Augustus

The bier then appeared. This was a couch made of ivory and gold and spread with a purple and gold pall. Beneath the covering, Augustus’ body was hidden in a coffin; above it, a wax effigy in triumphal costume was displayed. The bier was accompanied by a statue of the princeps in gold and another of him riding a triumphal chariot. Statues of his ancestors were also carried, as well as personified images of the nations he had added to the empire, and of leading Romans of the past. Interestingly, Pompey the Great was among the company, but Julius Caesar was excluded on the grounds of his divinity.

The family, dressed in mourning, walked behind, among them Julia Augusta. The entire Senate were in attendance, as were many equites, and the Praetorian Guard. Anybody who was anybody was present.

The cortège stopped in the Forum, where Tiberius and his son Drusus, both dressed in gray, delivered eulogies. It then wended its way through the Porta Triumphalis, the gate through which triumphal processions entered the city, and arrived at Augustus’ mausoleum in the Campus Martius. The awe-inspiring climax of the ceremony approached.

In the early Republic, Romans were usually buried, but by the end of the first century B.C. almost everyone was cremated. Augustus’ body was laid on a pyre in the ustrinum, or crematorium, next to the mausoleum. Once the bier was in place, all Rome’s priests marched around it, followed by the equites. Then the Praetorian Guard circled it at a run and threw on the pyre all the triumphal decorations (often valuable silver or gold plaques) any of them had received from the princeps in recognition of acts of valor.

Centurions lit the pyre, and as the flames rose an eagle was released and flew up into the sky, as if bearing Augustus’ spirit into the heavens. A former praetor, presumably a man with an eye for the main chance, solemnly swore that he saw the spirit of the princeps on its journey upward. Julia Augusta rewarded his sharpness of sight with the huge sum of one million sesterces.

Perfume was thrown onto the fire, as well as things that the dead man would have enjoyed—cups of oil, clothes, and dishes of food. The ghosts of the dead, the manes, liked to drink blood, which reinvigorated them; this may have been supplied by gladiators, who were often hired to fight at funerals, their duels lit up by the flames.

When the fire had burned out, wine was poured over the embers. A priest purified those present from the taint of death by sprinkling water over them with a laurel or olive branch. The mourners were then dismissed, each of them saying “Vale” as he or she left the scene.

Eventually, only one person was left beside the ashes—Julia Augusta, widow and now daughter of the dead princeps. The old lady remained where she was for five days. Then, attended by leading equites, who were barefoot and wore unbelted tunics, she collected the bones and lodged them in the mausoleum.

INTO THE FUTURE

Making a show of reluctance before the Senate, Tiberius assumed full powers and authority. Broadly, the new emperor maintained Augustus’ policies. However, the divine family became increasingly dysfunctional. Livia, or Julia Augusta as she now was, got on badly with her son once he became emperor. Although he admired her sagacity, he was irritated by the fact that she was credited with having made him emperor. In A.D. 26, Tiberius abandoned Rome for Capri off the Bay of Naples, where he spent the rest of his reign; his mother was probably one of the reasons for his second and final self-exile.

Germanicus was given a commission in the east, but died in A.D. 19 at the age of thirty-four, perhaps from poisoning (as usual, Livia was blamed). In A.D. 23 his contemporary, Tiberius’ son Drusus, also died; he may have been a victim of the emperor’s scheming favorite, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, but more probably of an epidemic raging in Rome that year.

The elder Julia did not long outlive her unforgiving father, dying in A.D. 14 at Rhegium. Postumus’ death removed her last hope of recall. According to Tacitus, Tiberius pitilessly “let her waste away to death, exiled and disgraced, by slow starvation. He calculated that she had been banished for so long that her death would pass unnoticed.”

The younger Julia never left her little island in the sun, and died some twenty years after her enraged grandfather had sent her there. Her lover, Silanus, was more fortunate. He was allowed to return to Rome in A.D. 20; Tiberius remarked quizzically that he was gratified that Silanus should return from his “pilgrimage to far lands.”

As for Ovid, Tiberius and Livia turned a deaf ear to his pleas for a reprieve. He cultivated the young Germanicus, but to no avail. In A.D. 17 he died among his barbarians at Tomis. He asked that he be buried near his beloved city, Rome, and one can hope, but without much confidence, that this last wish was granted.