17. Portraits of Antonius and Cleopatra on a silver tetradrachm issued in Syria in 36 BC. The coins reflects the integration of the two regimes in the context of the Parthian war. Antony is described as imperator and triumvir, Cleopatra as the ‘younger goddess.’ Brutus and Cassius had upset the status quo. They had terrorised the rulers and cities of the east, slaughtering the Lycians and sacking the city of Rhodes, among other indecencies. Although Antonius had been aware of the stress the system had been under when he arrived after Philippi, he could accomplish little of substance. Again, the case of Deiotaurus is telling. He had sent troops to the aid of Brutus and Cassius, but had previously sent Antonius a large gift to secure his throne – which Antonius had retained because the troops, commanded by his secretary Amyntas, had deserted on the eve of Philippi. Also, in what was little more than a year between his arrival and his departure for Brundisium, he had met Cleopatra. After the spectacular encounter in southern Turkey he had accompanied her to Alexandria. She was pregnant with twins by the time he left. Antonius’ failure to establish a coherent relationship with the other dynasts of the east may explain why rulers whose theoretical function was to protect the tax-paying urbanised zones of the west offered no resistance to Labienus. Antonius would now be more proactive, and he had quite likely laid plans for restructuring the eastern frontier before he returned from Italy. There is evidence that the Senate was rubber-stamping decisions he had made concerning people and places in the east around the time of the treaty of Misenum. When Deiotaurus died, his kingdom went to Amyntas, and Antonius began to rearrange the states of southern Anatolia, delivering
them to men who had proved their loyalty during Labienus’ invasion. These included Polemo of Laodicea, a respectable public intellectual, and Cleon and Antipater, both said to have been brigands. In the north, in assembling a new kingdom of Pontus for Darius, grandson of Mithridates, he cut loose territory from the eastern edge of the province of Bithynia–Pontus. Cappadocia, occupying a strategic position south of the Armenian highlands stretching west from the Euphrates, had lost its king to Cassius and offered no resistance to the Parthians. Antonius now gave the realm to the deceased king’s son Ariarathes, who had once sought Julius Caesar’s patronage. In Commagene, at the eastern end of the Anatolian plateau, King Antiochus was accused by Publius Ventidius (probably for good reason) of aiding and abetting the Parthians. But Ventidius, who may well have taken a large bribe from Antiochus, once a client of Pompey’s, pursued his removal with less than his usual vigour. Antonius, who certainly received a substantial payment, left Antiochus in place. Antonius did more than re-establish links with local dynasts: he began the deaccession of territories that were insufficiently urbanised to support a standard Roman administration. Thus Cilicia, once the strategic key to the Roman east as the link between Syria and Asia, vanished. In northern Anatolia, where Darius had died, the Pontic kingdom went to Polemo of Laodicea. Lycia was once again left independent, while Cleon and Antipater were awarded Lycaonia on the northern slopes of the Taurus mountains. Cleopatra received Cyprus and portions of Palestine, the rest of which went to Herod, who, along with his brother, had been appointed as tetrarch to support the Hasmonean high priest Hyrcanus. A Parthian column had eliminated Hyrcanus and Herod’s brother while supporting a Hasmonean pretender to the high priesthood in Jerusalem. When the Parthians were driven back, Herod was the only one left. The area to the east of the Jordan river remained under the control of the king of the Nabataeans, based at Petra. Antonius’ arrangements reveal a strategy to provide cost-effective security through a cordon of client kings. Syria, drawing support for any military adventure from these same kings, would remain a forward Roman base against Parthia. The gifts to Cleopatra, which restored previous Ptolemaic territory, were part of the grand plan to reduce the Roman footprint in marginal lands, and might be seen as recompense to Cleopatra for her services against the assassins. Also, she was rich, and Antonius
needed her money for his proposed invasion of Parthia; he could no longer rely on extortionate demands for cash if he wished to secure the loyalty of the eastern provinces while continuing to pay his very large army. It was in the planning stage of the Parthian war that the partnership between the two was solidified. Cleopatra became, in effect, the paymaster of the Roman army. Octavia, with whom Antonius had two children, remained in Athens with their offspring as well as the children from both her and Antonius’ previous marriages. In this era of widespread marital infidelity, Antonius’ conduct towards Octavia was not seen as especially remarkable. Critics would later stress, not his infidelity, but his penchant for drunken parties and self-display that echoed that of eastern dynasts. More serious than infidelity was the charge that his love life was affecting his judgement. It was rumoured that Archelaus, who replaced Ariarathes as king of Commagene in 36 BC, received the kingdom only because Antonius had had an affair with Glaphyra, his mother. In Rome, reports of Antonius’ behaviour might recall Cicero’s accounts of his debauchery, especially in the Second Philippic, his creative denunciation of Antonius’ earlier life that had circulated in the late summer of 44 BC. Antonius needed now to show that he was still at the top of his game. So in the summer of 36 BC he was at last ready to launch his expedition against Parthia, where yet again there was administrative unrest. The current king, Phraates, had murdered his father Orodes (ruler when Carrhae was fought) and his brother two years earlier. Antonius sent four legions into Armenia to secure the loyalty of its king, Artavasdes, while he assembled a vast army in Syria and demanded that Phraates return the surviving prisoners from Carrhae as well as the standards taken in the battle, plus some lost to Labienus. This was the first time that legionary standards had become such important symbols. Julius Caesar never mentions the need to recover the one his legates lost in the winter of 54 BC, nor does anyone mention lost standards in the more neutral – from Caesar’s viewpoint – account of the Helvetian victory over the Romans in a previous generation. The recovery of standards from the Cimbrians and the Teutons was a non-factor for Marius; and there were peoples such as the Scordisci in the Balkans whose occasional victories over the Romans must have left them with quite a stockpile. In his virulent attack on Piso, Cicero, who was not one to refrain
from retailing the embarrassments of those he disliked, never mentions the loss of a military standard that was recovered with some fanfare in 30 BC. Critics would later write that Antonius botched the Parthian invasion because his infatuation with Cleopatra clouded his judgement. That was not the problem. The problem was that Antonius was careless. Although he could be charming and courageous, he could also be delusional. Seeing himself as somewhat larger than life, he was prone to mistake theatrical grandiosity for careful planning; he could be bad with detail and incapable of seeing the world from any perspective other than his own. So it was in the hope of achieving something great without much effort that he allowed himself to be drawn into protracted negotiations with a brother of Phraates, who had briefly deserted during the spring of 36 BC. Then, when he found the Parthian army massed across his path, he had to turn north to gather his full force in Armenia. Arriving at the end of the summer, he should have stayed put; but he did not, instead resolving to advance through the highlands of Armenia into Media Atropatene (the modern Iranian province of East Azerbaijan). Antonius proceeded down the valley of the river Ar before turning south to lake Urmia; and then from the valley of the river Barandouz that empties into the lake from the south he turned east to the royal city of Phraaspa, leaving his siege train to play catch-up. But Phraates destroyed the siege train and the force guarding it (while adding to the Parthian collection of Roman standards), which made the siege itself impossible. Antonius was left to fight his way back to Armenia, his army suffering the effects of both the winter weather and a lack of food. It was now that his positive qualities came to the fore, as he inspired his men and in so doing preserved about two-thirds of his original force. After several months of moping about on the Syrian coast, and having received a serious injection of cash from Cleopatra, Antonius claimed that the campaign’s failure was in fact Artavasdes’ fault, because the outnumbered Armenian cavalry had not saved the siege train. Now allied with the king of Media (also called Artavasdes), Antonius pursued his Armenia vendetta over the next two summers. During the campaigning season of 34 BC, he finally took Artavasdes the Armenian as prisoner and in 32 BC he received back from Artavasdes the Mede the standards lost when his baggage train was destroyed two years before.
The capture of Artavasdes the Armenian was the occasion for a triumphal procession in Alexandria, at which Antonius announced the reorganisation of the eastern provinces, the upshot of which was essentially that Cleopatra would receive more territory. He also announced his forthcoming divorce from Octavia and his marriage to Cleopatra, and that Caesarion was Julius Caesar’s biological child (which he was). He allegedly stated, too, that his three children by Cleopatra, twin boys and a girl, would have kingdoms of their own in the future. For two of them (a son and the daughter) these kingdoms would be carved out of territory that was currently Roman, while the other son, now betrothed to the daughter of Artavasdes of Media, would receive a vast realm constructed from Parthian territory. Or so it was said. If the story of the future dispositions is true, it would appear that Antonius had a new vision of the world, involving a permanent division of territory between himself and Imperator Caesar, as well as a new understanding of what it meant to be a Roman magistrate (who hitherto had had no authority to give away chunks of the empire). Antonius may have had his blind spots, but he was fully aware that any dispositions he made were subject to approval by the Senate, and the next summer he would need a sympathetic audience in Rome – which makes the story about the announcement of new kingdoms look, at best, an inaccurate exaggeration. In reality, the administrative structures of Cleopatra’s realm were becoming inextricably linked with Antonius’ command. Not only had she made significant contributions to the eastern war effort but she was offering generous grants to some of Antonius’ generals from her royal estates; and Antonius had broken off relations with Octavia, who had been stranded in Athens since the summer of 35 BC when she had come east with fresh troops for her husband. The acknowledgment of Caesarion’s paternity was a direct attack on Imperator Caesar’s claim to be Julius’ sole heir, and might have been connected with the anticipation of some new division of territory, as triumviral power was due to expire on 1 January 32 BC. For his part, Imperator Caesar had not been idle. He had campaigned in the Balkans, fighting successful campaigns in the Alps; and in what is now Croatia he had quashed a major military mutiny, finished some building projects and generally tried to make himself agreeable to an Italian audience as he prepared his coup d’état. He knew that two associates of Antonius were scheduled to be consuls in 32 BC, and that Antonius could, in theory,
