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AUGUSTUS (RULED 27 B.C. - A.D. 14)

Augustus was the first and arguable the greatest Roman Emperor. After Caesar's death there was five years of civil war and a bitter power struggle that resulted, 14 years later, in the accession of Augustus to the throne. Augustus was Caesar's nephew, known before he became emperor as Octavian. It has been said that the Caesar's campaign ended Republican Rome and created an empire with Augustus at the throne. The four emperors that followed Augustus were also descendants of Caesar.
Nina C. Coppolino wrote: “Unlike his great-uncle and adoptive father who was murdered by a senatorial conspiracy in 44 B.C., Augustus lived a long life, having replaced the oligarchic rule of the Roman Republic with a constitutional monarchy, controlled first by the Julio-Claudian Dynasty (31 B.C. — 68 A.D.), in which Augustus was followed by Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero, all of whom were descended from Augustus or his wife, Livia. [Source: Nina C. Coppolino, Roman Emperors]
Pat Southern wrote for the BBC: “The civil wars that followed Caesar’s assassination were part of Octavian’s inheritance. By 30 B.C. he had eliminated his last rivals, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and set about consolidating his power, greatly assisted by the fact that he controlled all the armies and had direct access to the wealth of Egypt, which remained his own personal possession. His other assets were his shrewdness and patience.” [Source: Pat Southern, BBC, February 17, 2011]
Augustus was the Emperor of Rome during the early Christian era. Jesus was born in the 27th year of Augustus's rule. This event however was of little consequence to the Romans. Palestine was a backwater province. To achieve his ends Augustus could be quite cruel to people who got in his way. These included the banished love poet Ovid; Augustus's loyal and humane sister, Octavia, his underappreciated stepson Tiberus and Cleopatra and Marc Antony.
Books: “Augustus: First Emperor of Rome” by Adrian Goldsworthy (Yale University Press, 2014); “Augustus, The Life of Rome's First Emperor” by Anthony Everitt (Random House, 2006)
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Websites on Ancient Rome: Acts of the Divine Augustus (Res Gestae Divi Augusti) MIT Classics classics.mit.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; Lacus Curtius penelope.uchicago.edu; The Internet Classics Archive classics.mit.edu ; Bryn Mawr Classical Review bmcr.brynmawr.edu; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org; Ancient Rome resources for students from the Courtenay Middle School Library web.archive.org ; History of ancient Rome OpenCourseWare from the University of Notre Dame web.archive.org ; United Nations of Roma Victrix (UNRV) History unrv.com
Augustus’s Achievements

Aqua Julia built under Augustus
Augustus transformed the Roman territory into the Roman Empire, ruling a vast area that stretched from Spain to Syria from 31 B.C. (officially from 27 B.C.) to A.D. 14. Augustus ruled longer than any other emperor, ushered in a long period of peace and prosperity, and established an imperial court that would endure for 400 years in Rome and another 1,000 years in Constantinople. Many historians have argued that Western civilization itself is based on the “Apollanian” civic model of Augustus's Rome.
Nina C. Coppolino wrote: “Through his gradual efforts, and through the circumstances of his era, Augustus ruled Rome alone for nearly a half-century (31 B.C. -14 A.D.), and he set for all his successors the institutional and ideological foundations of the Roman Empire. The broad bases of his power were the army, whose loyalty was maintained by money and land-grants at retirement, and Tiberius’s apparently genuine support of many people, who wanted at any constitutional cost an end to the factional bloodshed of the late Republican civil wars; the nobles retained niches in the regular operation of the still prestigious political administration or in military roles, property was ultimately secured, administrative roles were more easily filled by some increased social mobility among the ranks and classes, and the populace (once fed) was ostensibly defended by the tribunicia potestas with which Augustus legitimized his rule, and which finally became the official rubric under which the state was run for centuries. The innovative outcome of Augustus' rule was the acquisition of sole power at Rome and abroad by the assumption of traditionally distributed powers found in long-standing Roman magistracies, military commands, state religious honors, patronage, family connections, and personal influence. [Source: Nina C. Coppolino, Roman Emperors]
Pat Southern wrote for the BBC: “Many reforms were necessary, but he rarely imposed his will, and worked by legal means. In order to oversee his initial reforms, he entered on his fourth consulship in 30 B.C. and held it every year until 23 B.C. But the most important source of his power was that of the tribunes, which gave him the right of veto over any proposals. [Source: Pat Southern, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]
“In 27 B.C., he restored control of the republic to the Senate, ostensibly reverting to the old order, with annually elected magistrates, the senators sharing responsibility for government, and no single individual with supreme power. But it was a republic in name only. The reality was that Octavian emerged with the honorary title 'Augustus' and the control, via his legates, of all the provinces with armies. Augustus converted the republican citizen levy into a standing army, established regular pay and terms of service for soldiers, and a pension scheme for veterans. |::|
“Gradually by his authority and influence he became the principal fount of law, he controlled state finance, foreign policy and religion, and he shaped Roman society as the republic was transformed into the empire. In brief, he became the first emperor.” |::|
Augustus's Life
Augustus was born Gaius Octavianus in Rome on September 23, 63 B.C. He was Caesar's grand nephew and adopted son, and was named by Julius Caesar as his heir. In 51 B.C., at the age of 12, Octavian first appeared publicly to give the funeral oration for his grandmother, Julia. He was 18 and in Illyria across the Adriatic when Caesar was murdered. His mother told him he should escape to but instead he came to Rome.
