AUGUS'TINE AGE, a term used to designate the reign of Augustus, the most brilliant period in the literary his tory of Rome. The wars that had long distracted the Roman empire had stifled the cultivation of literature and the arts; and when the battle of Actium had terminated internal commotion, noth ing, it was supposed, could so effectually celebrate and adorn the restoration of peace and the happy reign of Augustus, as the appearance of great national poets, who (night supply the chief defect in the literature of their country, and create a body of classical works, in which the ancient Roman traditions might be transmitted to posterity. To accomplish this object, men of genius were flattered, courted, and enriched, in an unexampled manner, by the liberality of Augustus ; and after a brief interval, the verses of Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Tibullus resounded throughout the em pire in their respective epic, lyric, and elegiac strains. The science of jurispru dence then received its full development : and the boundaries of strict law on the one hand., and equity on the other, were
respectively ascertained. In this age, too, Rome became the scat of universal government and wealth; and so tinnie• oils and splendid were the architectural decorations with which it was embellished, no to justify the saying of Augustus— that he found Rome of brick, and loft it of marble.
AUG a religious order, so milled from St. Augustine, their founder, and vulgarly called Austin friars, or Christian hermits. Before the Reforma tion they had 32 houses in England. Among other things, this rule enjoins to have all things in common, to receive nothing without the leave of the superior ; and several other precepts relating to charity, modesty, and chastity. There are likewise nuns of this order. The Augustines are clothed in black, and at Paris are known under the name of the religious of St. Genevieve, that. abbey being the chief of the order.