set a senatorial agenda through them. But their ability to do so was being rapidly undermined. Talk of new kingdoms for Antonius’ children was so appalling to Roman opinion that his supporters in Rome tried to prevent Imperator Caesar from disseminating the news – which, in all probability, Imperator Caesar had invented anyway. It was his avowed opinion that Antonius was totally enthralled by Cleopatra, had ceased to be Roman, and had descended into a life of debauchery that corrupted the true Roman virtues. There were, for instance, tales of one of Antonius’ entourage, the former consul Plancus, stripping off his clothes, painting himself blue and attaching a fish tail to his naked behind to play the role of a sea god at dinner parties! The technical issue on which Imperator Caesar would base his claim to power was that his imperium as triumvir would not lapse with the office (one thing that he and Antonius could agree upon), so long as he did not cross the pomerium. He did not attend the Senate meeting at which the new consul, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (formerly Brutus’, Cassius’ and Magnus’ admiral), presided, for that was within the pomerium. But the next meeting was not, and Imperator Caesar entered at the head of an armed guard to seat himself between the consuls – through which symbolic act he asserted his superior authority – and read out a denunciation of Antonius’ relationship with Cleopatra as ‘conduct unbecoming to a Roman magistrate’. The consuls were allowed to leave for Alexandria, as were other senators who felt personal loyalty to Antonius. Several hundred seem to have made the trek. As the summer progressed, Imperator Caesar launched ever more strident attacks on Antonius, even claiming that he had received a copy of his will from the Vestal Virgins in which Antonius again announced his desire to reside in Alexandria and be buried with the queen. Seeing that war was inevitable, Antonius began to muster a massive army and navy for the invasion of Italy. Cleopatra, who again provided many of the ships and much of the money for the expedition, insisted on accompanying Antonius as he made his very deliberate way towards Actium on Greece’s west coast. At some point, possibly as the fleet approached Athens, Antonius sent Octavia a formal notice of divorce, and she returned to Rome. Imperator Caesar claimed that ‘all Italy’ swore an oath to support him and asked him to be leader in the war – declared (technically, against Cleopatra) towards the end of the year. The campaign that followed, in 31
BC, was something of an anticlimax. Antonius had once again botched the logistics, leaving his army stranded at the end of an over-long supply line. Agrippa and Imperator Caesar crossed the Adriatic in the spring with forces to match those of Antonius. There followed a series of engagements in which Agrippa gradually cut off Antonius’ communications, and senior members of Antonius’ staff, including Plancus and Domitius, deserted. On 2 September Antonius resolved to fight his way clear from the bay of Actium. We cannot be certain what happened next, but the best evidence is perhaps a remarkable monument from Avellino in Campania depicting the battle as a hard-fought affair, an image corresponding to one version of the story in literary accounts. It is also the impression to be gleaned from a monument that Imperator Caesar later erected in the city, appropriately named Nicopolis (Victoryville), that he founded to commemorate the victory at nearby Actium. That monument contains the prows of ships captured in the engagement. The battle may even have been well-nigh lost when Cleopatra hoisted sail and led an Egyptian squadron in flight from the mêlée, followed by Antonius’ flagship. The land army surrendered the next day and was incorporated into Imperator Caesar’s army. Perhaps conscious that future resistance would be deemed futile, Imperator Caesar took his time pursuing Antonius. He first had to quell a mutiny staged by the troops who had been returned to Sicily and Italy after the battle and now wanted to be demobilised; and then to establish his own government of the eastern provinces. On his way to Alexandria, he received the submission of the various kings Antonius had installed; then, at last, nearly a year after Actium, he gathered his massive forces on Egypt’s border. Antonius now endured a series of betrayals as, one after another, his supporters went over to Caesar. Indeed, the higher the rank, the faster the betrayal, so that beyond the Egyptian border the most noteworthy Antonian loyalists were seemingly a bunch of gladiators fighting their way from western Turkey to Alexandria. Once in the capital, Antonius made vain efforts at negotiation. Then, in a final betrayal, Cleopatra herself opened talks with Imperator Caesar behind his back. But there was no deal to be made: Imperator Caesar, who really wanted both Antonius and Caesarion dead, had already made too much of Cleopatra’s corrupting influence, and he had other agents at work. So it was that, when his forces approached Alexandria, after some desultory fighting
Antonius’ troops surrendered. Hearing that Cleopatra had committed suicide, Antonius stabbed himself, then learned that she had merely betaken herself to her tomb, whence he had himself brought to die in her arms. What happened next is not known, except that Cleopatra died. It was allegedly suicide, brought about by a spectacular failure of security when the guards posted outside her tomb failed to notice the asps being transported into her quarters. The kingdom of Egypt was the great prize of the war. Still wealthy and producing a surplus of grain, it was to be treated with care. Imperator Caesar determined that it should not pass from his direct control. No senatorial governor was to be appointed – rather, he would appoint an equestrian who would report directly to himself as its ruler. The first governor was Cornelius Gallus, a capable soldier and famous poet, friend to both Propertius and Virgil as well as lover of one of Antonius’ old flames, an actress called Volumnia. With victory secure, Imperator Caesar could begin the gradual restructuring and repurposing of the Roman army. This meant reducing the number of legions from something like eighty to a more manageable and affordable twenty-six, twelve of them units that had long been in his service (and in some cases, his father’s), the rest taken over from Lepidus and now from Antonius. Antonian veterans demobilised at this point were settled in provincial colonies; Caesar’s, many of whom may have served for no more than a year or two, may simply have gone back home and received a cash bonus and a land grant to thank them for their participation. New soldiers would be expected to serve for sixteen years, the theoretical maximum in previous generations. The legions themselves were located in potential hotspots such as Spain and Gaul, as well as Syria and Egypt. Two legions were assigned to Africa, and some to the Balkans. Even as the reorganisation of the army was in train, answers to the question of what the new political order would look like were beginning to surface. When news of Alexandria’s capture reached Rome, the Senate had voted that a triumphal arch be erected in the forum along with many other marks of distinction. At the beginning of 29 BC it had voted that the gates to the Temple of Janus be closed, symbolising that the state had now won the peace: a little optimistic, since there were still a few wars raging in the provinces. Imperator Caesar was also awarded various attributes of
tribunician power. Since 36 BC he had been deemed ‘sacrosanct’ (inviolable), a status recognised as more honorific than practical; now he was granted the right to bring aid to citizens (the tribunician ius auxilii) across the whole empire; and if there was a tied verdict in any jury trial, anywhere, his vote would be counted as being for acquittal. The new arrangements in the eastern provinces occupied Imperator Caesar for the better part of a year. They included the development of provincial cults honouring him – perhaps the sort of thing that Caesar had imagined for himself before his death, though these would not be accompanied by any public cult in Rome. The need to make new connections meant a long, slow trip; Imperator Caesar only returned to Rome to celebrate a triple triumph on 13–15 August 29 BC for his victories in Dalmatia, at Actium and at Alexandria. Other features of this special event were generous distributions of cash to citizens and soldiers, and quite astonishing spectacles – beast hunts involving rare animals, among them the first ever rhino in Rome, gladiatorial contests and theatrical events. All could join in celebrating the dawn of the new era. Victory won, Imperator Caesar needed to decide his own political future. Antonius was not alone in his predilection for evoking images associated with eastern potentates. In the previous few years Imperator Caesar had adopted increasingly regal and divine forms of display before settling on a patron divinity, Apollo, about the time that he had defeated Magnus. Apollo was something of a novelty in this role. Sulla, Pompey and Caesar had all stressed the guardianship of Venus, as a goddess of fortune; Antonius claimed Hercules as an ancestor. Apollo, god of prophecy and culture, was the antithesis of Dionysus, whom Antonius often invoked along with Hercules, and was renowned as a destroyer of barbarians. It was, then, altogether appropriate that, as the war with Cleopatra got under way, the crowd would be able to look up from the chariot races in the Circus Maximus to see a new Temple of Apollo arising alongside Imperator Caesar’s residence on the Palatine. The temple would be formally dedicated on 9 October 28 BC. This was but one of a number of projects to commemorate the role of the Caesars, father and son, in perpetuating Rome’s greatness. The Temple of the Divine Julius, begun in 42 BC on the spot in the forum where Julius Caesar’s body had been burned during his funeral, was dedicated thirteen
years later; it would receive spoils from the triumphs, as would the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter (usually the home for war booty). Imperator Caesar may have fallen nearly as far short of his father’s intellectual ability as he did of his physical courage, but that was actually an advantage. Unlike Julius, he knew he had to work with others and that those individuals deserved public recognition. Statilius Taurus, who, like Agrippa, lacking any senatorial ancestors, had commanded the land forces at Actium and had already been allowed to build Rome’s first permanent amphitheatre in his own name, on the Campus Martius. Plancus (the former exotic dancer, soldier and consul) had repaired the Temple of Saturn. Pollio built a massive shrine to the goddess Libertas to which he attached a public library, while Quintus Cornificius, an important commander in the fight against Magnus, fixed up the Temple of Diana on the Aventine and Marcius Philippus repaired the ancient Temple of Hercules and the Muses. Imperator Caesar encouraged men who had celebrated triumphs to contribute funds to urban beautification – as peace came, the leaders of Roman society collectively improved the city and, beyond that, Italy’s road system. Agrippa was everywhere, and Maecenas, who had managed Imperator Caesar’s interests while the war with Cleopatra ran its course, was likewise highly visible. In a further piece of political theatre Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of Caesar’s old partner, claimed both a triumph and the spolia opima for victories in the Balkans, the first person to make such a claim since Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 222 BC. But, Imperator Caesar explained, this was not possible since Crassus had been operating as a proconsul and thus with inferior imperium. It was an important point, because Imperator Caesar was now attempting to bring order to the somewhat chaotic understanding of imperium so as to ensure that he could run the empire by virtue of his own imperium as a consul. Crassus agreed not to claim the spolia, thereby consolidating Imperator Caesar’s constitutional claims. In so doing he was following the current fashion, set by Agrippa, of egotistical self-secondment to the spirit of the harmonious new age. Crassus also celebrated a triumph in the summer of 27 BC, and his deeds would subsequently be trumpeted by historians friendly to the Augustan regime. He, along with the others celebrating triumphs in 27 and 28 BC, represented a governing class reunited after the era of civil war, delighting in the construction of a new Rome on a bed of barbarian corpses.
