The Augustan Empire 43 BC

eques had been an outrage and who seized upon some Achilles' heel of Gallus to destroy him. There is a puzzle of evidence here, whose pieces do not all fit; but it may be that we can legitimately see the Senate emboldening itself to declare - now that the favourite had fallen from grace — that a prefect of Egypt was not exempt from prosecutions to which other governors were liable. And perhaps it is not too fanciful to guess that the fall from grace was because Gallus had had further career pretensions, such as entry into the Senate with high standing. At any rate, insofar as there was a display of opposition in the incident it quite failed to unnerve Augustus, who continued to entrust Egypt to equites (and did not let them rise further).

The story here being challenged, that of attacks upon the usurping junta by an increasingly powerful and bold opposition, leading' to disintegration of the 'Party' and forcing upon the ruler a rethinking of his entire position that bore fruit in 23 B.C., is held to embrace even Augustus' Spanish war — its purpose political propaganda and its goal not achieved.[184] Northern Spain had been a useful triumph-hunting ground for years, down to 26 B.C., but it seems probable that it was now to be definitively annexed for its precious metals. That proved a hard task: Augustus had intended to lead a victorious campaign in person, and he had Marcellus and Tiberius with him as military tribunes, but he was ill at Tarraco and the war had to be carried forward - to no properly conclusive end — by legates. The illness gives a better key to these years: Augustus doubted his own long survival. Timor mortis, rather than fear of the opposition, was what preoccupied him.

His consular colleagues in Rome in 27 and 26 were Marcus Agrippa and Titus Statilius Taurus, reliable men. It can therefore hardly have been out of a sense of insecurity that in 26, from Spain, he promoted another experiment, the appointment of a prefect of the city, the respected triumphator Messalla Corvinus.[185] The post had a remote republican history: in the dim past a prefect had been appointed by the consuls if both had to be absent on campaign, to see to the government of the city, and Iulius Caesar had appointed several prefects simulta­neously in his absence. The prefecture was destined to become a regular post under the Principate, with responsibility for policing Rome, for which the urban cohorts were at the prefect's disposal; it came, in fact, to be the crown of a senatorial career. But in 26 there was a sitting consul, and Messalla, having accepted, gave up the post after six days.[186] The oddity is, if he thought it was a breach of mos maiorum, why he accepted inthe first place. Scholars suggest that pressure from his peers caused him to resign - another 'victory for the opposition' - or that he realized he was being manipulated by the ruler into acquiescing in a sinister novelty. It may be suggested, rather, that Augustus intended the post as an addition to the 'honours list' and Messalla accepted it as such and then learnt (from someone like Livy? We must remember that the Romans did not know much about their ancient history) how historically anomalous it was. There is no sign that he forfeited Augustus' esteem by his resignation, and the post was not, at that time, proceeded with. Statilius Taurus, according to Tacitus, took it, and with success, but hardly immediately, for he was consul; and it is by no means certain that Augustus ever intended that prefecture as a permanent post.

Agrippa, in his chief's absence, was engaged in the creation of a new complex of public structures and leisure-spaces in the Campus Martius. It was part of the stage-by-stage capture of the public spaces of Rome for the symbolism of the new ruler, as well, of course, as the cultivation of the plebs and the continuation of Agrippa's own populist image, inaugurated by his astonishing aedileship in 3 3 B.C.⁶² The new complex comprised, particularly, the Saepta Iulia, the great covered hall for voting (a project of Iulius Caesar), new baths with an attached park, and a new temple, the Pantheon.⁶³ Now the precedents for such a temple as that were hellenistic and monarchical, and scholars detect a whiff of opposition again, for we are told that Agrippa wished to call his structure Augusteum and place in it a statue of Augustus, so implanting direct cult of the ruler in Rome itself. Augustus declined, and if he was not under pressure he was certainly, in the matter of cult, feeling every step of the way; his absence will have helped to save embarrassment.