Augustus, page 33
Some documents record the formal senatorial decree granting the privilege or other benefit given by the princeps, and it is safe to assume that this occurred in all major grants so that matters were given a veneer of constitutional legitimacy. However, the impression is overwhelmingly one of autocratic rule, even if, at least openly, that rule was exercised for the good of the subjects. Embassies to the princeps were opportunities for oratory as well as gift-giving. Many speeches were in Greek, which enhanced the sense of a benevolent ruler and one who was sympathetic to provincial culture. The unashamed mention of Livia as an advocate for the Samians was a marked change from the days of the Republic and an open admission that anyone capable of influencing Augustus was worth cultivating. It was not unusual. There were generous grants to communities who had welcomed and helped Livia and her then husband after their flight from Italy.24
Once again it is quite possible that Augustus’ wife accompanied him on some or all of his tour. From Sicily he went to Greece in 21 BC, wintered on the island of Samos, and then crossed to Asia in 20 BC, touring this province and Bithynia, before moving on to Syria. It was only at this point that he actually reached one of the provinces allocated to him and governed via his legates. This did not matter, and no doubt the proconsuls in each region kept on with their normal business of dispensing justice and handling appeals while he was there. The princeps dealt with bigger and more sensitive issues, and records of surviving embassies and petitions give some idea of the unending flow of questions waiting to be considered and answered. Perhaps some ambassadors were surprised when they came into the presence of Augustus, and saw not the flawlessly youthful image from sculpture but a man now in early middle age, with skin so sensitive that he wore a broad-brimmed floppy hat to shield himself from the sun.25
The imperfections of reality have never been a barrier to diplomacy and, day after day in city after city, business was carried on. Ambassadors waited for the chance to be presented, made their speeches – probably at considerable length – and were then either pleased or disappointed at the outcome. Some communities suffered. Athens lost territory from the region administered by the city while Sparta gained authority over a wider area. Cyzicus in Asia was severely punished for an outbreak of violent disorder during which several Romans were flogged and then executed. It lost civic status and some of its citizens were enslaved. This was an extreme punishment, and only a few others suffered similar penalties.26
While travelling, Augustus had to keep up with events in Rome itself, where there was more unrest in 21 BC. Wherever he was, petitioners travelled from other provinces to reach him, just as they had gone to Tarragona during his residence there. In Egypt the prefect Petronius had faced serious raids by the Ethiopians into the south of his province. He drove out the first attack, but the difficulty of keeping an army in the desert caused him to pull back most of his forces. The Ethiopian Queen Candace again sent her warriors to attack the Romans, prompting another campaign and Roman counter-attack, which this time a better-prepared Petronius extended further south. The British Museum houses the head from a statue of Augustus that was cut off and carried back home as a trophy by the Ethiopians. It was later buried beneath the entrance to one of their temples and was still there when excavated, having survived the destruction of the building by Petronius’ vengeful soldiers. Eventually Candace sought terms, and Petronius referred their ambassadors to Augustus. Interestingly, Strabo tells us that the Ethiopians complained that they did not know ‘who Caesar was or where they should have to go to find him’ and so Petronius ‘gave them escorts; and they went to Samos, since Caesar was there . . .’27
In 20 BC Agrippa was sent back to Rome to deal with the continuing disorder in the City, but he soon had to move on to suppress renewed rebellion in Spain. In the following year he fought a tough campaign and at long last brought to an end large-scale resistance among the Cantabrians and Asturians. In the meantime voters in the Comitia centuriata once again wrote Augustus’ name on their ballots and refused to elect more than one consul. At the start of 19 BC this man, Caius Sentius Saturninus, still lacked a colleague. Another election was held, but was badly disrupted by the violence of one of the candidates. This was Marcus Egnatius Rufus, a man who had won popularity for himself serving as aedile a few years earlier. At a time of floods and fires, Rufus not only entertained the population but formed his slaves into a fire brigade which helped to protect their homes. Still below the legal age for the consulship, he nevertheless put himself forward and organised his household and supporters into the sort of intimidating band used in the past by men like Clodius and Milo. Perhaps he promised radical reforms if elected, or was simply seen as a threat to stability, for later sources felt that he conspired against Augustus himself. (This may reflect the same attitude that attributed military defeats to the princeps even when he was nowhere near the theatre of war.) Saturninus had the Senate pass the senatus consultum ultimum – the last time this was ever done – and Egnatius and some of his supporters were arrested and executed. Probably this was made easier by the assistance of whatever force of praetorians were in or near the City and the active support of men like Maecenas and Statilius Taurus. The episode was a reminder of the violent past, and a warning that such things could still happen, especially when the princeps was far away. Yet in many ways it was more a sign of the growing stability of Augustus’ regime. Traditional mechanisms dealt with the problem, and Egnatius Rufus proved to be the last in the long succession of ambitious senators – often tribunes – willing and able to use force to get their way.28
RESTITUTION
Given the distances involved, Augustus may not have heard of these events until the affair was over. Before he left Rome envoys had come from the Parthian King Phraates IV, demanding the return of his rival Tiridates. The latter had fled to seek Augustus’ protection and support, bringing as captive Phraates’ son. Both were given comfortable accommodation in case they proved useful in the future, but in 23 BC a delegation was sent by Phraates asking for their return. The Parthian ambassadors went first to Augustus, who then brought them and Tiridates before a meeting of the Senate. Rather than make a decision on the matter, the senators promptly passed a vote asking the princeps to do so. Syria, the region closest to Parthia, was part of his province so there was perhaps a degree of justification for this, but more importantly it revealed the underlying truth of power in Rome.29
Augustus gave the king back his son, but refused to hand over Tiridates, and demanded the return of Roman standards and prisoners held by the Parthian king. Negotiations continued at a lesser distance when in 20 BC the princeps arrived in Syria. They were backed by a show of force. A rebellion in Armenia had overthrown and killed King Artaxias II. The kingdom lay between the greater powers of Parthia and Rome, and was culturally closer to the former, although on balance even more exposed to the military might of the latter. Artaxias had been backed by the Parthians, but now leading aristocrats offered the throne to his brother Tigranes, another exiled foreign prince who had sought and found sanctuary in Rome.