The ideology of shared victory was linked with one of shared propriety, especially among members of the upper classes. One of the tasks that Agrippa undertook with Imperator Caesar was the censorship, which the two of them held in 28 BC. Reform of the Senate was on that year’s agenda as well. Nearly 200 men were removed from its rolls – fifty who had taken the hint and resigned voluntarily and 140 who found their names posted on a list. The purge may not have been unconnected with rumblings of discontent in previous years, not least concerning an alleged conspiracy led by the son of Lepidus, who had committed suicide when the plot was uncovered. In purging the Senate, the censors also sought to display their concern for ancestral institutions by increasing the number of patricians on the grounds that more were needed for the continuation of (largely religious) traditional practices. Senators as a group were forbidden to leave Italy without permission, and urged to attend meetings regularly. At the same time the censors announced the astonishing result of their efforts at counting the population: there were now more than 4 million Romans! It is not entirely clear how this demographic miracle was achieved (the censors of 70 BC had counted around 900,000 souls). Quite possibly this number represents not just the males, but also the women and children, who would usually figure in the censuses conducted at various times in the provinces. Demographically curious though Caesar’s census might have been, it did have both ideological and practical significance. The increased population mirrored the health of Roman society. So it was that, learning that the ‘Republic was restored’ (Laudatio Turiae, col. 2.25–8), an aristocratic couple who had lived through hard times apparently celebrated the glad event with enthusiastic fornicating. But the child they hoped for never arrived to enjoy the blessings of the new age. At the time he dedicated the Temple of Palatine Apollo, Imperator Caesar was himself undergoing a painless, if scarcely superficial, transformation. Governing now as consul (he had held the office every year from 31 BC onwards), he finally gave up his power as triumvir and, as he would later put it, ‘restored the state from his control to the determination of the senate and people of Rome’ (RGDA, 34.1). A coin minted in the year 29 BC displays an image of him sitting on his magistrate’s chair holding out what is most likely the text of an edict through which ‘he restored laws and statutes’. He would say later that he undid everything unjust that had been
done during the triumviral period. An echo of the language of this decree is preserved by Cassius Dio, now our best source for these matters. He writes of the ‘very many illegal and unjust regulations during the factional strife and the wars, especially in the period of [Imperator Caesar’s] joint rule with Antonius and Lepidus’ (Dio 53.2.5). That was now long in the past. The triumviral era may have ended, too, but what now lay in store? On 13 January 27 BC, Imperator Caesar announced that elections would now be open competitions; the Senate thanked him and awarded him a new cognomen, Augustus. Henceforth he would be known as Imperator Caesar, son of the divinity, Augustus (we will call him Augustus from here on in). He thanked the Senate and agreed, upon their urging, to take up the management of numerous provinces, largely ones with armies, for a ten- year term, as consul or proconsul. As a Greek contemporary put it: When his fatherland bestowed upon him the principal position of leadership, and made him lord of war and peace for life, he divided the whole realm into two parts and assigned one to himself and one to the people. To himself he assigned as many as had need of military garrisons (that is to say, the part that was barbarian or near to unsubdued barbarians or was poor or difficult to farm, so that, while unprovided in everything else, they were well provided with strongholds and prone to rebellion), to the people he gave the rest in so far as they were peaceful and easy to govern. (Strabo, Geography, 17.3.25) In theory, Augustus would be a normal consul with a few extra honours such as tribunician powers, and a multi-provincial command, larger indeed than those of Lucullus, Pompey or Caesar, but still conferred in the tradition of pre-triumviral Rome. It is striking that in our contemporary’s view the power to rule those provinces not assigned to Augustus was that of the people, and that Augustus himself was the creation of the ‘fatherland’. It is indicative of the symbolic importance to Roman life of voting that the restoration of regular elections for the consulship mirrored the restoration of consensus in public life, which was the essence of traditional government restored. Elections might now be ‘open’, but the consular list indicates the power of the victorious faction. Augustus had shared the consulship of 29 BC with his nephew Sextus Appuleius. Agrippa was consul with him in 28 and 27 BC, then Statilius Taurus in 26 BC; in 25 BC it was Junius Silanus, whose life epitomised the crises of the previous decades. In his youth he had been one
of Julius Caesar’s legates; hated by Lepidus, he was proscribed; rescued by Magnus, he returned after the peace of Misenum and took service with Antonius; hated by Cleopatra (so the story goes), he changed sides before Actium. Augustus’ consular colleague in 24 BC was Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, whose father had played a significant role on the winning side at Philippi; and for 23 BC it was Varro Murena, who had a family connection with Maecenas and had recently served with Augustus in Spain. The Spanish campaign had begun in 26 BC, the primary event in a three- year absence from Italy planned to drive home the significance of Augustus’ grand governorship. The war itself, however, may have been something of an accident. Augustus had been aiming for Britain, people were told. But competition with his father’s deeds would have to be postponed, he realised, when trouble broke out in northern Spain. Augustus went in person, which seems not to have been a good idea. The Spanish tribes in the foothills of the Pyrenees and in the western reaches of the peninsula were a tough bunch. He became ill, as he was wont to do when danger reared its head, and withdrew to Tarraco (today’s Tarragona), whence he could offer ‘strategic advice’ while his generals won a few battles. By the end of 24 BC he felt that enough had been achieved to declare victory, return home and shut the gates of the Temple of Janus yet again. Two things emerged from this campaign. The first was a new Spanish city, Augusta Emerita (modern Merida), where a large group of veterans were settled; use of provincial locations, founded or refounded as Roman colonies, for veteran settlement would hereafter become standard. The other was Augustus’ realisation that he was not cut out for soldiering. He would never again take direct command in battle. While Augustus was away, Agrippa had continued the process of transforming the Roman cityscape with new victory monuments and the architecturally adventuresome temple to ‘all the gods’, the Pantheon, which stands today in the heart of Rome. He also redesigned the voting area on the Campus Martius, building fancy new ‘pens’ in which voters would stand while waiting to cast their ballots. Voting in ‘the restored Republic’ was meant to be orderly. At about this time Augustus himself appears to have completed a new building on the Campus Martius, close to the banks of the Tiber: a massive
mausoleum, also still standing, for himself and his family. It was a statement: in the restored Republic Augustus’ family would be a dynastic family, as the Scipios had been, but not necessarily the dynastic family. Unfortunately for Augustus, in the summer of 23 BC the mausoleum received its first occupant. This was his nephew Gaius Claudius Marcellus, husband of his daughter Julia and the man believed to be next in line for Augustus’ statio, his position in the state. He had died of a nasty illness that had spread even among the rich; indeed, Augustus himself had very nearly died of it that same summer. Illness and the Spanish campaigns raised questions about the stability of the regime. So did an expedition to Yemen commanded by the prefect of Egypt. The aim was to seize control of an important outpost in the lucrative spice trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The expedition had not been a total success and was presented now as a ‘recognisance in force’. This offered a stark contrast to campaigns that had ended in the triumphs celebrated by Crassus, Messalla, Carrinas and Autronius, and indeed to campaigns waged subsequently by Appuleius in Spain, by Marcus Vinicius against the Germans and by Lucius Antistius in Spain during Augustus’ illness. Nor did it help Augustus’ overall reputation that there was a crisis in Macedonia, where the governor Marcus Primus was charged with having waged an illegal war. He was tried for treason, offering as his defence that either Marcellus or Augustus had authorised his action. The defence was weak, but Augustus’ refusal to provide an alibi angered a son of Licinius Murena, the consul in 62 BC, who had served as Primus’ lead defender. Before the end of 22 BC, the Murena who had been Primus’ advocate constructed a plot to murder Augustus. Clearly, for all that his popularity with the Roman people remained intact, and even after he had formally changed his state function during the summer of 23 BC, annoyance was surfacing among the aristocracy. The likely cause was that while he was ill he had handed his seal ring to Agrippa, thereby implying that Agrippa would continue in a similar position to him; but there was no way within the traditional structure of the state for him to do that. Two new constitutional status markers were created to define the stations of Augustus’ chief men. These were tribunician powers, and maius imperium over multiple provinces, probably defined as ‘maius imperium in any province into which [the holder] should come’, which was in addition
to Augustus’ imperium as a proconsul in those provinces that were under his direct rule. The new powers could co-exist for extended periods; hence, after he laid down his consulship in 23 BC, the Senate voted Augustus both tribunician power and maius imperium for a term of five years. It awarded a similar honour to Agrippa, who was now married to Julia, while his own daughter Vipsania had married Tiberius, the oldest of Livia’s boys by her previous marriage. Tacitus, who wrote a brilliant history of post-Augustan Rome from AD 14 to 96, would later refer to tribunician power as the ‘term for the highest position’ (Tacitus, Annals 3.56.2), which indeed it would become, though it took a while for this to become apparent. It gave its holder the power to summon senatorial meetings, to introduce legislation and call voting assemblies, to veto motions in the Senate, and to bring aid to a Roman citizen anywhere in the empire. Tribunician power would be held only by members of the immediate imperial family. The settlement of 23 BC created the terms under which imperial power would be exercised for centuries. When at the year’s end a rumour spread of an imminent grain shortage, a riot broke out. To solve the crisis, people demanded that Augustus be made dictator – a demand that surely demonstrates the popular misconception of just how much power he possessed. Augustus refused the dictatorship, which had never been reinstituted after its formal abolition in 44 BC. He did, however, accept the old Pompeian post of director of the city’s grain supply for five years. At that point he left town for a while for, although he remained popular with the mass of Rome’s people, his military failures needed to be removed from the governing class’s view, lest further questions be raised about his fitness to be the state’s commander-in-chief – and then, possibly, the regime’s ideology could be subtly shifted to play down the persistently militaristic tone. The proximate cause of Augustus’ departure was a potential crisis on the eastern frontier, a situation that would give rise to a claim that he was trying to rectify old failures. About the time when the conflict between Augustus and Antonius was winding down, a civil war had been raging in Parthia, and once again the loser had taken refuge in Syria. Also, Augustus had received one of Phraates’ sons as a hostage, which, given the fratricidal habits of the Parthian royal house, was a way for Phraates to ensure his son’s survival. In 23 BC Phraates had asked that his former rival Tiridates
and his own son be handed over. The first of these requests Augustus denied, but agreed to the second if Phraates would return both the standards taken from Crassus and any captives still alive. This Phraates is said to have acquiesced to, but by 22 BC he had done nothing. His failure to keep his promises gave Augustus the excuse to head east. The expedition would last four years and was more of a grand tour than a military operation. Phraates was not interested in fighting, and Augustus was not keen to force the issue. Much of the time he spent in Athens or on the island of Samos. He never reached the Euphrates frontier; the standards and the surviving prisoners were received back by Tiberius, who was by now a potential heir apparent. When the Armenian king Artaxias, son of the Artavasdes whom Cleopatra had killed, was assassinated in the year 20 BC, Tiberius was charged with ensuring the succession of his brother Tigranes. The arrangement seems to have been thoroughly agreeable to the Armenian nobility even though the change of regime meant a tilting of allegiances away from Parthia and towards Rome. Regarding the new Roman alliance as protection against his domestic foes, Phraates delivered even more of his children to Augustus. So it was that, by exploiting Phraates’ domestic troubles, Augustus secured the northern wing of the eastern frontier. Pompey’s plan for that frontier was at long last confirmed. And how appropriate, since Augustus’ remit, stemming from the vast extraconstitutional powers granted him by statute, for fixed terms, had itself evolved from the positions Gabinius and Manilius had created for Pompey in the 60s BC. Augustus knew that to govern he had to function within and alongside the traditional institutions of the Republic, not above them, which had been the version of autocracy favoured by Sulla and Caesar. The end of the civil war represented a compromise between Caesar’s politics and Pompey’s vision.
25 THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE In 19 BC Augustus returned to Rome in a blaze of glory. Standards had been recovered, kings installed, royal hostages taken – and all without significant loss of life. The Senate decreed that the consul Quintus Lucretius, accompanied by some of the praetors and tribunes, should go all the way to Campania to greet him on his return to Italy. That was an unprecedented celebration. Rome had not been exactly peaceful while he had been away. There was considerable popular unrest and unease at the thought that Augustus would not be consul. In 22 BC, the voters had elected only one consul and, when he returned, Augustus had to order an election of the second (which was marred by corruption). The censors elected for the year fell to quarrelling and failed to complete their task. Agrippa had returned from the eastern expedition in 21 BC (a sign that significant combat had not been anticipated) but was forced to head off to Gaul and Spain, where there was some serious fighting. The result was further tension in Rome and, in 19 BC, there was again only one consul. The problem this time was that a man named Egnatius Rufus was trying to make the (illegal) jump from aedile to consul based on the popularity he had gained from organising a fire brigade the year before. The driving force behind these electoral spats appears to have been the desire of voters in the first census classes for guaranteed order – which was why a man like Egnatius Rufus, who put fires out, could be a serious candidate even though Augustus did not like him. While Augustus was on his way home, it was discovered that Egnatius had formed a cabal to assassinate him. It is not clear that the case ever came to trial but Egnatius did not survive even to Augustus’ formal return. The combination of a general desire for effective administration and the continuing unease about the future underlies the next great transition in
Augustus’ vision of government. This was a vision based not so much upon public law and the creation of new offices as upon tradition and marital bliss (which, it transpired, was something to be legislated). To take the lead in this programme, Augustus had to bury his own past very deeply. It was not just that his marriage to Livia was scandalous – that was long ago in the past, and people were getting used to the increasingly public role that the sons she had had by her first marriage were coming into play. It was the fact that Antonius could produce an ample list of women with whom Augustus might have been sleeping when not with her. His lecherous inclinations were sufficiently well known that his associates had to claim that he was only sleeping around to learn the secrets of his enemies. Then there was the boyfriend. At a party in Alexandria, a friend of Antonius had put Cleopatra’s nose a bit out of joint when he complained about the bad wine, speculating that Sarmentus, Augustus’ paidiskos (‘boy toy’), would be drinking better. If the Roman world was to be reformed, serial fornication would have to go. Sexual predation was the act of a tyrant, as everyone steeped in the traditions of classical thought would have known. Augustus was not a tyrant. To know that, all one had to do was ask him. No sooner had Augustus returned from the east than the process of moral reform began in earnest. The operative principle for Augustus was the same as that which lay behind Sulla’s reform. This was the idea that a good constitution shaped people who behaved well within it. Augustus, too, was aiming to create the best possible aristocrats to help run the state. In 19 BC the Senate had granted Augustus the right to exercise consular authority within the pomerium (a measure designed to calm disquiet at his not being consul) and the title of ‘guardian of customs and laws’ (cura morum et legum), which granted him the power of a censor to reshape the domestic order. With Agrippa at his side, he initiated the thorough reorganisation of the senatorial and equestrian orders that would continue for the better part of the decade. In the Senate’s case, there were two principles at work, one of which was that ‘respectability’ in the eyes of fellow senators was a necessary qualification for rank, the other being personal wealth. The aim was to produce a functional body consisting of the respectable rich. To evict people, Augustus invented a process whereby a select group of thirty of the ‘best men’ would each select five men who would be guaranteed membership in the Senate, then one man from each group of five would be
selected to choose another five men. At this point the whole thing seems to have become too complicated, there were claims that some people were protecting unworthy friends, and Augustus declared that since the Senate had failed to police itself, he would do the job himself (probably his intention from the start). He posted a list of 600 men, and imposed a new census qualification for membership. To be a senator one now had to have property valued at 250,000 denarii; previously the minimum requirement had been 100,000, which was what was still required to be entered on the list of the equestrians. Senators had already been forbidden some ‘disreputable professions’ (e.g. acting), and were now forbidden from marrying women who were too far ‘beneath’ them – such as their freedwomen or the actresses and courtesans with whom they had been consorting for decades. At about the same time that he introduced the new requirement for membership of the Senate, Augustus reinvented the old ritual of public inspection for the equestrian order. This ‘approval of the equestrians’ (probatio equitum) had been a traditional feature of the censorship, when membership of the equestrian order had been based upon membership of the eighteen centuries of equites ‘with the public horse’. But those traditions had fallen by the wayside, and a probatio equitum had certainly not been seen in Rome for more than forty years after Pompeius had presented himself to the censors of 70 BC. It may only have been resurrected for the censorship of 28 BC, but now it became something quite different: an annual ‘review of the equestrians’ (transvectio equitum) which was linked with an ‘examination of the equestrians’ (recognitio equitum) by a board of three senators who approved the moral fitness of the members of that order. The equestrian order, now reinforced by hundreds of men who had been expelled from the Senate, was no longer to be the Senate’s judge and jury, or even identified as the mouthpiece of the contractor class. Its purpose was to support the Senate and offer an example of ideal conduct for the lower classes. At a separate ceremony, 14-year-old boys from families with the property necessary to support a senatorial career were reviewed, it seems by Augustus himself. If they passed inspection, they received the ‘broad stripe’ (latus clavus), a purple band that was sewn on to their togas signifying their eligibility to stand for senatorial positions when they reached their twenties. In the meantime, they were to attend Senate meetings so that they could become accustomed to appropriate senatorial behaviour.
