The Augustan Empire 43 BC

The reign was punctuated by other colourful excitements; Augustus' pride in them is attested by the attention given to them in the Res Gestae. There was the journey of Senate and people to Campania to meet the returning ruler in 19 B.C., with the ceremonies at the altar of Fortuna Redux: 'returns' became a standard occasion for pageantry. The ludi saeculares in 17 b.C., the thronged assembly for Augustus' assumption of the role of pontifex maximus in 12 b.C., the full triumph of Tiberius in 7 B.C., the successive installations of Gaius and Lucius as principes iuventutis, reached a culmination in 2 в.с. with the bestowal of the title pater patriae on Augustus and the dedication of the temple of Mars Ultor, accompanied by gladiatorial combats and the long-remembered 'Naval Battle of the Greeks and Persians'. Perhaps creativity ran out after 2 B.C., but activity did not, for the games of a.d. 8 in honour of Germanicus and (astonishingly) Claudius were notable, and it must not be forgotten that it was intended for Augustus and Tiberius to hold full triumphs after the defeat of the Pannonian rebellion in a.d. 9, and Tiberius did celebrate one on 23 October of a.d. 12 or 13. The whole was, in any event, a remarkable calendar of novelties to keep the images of victory and peace simultaneously before the public eye.

Commonly related to the process of image-building are the legends and pictures on the Augustan coinage. It is wise to be cautious about calling them 'propaganda', not least because much uncertainty and disagreement persists as to whom the coinage was supposed to influence and who decided on the types and legends.[285] Gold coinage, and even silver, down to the denarius (the 'tribute-money') will not often have been in the hands of ordinary people; and some of the best-known 'speaking' types and legends are portentously rare and must have been struck in relatively tiny issues, while, conversely, some very large emissions have relatively uninformative material on them. New money probably went first to the troops, so the influence of the coins may have been intended primarily for them; certainly, an explosion of vivid and dramatic, plainly propaganda, types is a feature of the years after Julius Caesar's assassination, and they were part of the armoury of the triumvirs and Sextus Pompeius. In the new age after Actium that momentum was maintained for a while, but it then diminished. Augus­tus' 'saving of the citizens' and the crown of oak leaves, and the Shield of the Virtues, achieved celebration, as did festivals and buildings and cult

Fortuna Redux, the ludi saeculares, Actian Apollo, the Altar of the Three Gauls and the temple of Rome and Augustus at Pergamum. The collegiality of Augustus and Agrippa was also given some emphasis. But the only specific promotional campaign run by the official coinage was bestowed on Gaius and Lucius Caesar (though the successes of Tiberius late in the reign did not go quite without mark). At least, however, the Augustan coinage was, even in terms of types, as well as scale, a world- coinage, with Lugdunum and Nemausus, Ephesus and Pergamum, all striking to recognizably similar effect, and as a dissemination of the image of the ruler that was tremendous.

Buildings also (to return to that important theme) were part of the image-making.¹¹⁴ The public heart of the city of Rome was transformed: everyone knows how Augustus boasted that he had 'taken over a Rome of brick and left a Rome of marble',[286] and Ovid, justifying the soignee look for ladies, exclaims 'Before, all was country plainness: now Rome is of gold'.¹¹⁶ The transformation was not just in grandeur, but in symbolic orientation towards the ruler. It is, indeed, unfair to see the programme solely in that context: improvement and amenity went hand in hand with symbolism. Sewers and water supply, markets and porticoes, theatres and an amphitheatre, improvements to the race-course, parks, baths and libraries now adorned Rome, and Agrippa's part was the more brilliant in that it combined the prosaic and the charismatic. But improvement stopped short when it paid no dividends in prestige (and when Agrippa was no longer there), so that some of the recurrent scourges of the plebs