After the slave, I make room--for whom else
than imperial Augustus? Off this shore he defeated Sextus Pompey, and he
thought easily to subdue the town above when he summoned it. But Taormina
was always a loyal little place, and it would not yield without a siege.
Then Augustus, sitting down before it, prayed in our temple of Guiding
Apollo that he might have the victory; and as he walked by the beach
afterward a fish threw itself out of the water before him--an omen,
said the diviners, that even so the Pompeians, who held the seas, after
many turns of varied fortune, should be brought to his feet. Pompey
returned with a fleet, and in these waters again the battle was fought
and Augustus lost it, and the siege was raised. But when a third time
the trial of naval strength was essayed, and the cause of the Pompeians
ruined, Augustus remembered the city that had defied him, sent its
inhabitants into exile, and planted a Roman colony in its place. Latin
was now the language here. The massive grandeur of Roman architecture
replaced the old Greek structures. The amphitheatre was enlarged and
renewed in its present form, villas of luxury bordered the coasts as in
Campania, and coins were struck in the Augustan name.
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