, the famous Monumentum Ancyro-num, ed. by Mommsen (Berlin, 1883), and by Fairley (Philadelphia, 1898), with tr.; Tillemont, Histoire des empe- reurs, etc. (Brussels, 1732); Merivale, History of the Roma-ns under the Empire (London, 1850-52); Smith, Diet, of Greek and Roman Biography (London, 1890), I. 424-431; Taylor, A Constitutional and Political History of Rome (London. 1899): xvi-xviii; Ramsay, Was Christ bom at Bethlehemf (New York and London, 1898); The Church under the Roman Empire (ibid.. 1893); Gardtbavsen, Augitstus und seine Zeit {Leipzig, 1891), the standard work on the subject. For the origin and char- acter of the legends that, at an early date, made Augustus one of the " prophets of Christ ", see Graf, Roma nella memoria e nelle immaginazioni del Medio Evo (Turin, 1882). I, ix, 308, 331. Cf. also Gray in Hastings, Diet, of Christ and the Gospels (New York, 1906) s. v. Augustus, I, 143-46.
Patrick J. Healy.
Aumbry, variously written Ambry, or Aumbbye, is a derivative through the French of the classical armarium, or medieval Latin almarium. Its original meaning was a cupboard and it has never lost tliis more general sense, but even in classical Latin it had acquired in addition the special signification of a cupboard for holding books. This limited meaning was widely prevalent in the Middle Ages. Thus in the tenth-century rule of Climy the library is called armarium and the official who had charge of it armarius, while by an arrangement which was long and widely observed both in Benedictine and in other monastic houses, this armarius, or Ubrarian, was usually identical with the precentor. In ^Elfric's Anglo-Saxon glossary, compiled at the beginning of the eleventh century, the Anglo-Saxon word bochord (book-hoard, i. e. library), is interpreted bibliotheca vel armarium vel archivum. Similarly it was a common proverb in religious houses, which meets us as early as 1170, that claustrum sine armario est quasi castrum sine armamentaria (a monastery without a Ubrary is hke a fortress without an arsenal). Besides this, owing to the number of cupboards and presses needed for storing vestments, church plate, etc., the word armarium was also not unfrequently used for the sacristy, though this may also be due to the fact that the books were themselves in many cases Tcept in the sacristy. In German the word Almerei, a derivative of armarium, has the meaning of sacristy.
Clark. The Care of Books (Cambridge. 1902). 57-88; Mi- chael, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (Freiburg, 1903), 42-62; Gasquet, English Monastic Life (London, 1904), 51-55; Otte, Handbuch d. kirchlichen Archdologic (Leipzig. 1886), I, 105; Viollet-le-Dcc, Diet, de Mobilier (Paris, 1856), I.
Herbert Thurston. Aunarius (or Aunacharius), Saint, Bishop of
