Augustus, page 36
Senators felt free to embarrass the princeps without fear of reprisal. Perhaps it damaged some men’s careers, but many had already achieved all that they wanted in terms of office, honours and provincial commands, and were not deterred. The mockery was gentle, especially when compared with the often extremely vulgar abuse traditional in Roman politics, and stopped short of direct criticism of Augustus. In many ways such exchanges helped to preserve the façade that he was still no more than the most distinguished member of the Senate. His laws were passed without any difficulty. Enforcing them was another matter, but resistance to the new rules had little to do with formal opposition to him. Some men arranged betrothals with infants, gaining the benefits of marriage without the inconvenience of actually contracting one for a good few years. Augustus responded by modifying the legislation so that a betrothal was only recognised if the wedding took place within two years.30
The efforts to make these laws work created more uncomfortable moments, his temporary responsibilities for public morals meaning that individual cases were brought before him. One man was accused of marrying a woman with whom he had previously had an adulterous affair, something rather too close to home given Augustus’ unorthodox courtship of Livia. In this instance the man’s accuser brought many other charges about his character, and clearly bore a deep grudge against him. Augustus finally dismissed the case, vaguely declaring that they all ought to forget the fractious quarrels of the past. Aged forty-five at the start of 17 BC, the princeps was a mature man, less prone to the angry outbursts and sometimes clumsy statements of his youth. He coped with the ironic questioning of senators or the interruption of his speeches, and even when placed in awkward situations dealt with minor losses of dignity with good humour.31
His affability softened the hard reality of his control, and only occasionally was the steel of the former triumvir apparent. On one occasion Augustus dined with an equestrian called Vedius Pollio, who was known for his wealth, love of luxury and his cruelty. He was also an old friend, probably one of the wealthy backers who had supported the young Caesar when he thrust himself into politics in 44 BC. Like many of Cicero’s generation, he owned extensive ornamental fish ponds, one of which was filled with carnivorous lampreys to which he would feed slaves who displeased him. During the meal, a slave accidentally broke one of a set of expensive drinking cups, and his master immediately ordered him to be thrown to the fish. Imperator Caesar Augustus gave an order of his own, telling one of his attendants to gather the rest of the set of cups and then smash them one by one in front of their owner until he released the slave. The story is told to illustrate his disapproval of the senator’s viciousness and that was surely his motive. There is also something chilling about his absolute assurance, knowing that he could act in this way and that there was nothing his host could do about it. Later the man died and bequeathed one of his luxurious villas to the princeps. Augustus had it demolished so that no memorial would preserve Vedius’ name. It was his property and so he was free to do with it whatever he pleased, but the disdainful erasure of someone’s memory – however well justified – illustrated the utter dominance of Caesar Augustus.32
There was no force to oppose him, and whatever they pretended no one failed to understand this. People could voice criticism of him, but the very fact that this was so restrained confirms the fear as well as respect he commanded. In the past, the Romans had never been so reticent in voicing their opinions even of the greatest men in the state. Stronger sentiments were expressed in anonymous pamphlets left in public places including the Curia. Caesar Augustus spoke in the Senate to defend himself from these attacks and announced that in the future their authors would be sought out and held to account. Sometimes the most savage insults were directed against other senators, unconnected with him or his regime, and reflected older hatreds. As in any era, high politics occupied only a small part of the majority’s time, efforts and interests. During these years Augustus recalled the actor Pylades from exile, a punishment awarded after rivalry between his fans and those of another actor named Bathyllus had grown too strong. Pylades humiliated one heckler by singling him out and turning the abuse of the rest of the crowd onto the man. Bathyllus was a favourite and at times the lover of Maecenas, who had protected him. Now his rival returned to the stage and both men continued to be very popular with audiences. Chided by Augustus for the past disturbances, Pylades confidently assured Caesar that it was in his best interests for the people to devote their spare time and enthusiasm to the theatre and its famous – or sometimes notorious – stars.33
THE CYCLE OF YEARS
In 17 BC, with the newborn Lucius and his brother Caius adopted as his sons, Caesar Augustus was looking to the long-term future. For all the celebration of peace after decades of strife, for all the talk of physical and spiritual renewal, and the deep interest in tradition and past glories, the ethos of the regime was always far more about the future than the past. The great achievements of the Romans under the leadership of Caesar Augustus would be followed by far greater things as he led them into the future. Renewal was an important part of making them fit for this destiny, re-established in a proper relationship with the gods who had guided the City’s progress for centuries, the citizens acting and behaving as Romans should, but ultimately this was not about making things as they were in the past. Instead it was about moving forward in the right way.
