Augustus, page 46
Augustus lived in a fitting style for a leading senator – indeed it was clearly intended as a model for how these should behave – and the emphasis on modesty was relative. When at home, and not receiving guests or acting in any public capacity, he normally wore clothes made for him by Livia, Octavia or the other women of his family – no doubt assisted by their extensive household of slaves and freedwomen. Weaving was a traditional activity for the wives and daughters of the Roman elite, although by this era admired more than copied, and it is hard to know how far others followed the example set by the princeps’ household in this respect. In winter he wore as many as four tunics over a vest and chest warmer, as well as leg wrappings around his thighs and calves – trousers were a barbaric custom, not to be adopted by Roman emperors for almost 300 years. In summer he dressed lightly, and invariably put on a broad-brimmed hat to protect against the sun, even when he was within the complex on the Palatine. Yet this was the informal garb. Whenever he appeared in an official capacity, Imperator Caesar Augustus dressed in a manner befitting his status. Appropriate official clothes were kept ever ready at home so that he could change into them if he suddenly needed to deal with any public business.30
Moderation also characterised Augustus’ eating habits, and once again this was a mixture of personal inclination and living up to an ideal of proper behaviour for a leading Roman senator. Suetonius tells us that he was fond of simple bread rather than the finest loaves, and often ate moist cheese, figs and a little fish. On most days he happily nibbled at such things whenever the mood took him rather than waiting for a formal meal, and was inclined to eat while being carried in his litter or carriage. Quotes from his letters speak of his eating bread, dates and grapes in this way, and we are told that other favourites were cucumber, lettuce and flavoured apples – the last presumably dipped in or coated with something. He drank little wine, taking no more than a pint and vomiting up any excess. His feasts were generous and formal dinners frequent, although sometimes he took scant food himself, having already eaten beforehand or choosing to do so afterwards. As far as we can tell he took more pleasure in the company and conversation, or in playing dice or other games, such as making people bid for prizes without knowing what they were or their true value, mixing the genuinely valuable with the very ordinary – one trick was to show people only the backs of a set of paintings. At major festivals he liked giving out secret prizes, sometimes valuable, sometimes curiosities such as ancient coins, and sometimes joke gifts such as sponges or iron pokers, which he gave under punning names.31
Augustus frequently entertained guests at his house, and as frequently accepted invitations to dine with others, but these were always people considered appropriate by aristocratic standards. He never invited freedmen to share his table, but would on occasion have as guests freeborn men who were neither senators nor equestrians. Suetonius cites the example of a former speculator – originally a specialist scout, the term later came to mean intelligence operative and may already have had something of this sense – who was invited to a meal. Augustus had stayed in the man’s villa, creating another acceptable debt of gratitude, and this suggests he was someone of at least moderate wealth. The princeps was careful to treat everyone with the respect suited to their rank and past service, just as he was patient in receiving petitioners. As we have seen, he had a lively sense of humour, with a particular – and very Roman – delight in puns and sarcasm. When one hunchbacked senator was advocate in a court case judged by Augustus, the man kept asking the princeps to ‘set me straight if you spot a mistake’; Augustus finally quipped that ‘I’ll correct you, but I cannot set you straight!’32
A joke was often a gentle way out of an awkward situation, such as saying no to someone. They were also good stories that quickly circulated and added to the impression of Augustus as an ordinary man and not some distant tyrant. One merchant brought him a consignment of clothes dyed with Tyrian purple, but the princeps was unimpressed with the depth of the colour. The trader assured him that if he held it up to the light it would look better. ‘What? You mean that I’ll have to walk up and down on my balcony so that the Roman people can see that I am well dressed!’ was the emperor’s reply. At some point he owned a nomenclator who proved poor at remembering and recognising people in time to advise his master. One day as they were about to go down to the Forum the slave asked whether he had forgotten anything they needed. ‘You had better take some letters of introduction,’ Augustus said, ‘since you don’t know anyone there.’33
The jokes were sometimes biting, but never vicious by the standards of the day – the Romans were happy to mock physical deformities. More importantly they were never accompanied by cruel or arbitrary actions, and this was a marked change from his years as triumvir when he could execute men and joke that they would be ‘food for the carrion birds’. Augustus neither paraded nor abused his power in his humour any more than he did in affairs of state. He was also ready to let himself be the butt of some stories and be laughed at. Once he is supposed to have encountered a man who looked uncannily like him, prompting the princeps to ask the man whether his mother had ever spent time in Rome. The man said no, before adding that his father was a frequent visitor. Moderation and courtesy in his dealings with others were probably reflections of Augustus’ true character – at least at this stage in his life – as well as sensible policy. Acts of generosity and kindness were readily reported, for instance when he heard that a minor senator had gone blind and was planning to take his own life. Caesar Augustus barely knew the man, but still went to his bedside and after a long talk persuaded him to change his mind. Both the sympathy and the willingness to take trouble to help with another’s problem carried over from his formal duties, but were important ways to convince people to accept – and often to like – his dominance.34
So much of what the princeps did was in public that many stories survive of his foibles and eccentricities. He generally held to Julius Caesar’s recommendation that formal speeches and statements should be kept clear and in plain language, and mocked Maecenas and Tiberius for their fondness for obscure and over-complicated sentences. By contrast he used a few vulgar forms of words, and had a fondness for homespun sayings, such as ‘As fast as you can cook asparagus’, or ‘They will pay up on the Greek Kalends’ – since there was not such a day in the Greek calendar this meant that they would not pay. He was especially fond of the slogan ‘Hurry slowly’, which he seems to have employed in both Latin and Greek. Peculiarities of speech combined with a number of deep superstitions. Thunder and lightning frightened him – during a journey in Spain a lightning strike had killed the torch-bearer standing beside him – and so he always carried a piece of lucky sealskin with him as protection when travelling. If at home, he would flee to an underground room for safety. He would not travel on certain days, but was always pleased when he began a journey in a light rain as he believed this was a good omen – unlike finding that his slave had put out his shoes the wrong way round.35
Such things were inoffensive eccentricities, keeping well within the bounds of acceptable aristocratic behaviour. Similarly his care for his own health was not excessive, despite his record of poor health. He developed his own routine for bathing, which was less extreme than the conventional Roman bath with its exceptionally hot and cold temperatures, but left his skin scarred by over-rigorous use of the metal strigil when scraping off oil used as soap. He remained prone to serious illnesses, and at times suffered from rheumatism and weakness in his legs and hands – especially the right hand – sometimes making it impossible for him to hold a pen.
