The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  Apart from the classicism of the new bold stonework and the best of the new poetry, there was still the other Rome, now a teeming city of (probably) a million inhabitants, far the biggest city in the world. Social contrasts had remained amazingly extreme here. The rich lived in grand houses, but the very poor bedded down where they could; the relatively poor were crammed into tall wooden apartment blocks with thin dividing walls, the speculative landlord's dream. Narrow winding streets surrounded these hastily built and overcrowded 'verti­cal receptacles', while erratic supplies of water went with a total absence of public transport. Most people's Rome was both a wonder and a nightmare. It was also, of course, a slave-society. A single senator, in the 6os, owned no less than 400 slaves in his household: 'the Senate' (good men and true) would thus own about 250,000 of Rome's human beings if this senator was at all typical.6 Perhaps two-fifths of the city's (approximate) million inhabitants were slaves, and many of the rest were ex-slaves, freed but still 'obliged' to their ex-masters. The common citizens were the plebs, but among the plebs those who were attached to the great households were not to be confused with those of the plebs who were not. For there were 'respect­able' plebs, and downright 'sordid' plebs, people who begged what they could. The modern cardboard cities of refugees in Egypt or Pakistan are the nearest we can come to imagining this 'other Rome', though they lack Rome's openly accepted slavery.

  This 'other Rome' had proved beyond the capacity, or concern, of Cicero's beloved Republic. Under Augustus, it took its first few steps towards health and safety. By stages, a much-needed fire brigade was introduced, the Watch or vigiles, whose name lives on in modern Rome's equivalent. The public water supply was vastly improved by new aqueducts and, in due course, by new overseers and public slaves to maintain it. In reply, rich families moved up to the hills above previously marshy ground and continued to develop new parks and fine palazzi there. A committee was appointed to attend to flooding from the river Tiber. The height of apartment blocks was limited to about seven storeys, no doubt to the speculators' annoyance. The grain-supply acquired a new prefect; the regular gifts of free grain to designated citizens continued (about 250,000 people were now on the list). Like the public shows, the dole did not extend 'bread and circuses' to all the free poor, because they amounted to more than half a million people. But when backed by the grain of Egypt, the general supply of grain on sale became more stable.

  As one reform succeeded another, each social order in Rome began to have defined roles, and these roles were made to seem to be worth having. The Senate continued to be very busy and senators' functions multiplied, and yet ultimate power resided elsewhere, with the emperor. As time passed, therefore, it became harder to assure a quorum for senatorial meetings. Privileged knights had their annual processions; the common people, too, began to be more closely regu­lated. There were hundreds of thousands of them, after all, potentially a seething mass, as they had shown briefly after Caesar's murder. Augustus left them with their ancient 'tribes', all thirty-five of them, through which gifts of corn were distributed and assemblies organized. However, he continued Julius Caesar's controls. He strictly regulated their right to form 'clubs', or collegia, those political and social dang­ers in the republican city. Instead, the plebs had ever more shows to watch, but even here, they were to be regulated in a hierarchy of seating. This orderliness was only possible because the common spec­tators accepted it and were not rebellious against it. There was still no designated police force, although the fire-watchers did go on patrol. But Augustus had stationed soldiers in or near the city, the Praetorian guards and his German horseguards. They could always intervene in a crisis.

  The obvious tactic, meanwhile, was divide and rule. In 7 bc Augus­tus split the city into fourteen districts under 'ward magistrates' (vicomagistri) who were usually freedmen. These local officials celebrated cults of the Protecting Spirits, or Lares, at each ward's crossroads. Previously, there had been 'august Lares': now, the same Latin words suggested the 'Lares of Augustus' (Lares Augusti). In cults at the crossroads, honours were also paid to the genius of Augustus, his 'guiding spirit'. Cults, therefore, of Augustus' own household were neatly transferred to the city's main street corners. The presiding freedmen in these cults had the robes and insignia of real magistrates, while privileged slaves served as their assistants. One surviving altar for such a cult reflects the themes of high art, showing a scene from the legend of Aeneas the founder and the honorary shield which proclaimed Augustus' 'virtues'. The self-important officials took kindly to their new function and these little local shrines persisted at Rome for centuries.

