The Failure

of Augustus
The Failure
of Augustus:

Essays on the Interpretation

of a Paradox

By

E.A. Judge
The Failure of Augustus: Essays on the Interpretation of a Paradox

By E.A. Judge

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2019 by E.A. Judge

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-2592-9

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-2592-4
 For Tom Hillard nostro
rerum Romanarum scrutatori peritissimo.
Fig. 0-1: The Meroë head. Larger than life-size head in bronze from a statue of
Augustus captured in 25 BC from Egypt and buried at Meroë in the Sudan. Now in
the British Museum. Used with permission.
 CONTENTS

Contents .................................................................................................... vii

Tables & Figures ....................................................................................... ix
Preface ....................................................................................................... xi
Chapter One
What Did Augustus Think He Should Be Doing? ...................................... 1
Chapter Two
What Did they Think was Happening at the Time? .................................... 9
Chapter Three
The Private Sources of Force in Roman Politics ...................................... 21
Chapter Four
Caesar and Augustus ................................................................................ 39
Chapter Five
Caesar’s Son and Heir .............................................................................. 45
Chapter Six
Augustus and the Roman Nobility ............................................................ 69
Chapter Seven
The Real Basis of Augustan Power .......................................................... 75
Chapter Eight
The “Settlements” of Augustus: A Constitutional Reform? ..................... 79
Chapter Nine
“Res Publica Restituta”: A Modern Illusion? ........................................... 85
Chapter Ten
Veni. Vidi. Vici, and the Inscription of Cornelius Gallus ........................ 107
Chapter Eleven
The Rhetoric of Inscriptions ................................................................... 111
Chapter Twelve
The Eulogistic Inscriptions of the Augustan Forum:
Augustus on Roman History................................................................... 131
viii Contents

Chapter Thirteen
Augustus in the Res Gestae .................................................................... 151
Chapter Fourteen
The Crux of RG 34.1 Resolved? Augustus on 28 BC............................. 181
Chapter Fifteen
Was a Greek Res Gestae Authorised for Sardis? .................................... 185
Chapter Sixteen
The Period of Augustus and the Julio-Claudians.................................... 193
Chapter Seventeen
On Judging the Merits of Augustus ........................................................ 203
Chapter Eighteen
The Second Thoughts Of Syme On Augustus ........................................ 231
Chapter Nineteen
Who First Saw Augustus as an Emperor? .............................................. 255
Chapter Twenty
Thanksgiving to the Benefactor of the World, Tiberius Caesar ............. 261
Chapter Twenty-One
The Augustan Republic: Tiberius and Claudius on Roman History ....... 265
Chapter Twenty-Two
What Kind of Ruler Did the Greeks Think Augustus Was? ................... 281
Chapter Twenty-Three
“We Have No King But Caesar.”
When Was Caesar First Seen as a King? ................................................ 293
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Decrees of Caesar at Thessalonica .................................................. 303
Chapter Twenty-Five
Agrippina as Ruler of Rome? ................................................................. 311
Chapter Twenty-Six
How did Augustus Fail? ......................................................................... 317
Postscript ................................................................................................ 325
Bibliography ........................................................................................... 327
Notes....................................................................................................... 355
Index ....................................................................................................... 395
 TABLES & FIGURES

Tables
Table 1-1:
Cursus honorum of Augustus ..................................................................... 8
Table 6-1:
Patrician nobility (out of 11 gentes repeatedly winning consulships) ...... 70
Table 6-2:
Plebeian nobility (out of 24 gentes repeatedly winning consulships) ....... 70
Table 6-3:
Patrician nobility ...................................................................................... 71
Table 6-4:
Plebeian nobility ....................................................................................... 71
Table 6-5:
Augustus’ in-laws ..................................................................................... 72
Table 6-6:
Octavian’s patricians ................................................................................ 73
Table 6-7:
Percentage of attested incumbents who were patrician ............................ 74
Table 12-1:
Combined parade, Augustan forum with Virgil,
compared with later overviews ............................................................... 144
Table 13-1:
Interpreting the structure of the Res Gestae............................................ 152
Table 13-2:
The suggested focus of the military sections .......................................... 171
Table 21-1:
Calendar holidays honouring Tiberius .................................................... 269
Table 23-1:
Examples of gratuitous glosses in translation ......................................... 294
x Tables & Figures

Figures
Fig. 0-1: The Meroë head in the British Museum ...................................... vi
Fig. 12-1: Augustan Forum; Plan drawn by I. Gismondi. From CAH 10
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934) opp. 582. ................... 136
Fig. 12-2: Augustan Forum: Plan reproduced from P. Zanker, The Power
of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1988), 194. ................................................................................... 137
Fig. 25-1: The Women of the Julio-Claudian Caesars ............................ 316
 PREFACE