Up until Actium he publicly exercised with weapons both on foot and horseback in the normal aristocratic way. From 29 BC he switched to throwing and catching a ball, until advancing years made him content with simply riding and then taking a run, which he ended by leaping. Once again, this was normal for a senator of advancing years. Augustus’ lifestyle, every bit as much as his manners and deliberate actions, cultivated the image of a normal, respectable Roman nobleman who did nothing to excess. Exercise, like so much of the princeps’ life, was done in public, and his domestic lifestyle was meant as confirmation that he possessed the character necessary to lead the state. Somewhere in the complex of houses on the Palatine, Imperator Caesar Augustus gave himself a private refuge, and now and again he would go to this high room, which he nicknamed his ‘workshop’ or Syracuse after the great city in Sicily. It was a signal that he was not to be disturbed, and he would retire there for peace and quiet, or to plan legislation or other projects in detail. Another convenient hideaway was a villa owned by one of his freedmen just outside the pomerium.36
On 1 January AD 1, Caius Caesar became consul. He was far away on the border with Parthia, so the ceremonial burden fell on his colleague, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, the husband of Augustus’ granddaughter Julia. It was the princeps’ practice, when putting relatives forward for election to office, to recommend them to the voters ‘should they be deserving’. Aided by his advisers, Caius was doing well, helped by the fact that the Parthians also had little appetite for open war with Rome. Augustus’ son and the Parthian king met to negotiate, parading their armies for the other’s inspection, and then held lavish feasts on either side of the Euphrates. Peace was confirmed and a Roman nominee placed on the throne of Armenia.37
In AD 2 the nineteen-year-old Lucius Caesar left Rome for his first provincial command, heading for Spain, where there was no longer any threat of war and he could gain experience in a safe environment. En route he passed through Gallia Narbonensis and stopped for a while at Massilia. No doubt at every stage there were formal welcoming ceremonies and a long line of petitioners as the young prince was prepared for his public role. Then fate took a hand, for the teenager fell ill and died at Massilia. Augustus was devastated, but for the moment took consolation in the continuing success of his remaining son. Yet there were problems in the east. Scandal rocked Caius’ party when Lollius was accused of accepting bribes from foreign kings and took his own life. The initial success in Armenia turned sour when a large number of his subjects rebelled against the new king – probably unsurprisingly, since he was a Median rather than an Armenian and so was resented by the local aristocrats.
