Augustus

Egypt now lost the independence it had enjoyed (with a few intervals) for thousands of years and would not regain until the twentieth century A.D. Octavian handed it over, as was proper, to the Senate and people of Rome, but in many ways it became his private fiefdom. As well as being “lord of the two lands” (that is, Lower and Upper Egypt), Octavian was recognized as king of kings, an ironic echo of the grandiose title that Antony had accorded Cleopatra. The Egyptians soon accepted their Italian pharaoh. Modern archaeologists have recently discovered a telling example of assimilation: an image of the Egyptian jackal-headed god, Anubis, guarding the entrance of a tomb, but dressed and armed as a Roman soldier.

Any ruler of the Roman empire had good reason to set Egypt apart from the run-of-the-mill province. As the Mediterranean’s major producer of wheat, it was Rome’s bread basket. This made it much too dangerous to allow a senator, a full-dress member of the ruling class, to govern the kingdom; Octavian appointed an eques, his friend the poet Gallus, to become its first prefect.

The new governor was energetic and effective, but his splendid status as deputy pharaoh seems to have gone to his head. He indulged in “indiscreet talk when drunk” about his imperial employer, set up statues of himself, and had a list of his achievements inscribed on the pyramids. A colleague informed on him, and in 27 B.C. Gallus was dismissed. Octavian merely denied him access to his house and the privilege of entering the provinces of which he was the proconsul. But the Senate exiled him and confiscated his estates. Octavian in tears thanked the Senate for supporting him in his painful severity.

“I am the only man in Rome,” he said, “who cannot limit his displeasure with his friends. The matter must always be taken further.”

Reportedly, Gallus felt so humiliated by his disgrace that he took his life (although another story was told that he died while having sexual intercourse). Like that of Salvidienus Rufus, his fate was an awful warning to others in leading circles.

The Mediterranean world had had plenty of time between Actium and the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra to consider the final conclusion of the civil wars and reckon with the unchallenged supremacy of Octavian. Honors cascaded on him from every quarter, including the right to use Imperator, the title with which soldiers acclaimed victorious generals, as his permanent first name. Other awards he declined with a well-judged display of modesty.

The senatorial decree that gave Octavian the greatest pleasure was the formal closing of the gates of the tiny Temple of Janus. This building stood in the Forum and had perhaps originally been a bridge over the stream that used to cross the square (long since covered over and turned into a drain). Janus was the god of gateways; he had two faces, one looking forward to the future, the other to the past. The temple had doors at either end, which were closed in times of peace and open in times of war. The Romans were a warlike people and the doors were almost always open.

That they were shut now was a great compliment to Octavian, and a symbol of the much heralded, much delayed arrival of peace throughout the empire.

XVI

ABDICATION

30–27 B.C.

The claim of clemency should not be taken at face value. Many were forgiven, but some were not. Sosius was given employment, while Antony’s loyal army commander, Canidius, who was unfairly criticized for abandoning his legions after Actium, was executed: despite having boasted that he did not fear dying, he is reported to have lost his nerve at the end.

Vengeance was also taken on the dead. Antony’s memory was formally expunged. His name was obliterated from the Fasti, the state registers of official events. His statues were removed. It was to be as if he had never existed. The Senate, not unprompted surely, voted that no member of the Antonius clan should be named Marcus (a measure that was later repealed). His birthday was made a dies nefastus, an unlucky day, on which public business could not be conducted.

What had taken place, the meaning of the campaign that had been won and lost, needed to be attractively dramatized as an irreversible turning point in history. Actium, which had really been no more than a scrappy breakout from a blockade, was transformed into a great battle—a duel between Rome and anti-Rome, between good and evil.

The poets associated with Maecenas worked on an imaginative rewriting of history. Horace produced an ode that celebrated Octavian’s achievement at Actium (in fact, as we have seen, the credit for the campaign goes to Agrippa) and blackened Cleopatra’s name. He described her as

Plotting destruction to our Capitol

And ruin to the Empire with her squalid

Pack of diseased half-men—mad, wishful grandeur,