  Symptomatically, stone inscriptions in honour of individuals also proliferated in the Augustan city. At the top of society, full triumphs began to be reserved for members of the imperial family only. Instead, individual senators received 'triumphal ornaments', but commemor­ated themselves with public inscriptions which carefully listed each of the posts in their careers. By contrast, two great monuments commem­orated high points for Augustus himself. The first, the delicately sculpted Altar of Peace (Ara Pacis), was voted by the Senate for his return from Gaul in the summer of 13 bc. It shows a lush imagery of natural abundance and a fertile mother (probably Earth) with chil­dren. Sculpted members of the imperial family accompany figures from Rome's priesthoods, including four chief priests, veiled and preparing to sacrifice. The exact reference of the procession is dis­puted, but it probably records Augustus' own assumption in March 12 bc of the Supreme Priesthood (as Pontifex Maximus), which he had tactfully left in old Lepidus' hands until Lepidus' recent death.' The sculptures' combination of family, religion and formal togas is typically Augustan.

  In 2 bc Augustus' dominance reached its climax. Again, it followed where Julius Caesar had already trod. In February he was hailed in the Senate as 'Father of the Fatherland' (like Julius Caesar), and in May, the long-awaited temple of Mars (the war god) as Avenger was completed. It overlooked his supreme monument, the 'Forum of Augustus', in the heart of the city. Beginning on 12 May, great shows publicized the opening, with gladiators and the killing of 260 lions. The entertainments were like Julius Caesar's all over again. On a newly flooded lake, mock teams of Athenians and Persians re-enacted a sea-battle fit for the old Persian Wars of 480 bc. It was a heroic prelude to the dispatch of Augustus' young grandson, Gaius, to 'tri­umph' in the East in his own pseudo-Persian war. Crocodile hunts then followed in the flooded Circus.

  Julius Caesar had already commissioned a Forum, but Augustus' Forum of multi-coloured marble is the supreme statement of Augustan spin. Its temple of Mars commemorated the 'avenging' of Julius Caesar and the 'vengeance' (much less bloody) on the Parthians (achieved by diplomacy). It was to be the centre-point in Rome for the public giving of honours to commanders and men of military prowess: it became the standard meeting-point, in legal contracts, for people who were granted bail. On the temple, a decently sculpted Venus, goddess of the Julian family, accompanied Romulus (dressed as a shepherd) and patriotic gods such as father Tiber. Augustus' own name was carved at a focal point on the blocks directly below the pediment. Ancient Greek statuary, including two masterpieces of Alexander the Great, were displayed around the Forum. The novelties were the Forum's flanking colonnades. Like other monuments and public lists in the Augustan city, they put 'history on parade'.8 On one side, Romulus headed an array of statues of the great triumphing Roman heroes of the past, each of whom was identified with an inscribed eulogy. On the other side stood Aeneas with his Trojan father and ancestors of the Julian family. Augustus even published an edict to announce that 'the life [of these great men] was the standard by which he wished to be weighed by the citizens as long as he lived'.9 He even hoped that the future 'First Citizens' would be weighed likewise.

  Herodotus, the first historian, would not have been surprised by the sequel. Catastrophe followed this personal climax. Within months the public adultery of his charming daughter, Julia, was alleged and then punished: did some people wonder if
Augustus' adopted grand­sons, her two children, were really Agrippa's children as was claimed? When she remarked 'I only invite another pilot', it was perhaps to rebut such rumours. But the cargo, too, proved short-lived. First one then the other of these grandsons died on foreign service. New and complex dynastic arrangements were needed, which ended by giving a main role to a 'Claudian', Livia's austere son Tiberius. Yet Tiberius was rumoured in 9 bc to have talked about restoring more of a 'republic' and he had already withdrawn into self-imposed exile in 6 bc, arguably so as to avoid holding the populist tribunician power in public. From ad 6 onwards wars on the northern frontier imposed a heavy strain on Rome's finances and on citizen-recruitment. Both were hugely resented, including the new inheritance tax on citizens, which was introduced to help pay the army's costs. There were seditious grumblings among the Roman plebs, a major fire in Rome, and years of famine in Italy. Augustus' last available grandson was banished in ad 7, and in 8 adultery was prosecuted once again, this time against Augustus' granddaughter, the younger Julia. On top of it all came the severe defeat of the legions in Germany in ad 9. It was lucky that these crises came after thirty years of domination. By now, there was, it seemed, no alternative.