The ‘purification’ of the Senate occupied the latter part of the year 19 BC, and the ceremonial enhancement of the equestrian order may have fallen in the same year or a year later. It was certainly in 17 BC that the most radical measures were put into action as a way of celebrating the dawn of a new era, or saeculum. Unlike for the previous two (or three) celebrations of the secular games, Rome was at peace. The new saeculum, the seventh of Rome’s existence (so it was now determined), would be the best ever. Records of the year, inscribed on a massive stone stele, have survived revealing a series of nighttime processions and sacrifices presided over by Augustus and Agrippa, with the assistance of the members of the College of Fifteen for Making Sacrifices. There were to be six sacrifices, three at night, three in daytime, between the evening of 31 May and the afternoon of 3 June. Theatrical performances and chariot races would follow the daytime sacrifices, and then there would be seven more days of the same once the sacrifices had been concluded. Augustus was present at every sacrifice and, on the last day, a hymn composed by the famous poet Horace was sung by a chorus of twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls whose mothers and fathers were still alive. On opening night, Augustus himself had offered the following prayer, mingling archaic-sounding sentiments (and using the ancient term for Romans, the Quirites, to refer to both subordinate Latins and the people of Rome) with utterly contemporary references to himself: O Fates! As it has been prescribed for you in those books – and by virtue of those things may every good fortune come to the Roman people, the Quirites – let sacrifice be made to you with nine ewes and nine female goats. I beseech and pray to you, just as you have increased the empire and majesty of the Roman people, the Quirites, in war and in peace, so may the Latins ever be obedient; grant everlasting safety, victory, and health to the Roman people, the Quirites; protect the Roman people, the Quirites, and the legions of the Roman people, the Quirites, and keep safe and increase the state of the Roman people, the Quirites; be favourable and propitious to the Roman people, the Quirites, to the College of the Fifteen Men, to me, to my house and my household; and be accepting of this sacrifice of nine ewes and nine female goats, perfect for sacrificing … (Commentarium Ludorum Saecularium Quintum 92–8) Horace’s poem had done the same, invoking the memory of Rome’s foundation while also praising the new law governing marriage, which, continuing a theme emerging from the annual inspections of the equestrian order and the ‘cleansing’ of the Senate, extended the reach of the state into the private lives of Roman citizens. Roman women were now encouraged to have three children. Men whose wives had the requisite number of
children could hold office before the legal minimum age; those who had no children would be cut out of wills. And spouses were supposed to be faithful. Adultery was declared a public crime, to be prosecuted before a new standing court. Given the personal lives of the Roman upper class in the previous half century, this was a major change. But family life was now public life. It was in this spirit that Augustus had uttered the opening prayers of the secular games before 110 married women and why the children who sang Horace’s hymn had to have living parents. The new model family was that of Augustus. Reorganised after the tragedy of 23 BC, when Marcellus had died, it had Augustus and Agrippa representing the hope of current prosperity, Tiberius and his brother Drusus representing the hope of the next generation, and Julia – who was now having a lot of children – appearing to guarantee the more distant future. It was an ideal family, dedicated to the service of the state, taking pride in ancestral offices and winning ever more victories over barbarian peoples. It was a family that needed to be seen in the context of the greater and longer history of Rome. To help reinforce the message, Augustus could rely upon the efforts of sundry men of letters. Horace is the only person named in the record of the secular games who was not a sitting magistrate or a member of the College of Fifteen. That surely reflects both his own prominence and the prominence customarily attributed to successful public intellectuals. A generation before, Cicero had, in defending Archias, a Greek poet whose claim to citizenship was questioned after he had written an epic poem (in Greek) to honour Lucullus, described huge crowds that had turned up to listen to his recitations (also in Greek). Horace’s more standard appearances would have included the performance of poems in various metres adapted from the Greek, on themes ranging from love and the good life to the evils of civil war, the demise of Cleopatra and advice to various public figures such as his special friend Maecenas, as well as Plancus, Pollio and Sallustius Crispus, the adopted son of the historian Sallust, who was now employed by Augustus for confidential assignments. Agrippa seems not to have liked Horace, who rarely mentions him. But Horace thrived, none the less. Other poets, too – Propertius, for instance, who had lamented so memorably the ruin of Perugia and celebrated the joys of love (and of the charming Cynthia) as opposed to war – found time to compose on other themes that Augustus favoured. Propertius devoted
attention to some of the ancient myths of Rome and the battle of Actium. Pride of place, however, went to Virgil. Shortly after Augustus’ return from the east, however, Virgil dropped dead in his villa near the bay of Naples. This was a tragedy, if for no other reason than that his greatest poem, the Aeneid, which was by now well known through public recitations, lay unfinished. The villa had been a gift from Livia, moved to tears by a vision of Marcellus in the underworld at the end of a procession of spirits heading for reanimation as Rome’s greatest heroes. The great Pompey had been there as well, as had Caesar, who was briefly admonished for starting the civil war. That was more than Pollio had ventured, whose history of the civil wars would have appeared during these years. Horace knew that Pollio set the beginning of the conflict at the alliance between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in 60 BC. More than that, though, in the Aeneid Virgil had shown Rome’s founder himself to be human, a man who could be led astray, uncertain of the future, and deeply in need of divine guidance. Yet Aeneas accomplished the great feat of bringing the Trojan survivors to Italy to join with the Latins and beget the line that would found Rome itself. Mingled with predictions of limitless imperial glory and visions of civilisation’s gods amassing to drive off the monstrous divinities of Egypt at Actium are Aeneas’ grief at breaking off his affair with Queen Dido of Carthage – deeply unhappy, cursing him as he sails off – and his rage when he sees Turnus, leader of the Latins, wearing a belt ripped from one of his men. It is this rage that prompts him to kill Turnus. Only then can peace be made, and the Trojans unite with the Latins. Augustus asked two well- known poets who were friends of Virgil to edit a final version of the Aeneid, the one we have now. In composing the epic poem, Virgil had drawn not only upon the traditions of Italian history and mythology, but also, as was true of every significant Latin author since Naevius, on the traditions of Greek poetry from Homer onwards. Knowledge of Greek theory was important for prose writers, too, but Cicero gave it a particularly Italian spin, and now the conventions of the two languages were beginning to exercise a reciprocal influence on each other. Cicero had drawn on the style of ‘Attic’ orators of the fourth century BC – especially Demosthenes, whose attacks on Philip II of Macedon had provided the title for Cicero’s oeuvre against Antonius, the Philippics – but also on the more florid traditions current among
contemporaries in western Turkey. Augustan tastes, generally, turned far more pointedly in the direction of Demosthenes, creating the school of Attic oratory that was now shaping contemporary expression in Greek. A high priest of the new style was Dionysius, from Halicarnassus in western Turkey. In addition to works on rhetoric addressed to important Romans, he compiled a voluminous account of Roman antiquities which proved that the Romans were really Greek. It was now important for both Greeks and Romans to be able to integrate the history of Rome into that of the wider world. Even before ‘Atticism’ invaded the eastern Mediterranean, there had been historians of the Polybian sort who had written contemporary history offering a local take on Roman affairs. Posidonius, whose description of the pro-Mithridatic faction at Athens we found sharing the political tendencies of Sullan narrative, was a case in point. He was later asked by Cicero to produce a Greek history of the events of 63 BC; he refused, saying that he could not match Cicero’s deathless Atticising prose. Pompey’s powerful assistant Theophanes of Mytilene had written a history of the great man’s doings, and in the next generation Timagenes of Alexandria wrote a history in which various Romans appeared in less than flattering portrayals. Such works mirrored the politicised contemporary histories, along with the memoirs of Sulla, Caesar and now Augustus himself, who wrote an autobiography offering the Roman public his perspective on events from Caesar’s assassination into the 20s BC. Sallust’s history – with its anti-Sullan, though not obviously anti- Pompeian, slant – was the previous generation’s best-known history, but he was reacting to an extensive history of the social and civil wars by Cornelius Sisenna, a man of decidedly right-wing views who had defended Verres against Cicero. Sallust said that Sisenna was not nearly as critical of Sulla as he might have been, but this was not an issue with the work of Licinius Macer, an anti-establishment tribune of the 70s BC who was elected to the praetorship in the early 60s BC. Licinius may not, however, have got all that far – he fell down dead on the day he learned that he had been convicted of extortion during his governorship of Africa, at a trial over which Cicero, as praetor, presided. Then there was Lucceius, a failed consular candidate aligned with Caesar in the year 60 BC, who wrote a long history of the same period as Sisenna and, like Posidonius, turned down the
opportunity to write a special account of the key year 63 BC, even though Cicero offered him his notes. Cicero’s interest in being the object of a special history reveals the importance accorded to historical writing in aristocratic circles. Even when deeply partisan, it stood for the idea of truth. This much Cicero allowed when he said that the first rule of historical writing was that the author should not lie; Pollio claimed to have corrected errors in Caesar’s writings. Of course, the narrative should also be entertaining. Some writers of the previous generation had attempted to move beyond contemporary events to cover the whole of Roman history – a case in point being Valerius Antias, probably writing in the 70s and 60s BC, who was notable for the wildly exaggerated numbers he attributed to enemy casualty lists. His rough contemporary, Claudius Quadrigarius, eschewed the earliest history of Rome as fantasy and began with the Gallic sack. Skipping rapidly over the years between 390 BC and the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, his history none the less grew exponentially. But whatever their perspective on events, what all could agree on was that Roman history had changed course in the later second century BC. It had become very nasty indeed. The question for historians of the Augustan age was this: would it change course again? Livy was the man to answer that question. Livy, like Virgil, became famous well in advance of the completion of his work – which in fact would not be until after Augustus’ death. The story goes that one man came all the way from Spain just so that he could say he had seen him. Another Spaniard, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, an aficionado of rhetorical training also known as the Elder Seneca (we will meet the Younger Seneca in a couple of chapters’ time), offers insights into the literary world of the time through a remarkable work in which he recollects all the best rhetorical exercises of his era. He was aware, of course, of Livy’s glory, but also of Pollio’s belief that he himself was the foremost man of letters of these years. Pollio was powerful enough to tell Augustus off when the emperor complained later that he didn’t take proper account of his grandson’s demise – Pollio accused him of having conducted business in public very soon after the death of his own son – and took umbrage when Messalla suggested that Cicero was still the greatest man of letters in the Latin language. Pollio had pointed out that Cicero could be obnoxious; in a
