The age of Augustus is a brilliant period in the history of Rome. There were the lawyers M. Antistius Labeo and C. Ateius Capito; the poets Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and others; and the historian Livy. The literary remains of Augustus were published by J. A. Fabricius, Hamburg, 1727, 4to.

The annexed table shows the various descendants of Julia, the sister of the Dictator Cæsar, down to the Emperor Nero, who left no children. The Dictator had only a daughter, and she died childless.

The relationship of the various members of the family of Augustus is very complicated, but it is necessary to understand it well in studying the history of his period. The preceding tables by Lipsius show the relationship of all the members of the Octavian, Antonian, Julian, and other Gentes who were connected with the family of Augustus. There are some difficulties about a few names; but they are of no importance. (Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Augustus, ed. Örelli; Suetonius, Augustus; Dion Cassius, lib. xlv.—lvi.; Appian, Civil Wars, ii.-v., and Illyrica; Cicero, Letters and Philippics; Velleius Paterculus, ii. 59-124; Tacitus, Annal. i.; Monumentum Ancyranum, in Oberlin's Tacitus or the editions of Suetonius; Plutarch, Antonius; Clinton, Fasti Hellenici; Rasche, Lexicon Rei Numaria; Eckhel, Doctrina Num. Vet. vols. vi. viii.) G. L. AUGUSTUS, Duke of Saxony, and last Archbishop of MAGDEBURG, the second son of John George I., Elector of Saxony, and Magdalena Sibylla, daughter of Albrecht Frederick, Duke of Prussia, of the house of Brandenburg, was born at Dresden on the 13th of August, 1614. At the age of twelve he was chosen by the chapter of Magdeburg coadjutor to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, Christian William, Margrave of Brandenburg (8th of December, 1625), who was deposed by the chapter in 1628 on the ground of having made war upon the Emperor Ferdinand II., as an ally of King Christian IV. of Denmark. But the real cause of his deposition was the fear of the chapter that the Emperor, encouraged by his victories over the Danes and their allies among the Protestant German princes, would drive Christian William out, and impose upon them a Roman Catholic bishop in the person of his second son, the Archduke Leopold William, the consequence of which would have been the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in that bishopric. In order to prevent that danger, the chapter, immediately after the deposition of Christian William, chose prince Augustus archbishop, alleging that, as he was already coadjutor, they could not conveniently choose any other individual. But the real motive was the hope that the Emperor would not make any objection to his election, because he was the son of the Elector of Saxony, the most power

ful among the German princes, with whom, although he was a Protestant, the Emperor was on terms of friendship and alliance. The chapter was deceived. Misled by fanatical counsellors and Jesuits, and confident in the victorious arms of Tilly and Wallenstein, the Emperor issued the famous “Edictum Restitutionis " (1629), which was calculated to wrest from the Protestant princes so many bishoprics which were once Roman Catholic, and other ecclesiastical territories, where the Protestant religion was then established, and of which their younger sons were chosen bishops and abbots. The Emperor consequently declared himself against the election of Augustus, whom he contrived to deprive of his episcopal dignity by means of the Pope. The Emperor's son Leopold William was chosen archbishop, the Protestant canons and deans having 'first been driven out and replaced by Roman Catholics. Count Wolf of Mansfeld was appointed by the Emperor governor of the bishopric for his son, and the Roman Catholic religion was in a fair way to be forced upon all the inhabitants. Tilly occupied the country with the imperial army, and the city of Magdeburg, which was not under the bishop's authority, having refused to receive an imperial garrison, was besieged by him, and finally taken and destroyed. The King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, had endeavoured to prevent the unfortunate fate of that rich and populous city, but his alliance with the Elector of Brandenburg being not yet concluded, he could not assist Magdeburg in time; however, soon after the fall of that city, he approached it with his main army, obliged Tilly to evacuate the bishopric and to fall back upon Leipzig, and in the environs of that town defeated him in a decisive battle (7th of September, 1631). The bishopric of Magdeburg being thus conquered by Gustavus Adolphus, who, according to his proclamation, had taken up arms not only for the defence of the Protestant faith, but also for the protection of the Protestant princes, it was supposed that he would restore it to its legitimate sovereign Augustus; but he kept it for himself, and appointed Prince Louis of Anhalt-Dessau governor of it. The Swedes remained in possession of Magdeburg till they lost the great battle of Nördlingen (19th of August, 1634). Their defeat led to a separate peace between the Emperor and the Elector of Saxony, which was concluded at Prague, on the 20th of May, 1635, in which it was stipulated that Augustus should be recognised as Archbishop of Magdeburg. The Elector, however, was obliged to take the bishopric by force from the Swedes, and it was not until 1638 that Augustus received the homage of the chapter and states of Magdeburg. No sooner was he in possession than he was driven out again by the Swedes: he retook and lost it several times more, till