The proud and tragic ideal of Augustan Rome was profoundly unreal to
a New Zealand schoolboy in 1944. This first dawned on my conscious mind
by its juxtaposition with the radically different life crisis of that far-sighted
provincial citizen under Tiberius Caesar, Paul of Tarsus. From Virgil I was
writing a translation of the sad fate of Orpheus and Eurydice (Georgics
4.453–527). At the same time the national curriculum of public schools
required the silent reading in class of the apostle’s letters. The contrast
transfixes me to this day.
In our 1949 MA class for Latin Honours Professor Pocock pointed us
dramatically to the graffito he had written on the wall of his study,
contemptu famae contemni virtutes (Tacitus, Annals 4.38.5, “by despising
fame virtues are despised”). Ronald Syme was visiting us then. Pocock
passed us a copy of The Roman Revolution. It ends with a warning (p. 523)
against taking the Res Gestae Divi Augusti “as a sure guide for history …
no less vain the attempt to discover ultimate derivation and exact definition
as a literary form”.
I was already engrossed with the letters of Cicero, and their urgent quest
for glory (to be transposed by Paul!). The fourth-century commentator,
Servius, said that Orpheus and Eurydice had displaced Virgil’s inopportune
encomium of his fellow poet Gallus, the over-proud deputy renounced by
Augustus. The philosophical accommodation of glory to the needs of the
Roman nobility was comprehensively analysed (also in 1949) by A.D.
Leeman, as I was to learn.
By 1962 I had already been teaching Roman history for a decade in three
different countries (as well as beginning on the historical geography of my
Pauline question as Sir James Knott Fellow in Ancient History at King’s
College, Newcastle upon Tyne). From the University of Sydney I was
granted leave in Cologne under the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. My
mentors there were L. Wickert (author of the exhaustive entry in RE on
“Princeps”) and H. Volkmann, the reigning custodian of the text of the RG.
The Humboldt study was not however discussed with them.
Sidestepping the warning of Syme, the Humboldt report explained the
message of the RG in terms of the cultural ethos of the nobility (and not as
a bid for monarchy oriental-style, such as had been much canvassed in
Europe). To this was added the identification of particular patterns of
xii Preface

literary and epigraphic self-display at Rome. I was to prepare an historical

study of the RG for the use of the flourishing echelon of non-Latinate
students of Ancient History in New South Wales. Syme must have been
aware of this. On his arrival in Sydney in August 1967, as Secretary-General
of the CIPSH (Conseil Internationale de Philosophie et Sciences Humaines),
in order to open the Australian Society for Classical Studies which we had
founded, he passed to me at the airport a copy of the just published Oxford
edition of the RG by Brunt and Moore.
English-language students had so far been dependent on translations
from the twenties by E.G. Hardy and F.W. Shipley. The Latin text of Brunt
and Moore was taken from Ehrenberg and Jones, derived itself from the
advanced editions of Volkmann and Gagé (Paris). Only now do we have
comprehensive and up to date editions of the RG by Scheid (Paris) and
Cooley (Cambridge). The latter expertly opens the text to non-Classical
readers by providing separate translations for the Latin and Greek versions
on facing pages.
The 26 chapters of the present collection were first presented mostly as
lectures for advanced secondary students or their teachers, or as academic
conference papers, between 1966 and 2016. They are now arranged
however in a broad thematic sequence across the career of Augustus. They
are in no way a biography of him, nor a history of his time. A student-level
familiarity with the two centuries from the Gracchi to Nero is assumed (cf.
Scullard).
The particular chapters are all guided by two principles of study. The
first, inspired in my mind by the lectures of A.H.M. Jones at Cambridge in
1953, is that one must start with the precise meaning of each of the
documented terms that bear on the question. The second, arising from my
personal convictions, and not usually argued by me in academic debate, is
that anyone is first entitled to an account of their motives at the time,
irrespective of the vast consequences that may have flowed for everyone
else, however glorious.
Augustus did not intend to become “the Founder of the Roman Empire”.
He failed to escape the early onset of such a categorical mis-construction of
his ambition, losing for ever the actual glory he tried in vain to win.
As a one-time Geordie I am grateful to the Cambridge Scholars of
Newcastle for refloating this unfamiliar interpretative scenario. The
miscellaneous essays were selected by myself. At Macquarie University I
have had the private assistance of A.D. Macdonald in adapting the texts to
the Newcastle style.
 CHAPTER ONE

WHAT DID AUGUSTUS THINK

HE SHOULD BE DOING?1

Young Gaius Octavius (63 BC-AD 14) was the orphaned son of a minor
Roman nobleman. But at age 15 he had been slotted into a vacant
pontificate, and briefly made ceremonial urban prefect (Table 1-1, 47 BC).
Neither he nor anyone else seems to have seen much more in that. He was,
after all, only the grandson of the sister of the dictator, Julius Caesar (Fig.
25-1). He no doubt anticipated the usual cadetship in the latter’s provincial
command. Then in the second quarter of his adult life he might stand for
election in the magisterial career (cursus honorum) proper, with the ultimate
goal of winning an independent imperial command in his forties as praetor,
or even consul.
But he was catapulted into power at 19 years of age (Res Gestae [=RG]
1.1) by the news of Julius Caesar’s will (44 BC). He was to be principal heir
(three-quarters of the estate), if no son had been born, but on condition of
adoption into Caesar’s name. Against parental advice, Octavius set out for
Rome, after landing in Italy secretly in response to the Ides of March.
He soon discovered the troops were already treating him as a Caesar,
and expected him to avenge his adoptive father against the assassins. The
name gave him the upper hand instantly in the public eye as well. But its
political legacy was to prove a poisoned chalice, for Caesar had been made
dictator for life (which was why his protégés assassinated him).
By the end of 44 Cicero, the elder statesman, was urging the senators to
co-opt the hero of the hour against his main rival. The next year saw their
progressive capitulation as half a lifetime of magisterial honours were
collapsed into the one year 43 in favour of Octavius. His career table records
co-option as a senator (with consular status in the speaking order), the grant
of military command (imperium) with rank of praetor, his first formal
salutation as imperator for a victory in action, and election to the now vacant
consulship itself. A retrospective enactment in 43 in law also validated his
(testamentary) adoption by the dictator.
2 Chapter One