Augustus granted the request, and sent the twenty-one-year-old Tiberius at the head of an army to take him to his kingdom. It was an extraordinary command for someone so young, only matched in the recent past by the activities of Pompey and the young Caesar during the civil wars. In the event there was no fighting, and the advance was little more than a parade culminating in the enthronement of Tigranes as the new king. Such peaceful displays of Roman strength had a long tradition and were widely admired. No doubt Tiberius was accompanied by older, experienced officers, but even so it gave the young man an opportunity to issue orders and control a large force in the field.30
The expedition to Armenia provided the background to the ongoing negotiations. Augustus did not want to fight Parthia any more than he had done in 29 BC. The risks were great, and the scale of the task daunting. At the very least it would have kept him away from Rome for two or three more years, during which time it would be harder to continue dealing with all the petitions and other problems brought before him. Phraates IV was no more enthusiastic for confrontation. He had other frontiers in addition to the one with Rome, as well as facing the more immediate threat posed by rival members of the royal family and an unruly nobility. In the last years Augustus had ensured the loyalty of the cities and client monarchs in and around Syria, making it very unlikely that the Parthians would get any support there, should they risk an invasion.
Neither side wanted war, and it was really a question of finding a peaceful way for both to claim success. Probably the Romans promised not to support Tiridates, although he was most likely permitted to live on in comfortable exile. In return Phraates IV pledged to keep the peace, and as a gesture returned the Roman standards captured from Crassus, Antony and during the invasion of the Roman provinces in 41–40 BC. With them came Roman prisoners, some of them held captive since Carrhae thirty years earlier.
The return of the lost legionary eagles and other standards was one of the most publicised of all Augustus’ achievements, seen for instance on the breastplate of the famous prima porta statue of him, and it really did not matter that it came through diplomacy and not from a successful war. For the Romans it was an acknowledgement of their superiority, since the Parthian king recognised their strength and met Augustus’ demands. The standards were reclaimed and, even if such tokens had far less significance for the Parthians than the Romans, the former must by now have been aware of their symbolic value. As far as we can tell, Phraates gave more than he received in this settlement. No doubt for a home audience he presented the arrangement as an agreement between equals. The Romans saw it differently: a proud and dangerous enemy had been humbled by the fear of Roman might at no cost in Roman lives. While Horace might declare that it was ‘sweet and fitting to die for the native land’ – dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, a phrase now perhaps most famous as Wilfred Owen’s ‘old lie’ – the Romans never needed a victory to be costly to themselves in order to be glorious and never depicted their own fallen on any victory monument.31
Coins were soon minted depicting the standards and carrying slogans proclaiming their return – signis receptis. The Senate greeted the news with a flood of fresh honours, many of which Augustus ultimately rejected when the offers reached him. This did not prevent some of these awards appearing on coins minted in Spain and other provinces before the news arrived that he had turned them down. Thus some show a new temple on the Capitol to hold the standards, although as far as we can tell it was not actually built. Although Augustus accepted a formal thanksgiving for his victory he declined the offer of celebrating an ovation – or perhaps even a full triumph – on his return, but not before coins appeared depicting the symbols of this. One series shows the princeps riding in a chariot pulled by a pair of elephants, so presumably this rather bizarre honour was offered to him. Pompey had tried to celebrate a triumph in this way, only to be thwarted and forced to change to a conventional horse-drawn chariot when he discovered that an arch on the processional route was too narrow for such an unwieldy vehicle and team. Julius Caesar had had forty elephants as torch-bearers in a night-time ascent of the Capitoline Hill after his Gallic triumph. Clearly the idea of such flamboyant gestures, using these large and exotic animals, still stirred some aristocratic imaginations.32
Augustus refused almost all of the new honours. It still meant that he enjoyed the glory of being given them in the first place and the admiration for his modest refusal, carrying with it the confident assurance that his fame and reputation was already so immense that he had no need for any more. In due course the returned standards would be placed in the Temple of Mars Ultor (Mars the avenger) which formed the centrepiece of his new complex, the Forum Augustum. He had vowed to build this temple after Philippi, having achieved vengeance over the murderers of his father, but the work had scarcely begun and now it would also happily serve to mark the avenging of defeats at the hands of the Parthians.