at last he succeeded, in 1646, in keeping himself neutral between the Swedes and the Emperor. In the following year, 1647, Augustus married Anna Maria, daughter of Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Mecklenburg, and on this occasion he renounced the title of Archbishop, and assumed that of Administrator, because, although celibacy had been abolished in the Protestant church, there was still an opinion among the Protestants that a bishop ought not to be married. At the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, Augustus was acknowledged as sovereign prince of Magdeburg, which, after his death, was to belong to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. The city of Magdeburg, still claiming the privileges of a free imperial city, refused to do homage to Augustus or Frederick William, till the elector besieged it with an army of 14,000 men, and forced the citizens to sign the treaty of Kloster-Bergen (28th of May, 1666), in consequence of which Magdeburg was degraded from a free imperial city (freie Reichsstadt) to a "Landstadt," or a town subject to a prince. The father of Augustus having died in 1656, he inherited part of his dominions-the town of Weissenfels, a considerable district in Thuringia, and the districts of Burg, Queerfurt, Jüterbock, and Dahne, situated within the archbishopric of Magdeburg; in 1659 he acquired the county of Barby. He built the fine palace at Weissenfels, and by a wise administration succeeded in healing many of the wounds which the Thirty Years' War had inflicted upon his dominions. Augustus had five sons and seven daughters by his first wife, who died in 1669. He made a second marriage, in 1672, with a countess of Leiningen-Westerburg, by whom he had three children more. After his death, which took place on the 4th of June, 1680, the archbishopric of Magdeburg, as stated above, was united with the dominions of the Elector of Brandenburg, whose descendants still possess it, but the districts mentioned above were inherited by the eldest son of Augustus, John Adolphus, who founded the branch of the dukes of Saxe-Weissenfels, which became extinct in 1746, in John Adolphus II., a renowned general. [ADOLPHUS II., JOHN, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels.] (Weisse, Geschichte der Chur-Sächsischen Staaten, vol. iv. vi. p. 200, &c.; Böttiger, Geschichte des Kurstaates und Königreiches Sachsen, vol. i. p. 320, &c.)

W. P. AUGUSTUS I. of POLAND. [SIEGMUND AUGUSTUS.]

AUGUSTUS I. (II.), FRIEDERICH, King of POLAND and Elector of SAXONY, is called Augustus II. by those who consider King Siegmund Augustus, who reigned from 1529 till 1572, as Augustus I.; although he is more properly called Siegmund II. Augustus, or simply Siegmund Augustus. Augustus Frederick, the subject of this bio

|graphy, was the second son of John George III., Elector of Saxony, and Anna Sophia, daughter of Frederick III., King of Denmark: he was born at Dresden, on the 12th of May, 1670. The Elector John George III. died in 1691; and was succeeded by his eldest son, John George IV., a highly gifted but extravagant prince, who died, in 1694, of the small-pox, which he had caught from his unworthy mistress Sibylla von Neizschütz, who died a few days before her noble lover. John George IV., having left no issue, was succeeded by his brother Augustus Frederick.

Augustus Frederick was gifted with an amiable disposition, rare talents, unusual beauty, and unparalleled strength, owing to which circumstance he acquired the name of Augustus the Strong, by which he is wellknown in history. He received an excellent education, and developed his natural taste for the fine arts and literature in a three years' journey through the principal countries of Europe; but being given to sensual pleasures and "noble" extravagances, he imitated the example of the court of Versailles and others which he visited, and there contracted that extraordinary passion for luxury and royal splendour for which his name has become as conspicuous as that of King Louis XIV. of France. At Vienna the young prince made a lasting friendship with the Roman king, afterwards emperor, Joseph I. of Austria. His father, who was known as a good general, and had signalized himself at the famous siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, wished to bring him up to arms; and the young prince was scarcely sixteen when he was sent into the camp of his grandfather, the King of Denmark, who intended to reduce the free city of Hamburg, and had assembled an army under its walls. During the years from 1689 to 1691, Augustus served in the imperial army which was employed on the Rhine against the French; and although he did not exactly show the qualities of a general, he attracted the attention of both the French and the Germans by many gallant deeds. After his accession he renewed the alliance of Saxony with the emperor, obtained the command-in-chief against the Turks, and joined the imperial army_in Hungary with 8000 Saxons (1695). For some time he was successful in Transylvania, and laid siege to Temesvár (1696); but the approach of the great Turkish army obliged him to raise the siege. In the following year (1697) he was defeated, after a brave resistance, at Olash, on the river Bega in Hungary; but although his defeat was only followed by moderate disadvantages for the imperialists, he resigned his post of commander-in-chief, and went to Vienna. His personal appearance, and the chivalrous spirit which he showed in many adventurous engagements, made a great impression on the Turks, and they used to call him "Demir

el," or "the Iron-hand;" being more polite than their historiographer Rashid, who calls him, in his Persico-Arabico-Turkish patchwork language, "Sáx nám láíní púr shúr," or, "the Saxon whose name be cursed, but who is easy to shear," that is, "to beat."