similar vein he had said that Livy was at heart a small-town boy (although the same could have been said of Pollio). Still, Augustus liked Livy. He also called him a ‘Pompeian’ – a term that meant something very different in his mouth from when his adoptive father used it. And this is key to Augustus’ programme of reshaping the public memory of his era. A ‘Pompeian’, in Augustan terms, was not a supporter of Gnaeus Pompey, and certainly not of his dreadful son Magnus, now to be remembered as a pirate. It would have been meaningless as an ideological designation while Pompey was alive – as Cicero said, in private, there was no difference between what he wanted and what Caesar wanted. It was also likely to mean nothing to Pollio, which might explain why he found Livy so irritating. Nor did it mean that one disapproved of Caesar, exactly. Livy sang Caesar’s praises at enormous length, we are told in a summary of his books that has survived intact from the second century AD. What emerges from this is that the Italian war was for him, as for other historians of his time, the decisive moment in Roman history, the point at which everything changed. But why did it change? In Livy’s view, it changed because of the irresponsible conduct of the tribunes of the plebs. Tiberius Gracchus was dreadful, and Gaius was no better; Saturninus was a nightmare, as was Livius Drusus, who had single- handedly triggered the Italian revolt. About the only thing the tribunes did right in the late Republic was to propose Pompey’s great commands. Livy did not need to poke about in the archives to come up with his view of tribunician disorder. He appears to have shared some false ideas about Tiberius’ programme with Cicero, who saw the latter as a catastrophe whose agenda violated the agreements made with the Italians. Cicero was generally back in vogue. Seneca, who reproduces various discussions about the man – in which only Pollio stresses the negative points – notes that his own teacher, Cestius Pius, said that if only Caesar and Pompey had listened to Cicero there would have been no civil war. There is a story that when Augustus found his grandson Gaius trying to hide a book of Cicero’s from him, he assured the young man that Cicero had been a great Roman. His murder was Antonius’ fault, after all. This is something Livy made crystal clear – his Cicero had warts, but ‘in weighing his faults against his virtues, he was a great and memorable man, and to
sing his praises one would need Cicero himself as the eulogist’ (Seneca, Advisory Rhetorical Exercises 6.22). The pleasing fantasies in which Livy enveloped the earlier history of Rome are preserved for us because they interested senators of the fourth century AD, who prepared the editions from which the surviving manuscripts derive. Tribunes and the like held no appeal for them: they wanted ripping yarns about kings and conquerors, not detailed accounts of the political struggles of the late Republic, which was the key point for Livy; and Livy’s Pompey supported tribunes who knew their place, who were therefore ideal for the Augustan age now that there was a statio, as Augustus called his position, that prescribed properly exercised tribunician power. In laying out his history ‘from the foundation of the city’, Livy benefitted from Augustus’ notion of its foundation date, calculated by Terentius Varro. Roman history was not simply a series of edifying tales; it also had to place the Roman experience in the broader context of meaningful accounts of the past. To do this, lists that could be reconciled with other lists were drawn up. It had begun to happen in Pompey’s lifetime. The first man to reconcile the Greek system of dating according to the four-year Olympic cycles (Olympiads) with a list of consuls was Castor of Rhodes; then Romans took up the challenge, including Cornelius Nepos, a friend of the great poet Catullus. By aligning Olympiad dates with consular lists he produced synchronisms between great events in earlier Roman history and equivalents in the history of Greece. The project was taken up by Cicero’s great friend Atticus, who wrote his own chronicle of world history. Nepos’ and Atticus’ chronicles, like Castor’s, have not survived, but we can gain some impression of what they achieved through the work of Diodorus Siculus, whose Library of History has offered us crucial information about the outbreak of the First Punic War, slave revolts in second-century Sicily and the outbreak of the Social War. He also commented on the Egyptian reverence for cats and on Caesar’s deification. List-making was very important to Augustus – he requested a list of the greatest Romans of all time so that he could include their images in a portico he planned to build alongside the massive Temple of Mars the Avenger in the new forum that was under construction to the north of Julius’ Temple of Venus. The display of illustrious Romans would bear
inscriptions describing each man’s service to the state. A second portico would contain images of his own family members, including Romulus and Aeneas, the progenitors of the Julian clan. These two porticos together made Rome’s heroes a matter of public memory and community history. All the heroes of the past could perhaps be seen as equivalent to the Julii. In the old forum, where the Senate had voted to erect a triumphal arch in honour of the battle of Actium and to expand it to commemorate the triumph over Parthia, would be inscribed a list of all Romans who had celebrated triumphs, beginning with Romulus. These included the names of those they had defeated and, according to the Varronian dating system, in what year after Rome’s foundation. Augustus also had a list of consuls inscribed on the walls of the Regia. Again, the aim was to codify a record of Rome’s greatness as a community achievement. The inscriptions in the forum set a fashion for the rest of Italy, where inscribed calendars (fasti) begin to appear, bringing Roman time and Roman history into the heart of the urban environment, sometimes employing prominent intellectuals such as Verrius Flaccus, an expert on Roman antiquities, to do so. Quite often these displays consisted of a calendar with inscriptions explaining important dates and with space to allow for updating. Important men began to post texts listing their offices in ways that were plainly influenced by the texts in Augustus’ gallery of heroes. The interest in chronology was but one feature of a new Augustan impulse for measurement. The gradual transformation of Roman government in the next few decades was not so much a matter of deliberate policy, though some changes – such as altering the position of legion chief-of-staff (praefectus fabrum) from one held by senators to one held by equestrians – were certainly deliberate. When given the choice between creating new systems and practices, or not, Augustus tended to go for it. In the fifteen years after Actium his two most significant changes were the formation of a professional long-service army based in the provinces and the creation of a relatively coherent tax system. Instead of basing provincial taxes on the best bid that a corporation of publicani could offer, they would now be based on regularly held, thoroughgoing provincial censuses. The amounts imposed would vary from province to province according to local custom, but the state could predict income and
expenditure with some degree of accuracy, even while it continued to depend, quite often, on subsidies from Augustus’ personal fortune. When Luke the evangelist wrote that Jesus of Nazareth was born when ‘Cyrenius was governor of Syria’ and that a decree had gone forth from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed, he was reflecting a provincial perspective on Roman government. Luke’s ‘Cyrenius’ was in fact Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, governor of Syria in the year we now call AD 6; he held a provincial census in the year of his governorship. 18. The enormous Temple of Mars the Avenger (Mars Ultor) was completed in 2 BC as the centrepiece of Augustus’ new forum. The transformation of the army was no more sudden than was the transformation of the tax system. In 13 BC, however, Augustus may have faced an unusual problem, in that the men who had been recruited immediately after Actium were due for retirement, so it was proving
difficult to find new land in which to settle them. The turnover among the military rank and file gave Augustus, in consultation with the Senate, an opportunity to alter the terms of service for the new recruits: they were told to expect generous cash payments at the completion of their sixteen years, rather than the land grants of earlier eras. Augustus had spent a lot of his personal wealth on land for veteran settlements the year before. He may have introduced a new regulation forbidding serving soldiers to marry – a regulation that was largely ignored, but which made an ideological statement about how Roman citizens in the legions should remain separate from the provincials among whom they were now living for prolonged periods. 19. It was once believed that the person honoured on this inscription, found at Tivoli, was Sulpicius Quirinius and the last line ‘as pro-praetorian legate of the divine Augustus for a second time, he obtained the province of Syria and Phoenicia’ was mistranslated to imply that he had been governor of Syria twice, the only way of preserving the integrity of Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus which combine Quirinius with Herod. Even as the new army was being raised, new campaigns were being launched both in Gaul and against some Alpine tribes who were stubbornly maintaining their independence. The Gallic campaigns, which opened along the Rhine in 16 BC following German raids and the loss of a standard, were serious enough to require Augustus’ presence to support the operations from a safe distance to the rear. The leadership of the Alpine campaigns had been assigned to Tiberius and to Drusus, his younger brother, to demonstrate their readiness to step up if something should happen to Augustus or Agrippa.
The campaigns along the Rhine proved successful; so, too, the Alpine campaigns. And the publicity back in Rome succeeded in promoting a positive image. On the domestic front, the long-overdue death of Lepidus permitted Augustus to hold an election for a new pontifex maximus – himself. Great crowds, Augustus said later, came from all over Italy to elect him to the post. To commemorate the event, he inaugurated a new altar of peace near his family tomb on the Campus Martius. The processions that visitors can still see decorating the altar may recall his assumption of the priestly office. Then it all started to go wrong. Agrippa died in the year 12 BC. A part of the oration that Augustus delivered at his funeral has survived, stressing the important role that Agrippa had played as his associate: The tribunician power was given to you for a term of five years in the consulship of the Lentuli, and once again for another five years in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Quinctilius Varus, your sons-in-law, and into whatever province the affairs of the Roman people should call you, it was ensured by a law that no one in those provinces would have greater powers than yours. (GC n. 294) Here Agrippa appears as another Augustus, so it was appropriate that his body be buried in Augustus’ family tomb, where he was shortly to be joined by Octavia, Augustus’ sister and Antonius’ widow. Three years later, Drusus, too, would be buried there. The author of a long poem offering consolation to Livia on her son Drusus’ death notes the griefs of recent years: We have seen him [Augustus] mourning for the offspring of his sister, torn away; that grief, as in Drusus’ case, was public; he placed Agrippa in your tomb, Marcellus, and already the tomb held his two sons-in-law, and scarcely had the door of the tomb been closed, with Agrippa laid to rest, then, behold! His sister receives the last rites. Behold! Three times already have the rites been given, now, with the latest funeral, Drusus is the fourth to have tears from great Caesar. (Ovid, Consolation for Livia 65–72) While Drusus’ death was a family tragedy, his achievements were set in a traditional context, for his ancestors would receive him, we are told, decked out in the glories of consular command and bearing the standards taken from the Germans.
