The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Augustus did not permit the expansion in Germany to pause; he simply transferred Tiberius to that front. Nevertheless, to him also Drusus' departure was a bad blow, coming so soon upon those of Agrippa and Octavia; it may not be fanciful to detect a growing rigidity in Augustus' attitudes and proceedings, now that he was deprived of the personalities from whom he had derived support and counsel. But there is a remarkable further tale that the reader must be asked to estimate, for it plays quite a part in recent accounts: 'republicanist' opposition on the part of the stepsons. It derives from Suetonius, who says that Drusus at some time wrote to Tiberius 'about forcing Augustus to restore liberty'; there was plainly some historical source that gave Drusus that colour­ing.[206] Conspiracies are mentioned by Dio at the end of his account of the year 9 B.C., and in the very next year a new rule was made that slaves could be compulsorily purchased by the state so as to make them available as witnesses against their former masters in cases of treason. Have we, then, uncovered the 'crisis of 9 в.с.'? There were those who believed that Augustus suspected Drusus and had him poisoned; also, that none other than Tiberius had reported the treasonable correspon-

L. Piso also had ornamenta triumpbalia for a Helium Tbraeicum, probably in 11 B.C.

Dio Liv.32.1; Suet. Claud. 2.1; POxj 3020, col. 1, line 4. Absence of Augustus is, admittedly, not impossible: in 9 B.C., for example, he was at Ticinum and cannot have attended the consecration of the Ara Pacis. ¹⁴⁴ Dio Lv.2.1. ¹⁴⁵ Suet. Tib. 50.1; Claud. 1.4.

dence to his stepfather. Suetonius, however, who records all that, gives one reason for hesitating, namely that there is so much evidence that Drusus was a favourite of Augustus: he had a place in the ruler's will, for instance. Antiquity was given to novelettes about poisoning; we do not have to accept that tale, and the conspiracies alluded to by Dio are unrelated. But it may be a fact that the brothers had discussed the kind of res publico they would like to serve under, and that Tiberius had undertaken to lay their views before Augustus while he was heavily reliant on them. We can imagine how, with Drusus gone, the sole effect would be to make Augustus reluctant to leave things to Tiberius.

The year 8 в.с. was twenty years from that sixth consulship when Augustus had begun handing the res publico back to the Senate and people: vicennalia, it would have been called in a later century, and it was, if mutedly, celebrated (though hand in hand with celebration went, again, loss: Maecenas first, and Horace shortly after). A 'census was completed, by consular imperium (a special, conceivably celebratory, grant), with a revision of the Senate list and — a rare curiosity — an extension of thepomerium of Rome.[207] Now, too, the month Sextilis was renamed 'Augustus'.¹⁴⁷ The anniversary was accompanied, as it had to be, by another formal renewal of Augustus' powers, for - surprisingly but perhaps also in celebration - a further complete decade; what did not accompany it was any acknowledgement of Tiberius as collega imperii: no love existed there, and no trust, and other possibilities were nearly in sight.

Yet the campaign of Tiberius in 7 в.с. was triumphant, leaving Germany 'practically ready to become a province of the Roman empire',¹⁴⁸ and permitting the discharge of large numbers of legionaries over the next few years.¹⁴⁹ Tiberius, who was, that year, consul for the second time, celebrated a full, formal triumph, and afterwards laid the foundation of a temple of Concord in the Forum Romanum, his thoughts perhaps still upon the lost partnership.

There were relatively everyday tasks and problems of government, not necessarily trivial. One such was an accusation, astonishingly, of ambitus, electoral bribery, against all the magistrates, presumably of the year 8. Augustus took care not to peer into that too closely, but he did make new rules to reduce bribery at the consular elections in the future. The very fact that it occurred shows that there was still popular choice, but it is principally a pointer to something else. What was amiss was that for twenty years Augustus had insisted on the being, in the old tradition, only two consuls a year (barring emergencies); but the office was still eagerly sought after and fought over, as the crown of a social career, and soon Augustus experimented again, dividing the year into two halves, with two 'ordinary' consuls followed by two 'suffect' consuls, a system that became regular from 5 в.с.