Augustus

The Roman year was punctuated by holidays during which lavish public entertainments were staged. Augustus was aware that these shows—especially the munera, the gladiatorial displays—were important for the ongoing popularity of the regime.

The munera were extraordinarily expensive even for the princeps’ deep pockets and he usually limited funding to two regular seasons, lasting between six to ten days in December and up to four in March. Most of the year’s numerous other feast days were devoted to the very popular chariot races at the Circus Maximus and to drama and dance spectaculars at various theaters in the city, including the one dedicated to the memory of Marcellus.

The Circus Maximus (which was used for gladiatorial displays as well as the races) was overlooked by the steep slope of the Palatine Hill. Augustus had a habit of watching shows from the upper rooms of houses on the Palatine that belonged to friends or his freedmen. Occasionally he sat in the pulvinar, a roofed platform at the Circus on which a couch carrying images of the gods was placed and which was used as a box by him and members of his family.

Augustus did not always arrive at the beginning of the games or even for the first day or so, but he always presented his excuses and appointed a substitute “president.” He did not repeat Julius Caesar’s mistake of reading papers and dictating replies during performances, a habit much disliked by the crowd. He watched intently “to enjoy the fun, as he frankly admitted to doing.” Augustus’ favorite sport was boxing; in the professional game he liked to pit Italians against Greeks, but he also had a taste for slogging matches between untrained roughs in narrow street alleys.

The princeps took a friendly interest in professional entertainers of all kinds and got to know some of them personally. However, there were limits of propriety on which he insisted; he banned gladiatorial contests sine missione, that is where a defeated fighter could not be reprieved and so had to be killed by his opponent. Augustus wanted to see bravery, but disliked pointless bloodshed. He also severely punished actors and other stage performers for licentious behavior. Women were not allowed to watch athletic contests (competitors did not wear clothes), and Augustus barred them from sitting alongside men at other entertainments; they were banished to the back rows.

The picture of virtue, industry, and economy does not tell the complete truth. Away from Rome and out of the public view, Augustus and his family lived in grand and extravagant style. Suetonius claims that his country houses were “modest enough”; he cannot have visited the rocky island of Pandateria (today’s Ventotene) thirty miles or so west of Naples, where the princeps built a palace, now undergoing a major excavation.

The island’s longer axis lies north–south and runs a little more than one and a half miles. All we know of Pandateria in antiquity is that it was plagued with field mice, which nibbled the sprawling grapes. It has no springs or rivers and large cisterns were built to collect rainwater. A small port was constructed, cut into the tufa, for landing building materials, food, wine, and other supplies. In the north, the island narrows and rises to a small plateau (where today’s cemetery stands). Here lie the remains of a building with many rooms, which were probably reserved for servants, slaves, and guards. The ground then dips and narrows into a small valley, where fountains played and a colonnaded portico with seats created a pleasant spot for conversation. A steep stairway led down to a small quay, giving family members and their guests private access to the villa.

Finally, the main house was reached by walking up from the valley to where it perched on a rocky promontory overlooking steep cliffs. The building was shaped like a horseshoe with a garden in the middle; it contained dining rooms, a bathing complex, and other living spaces. At the tip of the promontory, a viewing platform offered an uninterrupted panorama of sky and sea.

Here was secret splendor, where the princeps could entertain his intimate circle in undisturbed privacy. This was as it needed to be, for some of his friends were disreputable, not the kind of people with whom he should be seen in public. His dear Maecenas was a sybarite, but a civilized and able man. The same could not be said of the son of a wealthy freeman, the unappetizing Publius Vedius Pollio, who apparently helped establish a taxation system in the province of Asia after Actium. On one occasion Vedius went too far, even for his august friend.