Drusus had proved to be an able soldier, campaigning during the years 12–9 BC and laying the foundation for a new province between the Rhine and the Elbe, in western Germany The campaigns had not been uneventful – at some point tribes had ambushed him on the march, and one year he had experienced difficulties getting his fleet home. Tiberius, meantime, had campaigned in southern Germany and in the Balkans, leading columns from the Adriatic north towards the Danube in the region then known as Pannonia (now southern Hungary). In the east the Parthian king Phraates, worried about the well-being of his family in the brutal world of Parthian politics, dispatched four of his sons to be raised under Roman protection. Tiberius could be difficult and was somewhat less popular than his brother, for all that both were quite able in the performance of their duties. The poem about Drusus’ death mentions Tiberius’ carefully contrived facial expression (vultus), which would become something of an issue as his effort to exhibit utter impassivity in public was taken as a sign that he was given to deceit. But Tiberius was the eldest and, in the Augustan scheme, the most eligible successor. But what was Augustus now? There was still no definition of his role, other than that he was the most important man in the world. He spoke of his statio, but this was still an AD hoc collection of positions that required renewal. The way to become like Augustus, as the example of Agrippa showed, was to hold similar positions: the way to assemble an appropriate curriculum vitae to build a statio like Augustus’ was via traditional offices. That much is abundantly clear in the poem quoted above, where Livia is told how happy she should be that, even as the gods joined mortals in mourning his death, her son had been consul, and that both her sons had proved their worth by fighting beyond the boundaries of the empire. With Drusus gone, the succession was once more a work in progress; given the family mortality rate, it was plainly necessary to prepare several members for the role. Tiberius, though promoted and sent back to the Rhine in the year 8 BC, was not the only show in town, and his frequent absences left space for younger family members to attract public attention. One issue, as far as Tiberius was concerned, was his relationship with Julia, whom Augustus had compelled him to marry when Agrippa died (forcing him to divorce Agrippa’s daughter, whom he genuinely loved). The truth was that they hated each other. Julia’s two elder sons by Agrippa, Gaius and Lucius, were growing up, and the former was replacing the
absent Tiberius on some public occasions. In 6 BC Gaius was elected consul, by popular acclaim, for 1 BC; Augustus complained that he was too young, worrying publicly that all this attention would impinge on the modesty he desired in the young man. Tiberius was no fool: he could tell that Julia’s children, Augustus’ biological progeny, were being groomed to take leading positions. Would there be room for three men at the top? Triumvirates tended to lose their third members rather quickly. Rome was where the action was. But Tiberius kept being sent on campaigns – first to the Danube; then, in 6 BC, as instability threatened Roman influence to Armenia. Although he was granted tribunician power Tiberius decided that he had had enough. He refused to do what Augustus told him to. He retired to Rhodes where he wished to live as a private citizen, he said. Tiberius’ departure left Augustus with a problem: the wars had to continue to be waged and Gaius was too young to take command. There were senior members of the Senate who would readily accept the opportunity to win military glory in the service of the state. That being so, how important was Augustus, really? He was in his early sixties now and not getting any younger – of that he was painfully aware. Was his approach to the succession perhaps a little blinkered? Were there others who might step forward? It was crucial that Gaius get a chance to prove himself. He would go east to deal with the Armenian situation even before taking up his consulship in 1 BC; at the same time, in a carefully crafted piece of political theatre, Augustus tearfully accepted, on the commendation of the Senate, the title of ‘Father of the Country’ from the Roman people. Cicero had once been named Father of the Country by senatorial decree, for having quashed Catiline’s conspiracy. It is perhaps ironic that Augustus himself would suddenly be embroiled in controversy and conspiracy. Shortly after Gaius left town with great fanfare, his mother was arrested and exiled. She was charged with having violated her father’s adultery laws with an impressive assortment of middle-aged members of Rome’s elite, including Iullus Antonius, Antonius’ son by Octavia, who had been consul himself a few years earlier. Iullus committed suicide. Julia was exiled to Pandateria off Italy’s west coast. Augustus was mortified. There was worse to come. His adopted son Lucius, dispatched to Spain in AD 2, expired in Marseille. Gaius was still in the east, where he had benefitted from regime change in Parthia: Phraates IV had succumbed to a
conspiracy launched by his son, who now took the throne as Phraates V. Even though Gaius covered himself in glory for his successful negotiations with the Parthians on the banks of the Euphrates, the succession now hung by a narrow thread, unless Tiberius returned from Rhodes. Tiberius was duly summoned, and it may be that friends of his in Rome forced Augustus’ hand, for he does not seem to have been overjoyed to see him. He was asked to remain out of public sight, which he did, until word came that Gaius had died suddenly of an illness, on 21 February AD 4. An inscription recording the honours voted in his memory at the city of Pisa mirrors the way Gaius was imagined at the time and how deeply embedded in the traditions of previous generations the expressions of power still were. Like Agrippa and Drusus before him, he can be seen as a super- magistrate somewhat in the tradition of Pompey: Since on 2 April news was brought that Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, father of the country, pontifex maximus, guardian of the Roman Empire and of the whole world, grandson of the Divinity, after his consulship, which he bore successfully, waging war beyond the farthest boundaries of the Roman people, doing well by the State, conquering and receiving into fides the most warlike and powerful nations, he, having received wounds on behalf of the State, was torn by the cruel fates from the Roman people, being a man already designated as a princeps, as being most just and most like his father in his virtues. (ILS 140: 7–12) It was only now, as Tiberius re-emerged from internal exile, that Augustus, possibly with the younger man’s assistance, began to see that change was inevitable. Government needed to become less personal, more bureaucratic. As Livy, reimagining the past, by now would have been working his way through the era of the civil wars, Augustus was coming to imagine a new future.
26 ECCENTRICITY AND BUREAUCRACY The year AD 6 was notable for nativities. One of these, in Palestine, was that of Jesus of Nazareth. The date of his birth was later erroneously set in the consulship of Gaius Caesar and Lucius Aemilius Paullus (our 1 BC), but our AD 6 was the year Publius Sulpicius Quirinius held that census in Syria with which the Gospel of Luke connects the birth. That census came about as Quirinius reduced a part of the former kingdom of Herod, who died in 4 BC, to the status of a dependency of the province of Syria, to be governed by an equestrian official or a prefect. This decision was taken because Herod’s appallingly badly behaved son Archelaus had massively upset his subjects, who had asked Augustus to intervene on their behalf. Augustus banished him to Vienne in the Rhône valley. The other birth is figurative and took place in Rome, where Augustus set up the structures necessary to ensure the long-term administration of the city and the empire. These included a regular police and fire department for Rome, and a new method of guaranteeing the retirement bonuses for soldiers, stabilising their terms of service in what was now recognised as a long-term army, permanently based in the provinces. Within the next year or two a new arrangement for ensuring Rome’s grain supply would be up and running. All three systems would still be functioning in the fourth century AD. Bureaucracy is a cure for eccentricity. It may be dull, but it creates systems that function even when executive power is operating with marginal efficacy. The development of a bureaucratic, as opposed to a political, Senate, which could fulfil the responsibility of running an empire, had begun after 19 BC. The crucial features of Augustus’ programme were: senators must appear regularly for work; the number of assignments available to men between magistracies must be increased; a special
advisory council, on which senators rotated in six-month terms, should be developed; changes in electoral procedures and in the criteria for office (chiefly as relating to personal behaviour and census qualifications) should be introduced. Some of these changes were responses to difficulties such as an unwillingness to stand for the aedileship, which required holders to sponsor expensive games that were no longer of value in furthering their political careers; or to stand for the tribunate of the plebs, now considered somewhat déclassé because activist tribunes were blamed for past troubles. Other changes, especially those concerning elections, may have derived from demands that the process become less risky as the potential rewards diminished. One might still be consul, but no one could imagine himself occupying an equivalent statio to Augustus and his family members. At the same time, since holding traditional offices of state came to define a princely career, it was important for those offices to appear desirable. Indeed, office-holding as a state service had to become a status marker in its own right. The creation of new posts was an administrative default setting when problems arose, while rules governing attendance, personal behaviour and census qualifications were designed to enhance the overall dignity of the order. Augustus’ advisory council probably came into existence in 18 BC, at a time when he was intending to be more regularly resident in Rome and was dealing with the fall-out from his second ‘purification’ of the Senate. The council’s primary function, other than giving magistrates a chance to get to know Augustus (and vice versa), was the drafting of legislation; and now, it appears, some senatus consulta, largely on administrative issues, obtained the force of law. The convention whereby the comitia centuriata passed laws conferring important political appointments was retained – it was through this process that grants of imperium were conferred on Augustus and family members – and the comitia also dealt with laws such as those governing marriage. But on other issues, such as corruption and some matters of public morality – for instance, whether men and women of the senatorial and equestrian orders could fight as gladiators or appear on stage as actors – a senatus consultum had the authority of a lex. It may have been in the Senate in AD 8 that Augustus established that the state could force the sale of slaves who might be tortured for evidence against their masters. This was an
extension of earlier invasions of matters domestic: Augustus had already allowed slaves to testify against their owners in adultery cases and to expose criminal conduct with respect to the grain supply. In 4 BC Augustus advertised the fact that his council had drawn up a new procedure for hearing extortion cases that was more fair to provincials, and in AD 13 his council was given legislative authority because it was now difficult for him to attend Senate meetings. The restoration of ‘free’ elections had symbolised the restoration of the Republic in 28 and 27 BC. For Augustus, elections represented the stability of the political order and the friendship of the gods towards the Roman state, so it was important that they be orderly and inclusive. To this end Agrippa had built some elaborate new voting booths on the Campus Martius, and Augustus made provision for civic magistrates throughout Italy to send in their votes. This last may have happened earlier, when ‘all Italy’ was probably invited to swear an oath of loyalty and, as he put it, ‘asked him to be the leader in the war’ against Antonius. It was also symbolic of the link between elections and the Augustan statio that in AD 5 a law was passed adding ten new voting centuries to the first census class, in honour of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. Thanks to the details on an inscription recording the new regulations, we have a glimpse of the ceremonial world of Augustan elections: on the day when the senators and knights shall be present to cast their votes, we are told, the presiding magistrate, with the praetors and tribunes of the plebs sitting beside him, will put out ten large wicker baskets in order that the voting tablets may be placed in them, and he shall order that as many wax tablets as he thinks necessary will be set out next to the baskets; and he shall have a care that the white boards with the names of the candidates written on them shall be placed where they can be most easily read, and then, in the sight of all the magistrates and of those who are about to cast votes, sitting on benches … (RS 37–8:19–22) The magistrate would then order that thirty-three balls, one for each tribe (excluding the two in which no senators or equestrians were registered), be placed in a rotating urn and that the allotment be announced and then carried out to determine which senators and which equestrians ought to cast a vote and into which basket. (RS 37–8: 24)
The theory here was that the random assignment of the upper classes into centuries that would vote first would show who the gods favoured – and, now that the gods were so closely involved, minimise the opportunity for anyone to rig the results. For Augustus it mattered that corruption should still be considered a potential problem, so that it could be seen to have been successfully guarded against, even if the results would rarely have been in doubt. He had gradually been given the right to ‘nominate’ his preferred candidates for the consulship, and most for the praetorship, even being able to ‘commend’ some individuals who would run unopposed. He would not name preferred candidates for all the praetorships, and in the end this caused stress, because people wanted the assurance that they would win if they stood. Despite the importance that Augustus attached to office-holding, finding the people to fill those offices was becoming problematic. The census qualification – possessing 250,000 denarii – appears to have been a genuinely high bar. In 13 BC, when there were not enough candidates for the tribunate, men who had been quaestors were allowed to run for the office even though they were below the minimum age (probably thirty at this point). Augustus also compelled some equestrians who possessed the census qualification to become senators. This was not a popular move, however, so when there were too few candidates the next year, he allowed equestrians of the appropriate census rating to be tribunes without being quaestors first. Being a senator could be a drag if one was after a life of leisure, for there were now so many new posts – to do with the treasury, road inspections and other public services – that senators were expected to volunteer for if they wished to advance. But even if they were ambitious, most would still not rise beyond the level of praetor because even with what became the regular appointment of two sets of consuls every year – the ‘ordinary consuls’ who opened the year in office and gave it its name, and the ‘suffects’, who held office from July onwards – there were only four annual vacancies (or fewer, if Augustus or a member of his family wanted the position) and usually sixteen ex-praetors. Indeed, one reason some post-praetorian careers were expanding may well have been because it was hard to find people who saw any point in continuing their political lives after that point, making it harder to fill ever more administrative positions. Also relevant is that in 13 BC Augustus had reduced the number of pre-senatorial positions, usually held
