by David Potter
Augustus was also keen to avoid Caesar’s mistake of micromanaging and antagonizing his trusted lieutenants in Rome, and so decided to absent himself from Rome for a while on campaign. Ever prudent, he wanted to avoid taking on a truly dangerous enemy (which for the present ruled out Rome’s nemesis, the dreaded Parthians) but nevertheless wanted to find a suitably worthy opponent to justify the major logistics of raising and moving an army. And so he fixed his gaze on Spain. Spain had been the springboard from which Hannibal had launched his invasion of Italy at the end of the third century BC. After finally ousting their Carthaginian foe, the Romans established two provinces in the country, but had continued to meet significant resistance from the Spaniards. In particular, ever since Pompey had campaigned there in the 70s BC, it had become a hotbed of Pompeian sympathies. With their long history of turbulence and disloyalty to the Caesarian cause, the independent tribes of Spain therefore provided Augustus with a tempting target. With much public fanfare, he duly declared war on them in 27 BC; they proved a tougher nut to crack than he had anticipated, but his generals gained enough ground by 25 BC for Augustus to claim that he had solved a problem that was more than a century and a half old. Even so, it took a further 15 years, and the intervention of such high-profile generals as Agrippa, to bring Spain firmly to heel and integrate it fully within the provincial system.
Essential reforms
By 23 BC, it was becoming clear to Augustus that he needed to effect changes in his mode of governance. Some voices of discontent began to be raised about his tenure of the consulship for every year since 31 BC. He had mooted the idea of replacement (‘suffect’) consuls stepping in during the course of the year, but this did not satisfy the ambitions of aristocrats who still yearned for consular office and the kudos it brought. Augustus’ protracted occupancy of the consulship also placed a major question mark over his claim to have ‘restored’ Republican government in 28 BC.
Following a serious illness, therefore, Augustus surrendered the consulship halfway through the year. Yet this by no means signalled that he was relinquishing his hold on true power. The senate now voted him further honours, including a grant of imperium in Italy, and the imperium maius or ‘superior power’ to that of any provincial governor, as well as confirmation of the tribunicia potestas for life. The subtle interplay between these two roles testifies to Augustus’ political sleight of hand and his keen appreciation of the tenor of public opinion in Rome. While imperium maius handed him effective control over the provinces, the tribunicia potestas equipped him with all the legal authority he needed to administer Rome itself. Playing down the grant of special imperium within Italy, the tribunicia potestas became the symbol of Augustus’ civil authority. Indeed, his reign later came to be dated from when he was first granted this particular power. This underlines the extraordinary nature of the position that Augustus had fashioned for himself: an office originally created to protect the Roman people from the wilful acts of a magistrate had become the defining power of the emperor.
Moreover, in terms of public relations, the title tribunicia potestas was infinitely more palatable to Roman sensibilities than that of dictator, as Sulla and Caesar had styled themselves. As if to underscore this point, Augustus refused the dictatorship at the end of 23 BC when the senate offered it to him to help solve a threatened grain shortage. He was concerned to maintain the illusion that his authority was dependent on the will of the people. This may all have been political theatre, but it was an extremely convincing performance.
Securing the succession
Political theatre of another kind was played out the following year, when a group of senators plotted to kill Augustus. Several of the conspirators were extremely prominent citizens – one was even Maecenas’ brother-in-law – a fact that sent shock waves through the establishment. By this stage, Augustus was 41. Agrippa was possibly a year older and the life expectancy of most Romans did not extend far beyond 50. As bungled as the conspiracy of 22 BC turned out to be, it was a timely reminder to Augustus that he had still not truly ensured the long-term security of his rule or made provisions for a successor. It was clear that he urgently needed to start looking for younger heirs to carry on his legacy.
The system of succession that took shape over the next few years was based on the familiar Roman principle of collegiality. Augustus’ eldest nephew Marcellus (born 42 BC), recently married to his only daughter Julia, had died suddenly in 23 BC. During his own life-threatening illness that same year, Augustus had indicated that Agrippa should succeed him, and now arranged that he should marry Julia, while also promoting the careers of the two sons of Livia by her first marriage. Her elder son, Tiberius (42 BC–AD 37) was earmarked for prominent military responsibilities during the campaign that Augustus was planning to mount in the east.
Rome’s arch-enemy Parthia had recently been torn apart by a dynastic power struggle, and in the course of these upheavals the pretender to the throne had decamped to Roman territory with two sons of the ruling incumbent as hostages. This presented Rome with a golden opportunity to put pressure on Parthia. Augustus and Agrippa headed east, and, after tough diplomatic wrangling, the Parthian king made a number of important concessions in return for his sons’ release. These included officially recognizing the River Euphrates (in present-day Syria and Iraq) as the border between the two empires, granting Rome the power to appoint the king of Armenia – whose realm occupied much of what is now eastern Turkey – and returning military standards captured from Crassus and Antony. The return of the legionary standards was an easy gesture for the Parthians to make, but was of huge symbolic significance to the Romans, who still regarded their loss by the previous generation as a source of profound national shame. Augustus proclaimed the peace that he concluded with Parthia as a great victory, and not without some justification, since it removed at a stroke any potential grounds for Rome having to wage war on its old enemy. No Roman army could possibly have occupied Iraq and Iran, or even a significant portion of that territory, without getting bogged down in endless warfare. There were simply not enough soldiers to control an area that was culturally and politically too complex for the Romans to manage.