Pat Southern wrote for the BBC: “There was very little in the family origins of Augustus to indicate his future rise to prominence. He was the son of a senator, Gaius Octavian, whose name he shared, and Atia, the niece of Julius Caesar. In a codicil to his will Caesar adopted the young Gaius Octavian and made him his heir. History knows the young man as Octavian, but he never used this name, preferring to portray himself as the new Caesar. [Source: Pat Southern, BBC, February 17, 2011]

Atia, mother of Augustus
Augustus was only five-foot-five and rather frail. He was regarded as a hypochondriac and suffered throughout his life from a variety of infirmities, including gallstones and dirty teeth. He almost died of "an abscessed liver" and was a frequent visitor to health spas. He lived relatively modestly. According to Suetonius in Lives of Twelve Caesars Augustus boasted he could fast better than any Jews. He lived to be 75 and outlived his daughter's two sons and was succeeded by his stepson Tiberus.
Steven Coats wrote in the New York Times, “Augustus overcame a sickly constitution, and what charitably might be called psychosomatic aversion to the battlefield, to make an early end to his civil wars, winning in the process a personal reputation for cruelty, duplicity and vindictiveness,"
Family Background of Augustus
Augustus’s mother, Atia, was the niece of Julius Caesar; Atia's mother was Caesar's sister. Augustus, therefore, as the great-nephew of Julius Caesar, had patrician blood and family connections to political power at Rome. Augustus’s father Gaius Octavian was an equestrian banker, though his grandfather was a senator. His father's family, the Octavii, were wealthy townsmen from Velitrae, southeast of Rome.
Octavian's father was born into the equestrian order (the next social class down from the noble patrician class) and achieved senatorial rank, reaching the praetorship. His second wife, Atia, was the daughter of Julius Caesar's sister. Julius Caesar, who had no son of his own (he never acknowledged his son by Cleopatra, Caesarion, who would in any case have been illegitimate under Roman law) showed a marked liking for the young Octavius. He enrolled him among the patricians, and at the time of his assassination he was about to add Octavius to his staff for a campaign aimed first against the Dacians and then the Parthians. Julius Caesar's will left Octavius three-quarters of his estate and adopted him as his son, thereby giving him the name "Gaius Julius Caesar d(ivi) f(ilius) Octavianus." [Source: J. A. S. Evans, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com]
Suetonius wrote: “There are many indications that the Octavian family was in days of old a distinguished one at Velitrae; for not only was a street in the most frequented part of the town long ago called Octavian, but an altar was shown there besides, consecrated by an Octavian. This man was leader in a war with a neighbouring town, and when news of a sudden onset of the enemy was brought to him just as he chanced to be sacrificing to Mars, he snatched the inwards of the victim from the fire and offered them up half raw; and thus he went forth to battle, and returned victorious. There was, besides, a decree of the people on record, providing that for the future too the inwards should be offered to Mars in the same way, and the rest of the victims be handed over to the Octavii. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum — Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars — The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]
“The family was admitted to the senate by king Tarquinius Priscus among the lesser clans [Plebeian families in the Senate enrolled in addition to the patricians. See: Geer, American Journal of Philology, 55, 337ff.]; was later enrolled by Servius Tullius among the patricians; in course of time returned to the ranks of the plebeians; and after a long interval was restored to patrician rank by the Deified Julius. The first of the house to be elected by the people to a magistracy was Gaius Rufus, who became quaestor. He begot Gnaeus and Gaius, from whom two branches of the Octavian fimaily were derived, of very different standing; for Gnaeus and all his scions in turn held the highest offices, but Gaius and his progeny, whether from chance or choice, remained in the equestrian order down to the father of Augustus. Augustus' great-grandfather served in Sicily in the Second Punic War as tribune of the soldiers under the command of Aemilius Papus [205 B.C.]. His grandfather, content with the offices of a municipal town and possessing an abundant income, lived to a peaceful old age. This is the account given by others; Augustus himself merely writes [in his Memoirs] that he came of an old and wealthy equestrian family, in which his own father was the first to become a senator. Marcus Antonius taunts him with his great-grandfather, saying that he was a freedman and a rope-maker from the country about Thurii, while his grandfather was a money-changer. This is all that I have been able to learn about the paternal ancestors of Augustus.