by young men aspiring to senatorial office, from twenty-six – the number during the Republic – to twenty. In AD 5 he allowed the consuls for the year to issue a ‘note’ changing the minimum ages of thirty and thirty-five for the quaestorship and the praetorship that had been enshrined in his marriage laws of 18 BC to twenty-five and thirty respectively. Just as the Senate was a work in progress, so, too, was the administration of the city of Rome. The two big moves of AD 6 came at the end of long periods of experimentation. Fighting fires had always been a problem – in previous generations it had largely been a matter of private enterprise, as we saw earlier (Caesar’s partner Crassus was notorious for the way he used his personal fire brigade to help increase his property holding at knockdown prices). In 26 BC, Augustus had ordered the aediles to take over fire protection (with no extra funding); four years later he assigned 600 public slaves to work for them, but that, too, turned out less than satisfactorily. In 7 BC, he had divided Rome into fourteen regions and transferred fire-fighting duties within them to local magistrates; then when that did not work, he organised 3,500 men into seven cohorts of vigiles (‘watchmen’), protecting two districts each, and placed them under the command of ‘the prefect of the watchmen,’ (praefectus vigilum) who would report directly to the palace. This was one of the big changes of AD 6. Food was another major problem. In 18 BC, Augustus had entrusted oversight of the grain supply (the annona), under his personal control since the year 22 BC, to four former praetors. This system seems to have broken down over the years, and in AD 6 he appointed two consuls to the task; a year later an equestrian prefect, the ‘prefect to the grain supply’ (praefectus annonae), took over. The prefect to the grain supply and the prefect of the watchmen joined the equestrian prefect of Egypt and the prefects (usually two) to the imperial guard (praefecti praetorio), all serving at Augustus’ pleasure as the state’s senior equestrian officials. Even if the creation of this group was the gradual response to earlier failures rather than part of some master plan, it none the less represented a radical shift. There had been no equestrian officials holding offices of such significance in the previous 700 years of Roman history. The major equestrian offices at Rome were associated with the palace, where a much wider ranging bureaucracy was evolving. Augustus needed not only to manage the spectacles that were becoming an ever more central
part of his brief, all of which required a staff, but also to ensure that the appurtenances of his properties were kept up to scratch, that good food was on the table when guests arrived, and that the people in his service were properly dressed. Although most of his staff were slaves, he insisted that some basic tasks be shared with the family – for instance, he expected that the women of the household spend their time weaving. Then, there was a corps of people who handled his correspondence, the key figures being the secretaries ‘for Latin letters’ and ‘for Greek letters’, who often drafted responses for Augustus’ approval. As many matters that came his way involved the law, he also developed a legal staff. Jurisprudence as an intellectual discipline had become increasingly important in previous generations, so that professional jurists, usually equestrians, sometimes senators, were employed at the palace. The palace network extended far into the provinces where Augustus had vast estates, and his financial managers assumed administrative roles as representatives of the state as well as of Augustus personally. A fascinating document from around 15 BC reveals the interplay between communities, the palace and one of his local representatives, a procurator (manager) in the province of Asia and the governor who, as a proconsul, was not Augustus’ direct appointee, and who writes: Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, the proconsul to the magistrates, city council and citizens of Aizanoi, greetings. Menecles, Hierax and Zeno, your ambassadors, presented me with the letter of Augustus Caesar, in which he wrote that the procurator, Ofilius Ornatus, had allowed you to hold a meeting concerning freedom from taxation for a priest because of the sacrificial ceremonies, but he did not allow the city to contribute to the other expenses. Wishing, for my part, to enhance the benefits your city enjoys, I permit, in accord with what was authorised by Caesar … (AE 2011 n. 1303) Flaccus’ good manners here disguise the fact that the people of Aizanoi had gone behind his back, through the procurator, to Augustus himself seeking permission to give one of their fellow citizens a tax break. They had also hoped that the man might be given some further privileges. Ornatus, who may have smelled a rat, suspecting that a person of wealth was trying to wangle greater benefits from his office, limited the city’s response to the tax break. Having noted that Augustus appeared to be open to offering enhanced benefits, our text breaks off at the point where the governor looks like he is going to overrule the procurator. What emerges from all this is
that the emperor had, via his financial officials, built up a network that ran parallel to that of the state. Moreover, a governor who wanted to overrule a procurator could do so by pointing to the fact that he was acting in the spirit of Augustus’ earlier ruling. Augustus had financial interests throughout the empire, but his resources were not infinite, and as the army expanded – reaching twenty-eight legions – he had to shift the expenditure from his own budget to that of the state. So it was that in AD 6 he set up a state treasury to pay soldiers retirement bonuses. The mass demobilisations from the post-Actian army in 13 BC had led to retirement benefits being calculated in cash only (see p. 295), but in 2 AD (another year of mass retirements) Augustus had been short of the cash needed. Consequently, he ordered that men be held in service under ‘emergency’ conditions for four more years. But now their payment had come due and the soldiers were openly mutinous, so he offered a one-time grant to create a new treasury that would subsequently be funded with tax revenues. When he asked the Senate to propose an amount, its members – who would be the ones paying it – could not come up with one. Augustus then proposed a 5 per cent tax on inheritances and created a board of three ex-praetors to oversee its levying. Terms of service were also reset, so that twenty years became the norm for legionaries and sixteen for the imperial (praetorian) guard, whose members would also receive substantially more money than the fellows on the frontier. The theory that lay behind this law – that wealthy people should pay for a government service rather than be paid for it – constituted a fundamental shift away from the practices of the fiscal–military state of the pre-civil war era. Just before he died, Augustus advised that the empire be kept within the limits defined by the river Euphrates in the east, the Danube in central Europe, and the Rhine and the Elbe in the west. Exactly when he determined these limits is not known, but they were certainly defined by AD 6 when Tiberius headed off to the Balkans to ratchet up the subjugation of the suddenly restive peoples of the region. Cities were being built north of the Rhine, and three recently raised legions were assigned to a base close to the Elbe. Drusus had established that armies could be floated from the mouth of the Rhine and into central Germany. Strategic decisions were made in Rome, but the process through which they were made involved considerable communication between Augustus
and his subordinates. It is via the suddenly enhanced documentary record of the period that we glimpse how this was achieved: provincial communities, invariably the source of documents reflecting Roman rule, were making ever more extensive records, on non-perishable materials, of their dealings with the central government. Two items in particular reveal the mechanisms through which information passed back and forth. The first is the record of a settlement with a Spanish tribe in 15 BC; the second, a remarkable legal inscription from Cnidus in the province of Asia in 6 BC. The first reads as follows: Imperator Caesar, son of the Divinity, Augustus, in the eighth year of his tribunician power, and proconsul, said: I have learned from all my legates, who were in charge of the province of Transduriana, that the castellani Paemeiobrigenses of the nation of the Susarri remained dutiful when all others were deserting. Therefore, I give all of them perpetual immunity, and I order that they hold those lands, within those borders, which they possessed when my legate, Lucius Sestius Quirinalis, held the province, without controversy. In place of the castellani Paemeiobrigenses, of the nation of the Susarri, to whom previously I have granted immunity in all matters, I restore in their place the castellani Aiiobrigiaecini, and I order the castellani Aiiobrigiaecini to perform all duties with the Susarri … (AE 2000 n. 760) The province of Transduriana was a short-lived administrative entity in northern Spain where there had obviously been a revolt in which one subgroup of a local tribe, the Susarri, did not participate. The governor, Augustus’ legate, has decided to grant this subgroup, the castellani Paemeiobrigenses, privileges for their loyalty, and to adjust the boundaries of the area to include a new subgroup that would contribute to the tasks assigned to the Susarri – largely, we may assume, the payment of taxes. Although the matter is presented as Augustus’ decision, it was the governors who possessed the local knowledge needed to make these arrangements, and it looks as if Lucius Sestius Quirinalis or his successor (or both) decided what should be done and got Augustus’ approval for it. The castellani Paemeiobrigenses, delighted by what happened, recorded the decision on the bronze tablet that has survived to this day. As a method of government, this procedure can be observed via Caesar’s account of his conquest of Gaul, as he spent his winters in northern Italy and left the army to his legates. In 54 BC he had been sorely disappointed by his legates Sabinus and Cotta, who, he felt, should have written to him for
advice about threats from the people with whom they were quartered – when they went to leave camp, their men were massacred – whereas he praised his legate Quintus Cicero for staying put and keeping him informed. Caesar implies that his legates should have been aware of the way he would respond. Similarly, in this case, it is unlikely that the legates would have acted as they did if they had not thought Augustus would approve. Indeed, it is likely that before they left Rome they had received general instructions (mandata) outlining the policy as well as on how to apply the mandata. It is also very likely that, before issuing the mandata, Augustus would have consulted people with direct knowledge of the area in question – in a letter to Tiberius he mentions playing dice with Silius Nerva and Marcus Vinicius, a pair of ex-consuls who had recently commanded armies in the Balkans. The Cnidus case resembles the Aizanoi one, in that the protagonists bypassed the governor to access Augustus directly. In making his decision, Augustus was acting both on information that had reached him directly from a local source and on what he felt to be the principle on which government should be based. He wrote: Your ambassadors, Dionysius II and Dionysius II the sons of Dionysius, came to me in Rome and gave me the decree accusing Eubulus son of Anaxandrides, now deceased, and Tryphera, his wife, present here, of the murder of Eubulus the son of Chrysippus. I ordered my friend Asinius Gallus to interrogate those of the household slaves who were involved in the case under torture, learning that Philinus the son of Chrysippus attacked the house of Eubulus and Tryphera for three nights in a row, by force and in the manner of a siege, that he brought his brother Eubulus with him on the third night, that Eubulus and Tryphera, the owners of the house, neither by negotiating with Philinus nor by building barricades were able to be safe from his attacks in their own house, assigning one of their slaves not to kill them, as one might be inclined to do out of justifiable anger, but to drive them off, by scattering the household excrement on them. The slave assigned the task, whether willingly or unwillingly – he denied it steadfastly – let go of the chamber pot and Eubulus fell under it although it would have been more just for him to be spared than his brother. I have sent you the records of the interrogations. (GC n. 6) Given the document from Aizanoi, dating to a few years before this one, it should not surprise us that Augustus says he ‘ordered’ the senatorial governor Asinius Gallus (Pollio’s son) to conduct the investigation. Augustus became aware of the case because the victims had fled to Rome to complain of their treatment, and it looks like the initial embassy from Cnidus turned up because Augustus had demanded to know if he was being
told the truth. Augustus saw his job as protecting the ‘common safety of all’, so he was appalled to find out what had happened, and that the aggressors had not been charged. One reason why this procedure was so important for provincial government was that it made clear who was responsible for a disaster that struck in AD 9. At that point, the bulk of the army, commanded by Tiberius, was completing the reconquest and reorganisation of Balkan lands that had risen in revolt. At the same time, in Germany the governor Quinctilius Varus, who as Agrippa’s son-in-law was very close to the imperial family, received warning that a revolt was brewing in the lands separating his camp near modern-day Minden in west central Germany from the garrison cities on the Rhine, near the modern cities of Nijmegen in the Netherlands and Xanten in Germany. Although he was an experienced official, having previously governed Syria successfully, he must have consulted Augustus before deciding, that autumn, to withdraw the three legions under his command to the Rhine. But, leaving his base, Varus marched straight into a trap laid by Julius Arminius, the chieftain of the Cherusci, an important tribe in the area, who had earned Roman citizenship through his service in earlier campaigns. The battle lasted for several days until Varus’ army was annihilated. When he received the news, Augustus is said to have roamed the palace exclaiming, ‘Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ (Suetonius, Life of Augustus 23), thereby planting the blame for the defeat squarely on the general’s shoulders. Others in Rome accepted his view and subjected Varus’ son to public shaming. But this could not change the fact that the decision to pull the legions back to the Rhine was Augustus’, or that after the Balkan war there was no money for new troops. Tiberius was sent with troops from the Balkans to retrieve the situation.