In AD 3 Caius led an army to suppress the rising, but at the siege of some obscure walled town he unwisely went in person to negotiate with the enemy leader and was treacherously wounded. The injury proved serious and did not heal. Throughout the autumn and winter he grew worse, and his behaviour started to become erratic. At one point he wrote to his father asking permission to retire from public life – a strange echo of Tiberius almost a decade before, but all the more bizarre for a youth in his early twenties. On 21 February AD 4, Caius Caesar died. Many communities throughout Italy and the provinces joined the princeps in public mourning, and honours were voted to the two young men outstripping even those given to Drusus as two more sets of ashes were interred in Augustus’ Mausoleum. In his sixty-seventh year, Imperator Caesar Augustus was left alone at his sentry post.38
21
FOR THE SAKE OF THE RES PUBLICA
‘But fortune, which had snatched away the hope of the great name [of Caesar], had already restored to the commonwealth her greatest bulwark . . . Caesar Augustus did not delay for any length of time; for he had no need to hunt for one to choose, but simply to choose one of obvious eminence.’ Velleius Paterculus, early first century AD.1
Augustus ‘accepted the death of family members with more resignation than their misbehaviour’. Suetonius, late first century AD.2
Rome heard of the death of Caius Caesar some time in the second half of March. Augustus’ grief was genuine, but as he mourned he began to plan for the future, and within three months his decision was made public. As always he turned to his closest family, although the common belief among many scholars that he was obsessed with his own bloodline fails to convince. Yet his entire career had raised the auctoritas of the name Caesar to a level never before reached by any family name, constantly advertising it in every medium. Caesar Augustus had marked himself out as special, elevated far beyond anyone else, and from early on this mystique extended to his family. Whoever was to replace his lost sons would become a Caesar by name, but must clearly be felt to deserve that honour. In reality there were few options.3
One was Julia’s sole remaining son, Agrippa Postumus, but he was only fifteen and had not yet formally assumed the toga of manhood. More viable – even if more distantly related since he was the princeps’ great-nephew – was Germanicus, the oldest son of Drusus, who was now eighteen and showing a good deal of his father’s charm and knack for winning over a crowd. Suetonius states that Augustus seriously considered choosing Germanicus as his main heir before deciding against it, probably because he could not be sure of living long enough for the youth to prove himself and be secure. As usual he does not seem to have considered raising the husbands of any of his nieces and great-nieces to higher eminence, and the same was true of his granddaughter’s husband Lucius Aemilius Paullus.4
Yet there was also the forty-five-year-old Tiberius, twice consul, former son-in-law, former colleague in the tribunicia potestas, and probably the state’s most distinguished living commander. After eight years spent on Rhodes, Augustus had finally softened his answers to his former son-in-law’s pleas to return home. He did not grant permission, and instead had allowed Caius Caesar to decide the matter. The latter at first refused, but then eventually agreed – the change was said to have been due to the fall of Lollius, who cherished a long-standing and fully reciprocated hatred of Tiberius. That was in AD 2, and the ‘exile’, as he had become known, was back in Rome by the time news arrived of the death of Lucius Caesar, prompting him to write a public condolence to Augustus, full of shared grief and fulsome praise. Otherwise, apart from taking his son Drusus to the Temple of Mars Ultor so that he could assume the toga of man-hood and be enrolled as an adult citizen, Tiberius took great care to avoid playing the slightest role in public life. He did not live in his own grand house, formerly owned by Pompey and then Antony, but instead moved to one of Maecenas’ villas on the edge of the City.5
Once again Augustus was not looking for one successor, but for several – talk by modern scholars of regents or caretakers for the candidate he truly wanted is once again misguided. Augustus did not think in that way, and clearly expected close family members to be able to work as a team and share power – which was not to say that this belief was realistic. In the event, this was also the most complex and unorthodox of all his dynastic arrangements. As a first stage Tiberius adopted his nephew Germanicus. Then, on 26 May, Augustus adopted both Tiberius and Agrippa Postumus. There was nothing unusual about adopting a teenaged boy, but there was absolutely no precedent for the adoption of a forty-five-year-old former consul who now had two adult sons, Germanicus and the younger Drusus. In effect Augustus acquired not only two sons, but two grandsons as well. Marriages were soon arranged to confirm the bonds between this second generation. Germanicus was to marry Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, while his sister Livilla – who seems formerly to have been marked down to wed Caius Caesar – would marry Drusus. Tiberius remained single, in part through inclination, but also because it was surely difficult to find a suitable match for someone who had been married to Caesar’s only daughter.
Postumus was the odd one out, and not simply because he was the only one who was neither the son nor grandson of Livia. He was thirty years younger than Tiberius, far closer in age to the latter’s sons, although still younger than they, and would seem to have had more in common with them than his new brother. Nor was there any attempt to accelerate his career and public profile. It was to be another year before Postumus underwent the ceremony to mark his coming of age as an adult. In the past, Augustus had chosen to become consul so that he could present his sons Caius and Lucius to the people in this way. He did not do this for Postumus, although since he never again held the consulship a reluctance to take on its ceremonial responsibilities at his advanced age may have had more to do with it than anything else. More significantly, Postumus was not granted the title of princeps iuventutis like his dead brothers, nor was any announcement made granting him admission to the Senate and early tenures in the magistracies. Similarly, there was no talk of marriage to another prominent member of Augustus’ extended family. For the moment, the change from being the princeps’ grandson to becoming his son granted Postumus the name of Caesar, but little other immediate advantage to the boy.6
Tiberius was also now Tiberius Julius Caesar, and when Augustus announced his adoption in the Senate he declared that ‘I do this for the sake of the res publica’ – a statement that the historian Velleius Paterculus clearly felt rebounded to the credit of Tiberius. Many have wanted to see either weary resignation or heavy irony in the words, but it is unlikely that such emotions were openly paraded. Augustus had clearly felt betrayed by his son-in-law when Tiberius retired from public life in 6 BC and this bitterness may never have gone away altogether. Yet Tiberius had not caused trouble while on Rhodes, and since his return had very carefully kept free of public life and behaved as inconspicuously as possible. Surviving letters from the years to come are almost indistinguishable in their affection, advice, quotations and bantering tone to Augustus’ correspondence with the rest of his family. At the very least, and whatever his personal feelings towards Tiberius, in public he consistently showed respect, trust and fondness for his newly adopted son.7