“His father Gaius Octavian was from the beginning of his life a man of wealth and repute, and I cannot but wonder that some have said that he too was a money-changer, and was even employed to distribute bribes at the elections and perform other services in the Campus; for as a matter of fact, being brought up in affluence, he readily attained to high positions and filled them with distinction. Macedonia fell to his lot at the end of his praetorship; on his way to the province, executing a special commission from the senate, he wiped out a band of runaway slaves, refugees from the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who held possession of the country about Thurii. In governing his province he showed equal justice and courage; for besides routing the Bessi and the other Thracians in a great battle, his treatment of our allies was such, that Marcus Cicero, in letters which are still in existence [Ad Quint. Frat. 1.1.21], urges and admonishes his brother Quintus, who at the time was serving as proconsular governor [Quintus Cicero was really propraetor] of Asia [61/58 B.C.] with no great credit to himself, to imitate his neighbour Octavian in winning the favour of our allies.

Caesar's and Augustus's family tree
“While returning from Macedonia, before he could declare himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, survived by three children, an elder Octavia by Ancharia, and by Atia a younger Octavia and Augustus. Atia was the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus and Julia, sister of Gaius Caesar. Balbus, a native of Aricia on his father's side, and of a family displaying many senatorial portraits [imagines were waxen masks of ancestors of senatorial rank, kept in the atrium of their descendants], was closely connected on his mother's side with Pompeius the Great. After holding the office of praetor, he was one of the commission of twenty appointed by the Julian law to distribute lands in Campania to the commons. But Antonius again, trying to disparage the maternal ancestors of Augustus as well, twits him with having a great-grandfather of African birth, who kept first a perfumery shop and then a bakery at Aricia. Cassius of Parma also taunts Augustus with being the grandson both of a baker and of a money-changer, saying in one of his letters: "Your mother's meal came from a vulgar bakeshop of Aricia; this a money-changer from Nerulum kneaded into shape with hands stained with filthy lucre."
“He lost his mother during his first consulship [43 B.C.]and his sister Octavia in his fifty-fourth year [9 B.C.]. To both he showed marked devotion during their lifetime, and also paid them the highest honours after their death.
Jamie Frater wrote for Listverse: “HBO/BBC created an excellent series called “Rome” which covers a number of years of the Roman Empire. In the series they have, unfortunately, slandered the good name of one of the main Characters, Atia (Mother of Octavian – Augustus – and niece of Julius Caesar). In the show she is seen as a licentious, self-absorbed and manipulative schemer who is Mark Antony’s lover. In reality, Atia was a highly moral woman, well regarded by Roman Society at the time. Tacitus had this to say of her: “In her presence no base word could be uttered without grave offence, and no wrong deed done. Religiously and with the utmost delicacy she regulated not only the serious tasks of her youthful charges, but also their recreations and their games.” [Source: Jamie Frater, Listverse, May 5, 2008]
Early Life of Augustus
Suetonius wrote: “Augustus was born just before sunrise on the ninth day before the Kalends of October in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius [Sept. 23, 63 B.C.], at the Ox-Heads in the Palatine quarter, where he now has a shrine, built shortly after his death. For it is recorded in the proceedings of the Senate, that when Gaius Laetorius, a young man of patrician family, was pleading for a milder punishment for adultery because of his youth and position, he further urged upon the Senators that he was the possessor and as it were the warden of the spot which the deified Augustus first touched at his birth, and begged that he be pardoned for the sake of what might be called his own special god. Whereupon it was decreed that that part of his house should be consecrated. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum — Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars — The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]
“A small room like a pantry is shown to this day as the emperor's nursery in his grandfather's country-house near Velitrae, and the opinion prevails in the neighbourhood that he was actually born there. No one ventures to enter this room except of necessity and after purification, since there is a conviction of long-standing that those who approach it without ceremony are seized with shuddering and terror; and what is more, this has recently been shown to be true. For when a new owner, either by chance or to test the matter, went to bed in that room, it came to pass that, after a very few hours of the night, he was thrown out by a sudden mysterious force, and was found bedclothes and all half-dead before the door.

