The Augustan Empire 43 BC

floods, fires and collapses - were tackled with less than total commitment. About the transformation of Augustus' house enough has been said, and about his new Forum; but even the Forum Romanum took on the symbolism of the ruler and his divine ancestry, and Jupiter Tonans on the Capitol stole some of the limelight of the Capitoline god himself.¹¹⁷ Agrippa adorned the middle Campus, Augustus the northern part, with the Mausoleum, the Ara Pacis and the Horologium. Buildings were erected by, or in the name of, many members of the 'divine family'; as for the republican tradition by which triumphing generals embel­lished the capital and built roads 'out of spoils' (ex manubiis), Augustus was keen for it to continue, and for a while it did, endowing Rome with such important structures as Asinius Pollio's Atrium Libertatis, with the first Roman public library, Cn. Domitius Calvinus' marble rebuilding of the Regia, T. Statilius Taurus' amphitheatre in the Campus and the major temples of C. Sosius (Apollo Sosianus in the Campus) and C. Cornificius (Diana on the Aventine). That tradition only died out because the triumphs and the independent commands on which they rested died out: the last major such building was the theatre of Balbus, and he was, precisely, the last person outside the 'divine family' to celebrate a full triumph.

It hardly needs saying that building programmes advertising the ruler were not confined to the capital. Nor, in the Roman world in general, were they confined to structures erected at government expense, for there was a great mass of building on local and private initiative, as the municipal wealthy responded to the stability of the 'Augustan Peace'. Much was, however, inspired from the centre, such as the Augustan arches that still stand in testimony to the construction of roads, city-walls and harbours, and other imposing structures still to be seen - the Pont du Gard, the Maison Carree, the public buildings of Merida: enough for the imagination to grasp how new a visual world had been created by a.d. 14. In the Roman Forum stood the Golden Milestone,¹¹⁸ and the Chorographic Map of Agrippa stood in his sister Vipsania's portico.¹¹⁹

Of such elements was composed the great assault on the psychology of a generation. A consistent ideology is conveyed, an 'Augustan synthe­sis', the visual monuments being echoed by the literary monuments: it may be summarily spelt out, under three or four heads. First, this is a 'new age', novum saeculum - the keystone of Virgil's Aeneid,¹²⁰ the theme of the ludi saeculares and of the architectural transformation of Rome. It is an age in which the Hellenic and Roman cultural heritages are to be no longer enemies but partners,¹²¹ a partnership symbolized by Actian Apollo, the god combining arms and arts, with his temple and libraries on the Palatine. The gift of the new age is the 'Augustan Peace'; and the

¹¹¹ On the Forum Romanum, Simon 1986 (f 5 77) 84-91; on Jupiter Tonans, Zanker 1987 (f6j2) 44. »» Dio liv. 8.4. ¹¹⁹ Strab. 11.5.17 (120C); Pliny, HN 111.17.

120 Virg. Aen. vi-791-853. ¹²¹ Bowersock 1965 (c 59) ch. 10.

prerequisite of that peace is the ruler's untiring devotion to his cura, by reason of his virtus, dementia, iustitia and pietas. But it demands an answering devotion from others, a willingness to constitute a nation of stern morality and stable family life: that comes out best in the most overtly moralizing of all the literary monuments, the Carmen Saeculare of Horace. And amongst the duties demanded is untiring militarism. For Roman victory and supremacy to be maintained the Romans must keep faith with their long history. That is the message of the Fasti Trium- phales and the busts of Rome's heroes in the porticoes of the Augustan Forum, of the triumphal arches placed about the Roman world, and of the importance attached to the 'return of the standards' in the symbolic nexus. Virgil's 'Be it thy care, О Roman, to rule the peoples with thy sway' is the formal repudiation of the Epicureanism of Lucretius: 'Better to obey in quiet than wish to rule things with your sway and control kingdoms.¹²²

4. Resistance

The 'Augustan synthesis', thus summarized, is a rich diet and a heady brew; historical therapy demands that it be countered, in conclusion, by more astringent and sobering reflections. The historian must ask how successful the mystique was. To what extent can we perceive scepticism, rejection, an alternative ideology,¹²³ a revoludonary temper, even? 'Resistance' is an insistent modern theme;¹²⁴ how much of it is to be found beneath the confident surface of the 'Augustan synthesis'?