With two rivals Octavianus (as the new Caesar might have conventionally
been called) settled for a quasi-dictatorial “commission of three for settling
public life” (triumviri rei publicae constituendae) which lasted for two five-
year terms (43–33 BC). By his victory at Actium in 31 over his colleague
Antonius (who had been consul with the dictator Caesar in 44), Octavianus
was left unchallenged in the Roman world, but without any ongoing
appointment carrying the title to power. He had been granted imperium
(“command”) in 43, however, and was still holding it at his death (AD 14).
He had been consul for the second time in 33 BC, and (like the dictator Sulla
in 79) might have retired to the dignity of political eminence in the senate
while lesser men took their turn in the magistracies.
In retrospect Augustus justified his failure to do so in various ways. For
the year 32 he could appeal to the oath of personal loyalty by which “the
whole of Italy” (not the Roman state) had “spontaneously” (sponte sua)
“demanded me as general” (dux, RG 25.2). In 22 BC he had repeatedly been
voted the dictatorship (RG 5.1) but had refused it, as also with a perpetual
consulship (5.3), and then twice rejected the unheard-of position of
“supreme curator of laws and morals” (6.1). To avoid any suggestion of
window-dressing he spelled out the more restricted terms under which he
had nevertheless actually dealt with the political demands of those
occasions.
In 27 BC Augustus had been given a ten-year provincial command. It
was renewed at intervals, sometimes only for five years. In 23 BC, on
resigning the 11th consulship, he was granted “the power of a tribune”. This
would enable him to have a convenient (though not supreme) standing in
the senate when on leave from his command.
The ostensibly familiar sound of these arrangements was however lost
in the booming prestige that was only magnified as he lived on beyond all
expectation (he was ready to die when ill in 23 BC). Thus increasingly an
explanation was needed for the unparalleled ascendancy over 58 years that
outstripped the memory of almost everyone.
At three dramatic sessions of the senate attempts were made to express
the essential legitimacy of this position:

I – 13 and 16 January, 27 BC;

II – 5 February and 12 May, 2 BC;
III – 4 and 17 September, AD 14.
In each case one should distinguish:
What actually happened;
What Augustus intended should follow;
What others made of it later.
 What Did Augustus Think He Should Be Doing? 3

I – Consuls imp. Caesar VII, M. Agrippa III (27 BC)

On 13 January in the senate Octavianus announced the “transfer of
public life” (rem publicam transtuli) from his own control (potestas) to the
discretion of the senate and people of Rome (RG 34.1). Already in the
previous year an issue of gold coins had announced, “He has restored to the
Roman people (their) laws and rights” (leges et iura p(opulo) r(omano)
restituit). The Fasti Praenestini (a calendar compiled by Verrius Flaccus,
tutor of Gaius and Lucius Caesar, before their grandfather’s death) list for
13 Jan. 27 the award of the laurels and civic crown to Augustus which the
latter records in RG 34.2 (along with the golden shield commemorating his
virtus, “enterprise”, and clementia, his justitia and his pietas, “loyalty”).
The name Augustus had been given because it reflected the
contemporary understanding of Numa, the second founder of Rome, the one
who “founded it in law and morality” (Livy 1.19.1), rather than Romulus
(Suetonius, Aug. 7.2) who had founded it “by force of arms” (Livy). This
may even have been the year in which he pronounced the edict cited by
Suetonius, Augustus 28.2: “So may it be granted me to settle the public life
(rem publicam) safe and sound in its place, and to win from that the reward
which I seek, that I may be known as the author of the best possible order
(optimi status auctor) and at my death take with me the hope that the
foundations I have laid for the public life will remain in place.”
At the founding of the city the ceremony was defined (by Ennius, cited
in Suet. Aug. 7) as the augustum augurium (“the august augury”). Being
himself an augur (a member of that priestly college), the name “Augustus”
echoes this. It also reflects the status of auctoritas, lit. “authorship”, or
being the “developer” (auctor) of something. In RG 34.3 Augustus states
that while he was now no greater in lawful power (potestas) than his
colleagues in each magistracy, in auctoritas he stood ahead of everybody.
A century later, when Suetonius quoted the edict in which Augustus
had aspired to be known as optimi status auctor, he added that Augustus
also saw to it no one regretted “the new order”. Augustus would not have
thanked him. Innovation was certainly not his aim. But we have made him
“the founder of the empire”, as though that was something new in the
“public life” (res publica) of the Roman people. Imperium had always been
there, invested in the magistrates through whom Rome was ruled, and
herself ruled over other places. Conversely the “public life” (res publica)
continued to be the domestic usage of this imperial power even in the sixth
century AD.
We owe to the third-century Greek historian Cassius Dio the theory that
Augustus in 27 BC had to choose between two constitutions, democracy
4 Chapter One

and monarchy. He chose the latter, but masked it as the former (Dio 53.11).
In the year 1863 such a constitutional theory led Theodor Mommsen to
restore the broken text of the Fasti Praenestini to make it say that they gave
the oak crown to Augustus because he “restored the Republic” to the
Roman people.2 By 1883 Mommsen thought better of this, but “the restored
Republic” lingers on in our textbooks (though abandoned by the revised
Cambridge Ancient History of 1996).3