“In his infancy he was given the surname Thurinus in memory of the home of his ancestors, or else because it was near Thurii that his father Octavian, shortly after the birth of his son, had gained his victory over the runaway slaves. That he was surnamed Thurinus I may assert on very trustworthy evidence, since I once obtained a bronze statuette, representing him as a boy and inscribed with that name in letters of iron almost illegible from age. This I presented to the emperor [i.e., Hadrian], who cherishes it among the Lares of his bed-chamber. Furthermore, he is often called Thurinus in Marcus Antonius' letters by way of insult; to which Augustus merely replied that he was surprised that his former name was thrown in his face as a reproach. Later he took the name of Gaius Caesar [44 B.C.], and then the surname Augustus [27 B.C.], the former by the will of his great-uncle [i.e., Julius Caesar], the latter on the motion of Munatius Plancus. For when some expressed the opinion that he ought to be called Romulus as a second founder of the city, Plancus carried the proposal that he should rather be named Augustus, on the ground that this was not merely a new title but a more honourable one, inasmuch as sacred places too, and those in which anything is consecrated by augural rites are called "august" [augusta], from the "increase" [auctus] in dignity, or from the movements or feeding of the birds [avium gestus gustusve], as Ennius [Annales, 502, Vahlen] also shows when he writes: "After by augury august illustrious Rome had been founded."
“At the age of four he lost his father [59 B.C.]. In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar's African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth.”
Augustus and Caesar
Caesar favored Octavian from an early age. In 48 B.C., Caesar had his fifteen-year-old great nephew elected to the priestly college of the pontifices, and he also enrolled him in the hereditary patrician aristocracy of Rome. After recovering from illness Octavian joined Caesar in 46 B.C. on a campaign against the two sons of Pompey the Great in Spain. In 45 B.C. Octavian was sent to Apollonia in Epirus to study with the Greek rhetorician Apollodorus of Pergamum, and to train with legions stationed nearby. [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com, Nina C. Coppolino, Roman Emperors]
Only months after arriving in Apollonia, in 44 B.C., Octavian learned that Caesar was murdered. When he arrived back in southern Italy he learned that he was named as the beneficiary in Caesar's will and had been formally adopted as his son and heir. The will gave Octavian enormous powers. He was now the leader of a great army ready to follow the commands of Caesar’s heir. From this time Octavian called himself C. Julius Caesar Octavianus, though to avoid confusion, modern scholars customarily refer to him as Octavian before 27 B.C. In many historical accounts, including the one by Plutarch, he is referred to as Caesar.

Julius Caesar
Suetonius wrote: “When his uncle presently went to Spain to engage the sons of Pompeius [46 B.C.], although Augustus had hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed a high opinion of his character over and above the energy with which he had made the journey. When Caesar, after recovering the Spanish provinces, planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against the Parthians, Augustus, who had been sent on in advance to Apollonia, devoted his leisure to study. As soon as he learned that his uncle had been slain and that he was his heir [44 B.C.], he was in doubt for some time whether to appeal to the nearest legions, but gave up the idea as hasty and premature. He did, however, return to the city and enter upon his inheritance, in spite of the doubts of his mother and the strong opposition of his stepfather, the ex-consul Marcius Philippus. Then he levied armies and henceforth ruled the State, at first with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus, then with Antonius alone for nearly twelve years, and finally by himself for forty-four. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum — Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars — The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]
Livia Drusilla and Augustus’s Wives
Augustus had three wives. He was married to his first wife Claudia from 42 to 40 B.C. He divorced his second first wife Scribonia (married 40 to 38 B.C.) because of a ”moral perversity of hers." Livia Drusilla, his third wife, was characterized in Robert Graves novel "I Claudius" as cruel and coniving. She was pregnant with another man's child when they met and married Augustus three days after the baby was born. She found slave girls to send to her husband's chamber and looked the other way when he had affairs with the wives of other politicians. Livia proved to be an indispensable member of Augustus's regime but was suspected of scheming — and much worse — on behalf of her sons from her previous marriage.
