68 STATESMEN AND SAGES he undertook a journey to Campania ; but his infirmity increased, and he died at Nola (14 A.D.), in the seventy-seventh year of his age. According to tradition, shortly before his death, he called for a mirror, arranged his hair neatly, and said to his attendants : " Did I play my part well ? If so, applaud me ! " Augustus had consummate tact and address as a ruler and politician, and made use of the passions and talents of others to forward his own designs. The good and great measures which marked his reign were originated mostly by himself. He en- couraged agriculture, patronized the arts and literature, and was himself an author ; though only a few fragments of his writings have been preserved. Hor- ace, Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, and Livy greatest of Latin poets and scholars belonged to the Augustan Age, a name since applied in France to the reign of Louis XIV., in England to that of Queen Anne. ST. AMBROSE* BY REV. A. A. LAMBING, LL.D. (340-397) BIOGRAPHICAL history presents few characters more interesting either to the statesman or the churchman than that of St. Ambrose. As a statesman though but a small part of his life was devoted to the affairs of civil govern- ment he showed great prudence, was sincere- ly devoted to the interests of his imperial master, and yet he was at the same time an uncompromising advocate and defender of the rights of the people. As a churchman he united a high degree of personal sanctity and a fatherly care of those intrusted to his pastoral vigilance especially the poor to an extraor- dinary firmness in maintaining the rights of the Church against imperial usurpation, and the purity of doctrine against the inroads of heresy. St. Ambrose was born about the year 340, of a Roman of the same name who was at that time prefect of the pretorium in Gaul, a prov- ince which then embraced a large portion of western and southwestern Europe. Aries, Lyons, and Treves contend for the honor of being his birthplace, but it is most probable that it was in the latter he first saw the light. Legends, too, are not Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.