Indeed, Augustus avoided imposing direct Roman administration upon many Semitic borderlands of the empire where traditions of Graeco-Roman government, based upon city-states, were wholly alien and liable to stir up local resistance. If Augustus felt that Palestine was better off with Rome’s client king Herod (I) the Great (74–5 BC), then it was obvious that he would not even entertain the thought of sending Roman governors to Iraq.
Back to basics
Returning to Rome in 19 BC, Augustus embarked on a new phase of his reign. Even so, he would still spend most of the next decade away from the capital. Rather than pursue military glory for himself, he was now intent on focusing all his efforts on the moral regeneration of the Roman state by reviving the customs and traditions of the past. At the same time, he cemented his legacy by giving his stepsons free rein to display virtus in war, a vital quality if they were to be presented as worthy successors. Over the next decade, armies under the command of Tiberius and Drusus (38–9 BC), the younger of his stepsons, occupied Switzerland and southern Germany.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Augustus initiated his campaign to clean up both public and private life. In 19 and 18 BC respectively, he introduced legislation to expel ‘unworthy’ men from the senate and to regulate the marital and reproductive habits of the city’s upper classes. New laws were introduced governing marriage, and draconian measures were brought in to curb sexual offences. One law was specifically geared towards encouraging the élite to produce more children: men whose wives bore three or more children were given preferment in public office. By contrast, those who refused to marry were penalized, including being cut off from their inheritance. Another piece of legislation made adultery a crime for both sexes. The penalties it imposed were harsh: any man who refused to divorce a wife who was having an affair could be charged as a pimp. M
any Romans resented this intrusion of the state into the realm of the domus, but these measures were important symbols of an imperial commitment to a more orderly society, and thus helped consolidate the new regime.
Around the same time, in 17 BC, Rome celebrated the 800th anniversary of its founding. The lyric poet Horace – one of several writers who flourished in a period of extraordinary literary achievement, the Latin Golden Age, which began in the late Republic and ended with Augustus’ death – wrote a poem marking the occasion. This festival was the culmination of many years of work restoring temples and other public buildings that had fallen into disrepair. The years of civil war were decried as a period in which immorality had been allowed to run rampant, the cults of the gods had been ignored and personal expenditure on private luxury had replaced the pursuit of the common good. Augustus also staged a number of extraordinary spectacles for the Roman people and funded extensive construction of new venues for shows. For example, a huge new theatre was built and named after his deceased nephew Marcellus; the Circus Maximus, where the hugely popular chariot races were held, was improved and the first permanent amphitheatre for gladiatorial shows was constructed by Statilius Taurus. Taurus’ magnanimity was part of a trend whereby prominent citizens commissioned lavish public works. This had begun in 39 BC, with Asinius Pollio’s patronage of the first public library in Rome, while Agrippa later built a gleaming new portico in which he encouraged members of the Roman élite to display their art collections. Augustus pointedly refrained from having his own name associated with new buildings because he wanted to emphasize that this investment in the welfare of the Roman people was a communal enterprise. Likewise, in financing the restoration of temples he made sure that he did not efface the record of the original builders – further demonstration of his interest in and reverence for the Roman past.
In 12 BC, Augustus assumed the role of pontifex maximus, celebrating this new honour by erecting a massive new Altar of Peace by the banks of the Tiber, near to the spot where he had already built his own mausoleum. Rome was now a very different place, bearing out Augustus’ proud boast that he had found a city of brick and transformed it into one of marble. The many new public buildings had transformed the cityscape, while Roman possessions overseas had been enlarged by conquests in the Alps and Germany. Yet this new civic and imperial pride came at a price: Augustus now presided over a state where nonconformity was viewed with increasing suspicion.
The reluctant heir
As Rome changed, so too did the regime. Agrippa died in March, 12 BC, leaving the new generation as heirs apparent. Agrippa’s widow Julia was remarried to Tiberius, who was forced to divorce Agrippa’s daughter, whom he seems genuinely to have loved. The new marriage was not a success; the grim Tiberius was ill-matched to a younger woman who was notorious for her sexual promiscuity. In 9 BC, Drusus died when he fell from his horse while on campaign, and Augustus began to invest his hopes for the succession in two of the sons (Gaius and Lucius) that Julia had borne during her marriage to Agrippa. Tiberius, to whom the burden of military command of new campaigns in the Balkans now fell, became increasingly restive. In 7 BC, thoroughly disaffected, he announced that he was withdrawing from public life and retiring to Rhodes. His departure marked the start of a difficult decade.