The motive of Augustus' journey to Vienna, and his long stay there, soon became known. John III. Sobieski, the chivalrous King of Poland, had died in 1696, leaving three sons, James, Alexander, and Constantine, and a widow, Marie de la Grange, the daughter of the Marquis d'Arquien, a French nobleman. During the last years of his reign King John III. lost the confidence of the nation, which he so well merited by his personal character and his brilliant victories over the Turks; and there were few Poles who would have chosen one of his sons for his successor. To choose a king among their own countrymen would, however, have been the best course the Poles could have taken, if the weakness of the republic had not been manifest, surrounded as she was by the rising powers of Russia, Sweden, and Brandenburg, by troublesome Turks and Tartars, and by that power, Austria, which was the more dreaded by the Poles as two neighbour kingdoms, Bohemia and Hungary, the constitution of which was formerly very like that of Poland, had been deprived of their political liberties by the house of Austria. There was consequently reason to fear that some of these dangerous neighbours would have showed themselves hostile to Poland from the moment that the republic would have been less accessible to their influence by being headed by a national chief, unless that chief was not only a hero, but also a man above the temptation of gold. Moreover, that man ought to have been a noble exalted by his name, his wealth, and his influence above those intrigues and jealousies which at that time prevented any cordial union among the Polish nobles. But however rich in heroic soldiers, Poland had no general who was the hero of the nation as John Sobieski once was; nobles possessed of royal fortunes were as easily bribed with millions as those starving knights, their peers, with a dollar and a bottle of brandy, for which they sold their suffrages at the diet of 1697; and the great families of Radziwil, Sapieha, Sobieski, Leszczynski, Jablonowski, Czartoryski, and others were divided by jealousy, and so far from possessing any general influence, that the least attempt to obtain it would have united their rivals against them, and caused the failure of their patriotic or their selfish undertakings. Another circumstance which made the choice of a national king unsafe was the more nominal than real authority of the king, who was only the first peer of a realm in which there were no citizens except nobles, and where all nobles had equal political rights, so that even a few malcontents

or intriguers might cause great trouble to the king, even if he could reckon upon a powerful majority. This state of things was a sufficient reason for the majority of the Polish nobles wishing for a foreign king descended from a powerful family, though not so powerful as to become dangerous to the liberties and independence of Poland; a superior general able to defend the republic in her critical position and to conduct a successful war against those powers which, in the course of the seventeenth century, had wrested several valuable provinces from Poland; and rich enough not only to maintain himself with dignity on the throne, so as to become no charge to the nation, but also to pay those who should support him with their suffrages and influence. For there is no doubt, and the course of events will show, that the Polish nobles expected to be bribed, and that they were not ashamed to sell their suffrages, although they considered all trade as degrading, and left it to Jews and the German inhabitants of the principal towns.

Ten candidates, native and foreign, presented themselves or were proposed for the Polish crown. The first in rank among the natives was Prince James Sobieski, the eldest son of the late king, who offered five millions of Polish guldens (about 119,000l. sterling) for his election; but this sum was far from being sufficient, and, besides, the young prince met with a strong opposition even among those who wished for a native king, because he was the son of a king of an elective monarchy. Next to him came John Przependowski, senator, grand treasurer of the crown and castellan of Culm, and Bielinski, the marshal of the diet, both of whom played an important part during the ensuing troubles, but they soon renounced their plan, as they were not powerful enough to gain a numerous party. Among the foreign princes, the first was François-Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, of a younger branch of the royal house of France. The others were Charles, Count Palatine and Prince of Neuburg, who was married to Louise-Charlotte Radziwil; Leopold, Duke of Lorraine; Maximilian-Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria, a celebrated general; Louis, Margrave of Baden, also a renowned general, but who was rejected because he was not rich enough; Don Livio Odescalchi, the nephew of Pope Innocent XI., who promised twenty and even thirty millions of Polish guldens; and last, Augustus Frederick, Elector of Saxony.

Augustus Frederick was in many respects a very fit man for a king of the Poles. Although he was no great general, he knew warfare well and had attracted attention by his chivalrous conduct, which, together with his majestic appearance, his noble manners, his liberality, and unbounded generosity, were highly admired by a nation of warriors. His hereditary dominions were situated almost