Augustus

The year 9 B.C. began well for Augustus. On January 30 (Livia’s birthday, and perhaps her fiftieth) a great Ara Pacis, Altar of Peace, commissioned four years previously, was completed in Rome. Entirely made of marble, it was a sizable square enclosure, with two doorways. Inside, some steps led up to a large three-sided altar; drains were built in to allow the blood from slaughtered sacrificial animals to be washed away. Reliefs around the outside of the walls, inspired by the Parthenon marbles, depicted a grave procession of Roman notables headed by Augustus and Agrippa, with Livia and various relatives, including Gaius and Lucius.

The altar completed a grouping of magnificent structures that asserted the greater glory of the princeps and the stability of the regime. The Mausoleum of Augustus was the largest example of its kind; erected in a prominent location between the Via Flaminia leading north from the city, and the Tiber, it was a circular building about 262 feet in diameter, on top of which was piled a mound of earth planted with cypress trees and surmounted by a statue of Augustus. Next door stood a square four-walled enclosure covered by a metal grating. This was the ustrinum, where the dead were cremated before their ashes were placed in the mausoleum. Oriented toward the Ara Pacis was the Horologium Augusti, a vast sundial whose pointer was an obelisk that the princeps had brought back from Egypt. Lines marking months, days, and hours were inlaid in bronze on the dial’s face. At equinoxes, one of which was September 23, Augustus’ birthday, the shadow on the dial fell on the entrance to the altar. (Unfortunately, after a while the sundial started telling the wrong time, probably because an earthquake disturbed the alignments.)

The ruins of the mausoleum survive, as does the Ara Pacis, which reopened to the public in 2005 after a long period of restoration. The ustrinum is gone; of the Horologium, only the obelisk remains (it now stands in front of the Italian parliament).

Fate intervened once again to lop off another member of the “divine family.” In the late summer or autumn of 9 B.C., while he was at his summer headquarters, the twenty-nine-year-old Drusus had a riding accident and broke his leg. It was quickly apparent that he was not going to recover, although it is uncertain why. The Roman army employed experienced medical teams, and on campaign deployed well-equipped field hospitals. In the nature of military life, fractures were common; military surgeons had a good knowledge of how to deal with them, and the techniques of splinting and setting bones described in ancient medical texts are not greatly dissimilar to modern practice.

Some of the literary sources write of an illness rather than an accident, which may mean that it was not the broken leg that killed Drusus, but later complications. An inflammation and fever may have supervened. If there was an open wound, perhaps an infection took hold; without effective antibiotics, that could have led to gangrene and amputation.

Tiberius heard the news of Drusus’ accident when he was at Ticinum (today’s Pavia) in northern Italy reporting to Augustus about his Pannonian campaign. He rushed off in a panic to his brother. After crossing the Alps he covered two hundred miles at full stretch in a day and a night, changing his horses at intervals. The achievement was all the more remarkable in that he was traveling through unsettled territory that had only recently been conquered, with a Gallic guide as his sole companion.

As Tiberius approached his brother’s camp, someone went ahead to announce his arrival. Almost at his last gasp, Drusus ordered his legions to march out to meet him and salute him as commander in chief. He died shortly afterward, and the anguished Tiberius accompanied his body back to Italy, walking in front all the way. For most of the journey, the coffin was carried by leading men from the towns and cities through which the procession passed. Augustus and Livia met the cortège at Ticinum and traveled with it to Rome.

Livia was shattered by the death of her son. As she followed his body she was moved by the pyres that were lit in the dead man’s honor throughout the country and the crowds that came out to escort Drusus on his way.

She did not know how to comfort herself in her grief. Areius, the Alexandrian philosopher and family friend, counseled her not to bottle up her feelings, so she displayed pictures of Drusus in public places and in her private apartments and encouraged her friends and acquaintances to talk about him. However, unlike Octavia when Marcellus died, Livia maintained her dignity, and was widely respected for not overstating her grief.