According to Live Science: Livia was one of the most powerful women during the early years of the Roman Empire. Though the couple did not produce an heir, Livia held a significant personal freedom,and was one of the most influential women Rome would ever see, according to Joanne Ball, who has her doctorate in archaeology from the University of Liverpool. [Source Live Science, October 23, 2021
In A.D. 4, Augustus adopted Tiberius, Livia's son from a previous marriage, and appointed him his successor. After Augustus' death, Tiberius did become emperor; however, there were rumors that Livia had killed her husband after he intended to change his successor. According to ancient historian Cassius Dio, it was rumored that Livia "smeared with poison some figs that were still on trees … She ate those that had not been smeared, offering the poisoned ones to [Augustus]." The emperor's will granted Livia a new name Julia Augusta, which also served as an honorary title. According to Dio, she remained influential during her son's reign until her death in A.D. 29.
Augustus’s Children
Augustus had a hard time with his children and potential heirs, He lost his nephew Marcellus (memorably and piteously mourned by Virgil in the “Aeneid”) and then his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar. He only had one child, his daughter Julia, who reportedly made love to several of his enemies. On the spot where Augustus reportedly gave a speech about family values his rebellious daughter reportedly had an illicit affair. She and Augustus's granddaughter were both exiled on charges of gross immorality.

Livia Drusila
Suetonius wrote:““ln his youth he was betrothed to the daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, but when he became reconciled with Antonius after their first quarrel, and their troops begged that the rivals be further united by some tie of kinship, he took to wife Antonius' stepdaughter Claudia, daughter of Fulvia by Publius Clodius [43 B.C.], although she was barely of marriageable age; but because of a falling out with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her before they had begun to live together. Shortly after that he married Scribonia [40 B.C.], who had been wedded before to two ex-consuls, and was a mother by one of them. He divorced her also, "unable to put up with her shrewish disposition," as he himself writes, and at once [38 B.C.] took Livia Drusilla from her husband Tiberius Nero, although she was with child at the time; and he loved and esteemed her to the end without a rival. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum--Divus Augustus” (“The Lives of the Caesars--The Deified Augustus”), written A.D. c. 110, “Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum,” 2 Vols., trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920), pp. 123-287]
“By Scribonia he had a daughter Julia, by Livia no children at all, although he earnestly desired issue. One baby was conceived, but was prematurely born. He gave Julia in marriage first to Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia and hardly more than a boy, and then after his death to Marcus Agrippa, prevailing upon his sister to yield her son-in-law to him; for at that time Agrippa had to wife one of the Marcellas and had children from her. When Agrippa also died, Augustus, after considering various alliances for a long time, even in the equestrian order, finally chose his stepson Tiberius, obliging him to divorce his wife, who was with child and by whom he was already a father. Marcus Antonius writes that Augustus first betrothed his daughter to his son Antonius and then to Cotiso, king of the Getae, at the same time asking for the hand of the king's daughter for himself in turn.
“From Agrippa and Julia he had three grandsons, Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and two granddaughters, Julia and Agrippina. He married Julia to Lucius Paulus, the censor's son, and Agrippina to Germanicus, his sister's grandson. Gaius and Lucius he adopted at home, privately buying them from their father by a symbolic sale [the form of purchase consisted in thrice touching a balance with a penny in the presence of the praetor], and initiated them into administrative life when they were still young, sending them to the provinces and the armies as consuls elect. In bringing up his daughter and his granddaughters he even had them taught spinning and weaving, and he forbade them to say or do anything except openly and such as might be recorded in the household diary [a record of the imperial household, which apparently dated from the time of Augustus]. He was most strict in keeping them from meeting strangers, once writing to Lucius Vinicius, a young man of good position and character: "You have acted presumptuously in coming to Baiae to call on my daughter." He taught his grandsons reading, swimming, and the other elements of education, for the most part himself, taking special pains to train them to imitate his own handwriting; and he never dined in their company unless they sat beside him on the lowest couch, or made a journey unless they preceded his carriage or rode close by it on either side.