II – Consuls imp. Caesar XIII, M. Plautius Silvanus

(2 BC)
On 5 February, the Fasti Praenestini list a holiday to commemorate
the day when Augustus was called “father of his country” (pater patriae)
by the senate and people of Rome.
On 12 May, the temple of Mars Ultor was dedicated in the new
Augustan forum (though Dio 60.5.3 says 1 August).
The two events must be connected, since Augustus states that the
resolution of the senate on the title included its inscription under the
quadrigae (his triumphal chariot) which they decided should be set up in
the Forum Augustum (RG 35).
Since Augustus made this title the climactic point of the RG, it
clearly represents the final validation of auctoritas as the principle of his
leadership (RG 34.3). He was named pater patriae by senate, equestrian
order, and Roman people acting “as a whole” (universus). This was not a
novel salutation, but had historic precedent, and as long ago as 29 BC had
been anticipated for him in Horace, Odes 1.2.50. Why then did they wait
until now?
Prior to the battle of Philippi in 42 BC Augustus is said to have vowed
a temple to Mars Ultor (“the Avenger”) if given the victory over Caesar’s
assassins. This seems to have become parasitic upon Caesar’s own vow for
such a temple to celebrate his planned recovery of standards lost to the
Parthians by Crassus. Augustus needed a show of strength before it could
be built in the new forum, to be set at right angles to the Julian one. Mars
was to gaze down from his temple across the quadrigae of Augustus and
on towards the statue of Julius in the latter’s forum. In this coherent
panorama the divine Avenger beheld his avenging agent facing the avenged
parent.
Yet this potent scene was constricted by the owners of property
essential to its more spacious implementation, perhaps including a relative
of Pompeius, Caesar’s old rival (Ovid, Ex Ponto 4.5.10). Augustus did not
“dare” dispossess them, says Suetonius (Aug. 56.2). The vow must be
 What Did Augustus Think He Should Be Doing? 5

fulfilled by personal means, not public ones (RG 21.1). In the end Augustus
could wait no longer. The forum was truncated.
Not only was the past at stake, but also the future leadership of Rome.
Suetonius says that next to the gods Augustus honoured the “generals”
(duces, 31.5) who had from nothing “made the imperium of the Roman
people all powerful”. He had therefore put up statues of them all in his
forum, declaring by edict: “I have done this so that by their model as it were
I myself so long as I live and the leaders of subsequent ages may be tested
by the citizens.”
Suetonius must not have checked. Not all of them were “generals”, but
as Augustus says, they were “leaders” (principes). Moreover, the
inscriptions beneath their statues reveal what makes one the leader of his
age. It is crisis management: where others have broken down, and all
regular solutions are out of reach, the leader is the one who finds a way to
set it all right again.
There is a strong doctrine of history here. It asserts continuity, not
change. But it depends upon initiative. That same auctoritas (“capacity to
lead”) which had always saved Rome must do so also in the future.
Augustus embodies it on a grand scale, and will transmit the pattern to future
leaders. The public acclamation of him as pater patriae on the nones (=5th)
of February is treated by Ovid (Fasti 2.133-44) as though it echoes a formal
“inauguration” of Rome (Kearsley), the “restoration of rights”in 28 BC
perhaps.4 The dedication of the promised temple on 12 May (Ovid, Fasti,
5.552, 595) may have been tied to the prospective military success in the
East of Gaius Caesar, the adopted son of Augustus, who was to deliver the
show of strength needed to lend martial substance to the standards already
returned (Herbert-Brown).5
The message of this ceremonial combination, both the new title and
its monumental setting loaded with historic meaning, has often been lost, in
ancient times and modern alike. As a propaganda coup it has failed. It
contradicts our retrospective assumption that a major change in Roman
statecraft must have governed the mind of Augustus.

III – Consuls Sextus Pompeius, Sextus Appuleius (AD 14)

On 4 September the senate met following the arrival of the body of
Augustus (died 19 August) with Tiberius, on the previous day (Dio 56.31.2).
Drusus, son of Tiberius, presented the will of Augustus, which was read by
his freedman Polybius. Tiberius was allocated two-thirds of the estate, the
remainder going to Livia. Then Drusus himself read the four associated
documents:
6 Chapter One

1) funeral instructions;
2) the Res Gestae;
3) the public accounts;
4) advice for Tiberius and the public.

On 17 September the senate met again, to deify Augustus. The consuls

asked Tiberius “to succeed to his father’s position” (statio, Velleius
2.124.2), but Tiberius disclaimed it. They had surely invited him to sit in
the third curule chair between them, as Augustus had done since 19 BC.
Tiberius however insisted on standing up when the consuls were present
(Dio 57.11.3).
Augustus made no plans for any “succession” in the magisterial
sense (as when a consul succeeds his predecessor). As head of his family he
was providing by will for succession only to his property (he held no
magistracy anyway). But the money gave his principal heir the means to
succeed to his station in political life, as the ethos of the nobility (and the
public) expected. The term statio is used this way in a private letter of
Augustus to his adopted son Gaius in AD 1 (Aulus Gellius 15.7.3). It lay
with Gaius however to win his way by “taking the lead”, as Augustus put it.
Augustus advised the public “to entrust the public business to all who
had the ability both to understand and to act, and never to let it depend on
any one person” (Dio 56.33.4). As Drusus read out the words on 4
September it was no surprise to Tiberius. He had long been conscripted by
Augustus as a full partner in his provincial obligations. This appointment
did not lapse with the death of Augustus. But it did not cover metropolitan
leadership. On 17 September Tiberius insisted “the public business would
be more easily managed by sharing the work” (Tacitus, Annals, 1.11.1). He
then it seems read out (once more) the written advice of Augustus on this
principle.
By contrast with II (c) above, the battle of wits between Tiberius and
the senate has captivated the ancient sources and modern debate alike.
Although we have two contemporary authorities (Ovid and Velleius), two
second-century ones (Tacitus and Suetonius), and a studious one from the
third century (Cassius Dio), none has managed to state the technical details
of the issue. Modern taste cannot easily evade the insinuation of hypocrisy
on Tiberius’ part. Yet what we know of his character matches his
protestation. He had no appetite for a monopoly of power. At his own death
he split the family estate equally between two heirs.
As for Augustus, he deeply regretted having to pass the substance of it
on to one not of his blood-line. Nor did he assume Tiberius would prevail.
 What Did Augustus Think He Should Be Doing? 7