The Romans had several methods of measuring time. The year was based on the natural passage of the seasons and tied closely to the political world, its name derived from the consuls of each year. Every five years or lustrum, the censors were supposed to review the numbers, prosperity and rank of the entire citizen population. Beyond this was a longer period, the saeculum or cycle, felt to be more than the longest human lifetime. It had only definitely been celebrated on a handful of occasions in the past, and there was some doubt about its length, although most felt it came every hundredth year or so. The last celebration was in 146 BC, but 100 years later the turmoil of the civil wars ensured that no one was concerned with commemorating the new cycle. Augustus himself reported talk that the comet heralding Julius Caesar’s ascent to join the gods also marked the start of a new saeculum. Yet the timing was inconvenient, and it took the concerted efforts of one of his supporters, the noted jurist Caius Ateius Capito, to ‘discover’ that the cycle was in fact every 110 years, and that if it was calculated from the origin of the City in this way then the festival was due in 17 BC. Not everyone was convinced – the Emperor Claudius went back to the traditional system so that he could commemorate the festival during his own reign – but this was of small concern to Augustus, eager to stage such a grand and appropriate event.34
Considerable effort went into planning the ludi saeculares or Secular Games – the modern transliteration is rather misleading since these were in every respect religious rites. Augustus was heavily involved at every stage, as was Agrippa, his role far more prominent since the grant of tribunician power. Both were members of the key ancient priestly college, the quindecimviri sacris faciundis, who were tasked with supervising these rituals. All of the other members – there were now several more than the traditional fifteen from which they took their title, for Augustus had enlarged all of the priestly colleges and was a member of them all – were senators, and the arrangements were brought before and approved by them. The Senate decreed that the details should be recorded on inscriptions on the site in marble and bronze, paid for by the state treasury. Everything was done in a traditional and proper way, but throughout the process the role of Augustus and Agrippa marked them out as far above priestly colleagues and other senators: ‘Whereas the consul Caius Silanus reported that after a lapse of many years the Secular Games would be celebrated in the present year under the direction of the Imperator Caesar Augustus and Marcus Agrippa, holders of tribunician power . . .’
The recent law regulating marriage barred unmarried young men and women from watching public festivals, but in this case the event was too important and – since the whole idea was that the cycle was longer than any lifetime and this was their only chance of witnessing it – this ban was lifted.
On 31 May 17 BC the ludi saeculares began with a night-time sacrifice performed by Augustus on the Campus Martius near the River Tiber. In accordance with the rite established by the Sibylline Books, he sacrificed nine ewes and nine female goats to the Fates, called on this occasion Moirae, their Greek name. He prayed to them for good fortune for the Roman people – given their additional name of Quirites to make their identity absolutely clear to the divine powers – for continued success in war, for the safety of the state and their legions of soldiers. An archaic touch was added by prayer to keep the ‘Latins obedient’. The Latin-speaking neighbours of Rome had been securely under Roman control since the fourth century BC, but Roman ritual was obsessively conservative and so survivals of the distant past were common enough, even to the extent of repeating words no one could understand. In this case it is unlikely that the ritual owed much to earlier celebrations and this was surely a deliberate attempt to make it seem ancient. Into this traditional façade was interwoven the modern: twice in the prayer Augustus asked for blessing to ‘the Roman People, the Quirites, to the board of fifteen, to me, to my house and my household’.