With advancing years, Augustus seems to have become very hard to live with. Even when he and his wife Livia were both present in Rome, he continued to communicate with her by letter. A man of ostentatiously simple tastes, he delighted in dice games that the serious and academically minded Tiberius scorned. He was also shameless in his favouritism, doting on his grandsons but spurning Drusus’ son Claudius (10 BC–AD 54), who stammered and had a club foot and whom Augustus banned from showing his face in public. He was also adamant that a woman’s place was at home behind the spinning wheel, and his attempts to impose his abstemious lifestyle on those around him led to a serious rift with his daughter Julia. In 2 BC, just after her sons had been dispatched on campaign, Julia was found to have engaged in dubious activities with several members of the aristocracy. One of her misdemeanours was an orgy in the Forum, while there was also some suspicion of her involvement in a nascent plot to kill her father. She was banished into exile on an island.
Further crises rocked the state with the sudden deaths on campaign of Julia’s two sons, and Augustus’ preferred heirs, in AD 2 and 4. The reluctant Tiberius was recalled to Rome and installed on the Palatine Hill. Two years later he reemerged as the heir apparent, was shipped off to fight in Germany, and then to command a major military operation in the Balkans (Illyricum), where recently conquered tribes had risen in revolt. In AD 8 the palace was shaken by another conspiracy, this time involving the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, also named Julia, and her brother, known as Agrippa Postumus since he was born after his father’s death. Agrippa Postumus had already been sent into internal exile for allegedly deranged behaviour (open criticism of his grandfather seems to have been part of it), and was now dispatched to an island. Julia was found to be pregnant by someone other than her husband. Augustus saw to it that the child was killed and that she was exiled.
At the same time, Augustus lashed out at Rome’s most brilliant living poet, Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–AD 17), whose works included a poem on the art of love, which had been in circulation for some seven years but which Augustus now suddenly denounced as offensive. To be sure, Ovid’s poem celebrated extramarital love and also contained some wonderfully witty send-ups of Augustan propaganda – suggesting, for example that imperial processions provided excellent opportunities to meet lovers. But that was not enough, in and of itself, to cause the poet’s downfall – he refers also to an error that angered the emperor. We don’t know what that error was, but we do know the result: Ovid finished his life in Tomis, a city on the Black Sea coast of what is now Romania.
A military catastrophe
In AD 6, Augustus introduced his last, but arguably one of his most important, reforms when he set up a new treasury to guarantee retirement bonuses to soldiers who had completed 20 years of service. Funded initially by a large gift from Augustus’ private fortune, and thereafter by taxation (including an inheritance tax that was deeply unpopular with senators), this measure was the final step in creating a professional career structure for private soldiers and ensuring the army’s loyalty to the imperial house. In Tiberius, the army also now had a skilled commander, supported by a cadre of competent senior officers who all owed their positions to the regime. However, this period is chiefly known for one of the most devastating defeats in Roman military history, a disaster attributed to the strategic incompetence and naivety of the commanding officer. In AD 7, Quinctilius Varus, who was related to Augustus by marriage, was sent to govern the province of Germania, a region between the Rhine and Elbe rivers that Drusus had recently fought hard to subdue. In AD 9 Varus was deceived into believing intelligence supplied by a supposedly loyal Germanic chieftain named Arminius, who commanded an auxiliary unit. Varus was lured into leaving his camp and withdrawing his three legions to the Rhine to avoid being cut off for the winter by a rebellion among the tribes. Arminius then sprang his trap, ambushing and destroying the entire Roman force in the Teutoburg Forest.
Written accounts of the catastrophe give quite different versions of what happened, and what was happening in Germany at the time. We are fortunate, then, that in recent years archaeology has provided new evidence that has helped clarify the record. At the site of Waldgirmes in the modern German state of Hesse north of the Rhine, where the Romanstyle city in the process of development at this time was abandoned within a few years, we see both how serious the Romans were about establishing a province north of the Rhine and how Varus’ disaster did actually cause a major change in Roman policy. On a more specific level, part of the battlefield, long lost to history – where Varus’ legions (the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth) were slaughtered in AD 9 – was found north of the German city of Osnabrück in the early 1990s. Its disc
overy has helped historians gain a more accurate impression of how the engagement unfolded, and puts into context the various sketchy Roman accounts of the battle. Traces of German fieldworks have been identified on the Kalkriese, a hill bordering on the road that the Romans were taking south when they were ambushed. Arminius and his tribes launched repeated attacks on the Romans from this vantage point in the course of a three-day running battle. The Roman infantry was badly hampered by being forced to fight on swampy, heavily wooded terrain poorly suited to their tactics; the Romans’ fighting units could not manoeuvre successfully, and were split up and picked off by the Germans.
The disaster in Germany hit the regime hard. Augustus is reported to have wandered the palace banging his head against the walls and crying ‘Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ He seldom appeared in public after the catastrophe and his health was plainly beginning to fail. Tiberius recovered the situation to some extent, reinforcing the frontier on the Rhine before handing over command to his nephew Germanicus, who was tasked with retrieving the standards that had been lost with Varus. The three legions, however, were never replaced. Augustus and Tiberius seem to have agreed that the period of expansion was over and that the empire should remain within boundaries marked by the Rhine and Danube rivers in Europe, the Euphrates in the east, and the Sahara in North Africa.