At the end, according to Tacitus (Ann. 1.13.2), he noted four others likely
to bid for “political leadership” (principem locum).
The problem is ours. We retroject our classificatory way of understanding
how things change in history. But the Roman nobility did not think in terms
of a constitutional choice between democracy and monarchy (as Dio, a
Greek, already saw it). Nor were “republic” and “empire” chronological
epochs to them. Imperium was the supreme command within res publica,
both after Augustus as before.
8 Chapter One

C. OCTAVIUS (n. 63 BC)

C. Julius Caesar OCTAVIANUS (ex 43 BC)
Imp. Caesar AUGUSTUS (ex 27 BC)
47 47 Praefectus urbi

P
o 43 43 Cos. I aet. 19 43 Propraetor Imp. I
n 42
t Triumvir
i rei publicae constituendae
f S
e A e 38
x u 37 n 37
g X a
u V t ditto
r o
v r 33 Cos. II
i 32 Totius Italiae dux
r 31 Cos. III Imp. VI
30 ″ IV
s 29 ″ V
a 28 28 ″ VI Potens rerum omnium
c 27 ″ VII
r
26 ″ VIII
i
s 25 ″ IX
P 24 ″ X
r 23 23 ″ XI 23
f i Proconsul maiori
a
n T cum imperio
c c r
i e i 19 consulari cum
u p b 18 imperio
n s u
d 17
i n
s i
s ditto
e c
16 n i 13
a a
12 V t 12 Imp. XI
I u P
I s o ditto
P t
v e 8
o
i s 7
n r t
t
i a 5 Cos. XII
e s ditto
f
p
e u
x 2 Cos. XIII
l
o
M
n
a u
x
m AD 3 Imp. XV
i
m AD 4
u
s ditto

AD 13 Imp. XXI
AD 14 ditto
ob. AD 14 aet. 76

Table 1-1: Cursus honorum of Augustus

 CHAPTER TWO

WHAT DID THEY THINK WAS HAPPENING

AT THE TIME?1

Everyone takes Augustus as the great turning point in Roman history.

with him the “Republic” ended and the “Empire” began. But, so far as we
know, no one at the time saw it this way. Indeed the idea that history is
properly seen in terms of changes in the constitution of the state is foreign
to the Romans. It is imported from Greek political science.
In this system of thought the constitution was supposed to be the basic
cause of changes in the affairs of states. This may have been broadly true
for Greek states, which did have formal constitutions, so that the
competition for power typically took the form of proposals to change the
constitution.
But the Romans did not have a formal constitution. Nor did they express
the competition for power in terms of proposals for change of any kind.
They did not see change as desirable at all. Anyone bidding for control
would therefore say he was trying to preserve the existing order against his
rivals who were threatening to upset it.
The first hint in our sources that anyone was talking in the modern way
about Augustus comes when Tacitus (writing about a century later) says that
at Augustus’s death there was hardly anyone left who had “seen the
Republic.” This constitutes an insinuation that Augustus had destroyed the
old order. It does not say what he had put in its place. It is a consciously
loaded way of talking about the matter. It deliberately converts the term “res
publica” into the name for a period of Roman history which, by implication,
has come to an end.
But the term remained in normal use throughout Roman history as the
standard way of referring to the state, regardless of who ruled it or what its
constitution, if any, was supposed to be. Modern usage has gone over to the
assumptions of this clever, in-group remark of Tacitus. It has converted the
Latin term into the name of a constitutional form or period (so that
“Republic” can now mean only that in modern languages). It condemns us
10 Chapter Two

all to see Roman history through the eyes of later times, and to a foreign
way of understanding Roman politics.
It is the same with the word “Empire.” Romans normally used the term
“imperium,” at all stages of their history, for the power of command. This
was vested in a magistrate and exercised by him on behalf of the Roman
people over foreign nations. It did not mean a particular form of the state,
nor the second half of Roman history, as does the word “Empire” which we
have derived from it.
It is Cassius Dio, a Greek historian writing over two centuries after
Augustus, who spells out for us the view of him that has dominated the
tradition. Once Augustus was firmly in control, Dio has him sit down with
his advisers, Agrippa and Maecenas, to decide what kind of constitution
Rome shall now have.
Agrippa advises democracy but Maecenas persuades Augustus that
monarchy is best. Since the Romans are not likely to tolerate it, however,
Augustus decides to conceal his monarchy under the guise of democracy.
Hence the famous speech of January 13, 27 BC, in which, according to Dio,
Augustus pretends to be giving everything back to the people.
This “façade” theory of the Augustan revolution is basic to all modem
studies of it, including Sir Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution, the
greatest and most innovative study of Roman history from the 20th century.2
The cliché about “the restoration of the republic” is part of the same conceit.
It rests upon no contemporary evidence and it is not clear to me that it was
even possible for Romans to have thought in such terms.
The “façade” theory is a juggling act of the Greek historians to make the
facts of Roman history fit their constitutional doctrines. They are like the
Marxists who try to save their theory by ever more tortuous interpretations
of the facts. But history does not consist of processes that carry people
along.
History is the record of individual people, each of whom is confronted
with the onus of choice in his relations with others. Basic desires, like the
craving for approval, may lend a pattern to human affairs, but the possibility
of variation seems as unregulated as we know our own motives to be.
The historian who comes with his explanations ready-made has written
the recipe for misunderstanding. We all insist upon our own individuality
and freedom. We shall surely therefore get closer to the reality of people in
the past if we approach them on the same assumption. More than that, we
recognise that the fair dealing we expect for ourselves is also owed to the
dead. Why this should matter to us is a more profound question than I can
tackle here. But clearly the student of history takes upon himself a delicate
exercise in personal understanding, the more demanding and subtle for
 What Did they Think was Happening at the Time? 11

being addressed to those who have finished all they have to say. Our task is
to question the record they have left as carefully as we can, and to temper
the verdict we know we cannot avoid with the fallibility of all human
judgement.