Julia
“But at the height of his happiness and his confidence in his family and its training, Fortune proved fickle. He found the two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter, guilty of every form of vice, and banished them [in 9 and 2 B.C., respectively]. He lost Gaius and Lucius within the span of eighteen months, for the former died in Lycia [2 A.D.] and the latter at Massilia [4 A.D.]. He then publicly adopted [4 A.D.] his third grandson Agrippa and at the same time his stepson Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae; but he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and violent temper, and sent him off to Surrentum. He bore the death of his kin with far more resignation than their misconduct. For he was not greatly broken by the fate of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed the Senate of his daughter's fall through a letter read in his absence by a quaestor, and for very shame would meet no one for a long time, and even thought of putting her to death. At all events, when one of her confidantes, a freedwoman called Phoebe, hanged herself at about that same time, he said: "I would rather have been Phoebe's father." After Julia was banished, he denied her the use of wine and every form of luxury, and would not allow any man, bond or free, to come near her without his permission, and then not without being informed of his stature, complexion, and even of any marks or scars upon his body. It was not until five years later that he moved her from the island [of Pandataria] to the mainland and treated her with somewhat less rigour. But he could not by any means be prevailed on to recall her altogether, and when the Roman people several times interceded for her and urgently pressed their suit, he in open assembly called upon the gods to curse them with like daughters and like wives. He would not allow the child born to his granddaughter Julia after her sentence to be recognized or reared. As Agrippa grew no more manageable, but on the contrary became madder from day to day, he transferred him to an island [Planasia] and set a guard of soldiers over him besides. He also provided by a decree of the Senate that he should be confined there for all time, and at every mention of him and of the Julias he would sigh deeply and even cry out: "Would that I ne'er had wedded and would I had died without offspring" [Iliad III.40, where the line is addressed by Hector to Paris]; and he never alluded to them except as his three boils and his three ulcers.
Ancient Sources on Augustus
On Augustus as Octavian,” Cicero's letters and “Philippics” describe the year after Julius Caesar's murder (March 44 - summer 43 B.C.); Plutarch's Lives of Brutus and Antony are sources for the triumviral period. [Source: Nina C. Coppolino, Roman Emperors]
“The “Monumentum Ancyranum” is an inscription known since the sixteenth century from the temple of 'Rome and Augustus' at Ancyra in Galatia. The inscription is Augustus's own account of his achievements and honors at Rome. This account is commonly known by its prefatory title Res Gestae Divi Augusti, or "achievements of the divine Augustus." The purpose of the inscription was to show and justify Augustus's influence and power at Rome and in the Roman world. The text, which is addressed to the Roman people, describes the beginning of his public life, his military successes, honors given to him, official expenditures for the public good, foreign policy, and ultimately the highest honor any Roman could receive, the title of pater patriae, 'father of the country.' Since Augustus received this title in 2 B.C. the text of the Ancyra inscription appears to date from that time, though earlier drafts are likely, as his honors and achievements grew. According to Suetonius (Aug. 101, 4), the inscription was originally designed for bronze tablets set up in front of Augustus's mausoleum built substantially, if not completely, in 28 B.C. at Rome.
“The “Fasti Consulares” and “Fasti Juliani” provide further epigraphic evidence about Augustus and his time in the form of official lists of the holders of the annual consulship at Rome, and of holidays and religious festivals, respectively.
Nicolaus of Damascus wrote a “Life of Augustus” c. 25-20 B.C.; only a fragment of this eulogistic work survives concerning Augustus's youth and ending with the death of Julius. The work was probably a free paraphrase of an autobiography by Augustus.
Velleius Paterculus, who wrote the Histories during the reign of Tiberius (14-37 A,D.), provides a virtually contemporary, often eye-witness, and flattering account of wars of the Augustan period.
Appian describes events at Rome until 35 B.C. Though he wrote the Civil Wars in the second century A.D., Appian's account, sometimes favorable and sometimes not, is based on the contemporary history of C. Asinius Pollio, who was consul in 40 B.C.
Dio Cassius is the main source for events at Rome from 36 B.C., though the author himself lived c. 150-235 A.D., and his sources for the Augustan period are unknown. His account describes a ruthless Octavian, but an ideal Augustus as princeps, and a model for the Severan Era.
Tacitus gives an account of Augustus's merits and mostly demerits in the Annals, which the historian may have started composing as early as 115.
Suetonius wrote a “Life of Augustus” in the second century A.D. Suetonius was the court archivist of Hadrian ( 117-38 A.D.), and he had access to imperial documents of the Augustan age. Detached anecdotes replace a fully connected chronology.
Philo of Alexandria extolls the benevolence of Augustus in contrast to Caligula, in Embassy to Gaius, c. 40 A.D.
Flavius Josephus both favored and disfavored Rome in Bellum Judaicum c. 75 and Jewish Antiquites c 93-94A.D..
Pliny the Elder wrote negative reports about Augustus in Natural History, completed in 77 A.D.