  What, then, was the core of the Roman revolution which could endure such continuing turbulence? From ever more parts of Italy, members of local leading families did enter the Senate and appear in the upper orders at Rome. But the revolution did not lie in this mild, ongoing enlargement of Rome's governing class. More importantly, the proscriptions and the Civil Wars had cost lives and violently transferred property: here, indeed, there had been revolutionary terror, although the political system in Italy's towns remained unchanged. With victory, there was a military and constitutional rev­olution of a different sort. In Italy, there were now twenty-eight new colonies of army veterans whom Augustus, like Sulla, had settled in his active lifetime, men loyal to himself on expropriated land. Else­where, the remaining army was now a standing army, loyal to Augus­tus as Commander. Politically, he held a bundle of powers which were detached from elected magistracies: what he wanted could thus be massaged through the political system at Rome. Freedom of political initiative was killed off: it became extremely hard, historians noted, to penetrate back to the truth of things. A smart new voting hall (Julius Caesar's plan) was built in Rome for the people, but the candidates who were brought before its electoral assembly were increasingly agreed in advance. Such pre-selection was introduced in ad 5, perhaps as a sop to the upper class for Augustus' dynastic arrangements of the previous year. In legislative assemblies, mean­while, the scope for independent popular legislation or veto by a tribune had disappeared. In its place, a sense of 'dynasty' had been promoted. It is summed up by the new voting-centuries which were added to the people's electoral assembly: they were named after Gaius and Lucius, Augustus' dead grandsons. Down one side of Rome's political space, the Forum, a smart portico commemorated them too.

  On a long view, the historian Polybius would have claimed that his predictive theory had proved true. The balanced 'oligarchy' of the years of the Hannibalic War had first tipped towards what Polybius, at least, might have seen as 'democracy'. In fact, it had been the use by members of the upper class of the scope for 'popular liberty' embedded in Rome's constitution. Then, as the great historian of this crisis, Peter Brunt, well puts it, their 'attempts to "restore" the powers of the people led on to monarchy, and monarchy destroyed popular freedom more completely than senatorial freedom'.1" However, this loss of popular liberty was matched by social gains for the 'urban mob' in the city of Rome. Improved urban amenities went with new avenues of justice. As before, the elected praetors continued to preside over public courts in the city: a fourth 'panel' of jurors was added and there was no longer any concern to separate senators and knights among the jurymen. Senators would put up with this mixing because the Senate, with the consuls also, became a separate court with powers to try its own members for major crimes, including extortion: knights, therefore, were kept out of the most serious senatorial trials, and the hated 'equal liberty' was ended.

  The more drastic development was the giving of justice by new office-holders. The newly appointed Prefect of the City was a senator; he dealt with cases, especially those involving the lower classes in the city, and he had the power to coerce not only slaves but those free people whose 'audacity' needed force. In due course, the Prefect of the Praetorian guard came to dispense justice too, as cases simply gravitated to such people with the authority to settle them.

  The greatest such individual was the First Citizen himself. As the holder of a tribune's power, Augustus could be regarded as legally liable to receive the appeals of all Roman citizens. As early as 30 bc he is said to have been given this specific power, and in 18 bc it was probably made explicit in a law 'on public violence'. As the holder of proconsular power, he could also enquire into cases and pass sentence after an inquisition by himself. His presence, on top of the pile, was a new focus of crucial judicial importance. From the provinces, mean­while, accusations, requests and appeals gravitated to him anyway, both in civil and criminal matters, whether from Roman citizens or not. They arrived either with embassies from distant cities, or in written form, or with patient accusers or defendants who travelled to see him. An embassy even arrived from Cnidus, theoretically a free Greek city, seeking judgement in a remarkable case against a husband and wife (now seeking refuge in Rome) and the charge that, in a recent quarrel, one party had insulted another by making a slave pour a chamber pot over his head.11 Perhaps Augustus chose to go into the case so closely because the saga which the embassy presented to him was so extraordinary. It is a sign that pleas for justice, as always, spiralled upwards: Augustus soon had to arrange for cases both from Rome and abroad to be delegated to other parties. But like a Ptolemaic king before him, he could not escape the flood which his dominance attracted.