What did they expect to happen after Caesar’s death?

The plot to kill Caesar on the Ides of March was made among the leading
men of Rome. It does not seem to have occurred to any of them that anything
would change. With the dictator out of the way, public life would resume
its normal course. When Cicero later complained that an “heir to the throne”
had been left, he was alluding to Mark Antony. He had been Caesar’s
fellow-consul. Cicero’s jibe means that he saw Antony as another potential
dictator. It does not mean that he thought Rome was turning into a
monarchy.
But within a few weeks of the assassination it was clear that a profound
shift of power had occurred. Caesar’s great-nephew, Octavius (the future
Augustus) had assumed his name. Although only 19 years old, he was
raising troops without authority and setting himself up as a political leader.
Why had this possibility not been foreseen, and how did it come to pass?
Octavius was Caesar’s closest male relative. He had received the usual
minor distinctions and military opportunities that noblemen made available
to the cadets of their families. He had shown the usual level of ambition by
extracting from Caesar the promise that at some time in the future he would
be appointed for a year as his deputy in the dictatorship.
At the time of the assassination he was in Greece, training with the
legions for the Parthian expedition. For the past six months his name had
been entered in Caesar’s will as the principal heir, on condition that he took
over Caesar’s name and perpetuated the family—assuming no son was
posthumously born to Caesar.
We know why no one had spotted the significance of this in advance.
Caesar had not even told Octavius himself. (This is proved by the fact that
Nicolaus of Damascus, the contemporary biographer of Augustus, says
Caesar kept it secret to avoid turning the boy’s head—Nicolaus could not have
dared say this if it was not what Augustus himself asserted, and the latter
concedes thereby that he had not been informed of the so-called “adoption.”)
Had Caesar wanted to adopt Octavius, nothing stood in the way of his
doing it earlier (it was the normal recourse of noblemen without natural
heirs). The idea of a posthumous “adoption” was unprecedented, and
Octavius had to resort to special legislation to secure it. It seems certain
12 Chapter Two

therefore that this had not been Caesar’s aim. He must have had some other
obvious expectation (for example, that his wife would soon bear a son),
which caused the whole matter to attract no attention at all among the
nobility.
At an earlier stage Caesar’s heir had been his political collaborator (and
son-in-law), Pompey. The fact that the will was now opened, after a
senatorial debate, in the house of Antony the consul probably means that it
was expected to favour him. Because Caesar had no son, and had not
adopted one, the idea that the bequests to the family might have political
consequences was not on people’s minds at all in Rome.
The news of the assassination reached Octavius in Greece without
details of the will. He was advised to flee while he still had the option. This
shows that in the mind of his friends at any rate he was already politically
identified with Caesar, and in danger. But Octavius set off instead for Rome.
This was one of the decisive acts of history. It made possible the vast
movement of Caesarism, which was to shape the pattern of rule in the West
down to modern times. It was the clear decision of a single individual—and
hardly characteristic even of him. We know him later as the embodiment of
caution and compromise. But at 19 he was determined to be in the action,
whatever it was to be.
Upon crossing the Adriatic he landed secretly down the coast from
Brindisi, because he had no idea what kind of reception to expect. Only then
did he hear of the will. In spite of repeated warnings, including the plea of
his own mother, to keep out of harm’s way, he decided to make an approach
to the army at Brindisi. Only when they greeted him as Caesar’s son did he
assume that name.
From there support snow-balled. Within a few weeks the young man
found himself the leader of a private army of veterans, whom he paid out of
his own pocket (RG 1.1). It was a development neither he nor anyone else
had anticipated. The spirit of vengeance, which united the young Caesar
with the men who had worshipped the old one, swamped all the
accumulated prestige of the establishment (RG 2). Its momentum created a
new fountain of power at Rome: the personal memory of Julius Caesar was
quickly forgotten—or buried—but his name and mystique now set the style
of rule permanently.

Who authorised Octavian to fight Antony at Actium?

It was 12 years, however, before the final confrontation occurred
between Antony and Octavian (to give him the adjectival form of his
original name, which concedes that he was now officially called “Caesar”).
 What Did they Think was Happening at the Time? 13

Antony had chosen as his power-base the rich provinces of the East,
including a liaison with the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. Against him
Octavian had to make the most of the less civilised West, but with the moral
advantage of being in possession of Rome.
By the year 32 BC the triumviral commission of 43 BC had expired (as
Augustus was later implicitly to concede in RG 25.2). Both men retained
command of their armies, each accusing the other of preventing a return to
normality.
In retrospect, Augustus was to claim an entirely different source of
legitimacy. He asserts that “the whole of Italy” swore personal allegiance
“of its own free will” to him, and “demanded” that he be their “leader” in
the war which he won at Actium (RG 25.2). The terms all come from the
language of political obligation rather than of law.
Italy is not the name of a state but of a community. It could not speak
for the “Senate and People of Rome,” who alone were the source of lawful
power. A leader (dux, the same term that was to be used by Mussolini as his
title) is not a magistrate, or anyone else entitled to command Roman troops.
The oath is a personal commitment. Octavian even “excused” (!) the
citizens of Bononia from it on the ground that they were traditionally clients
of the family of Antony. In other words, the validity of his position rested
on the same kind of moral bonds as clientship did, so that he needed to
respect that even if it helped his enemy. We know from later copies of the
oath that it committed those who swore it, and their descendants, to be
political supporters of the family of the Caesars for ever. One noble house
was asserting its hold over the whole community.
The Res Gestae (15.1–4) demonstrates that the effective guarantee of
this loyalty was a succession of individual cash grants on a huge scale. If
one wants to know why Augustus was in power at Rome, there is a simple
answer: he paid for it. No Roman would have turned a hair, however. Their
whole social system rested upon the use of wealth to ensure political
support.
What was different in Augustus’s case was simply the comprehensive
scale of it. He was to endow the Roman plebs en bloc, not just his family’s
traditional clients. If one wishes therefore to discover the secret of
Caesarism, one should perhaps ask where Augustus was getting all the
money from.
But Augustus knows that there was another test of legitimacy at Rome
that was more valid than that of public support. It is all very well to have
the masses demonstrating in your favour. But the lawful government was
vested in the magistrates, and especially in the two consuls, who were the
heads of State. In RG 25.3 he turns from the oath to the question of the level
14 Chapter Two

