The Augustan Empire 43 BC

The celebration of a new lustrum — indeed, far more, a new saeculum of Rome — came, in triumphal mood, on 31 May 17 в.с.,¹¹⁹ and Horace's official Ode for the occasion, the Carmen Saeculare, cannot be bettered as a compendium of the ideology set before the Roman people. It is the fashion of our age to undercut official triumphalism, and there is plenty of reason in the present case. Many of the governing class exhibited irreconcilable dissatisfaction with the attempt to regulate their conduct: Augustus had been up against the plebs, but now he was up against its betters. Dio (and it must come from his source) stresses the ««-popularity of Augustus at this time, and even makes 18 в.с. the beginning of plots against him and against Agrippa,¹²⁰ whose status was resented. So if, as we are commonly taught, Augustus' greatest skill was the political tact whereby he experimented to fit his de facto supremacy into a framework of what people wanted it to seem to be, he had not, in the decade down to the ludi saeculares, reaped much fruit of that alleged skill — or so we might think until we notice the consuls of 16 в.с.¹²¹

hi. 16 в.с. - A.D. 14

The consuls of 16 в.с. were young nobles (and similarly in the years that followed, so all was right in that relationship, at least). That particular pair were also related to Augustus. Publius Cornelius Scipio was the son of his former wife Scribonia by an earlier marriage, and so half-brother to Iulia, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was married to Augustus' niece Antonia, one of the two women of that name, the daughters of Octavia and Mark Antony, who carried the great enemy's genes deep into the heart of the 'divine family'.¹²² The 'divine family' was the most distinctly Augustan innovation of all, his way of reconciling the high aristocracy. It was powerful both as fact and as concept. Practically, it secured a cadre of collaborators at the highest level; psychologically, it was the exemplar of Augustus' moral programme; and symbolically it was the 'parallel language' of dynasty and court taking over from elective republicanism. (As a matter of fact, for the second half of the year 16, the plebeian Lucius Tarius Rufus took over from P. Scipio; and that well illustrates the historian's peril in pretending to interpret the politics of the age, for we do not know why. Was it because Rufus could not be denied an honour and had to be fitted in? Or was Scipio ill, or

Pighi 1965 (в 263) 107-30, plus 131-6, shown by Cavallaro 1979 (в 217) to belong to the Augustan ludi. ¹²⁰ Diouv.ij.i. ¹²¹ Syme 1986 (a 95) 53-63.

¹²² For all such persons see, now, Syme 1986 (a 95), via the index.

incompetent, or dissident? Many stories could be told, and a 'crisis of 16 B.C.' invented; but it would all be idle conjecture.)

In any case, the main theme of Augustus' second decade was different. Towards the end of the year 16 Augustus and Agrippa left Rome, for opposite ends of the empire, each for three years - according, as it were, to pattern. Rome was left to the consuls, plus Titus Statilius Taurus as 'prefect of the city and Italy'.[201] Agrippa's role in the East was not military: he exercised imperial policy in half the empire as collega imperii, dealing, for example, with the affairs of the remote client kingdom of the Crimea,[202] and confirming the right of the Jews of the Diaspora to their ancestral laws and customs.[203] More in need of interpretation is Augus­tus' purpose in the West. His departure was hastened by the flurry caused by a legionary standard lost on the Rhine,¹²⁶ for rebuffs to Roman military prestige could not be allowed. According to Dio, some said he left Rome in order to consort with Maecenas' Terentia with less scandal, others that it was to avoid general unpopularity. But maybe a main theme was already emerging: imperial expansion in northern Europe, of which the two efficient stepsons would be the principal agents. Augustus was inexhaustible in experiments with the material at any time to hand: three centuries later, under Diocletian and his successors, the Roman empire would be ruled by two 'Augusti' and two 'Caesares', and the experiment of Augustus' second decade looks as if based on some such idea - save for the awkward and ominous difference that the two 'Caesares' due to be groomed for succession were a different pair of brothers entirely from the ones who were to share the present burdens.