  There was a final fearful symmetry. In 43 bc Augustus had begun by proscribing citizens to be put to death; in the difficult end to his reign, he reverted to attacks on freedom of expression. It is under Augustus that we first hear of 'dangerous' books being burned. The offence of treason against the Roman state became extended to verbal offences of libel and slander against prominent citizens. Such offences, it could be argued, insulted the moral standing of the upper class, a major theme of the new age. It was then an inevitable step to extend the offence to verbal treason against the emperor's person, whether dead or alive. This step became evident under Augustus' successor, Tiberius. When such cases for treason were heard in the Senate or in a court in the emperor's presence, the emperor's attitude during their hearing would compound the outcome of the trial.12 Through Augus­tus' revolution, the upper orders had lost political freedom, while regaining civil peace and stability. But one freedom, at least, was enhanced: their freedom to prosecute each other.

  PART SIX

  An Imperial World

  The strength of the Empire was derived from the devotion of its inhabitants, and that devotion was the result of gratitude

  for the peace which it was Rome's primary business to maintain, for the ordered government of which the monument

  endures in Roman Law and for that liberal attitude to the native population of which the steady extension of the Roman

  franchise is the most notable expression . . . The aristocracy which formed the basis of the administration at home looked

  for help to the aristocrats in the provinces and in a world where education among the many was as backward as the

  means of disseminating news and forming public opinion, the principles of democracy were neither honoured nor observed.

  But the age was not necessarily the worse because ability commanded esteem, nor were the ignorant necessarily the less

  contented for their measure of dependence on the cultured few. Hugh Last, in The Cambridge Ancient History,

  volume XI (1936), 477

  As I see it, the Roman political system facilitated a mo
st intense and ultimately destructive economic exploitation of the great mass of the people, whether slave or free, and it made radical reform impossible. The result was that the propertied class, the men of real wealth, who had deliberately created the system for their own benefit, drained the life-blood from their world and thus destroyed Greco-Roman civilization over a large part of the empire . . . If I were in search of a metaphor to describe the great and growing concentration of wealth in the hands ofthe upper classes, 1 would not incline to anything so innocent and so automatic as drainage: I should want to think in terms of something much more purposive and deliberate - perhaps the vampire bat.

  G. E. M. de Sainte Croix, The Class Stuggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), 502-3

  The Julio-Claudians

  The Senate . . . hopes that all those who were soldiers in the service of our First Citizen (Tiberius) will continue to manifest loyalty and devotion to the imperial house since they know that the safety of our Empire depends on the protection of that house. The Senate believes that it belongs to their concern and duty that among those who command them at any time the greatest authority with them should belong to those who have with the most devoted loyalty honoured the name of the Caesars which gives protection to this city and to the Empire of the Roman people.

  Senate's resolution on Gnaeus Piso, ad 2.0: lines 159-66

  Tiberius was savaged in letters from the king of the Parthians, Artabanus, who accused him of parricide, murders, sloth and

  luxury and warned him to satisfy the intense and most deserved hatred of his fellow citizens by killing himself as soon as

  possible. Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 66.

  In the summer of ad 14 the ageing Augustus left Rome, never to see the city again. One of his purposes has remained highly controversial. Our main ancient sources either suggest or state that he went in the company of only one trusted senator, Paullus Fabius Maximus, to the little island of Planasia to which he had banished his last surviving grandson, the erratic Agrippa Postumus, in ad 7. On their return, first his companion Fabius Maximus, then Augustus himself died without revealing what they had been doing. The 'rumour', as it later seemed to the historian Tacitus, has sometimes been dismissed by modern scholars as a fable. But we happen to know from quite another source that both Augustus and Fabius Maximus were unavailable in Rome in mid-May of this year. At this date, Augustus' adopted grand­son, young Drusus, was being admitted to a highly prestigious Roman priesthood, the Arval Brethren. Its records show that both Augustus and Fabius Maximus voted in absence to admit him.' Contemporaries, then, were quite correct to say that the First Citizen, now seventy-five, and this trusted senator had been away on other business. It is immensely unlikely that both of them were suddenly ill at the time of this one priestly meeting: for that reason alone, Fabius would not have been allowed the very rare honour of voting as a senatorial member in absence. Gossip ran freely on the journey's outcome, even claiming that Augustus had changed his mind and decided to make Agrippa Postumus his successor. Fabius, it was said, had indiscreetly told his wife, thereby costing himself his life. Augustus' wife, Livia, was even alleged to have poisoned old Augustus in order to forestall his change of mind. None of this scandal is at all likely, but the journey itself should be accepted as historical. It is the last dramatic act in Augustus' long marathon of finding and keeping an heir to the new Empire.