More immediately, the Senate voted him the right to construct a triumphal arch. It was the third time that he had received this honour, for similar awards were made after Naulochus and Actium. As far as we can tell, only one arch was ever built. This commemorated Actium and stood beside the Temple of the Divine Julius on the edge of the Forum Romanum. Instead of building another, Augustus seems to have decided to modify the Actian Arch, mounting larger-than-life statues of the princeps driving in a chariot with the goddess Victory behind him, while suppliant Parthians hand back Roman standards. Such imagery reminds us that even if he refused many honours, Augustus was still very obviously marked out as the greatest ever servant of the state. He was everywhere, his name, image or symbols on monuments in the heart of Rome, in the towns of Italy and throughout the provinces.33
On 27 March 19 BC the Younger Balbus celebrated a triumph for a victory achieved while proconsul of Africa, and he would spend some of the spoils building a new stone theatre. Augustus’ legates did not receive triumphs since their victories were his. Instead they were given the symbols of triumph (ornamenta triumphalia). Opportunities for large-scale campaigning were denied to most senatorial proconsuls, and very rare for the governors of Africa and Macedonia who still commanded legions. It is unclear whether or not anyone realised this at the time, but Balbus’ triumph would be the last after the old style. Augustus himself never celebrated another, and in the future only members of his family would be permitted the honour. Even for them the award was a rare one. Wars would continue and victories would come steadily, but all were now credited mainly to the princeps, who did not bother to commemorate them in the traditional manner. Perhaps a hint of this came when a list of all past triumphs was added to the Actian Arch. It ended with Balbus, and there was no space for anyone else.34
Augustus returned to Samos for the winter of 20–19 BC and the constant flow of embassies and petitioners continued throughout these months. Among them was a deputation from one of the Indian rulers, bringing some tigers as gifts and an unfortunate boy born without arms but able to grasp objects with his feet. Dio felt it worth remarking on these presents more than two centuries later. The animals were probably taken to Rome, displayed to the people and quite possibly slaughtered for their amusement, for that was the grim Roman way. The crippled boy was an object of curiosity rather than sympathy. The Indians stayed with the court for some time, following them when they proceeded to Athens. Dio also claimed that one of the ambassadors there committed suicide by throwing himself onto a specially prepared pyre. The historian was unsure whether the man did this out of extreme old age or ‘to make a display for Augustus and the Athenians’.
India remained far distant and little known, reached by Alexander the Great but never by a Roman army. Even so, this was just one of several embassies from India known to have come to Augustus, and that in itself reveals some Indian leaders’ recognition of Rome’s wealth, power and reputation. The Romans and the inhabitants of the provinces had a voracious and ever-growing appetite for silks, spices and other luxuries from the Far East, and it is likely that the main aim of the envoys was to secure access to that market. At the same time such exchanges allowed Augustus to boast that Rome ruled virtually the entire world. The idea thrilled Roman and Greek alike and would seem more real as the victories continued to come. If Rome’s honour and standards were regained without actual war, it was not a sign of slowing expansion.35
16
AN END AND A BEGINNING
‘From this noble line shall be born the Trojan Caesar, who shall extend his empire to the ocean, his glory to the stars . . . Him, in days to come, shall you, anxious no more, welcome to heaven, laden with Eastern spoils; he, too, shall be invoked with vows. Then wars shall cease and savage ages soften . . .’ Virgil, late twenties BC.1
Caesar Augustus appears to have spent several weeks in Athens, and his return to Italy was a slow progression, as he paused to give audiences in all the major communities along the route. Work continued and even such macabre distractions as the suicide of the Indian delegate were brief intervals between receiving petitioners and writing correspondence. More welcome was the appearance in Athens of the poet Virgil, who was travelling in Greece as a rest from working for more than a decade on his twelve-book epic, the Aeneid. A long-time intimate of Maecenas, through him the poet had been introduced to Augustus and it was widely – and no doubt correctly – believed that the princeps had urged him to embark on his great project. Certainly we know that Augustus took a keen interest in its progress, for instance writing from Spain to ask about it. Before leaving Rome for the east, he and some of his family attended when Virgil gave a public reading of a part of the Aeneid. The passage lamenting the recently dead Marcellus moved them all so deeply that Octavia fainted.2