of backing he had in the Senate, cleverly using the figures to suggest that it
was also overwhelming. He does not directly indicate that nearly a third of
the senators had taken the much more difficult option of going to the East
with Antony, and that they included many of those of consular rank.
His preoccupation with this problem of backing shows that what is really
on his mind is the damaging fact, which we know from the other sources,
that both consuls of that year had abandoned Rome at the beginning of 32
to join Antony. The Roman Government was on the other side, exactly as it
had been after Caesar’s death. We know that Octavian was intensely
embarrassed. He claimed he had sent them away because of their personal
connections with Antony.
But it is very significant of his profound grasp of the realities of power
that he made no attempt, either then or in retrospect, to suggest that his
position was correct in law. Instead he committed his fortunes and
reputation entirely to an appeal to the will of the people. This is basic to
what we mean by Caesarism.

Why did Octavian surrender control of the state in 27?

After the death of Antony, as after the death of Caesar, it was not clear
at first why the normal competition for power should not simply resume, in
spite of the scale of support for Octavian. One of his subordinates, Cornelius
Gallus, appointed to manage Egypt because Octavian would not risk a
senator’s doing it, assumed as much. He filled Egypt with his own statues,
and put his name on the pyramids. In other words, he acted as if he were
already a nobleman. Octavian took personal offence, and struck him off the
list of his friends.
Then something happened which no one could have anticipated, and
which certainly caught Octavian off guard. The senators apparently ruled
that what Gallus had done was tantamount to treason against the state. He
was driven to suicide before the case was tried. Octavian protested that it
should have been left to him to deal with privately. Was this a collective
ganging up by the senators against a parvenu? Or was it a mass capitulation
by them to the dominant house?
Another shadowy confrontation of the time suggests the latter. Marcus
Crassus, grandson of Caesar’s old colleague, and heir to a far more
distinguished family record, performed the feat of personally killing the
enemy’s king in battle. This heroic deed ranked him with Romulus and with
only two others in all Roman history. Octavian was said to have been
considering taking the name of Romulus himself, but if so, the feat of
Crassus must have promptly put an end to that idea.
 What Did they Think was Happening at the Time? 15

The honour of dedicating the “supreme spoils” to Jupiter, however, was

denied to Crassus. The argument was advanced that as proconsul he was
only a subordinate of Octavian (now consul) anyway. The collision that we
may imagine must have loomed up over this matter could explain the
puzzling claim of Res Gestae 34.1. I take it to mean that Octavian, in the
year 28, was suddenly placed in full control “by general consent.” As soon
as the crisis was solved and the disaster of another civil war avoided,
Octavian divested himself of this superior degree of control, resuming his
normal duties as consul.
Whatever the actual cause, Octavian was awarded the new name of
Augustus (signifying the reverence due to him), a permanent laurel-wreath
(symbolising victory), the “civic” crown (for having saved the lives of
citizens in battle), and a shield spelling out in words the political virtues he
stood for (RG 34.2). From that time, he claims his ascendancy was based
upon personal authority only. As a magistrate, he was no longer superior to
the others.
This celebrated but now irretrievably obscure manoeuvre is what
Cassius Dio took as the decision to found a monarchy disguised as
democracy, and what convention calls “the restoration of the republic.”
Both formulae are inventions. They elevate to a (spurious) exercise in
constitutional theory what must surely have been a political crisis of some
sort. One thing is clear. The mass adulation upon which the coups d’état of
43 and 32 had been based has now thoroughly infected the nobility itself.

Why did Augustus resign the consulship in 23?

Augustus was voted a provincial command for 10 years from 27. This
signifies a return to the normal rotation of posts in the government. But it
did not work out that way. For reasons not recorded he went on being elected
to the consulship each year although not present in Rome to exercise it. This
must have been caused by an unplanned public demand, in the face of which
we may imagine that those in the queue for consulships thought it more
prudent to default.
Resentment built up among the nobility, however, and the memory of
Brutus, the tyrant-killer, revived. Augustus was seriously ill anyway, and
everyone speculated upon what would happen at his death. In spite of
tenacious public resistance, he resigned the consulship in the middle of 23
and was replaced by a political rival.
Augustus now ranked as an ordinary proconsul. He does not mention the
matter in the Res Gestae because this was simply giving effect to what
should have happened at the end of 27. There is no reason to treat it as a
16 Chapter Two

stage in a master-plan (the “second settlement”) which has been suppressed

for sinister reasons. Nevertheless, the loss of the consulship was now
compensated for by a set of (emergency?) privileges which in time came to
be seen as elements in a new structure of rule.
To prevent collisions with other proconsuls his use of the imperium was
to take precedence over theirs (just as it would have done had he still been
consul). As proconsul he would have to lay down his command
automatically if he returned to Rome. But in view of the long term of the
appointment, and the public demand for his presence, he was freed from this
obstacle. (The command still had to be renewed, however, if it was to run
beyond its term.) To give him the right to some initiative in the Senate and
assemblies if he should return, he was allotted the powers of a tribune of the
plebs, which no doubt also satisfied the populist sentiments of his following.
He showed no interest at first in using them, and deliberately stayed away
from Rome. Even national and political emergencies, with offers of a
dictatorship, failed to move him.
Finally, in 19 BC. he did return, and from that stage adopted the practice
of taking a third curule chair between those of the consuls. This must mean
that exercise of the imperium (which he would continue to hold so long as
his provincial appointment was renewed) was to be equated with that of the
consuls. He was in effect a supernumerary head of State even when not
holding one of the consulships of the year (RG 8.3.4). It was a thoroughly
anomalous arrangement, being an attempt to reconcile public desire for a
permanent and conspicuous leader with his awareness as a politician of how
easily that could bring him to his own Ides of March. It was not a plan to
change the Roman “constitution.”