That night there was a ritual feast for a carefully selected group of 110 married women, all of them mothers, at which the images of the goddesses Juno and Diana were seated at the table. There was also a dramatic performance, watched by crowds who stood in the traditional Roman way rather than being given seating in the style adopted from the Greeks. On the next day, 1 June, Augustus and Agrippa each went to the Capitol and killed a perfect sacrificial bull, offering the animals to Jupiter Best and Greatest, and then on 2 June each sacrificed a cow to Juno, again on the Capitol. Other members of the priestly college attended them, but the offerings were made only by these two men. Apart from addressing the particular god or goddess, each time they repeated the first prayer, asking for the Latins to be kept under control and adding the princeps, his house and his household to the safety and success of the Roman people, the Quirites. On the night of 1 June ritual cakes were offered to the Ilithyia, Greek goddesses of childbirth, and then on the night of 2 June Augustus slaughtered a pregnant sow in honour of Mother Earth beside the River Tiber. On the next day he and Agrippa were on the Palatine to offer sacrificial cakes to Apollo and Diana.
Animal sacrifice is very alien to us, and it is all too easy for scholars of the period to take these common rites for granted and forget how much care and preparation they required. The right animals had to be found, kept in good health and brought calmly to the altar so that they did not panic. The actual killing was normally done by highly trained specialists, since it needed to be neat and efficient. Augustus and Agrippa stood by, part of their togas draped over the tops of their heads as they recited the words of the prayer. There are many images of Augustus – and quite a few of Agrippa – shown with their heads covered in this way, and it is clear that the princeps wished to parade his pietas and his priestly role. Any mistake – whether in the rituals of preparation, the slaughter of the victim or the slightest error in the enunciation of the words of the prayer – invalidated the entire ritual, requiring it to be repeated.
The sacrifices were accompanied by more sacred feasts held by the 110 matrons, who at times also took part in public prayers. There were also more dramatic performances in Greek and Latin lasting for seven days after the rituals, some of them held in a temporary wooden theatre, others in the Theatre of Pompey, and the still not fully completed Theatre of Marcellus. There were also days with beast fights and chariot races, rounding off almost two weeks of pageantry and spectacle, throughout which the present and future greatness of Rome was inseparably linked with the leadership of Caesar Augustus and his confederate Agrippa.
On 3 June, on the Palatine and later on the Capitol, a specially commissioned poem was sung by a choir formed of twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls – three times nine was a combination of sacred numbers. The composer was Horace, although it seems more than likely that Virgil would have been preferred if he were still alive. The poem, the Carmen Saeculare, survives; it calls upon the gods propitiated by sacrifices and on other deities to bless and protect the Romans, and speaks of the Trojan past celebrated in the Aeneid. Many of Augustus’ concerns are on display, such as the ‘Fathers’ [another term for senators who were traditionally fathers of families] edicts on the yoking-together of men and women and on the marriage law for raising a new crop of children’. The princeps himself appears as ‘the glorious descendant of Anchises and Venus . . . may he be victorious in battle over his foes yet merciful once they are down’. This emphasis on the Julian family was repeated in a series of coins issued that year depicting Julius Caesar.35
The games were intended to be a sign of ongoing and already well-established renewal and the promise of an even greater future. The Romans would multiply, and the generations to come grow even more in strength during this next cycle of history, and Caesar Augustus was at the heart of everything. He could now boast sons, for the bond of adoption was a strong one as his own career had shown, apart from which adopted children were as costly to raise as a man’s own sons. In this way Augustus tried to live up to the ideal of raising a new generation of Romans, just as he encouraged and tried to compel the rest of the elite to do likewise. The same was true of the early marriages of his stepchildren and wider family.