Florus wrote a second century A.D. Epitome of all Wars during 700 Years, an abridgement of the history of Roman wars waged through the Age of Augustus. Eutropius and Aurelius Victor were fourth century A.D. epitomists; Eutropius based his early Roman history on an epitome of Livy, and Victor wrote the Caesares based on Suetonius. John Zonaras wrote a twelfth century epitome of Dio Cassius.
Lastly, for the era and the man, the literature of the Augustan Age is a major source which includes the works of Livy, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, and Tibullus
Veracity of the Sources of Augustus
David Silverman of Reed College wrote:“Emilio Gabba begins his survey of the reception of Augustus among ancient historians ["The Historians and Augustus" = pages 61-88 in F. Millar & E. Segal, eds., Caesar Augustus : seven aspects (Clarendon Press, 1984)] with several contemporary and near-contemporary figures from the fringes of the empire: Nicolaus of Damascus (the court historian of King Herod the Great and author of a Universal History up to 4 BC), Philo of Alexandria (a philosopher and leading Jewish politician) and Aelius Aristides (2nd AD; a sophist, rhetorician, and devotee of Asclepius). All of these reproduce a vision of Roman empire centered on its inclusivity and universalizing power, and they celebrate the stability and peace brought by Augustus to the provinces. None is the least bit vexed over the idea that some degree of political freedom may have been lost with the introduction of the Principate. Why should they be? As subjects in relatively remote corners of the empire, they cared not at all whether the powers of the tribunate had withered and died; security was all. Liberty meant the chance of becoming a Roman citizen. [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class ^*^]
“With Appian, things become only slightly more complex. A confirmed monarchist writing in the mid 2nd century AD, he too disseminates the universalizing interpretation of the Roman empire. Roughly he adheres to a division in the life of Octavian / Augustus between the years before 36 BC and those subsequent; before 36 Octavian is the last warlord of the crumbling and corrupt Republic, after 36 he is the benevolent autocrat. For Appian, the civil wars are an evil, but the solution is a strong monarch, not a return to the Republic. In Gabba's reading, Appian had bias neither for or against Augustus, but used some pro- and some anti-Augustan sources; for Appian being pro- or anti- Augustan was without political significance. ^*^
“Cassius Dio, a senator who held the consulship in 205 and 229 AD, on whom we must rely for the only connected narrative account of the Augustan principate, likewise reproduces some material hostile to Augustus (as for example when he maintains that the occasions on which Augustus publicly renounced his powers were staged charades), but basically he approves, as Gabba rightly infers from Dio's version (his own composition) of Tiberius' funeral oration over Augustus (56. 35-41). Here we find strains of the Augustan defense against the critics of his early years, e.g. at 56. 37: ^*^
“He first attached himself to the powerful leaders who were menacing the very existence of the city, and with them he fought the others until he had made an end of them; and when these were out of the way, he in turn freed us from the former. He chose, though against his will, to surrender a few to their wrath so that he might save the majority ... ^*^
“This is problematic, in so far as Dio was composing a speech which would have been appropriate to the occasion, and the occasion called for praise of Augustus. But Dio like Appian was a committed monarchist, and the echoes of senatorial nostalgia for the Republic in his work (such as Agrippa's attempt to dissuade Augustus from establishing the principate in Book 52) are purely formulaic. For Dio, himself a Roman senator from Bithynia, the proper role of the upper classes was to mediate between the princeps and the people, not to challenge the latter for power; in Gabba's view, Dio conflates the senatorial class of the early Principate with the same men of his own age (late second and early third century AD).
“Meyer Reinhold and P. Michael Swan ["Cassius Dio's Assessment of Augustus" = pages 155-173 in K. Raaflaub & M. Toher, eds., Between Republic and Empire (California 1990)] agree with Gabba that Dio saw a crisis in the principate of his own time, especially with Commodus and Septimius Severus. Tyrannical emperors, foolish military adventurism, and the shrinking role of the senatorial aristocracy in imperial administration all worried him. Also like Gabba, Reinhold and Swan find in Dio the standard separation between Octavian the warlord and Augustus the princeps; the former is treated from the perspective of Thucydidean realpolitik, but for the latter they also see Dio's true feelings expressed in Tiberius' eulogy. For them, if Dio plays up the military achievements of Augustus' general Agrippa, who was married to Augustus' daughter Julia and became his adopted son in 19 BC and who until his death in 12 BC appeared headed for the succession) that has less to do with denigrating Augustus as a military leader than with finding a morally uplifting example of the proper application of military discipline. This commitment to the search for exempla, the bane of ancient biographers and historians, leads Dio to distortion; desiring to make the point that a good emperor resists expansionism, Dio suppresses the very real longings for an expanded empire manifested by Augustus. Along the same lines, Dio's antipathy for frivolous public expenditures blinded him to the essential role of the congiaria (distributions of money or free grain) and other forms of largess (such as gladiatorial contests) in confirming Augustus' standing with the plebs, and Dio's ideal of an exclusive cooperation between princeps and senate led him to overlook the extent of Augustus' courting of the ordo equester (the equestrian order).