20. In 1987 Major Tony Clunn, a British army officer, began uncovering large numbers of coins with a metal detector this area near Osnabruck in Germany. It has subsequently been identified as the (or a part of the) area where Varus’ legions were destroyed. The area in the centre shows the reconstruction of the field fortifications from which the Germans launched their attacks on the Romans. Despite Tiberius’ victory in the Balkans, Varus’ defeat came at a difficult time for Augustus. In AD 5, popular unrest compelled him to allow his daughter Julia, who remained popular despite the scandals of 2 BC, to return to Italy and take up residence in Reggio. In AD 9 he gave in to pressure to allow major reforms to his marriage legislation through the lex Papia Poppaea, a measure brought before the Senate by the consuls of that year. His willingness to do so may not be unconnected with the fact that the year before there had been another domestic scandal. Augustus’ granddaughter, also called Julia, was found to be pregnant, but not by her husband Aemilius Paullus, who refused to acknowledge that she was an adulteress. Both were exiled and the baby, a boy, was killed – although their surviving daughter Aemilia was adopted by her uncle, who was an ally of Tiberius, and would go on to play her own role in the domestic politics of the era. Additionally, there was a suggestion that Augustus’ surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who had been under house arrest since he was ousted from the line of succession for erratic conduct in AD 6, was conspiring against Augustus (a charge possibly connected with the ongoing outbursts
of unrest). He was now sent into exile on the island of Pandateria, off the coast of Naples, while at least one other perceived enemy of public order was shipped off to Tomis (today’s Constanţa) on the Black Sea. This person was the poet Ovid, who would remain there until his death in AD 17, having created a substantial collection of poetry in which he asked to be allowed to return home. It becomes clear in these poems that after AD 9 he saw Tiberius as the guiding force in Roman politics, but when he found he was getting nowhere with him he began to address himself to Tiberius’ nephew and adopted son Germanicus, who had taken over command on the Rhine from Tiberius. In AD 13 Tiberius was formally given powers equal to Augustus’ in all the provinces. In the summer of the next year Augustus, now aged seventy- six, showed signs of terminal illness. Livia took him to the family villa near Naples and summoned Tiberius to his bedside. Tiberius, who was en route to the Balkans, hastened to see him. It is unknown if he arrived in time. Rumours of all sorts abounded as to his accession – people who did not like Tiberius, of which there were plenty, suggesting that Augustus might try to restore Agrippa Postumus to public life. No one knew what to expect when the dominant force in Roman politics – albeit more symbolical than actual in his declining years – would no longer be present. On 19 August AD 14 it was announced that Augustus had died at his villa at Nola, in the room in which his father had also died. Cornelius Tacitus, began his Annals with the accession of Tiberius, thinking that the successful transition of power marked a crucial turning point in Roman history. He was right, but Augustus may not have been fully aware of what his legacy would be. A few years before his death he had written to Tiberius, who was something of a workaholic, to say that if he and Livia should hear that he had become ill, they might themselves die and the ‘Roman people would be shaken with respect to the most important aspects of its empire’ (Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 21.7). Such language reveals that while Augustus believed he had created a unique statio, he had no idea that he had built such a stable framework for government that it would last for 1,800 years, the last person claiming to hold an office descended from his statio, the last Holy Roman Emperor, only abdicating on 6 August 1806. It is ironic that his abdication was forced by the emperor Napoleon, who took his inspiration from Roman history: whose armies
marched behind eagles; who had studied Caesar’s commentaries; and who claimed to be the ‘best of the race of the Caesars’. By now, public funerals for members of the imperial house were well- practised events, and Augustus was cremated on the Campus Martius after Tiberius had delivered a eulogy in the forum. His ashes were placed in the great mausoleum by the banks of the Tiber, where the record of his deeds that he had composed in the months before his death would soon be inscribed on two bronze tablets by the tomb’s entrance, quoting decrees in his honour and listing his many accomplishments. The funeral’s aftermath was considerably more interesting than the event itself. One senator swore that he saw the genius of Augustus, the divine spark that was within him, ascending to the heavens to join the gods. The Senate would duly vote for the creation of a new state cult in his honour. At the meeting that followed, Tiberius delivered an address and had Augustus’ will read out, along with his final memorandum listing the assets of the state and offering advice for the future – namely, that wars of expansion should cease. The Senate clamoured for more, in response to which Tiberius delivered a truly awful speech that left everyone confused as to his intentions. Would he or would he not accept Augustus’ statio? He agreed to do so. The Senate then passed a bill that appears to have conferred upon him powers that were neither part of his tribunician authority nor the granting of authority equal to Augustus’ in all the provinces. Some of these have survived in a document composed in AD 70 listing the powers of the emperor Vespasian, who took office that year. The outcome of this meeting was that there was now, for the first time, a document spelling out the job of the person who could now be called princeps. Tiberius’ son Drusus by Agrippa’s daughter and his adoptive son, his biological nephew Germanicus, were next in line for the office. Drusus was a few years younger, so Germanicus was regarded as the immediate heir apparent and received the most important command, avenging what was now called the ‘deceitful slaughter of an army of the Roman people’ in Germany (RS 37: 14–15). Drusus, in Italy when Augustus died, was dispatched to the Balkans. Both of Tiberius’ sons now faced mutinies in armies that saw themselves as being very much Augustus’ men – not unreasonably, since their late leader had called them ‘my armies’ when compiling the record of his deeds. In the Balkans, the troops were
protesting against the poor conditions of service and the fact that they were being kept in the military beyond even the extended term Augustus had imposed in AD 6 – some of those rebelling in AD 14 would have been recruited into legions newly formed for the invasion of the Balkans more than a quarter of a century previously. 21. The Temple of Rome and Augustus in Ancyra, Turkey. The best, most extensively preserved text of Augustus’ account of his life – the ‘Deeds of the Divine Augustus’ – is inscribed on the inner wall of this temple (photo courtesy of Professor C. Ratté). On the Rhine, the mutiny appears to have been caused by the news of regime change. There is no reason to think that Tiberius was especially unpopular in either place, and some local mismanagement may have contributed to the trouble. In the end, Drusus managed to suppress the Balkan mutiny with minimal bloodshed. Germanicus had more difficulty and, after considerable internecine violence, led a large-scale raid into southern Germany to restore morale.
This year also saw the shifting of elections for minor magistrates away from the comitia tributa to the Senate (although the comitia centuriata continued to function as it had under Augustus), plus several salutary assassinations, eradicating sources of the earlier opposition to Tiberius’ accession. Agrippa Postumus was killed before Augustus’ funeral. His mother, Julia, died sometime before the end of the year; one of her alleged lovers, a descendant of the Gracchi who had written letters critical of Tiberius, was killed in his place of exile on an island off the coast of Africa. At first, the main problem facing Tiberius was what to do about Germany. Augustus had favoured the recovery of all that had been lost by Varus, but this was not practical. After a couple of years during which Germanicus led armies deep into German territory, suffering some heavy casualties without winning a decisive result, Tiberius decided to declare victory and abandon the effort. Germanicus celebrated a triumph: it was announced that he had defeated the Germans, removed them from Gaul and recovered lost standards. He did manage to recover two standards, but there was never any question of having to remove the Germans from Gaul, as they had never invaded in the first place. As the German campaign ended, disorder threatened the east. The king of Armenia had died and Tiberius, who was not the forgiving sort, wished to settle a grudge with the king of Cappadocia, who had offended him during his years on Rhodes. There was an extra complication in that before Augustus’ death the Parthian nobility had asked for the return of Vonones, son of Phraates IV, to be their king (Phraates V having died). But they soon found Vonones to be ‘too Roman’ and replaced him with Artabanus, a distant relative. Vonones fled to Armenia, where he took the vacant throne, but was unable to retain it in the face of threats from Artabanus. He was now in Syria. Germanicus was sent off to settle the issue of the Armenian succession without starting a war. He was accompanied by Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, consul in AD 8 and a close friend of Tiberius. Unfortunately, Piso and Germanicus loathed each other: Piso evidently claimed that, while Germanicus might have maius imperium with respect to senatorial governors, he could not override mandata received from Tiberius. Piso gave Germanicus minimal support, instead expressing support for Vonones. That was not part of Germanicus’ plan. He made Polemo, grandson of the
Antonian dynast of that name, king of Armenia; then he met up with Artabanus and went on a grand tour of the eastern provinces, reaching as far south as Egypt, where he took a trip up the Nile. Piso, in the meantime, supported a botched coup that aimed to put Vonones back on the Armenian throne. This was more than Germanicus could tolerate. Returning to Syria, he dismissed Piso for gross insubordination. But then he fell ill, and died on 10 October AD 19; the suspicion was that he had been poisoned. Germanicus’ death unleashed a crisis. Piso, claiming that he had been wrongly dismissed, tried to retake the governorship of Syria by force of arms, failed, and was arrested. There were massive outpourings of grief in Rome, where Germanicus was a crowd favourite. In trying to express his grief Tiberius said, rather unfortunately, something along the lines of ‘I will not dissimulate my sorrow’ (RS 37 col. II, 16), which led some people to think that he was in fact hiding his joy at Germanicus’ demise. Piso’s show trial in May AD 20 ended with the defendant’s suicide and the publication of a massive decree at the end of the year explaining his ‘crimes’ and declaring that order was now restored. Among Piso’s alleged crimes were that he had raised the spectre of civil war, which had been ‘buried’ by Augustus and Tiberius, and had corrupted the military discipline that Augustus had instituted. The decree concluded with a list of the various virtues that members of the imperial family had displayed for the edification of the Roman people. Then the Senate and the equestrians were thanked for quelling the anger of the plebs with their supportive acclamations, as were the soldiers who had displayed loyalty to those officers who showed the greatest loyalty to the ‘Augustan house’. Despite Tiberius’ efforts to maintain that he was simply the caretaker and educator of the state, much uncertainty remained, and the frequency with which treason charges were now being brought was deeply disturbing. Everyone agreed that Piso was guilty, and that Scribonius Libo Drusus – who had also committed suicide, while on trial for attempting to kill many aristocrats through black magic – was dangerously deranged, but in other cases the guilt was less obvious. Tiberius had tried to prevent the charge being used as an add-on to more conventional charges; he found it embarrassing to be present at such cases, which were inevitably tried in the Senate, but had limited success in restraining prosecutorial zeal because such prosecutions provided career opportunities for those who wanted to advance at the expense of their rivals.
Tiberius was now sixty. Germanicus’ death heightened concern for the future; but Drusus was still alive, with a young son, and had adopted Germanicus’ older children, who began their public careers in AD 22. The next year things took a turn for the worse, when Drusus suddenly fell ill and died. Now the empire was to be ruled by an ageing emperor who was becoming increasingly uninterested in his role, and his adoptive grandchildren. Bureaucratic government came a step closer. Aelius Sejanus, who was now sole praetorian prefect, started taking on more and more responsibility for the daily management of the empire. Despite having no military reputation, his control of the emperor’s appointment calendar gave him control of the whole political scene, through which he hoped to be Tiberius’ Agrippa. His hand was further strengthened in AD 27 when Tiberius left for Capri, where he consorted with academics, ate a vegetarian diet and was (falsely) rumoured to have engaged in large-scale child molestation. He would never return to Rome. A modern visitor to his favoured residence, the Villa Jovis on Capri, will be struck both by the extraordinary natural beauty of the site and the relatively small size of the establishment. It is nothing like large enough to house the number of people needed to run an empire. That was being done by bureaucrats who were now stationed around the bay of Naples. Sejanus exploited the limited access to Tiberius by causing rifts between the emperor and Germanicus’ family, which led to the imprisonment of the latter’s widow Agrippina and his two eldest sons. By AD 31 the only possible heirs to Tiberius were Gaius, better known by his nickname Caligula – or ‘little boots’, taken from the footwear he wore when he accompanied his father Germanicus on campaign – and Drusus’ son Gemellus. Caligula was a teenager, Gemellus was not yet in his teens. This is when ambition got the better of Sejanus. He began an affair with Julia Livilla, Drusus’ widow, then hatched a plot to kill Caligula – which failed. The elimination of a young ‘imperial’ would have had an unwelcome impact on the people in his or her household, who would suddenly have found themselves out of work, demoted and/or reassigned. Sejanus would not have been popular, either, with the palace staff, whose friends were suffering in the wake of the many arrests. And other households, too, would have been ruined, while he concentrated on managing the Senate via more