What was the meaning of the new Augustan forum

of 2 BC?
The claim that the pattern of Roman government was changing was by
now starting to be heard, even within the family of Augustus. He worked
hard to suppress the dangerous idea. For his new forum (needed because of
the pressure of court sittings) he prepared a display of statues that were to
fix the traditional understanding of Roman history in the public mind and
project it into the future. In an edict, he called upon the people to test the
“leaders of subsequent ages”—and himself so long he lived (there was no
question of his giving up)—by this standard from the past.
Who was exhibited in the parade in the forum? On one side were Aeneas
and other noble ancestors of the Julian family. On the other were Romulus
and leading generals of Rome’s past.
 What Did they Think was Happening at the Time? 17

The forum as a whole formed a kind of forecourt to the temple of Mars

the Avenger, which Octavian had promised 40 years before in the event of
his victory over Brutus and Cassius. It had been delayed all this time
because at least one property owner had refused to sell out to him. It was
essential to the ideology of the project that it be built on his own land (RG
21.1). He meant to identify the self-serving military adventures of his youth
with the imperial interests of Rome itself. All military ceremonial was
henceforth to be centred in the forum.
The inscriptions beneath the statues prove, however, that the military
heroes of the past were there to teach a political lesson. It was not simply
their having won triumphs that earned them a statue in the forum. There had
to have been some unique feat of statecraft, by which the man had risen
above what could ordinarily be expected of a magistrate. In some crisis
where the very existence of Rome was in jeopardy, he had to have seized
the initiative and carried the city through. The people must have seen him
as their deliverer.
Augustus’s own statue stood in the middle of the forum faced by those
of Aeneas and Romulus. The inscription on it recorded that in this very year
the nation had unanimously named him “father of his country” (RG 35.1).
By what feat of statecraft had he deserved this? By the celebrated surrender
of control of 25 years before, it is implied in the Res Gestae (34.1–3).
It is a very elaborate exercise in the stage-managing of history, designed
to stifle the growing assumption that his overwhelming personal power had
altered the nature of leadership. He certainly meant to win more decisively
than anyone had ever done before, but he needed to prove that the rules had
not changed, or the satisfactions of winning would turn sour.

What did they expect to happen after Augustus’s death?

In contrast with the imperceptiveness of everyone at the time of Caesar’s
death, the remarkable advantage that Octavian had won from it ensured that
the sequel to his own death was the subject of intense speculation, at least
for the last 40 years of his life. His mere survival, of course, must have made
both his own power seem more unique and the possibility of anyone
repeating it more unlikely. Compare the sense of unpredictability that has
surrounded the long-expected deaths of Franco and Tito in our own times.
Yet in Roman politics there was always a loose principle of succession
at work. Every nobleman hoped a son of his name would repeat his honours
and thus perpetuate his memory. It was a kind of immortalisation, Cicero
says, which one can both claim for oneself and from one’s heirs and from
the public.
18 Chapter Two

Essential to this succession, however, was the belief that the heir must
win the honours afresh by his own merits. Augustus used to get very irritated
when the senators tried to confer automatic preference upon his “sons” from
time to time. It reflected badly on the nature of his own ascendancy. To
make it more complicated, he did not have a natural son, and several
possible or actual substitutes had predeceased him.
His last “son”, Tiberius, had only been adopted “to satisfy the public
interest”, as he had deliberately stated at the time. The two men did not like
each other at all, but both were trapped in the web of political honour and
public expectation. But there were no formal arrangements made for what
was to happen to the government after Augustus died. He had spent half his
life planning his funeral, the Res Gestae, and other matters to do with his
own reputation. But apart from a lengthy dossier of good advice that was
read out in the Senate, Augustus deliberately threw the competition open
again, as it had always been in Roman history. He himself was said to have
speculated on the likely winner.
In the event no one knew what to do, and for over a month the Senate
was gripped in a crisis of indecision. It seemed obvious to everyone that the
Augustan kind of monopoly, which was the only style of leadership they
were now at home with, would have to continue. But no one knew how to
give effect to it, because it had been built up in circumstances entirely
peculiar to Augustus.
Tiberius took the basic step, by having the Caesarian oath renewed in
his own name. The consuls perhaps moved in the Senate that he should take
a third curule chair between them, as Augustus had done. But this Tiberius
flatly refused. He was prepared to take only limited responsibilities, which
he was well used to. There was no formal succession.
The state lurched from crisis to crisis over this matter so long as there
were personal descendants of Augustus to conjure up the public loyalty to
the name of Caesar. Only after the death of Nero was an attempt made to
embody in a law the miscellaneous constitutional prerogatives which had
accumulated around the Caesars.
The Augustan revolution was simply the aggrandisement of one family
within the conventions of noble competition. The so-called “Empire” is a
rationalisation by subsequent analysts whose tidy minds and familiarity
with the smooth functioning of the system in later centuries could not
envisage that Augustus had not intended to change the form of government.
It is an ominous example of the tyranny of historical theory over
contemporary propaganda and facts alike.