“A much greater historian than either Appian or Dio, the senator and consular P. Cornelius Tacitus, chose in his Annals not to give a full treatment of the Augustan principate. But Tacitus does include a few paragraphs about Augustus: ^*^
“He seduced the army with bonuses, and his cheap food policy was successful bait for civilians. Indeed, he attracted everybody's good will by the enjoyable gift of peace. Then he gradually pushed ahead and absorbed the functions of the senate, the officials, and even the law. Opposition did not exist. War or judicial murder had disposed of all men of spirit. Upper-class survivors found that slavish obedience was the way to succeed, both politically and financially. They had profited from the revolution, and so now they liked the security of the existing arrangement better than the dangerous uncertainties of the old ré gime. Besides, the new order was popular in the provinces. (1. 2) ^*^
“A little later Tacitus, now narrating the beginning of Tiberius' reign, recounts how Augustus was remembered on the occasion of his funeral. ^*^
“Intelligent people praised or criticized him in varying terms. One opinion was as follows. Filial duty and a national emergency, in which there was no place for law-abiding conduct, had driven him to civil war - and this can be neither initiated nor maintained by decent methods ... When Lepidus grew old and lazy, and Antony's self-indulgence got the better of him, the only possible cure for the distracted country had been government by one man. However, Augustus had put the State in order by not making himself king or dictator, but by creating the Principate. ^*^
“The opposite view went like this. Filial duty and national crisis had been merely pretexts. In actual fact, the motive of Octavian, the future Augustus, was lust for power. (1. 9-10). ^*^
“In comparison to Tacitus, whose true view of Augustus is the second of the two alternatives he presents at Annals 1. 9-10, Dio's much fuller narrative, in which Augustus has a tendency to become an idealization of the good princeps, must appear to suffer from a lack of critical perspective. ^*^
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except star cart, astro.com
St. Peter, Paul and the Persecution of the Christians Under Nero
Nero allegedly ordered the slaughter of Christians. Among them, according to tradition, were the apostles Peter and Paul. Christians, wrote Tacitus, "were nailed on crosses...sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the night."
Nero began persecuting Christians on the grounds of disloyalty and blamed them, along with Jews, for the great fire in Rome in A.D. 64, something which he is believed to have been was involved in. Tacitus wrote that before the killing of Christians, Nero used them to amuse the masses. Some were dressed in furs, to be killed by dogs. Others were crucified. Still others were set on fire. Although some persecution of Christian is believed to have occurred, and some it was very cruel, the extent of it has been wildly exaggerated. Most of the victims were bishops or other male leaders. Nero is believed to have accused the Christians of starting the Rome fire in order to shield himself from the suspicion of setting the fire himself.
The height of the persecution of Christians was not during the reign of Nero, but much later. Domitian, Marcus Aurelius and Valerian all brutalized Christians after A.D. 150, when Christians held many high positions and presented a threat as "state within a state." In A.D. 202 the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus made baptism a criminal act. In A.D. 250 Emperor Decius increased the persecution of Christians.
According to the traditional story, in A.D. 67, in the last year of Nero’s reign, St. Peter was hung upside down and beheaded at the Circus Maximus during a wave of brutal anti-Christian persecution after the burning of Rome. His brutal treatment was partly of the result of his request not to be crucified, because he didn't consider himself worthy of the treatment of Jesus. After Peter died, it is said, his body was taken to a burial ground, situated where St. Peter's cathedral now stands. His body was entombed and later secretly worshiped.
It is not exactly clear what happened to St. Paul but it is believed that he was martyred in A.D. 64, the year that Nero blamed the great fire of Rome on the Christian and Jews. Before he was killed St. Paul invoked his right as a Roman citizen to be beheaded. His wish was granted. According to some, Paul was martyred at the site occupied by the Monastery of the Three Fountains in Rome. The Cathedral of St. John Lateran, the oldest Christian basilica in Rome, founded by Constantine on A.D. 314, contains reliquaries said to hold the heads of St. Paul and St. Peter and the chopped off finger doubting Thomas stuck in Jesus' wound.
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.
Last updated October 2024