Others in the princeps’ circle did not set such a good example. Maecenas was married, but had no children and seems to have been more interested in male lovers. Virgil does not appear to have married, and was rumoured to have felt passion only for boys. Horace was enthusiastic in his pursuit of women, but restricted his activities to professional courtesans and other prostitutes. He was said to have mirrors covering the walls and ceiling of his bedchamber so that he could watch while he made love to them – if true, this would have been a highly expensive indulgence, for mirrors were very costly. Augustus did not seem to mind, playfully nicknaming the poet ‘a most lecherous little man’ and ‘a perfect penis’ in letters to him. None of these men embarked seriously on a public career – Maecenas had influence and behind-the-scenes power but never held office.36
In a very Roman way, Caesar Augustus was far more concerned with public appearances and practicality than with changing behaviour for its own sake. He needed the aristocracy to reproduce so that there would be another generation, and he needed them to behave with dignity in public, respecting the gods and tradition in general. His marriage laws were resented and ignored by many, but overall a majority probably conformed to them more or less willingly. If they did this, and behaved appropriately in public, neither he nor anyone else was much concerned with discreet private activity.
17
FAMILY AND COLLEAGUES
‘Augustus Caesar . . . had become disliked by many as a result of his long stay in the capital.’ Dio, early third century AD.1
‘I pacified the Alps, from the area closest to the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Tuscan sea, without waging an unjust war against any tribe.’ Deeds of the Divine Augustus.2
Late in 17 BC or early in 16 BC three Germanic tribes, the Usipetes, Tencteri and Sugambri, suddenly rounded up some Romans who were in their lands – presumably there as merchants – and crucified them. We do not know what prompted this outburst of hostility, but a large group of warriors then mustered and launched a plundering raid across the Rhine into Roman Gaul. The legate, Marcus Lollius, responded by gathering a force to deal with them – just as Julius Caesar, Agrippa and others had done in the past in much the same area. It seems that Lollius lacked their skill, and this time things did not go well. The auxiliary cavalry patrolling ahead of the army were ambushed and soundly beaten. Exultant German warriors chased the horsemen as they fled, and the whole mass fell back on the main force which was surprised and thrown into confusion. Legio V Alaudae broke and lost its precious eagle. For a time most of the Roman army was in flight, before order was restored and the enemy repulsed.
Lollius and his army survived their defeat, and the losses were probably not very high. Suetonius dubbed the reverse ‘more infamous than serious’, but still included it as one of only two serious defeats suffered by Augustus’ armies after the civil wars. Lollius was his legate, and the soldiers were his soldiers, so their defeat was every bit as much his as their past successes. Imperator Caesar Augustus led the state because his victories brought peace and prosperity. Any reverse was damaging, and after the much-trumpeted return of the standards from Parthia and Illyria the loss of another eagle was embarrassing. Augustus announced that he would go to Gaul in person, and left Rome late in the spring. Before he arrived the campaign was over. Lollius gathered together a larger and better-prepared field force to invade the tribal heartlands in reprisal for the raid. News of this prompted the Germans to send ambassadors begging for peace, which was granted on Rome’s terms. We do not know what happened to the eagle, but there was no fanfare surrounding its return and it is possible that the loss was temporary, and the precious standard had been recovered in the first encounter.3
Augustus continued on to Gaul, and most probably a tour of the western provinces was already planned before news arrived of Lollius’ defeat. Agrippa had also left for the east, and neither he nor his father-in-law would return to Italy for more than three years, continuing the now-established pattern of alternating spells in Rome with longer visits to the provinces. Dio claims that Augustus was glad to leave the City behind, and used the news from Gaul as a pretext to hurry. The recently introduced marriage legislation continued to aggravate some senators and equestrians. The princeps was willing to grant exemptions or more lenient treatment to friends and supporters caught infringing the laws, and although this was understandable and very Roman, it only added to the resentment of his harsher treatment of others. There is no hint of concerted opposition, but Augustus’ informal style, approachability and claims of wanting free and open debate in the Senate provided plenty of opportunities to embarrass him. The longer he stayed in Rome itself, the easier it was for those so inclined to test the limits of his tolerance, and there was little he could do if he wished to preserve the traditional and constitutional façade of his regime.4
