The most detailed biography for all our princes is Hurlet 1997, which collects prior bibliography as well. There is no good book-length treatment of Gaius and Lucius, beyond the limited scope of Pollini 1987. For Germanicus, Gallotta 1987 is important. Standard dictionary and encyclopedia articles can provide overviews in English.

Gaius and Lucius Caesar

Gaius and Lucius Caesar were the first-born sons of M. Agrippa and Augustus’ only daughter Julia. The boys were the natural grandsons of Augustus, but when Lucius was born in 17 BCE (three years after Gaius was born in 20 BCE) Augustus adopted them. Raised at Rome the boys were quickly given a place of public prominence, integrated into the composition of the imperial family, and linked to the mythic revivals that characterized the new age. In 13 BCE six-year-old Gaius led the patrician youth in Augustus’ revival of the lusus Troiae, the Trojan games, an ancient equestrian faux combat associated by Vergil (Aen. 5.548–603) with the founding of the city (Dio 54.26; see Freyburger-Galland 1997). The boys are probably the two youths famously found walking with the imperial family in the reliefs on the Ara Pacis (see Hurlet 1997: 114–115 with bibliography in n. 185; Rose 1990 has revived an older view that the figures are foreign princes). In 8 BCE Gaius accompanied Augustus and his stepbrother Tiberius on a trip to Gaul and the Rhine frontier where he was presented to the legions and a donation (congiarium) was made to the soldiers in his name (Dio 55.6). The visit is commemorated on the distributed coins themselves (RIC 12 Augustus 198; see Pollini 1985). Eventually, the growing popularity and prominence of Gaius in particular led to conflict with the future emperor Tiberius, Augustus’ son-in-law, who famously retired to Rhodes in 6 BCE on the eve of Gaius’ reaching adulthood (Dio 55.9; see Levick 1971).

Note on the texts and translations

Readers should begin by looking at the images of each inscription. Next, an exact transcription, called a “diplomatic text,” reproduces the text of each inscription as it now exists; abbreviations are not expanded, errors are not corrected, and no missing text is restored. Sometimes a diplomatic text is a line drawing of the inscription itself, but in the case of longer inscriptions the diplomatic text is given simply as text in all caps. From the diplomatic text, readers can get a better sense of the scope and nature of the surviving text of an inscription without as much editorial intervention, and, therefore, reference to the diplomatic text is necessary to understand and evaluate the corrections and restorations proposed by scholars.

After the diplomatic text, an edited text with a facing page English translation is given. The edited text incorporates current scholarly thinking on corrections and restorations and adds punctuation, capitalization, etc. to aid in readability. The commentary is keyed to the edited text. The English versions do not privilege the original syntax of the translation over clear English. They should be used to understand the meaning rather than the exact grammar and syntax of the Latin. Since there is no consistent scheme used for formatting display copies of Latin legal documents, the formatting of the English translation is designed to aid the reader in understanding the structure of the document rather than to mimic the minimal formatting of the inscriptions.

DPL

By the fifth century BCE Pisa was an Etruscan community on the banks of the Arno River in Northwestern Italy. In the third century BCE the Romans used the city and its port as a naval base against the Ligurians (Livy 21.39) and the Carthaginians but after the war the city lost territory to the new Roman colonies at Luca and Luna. Sometime before the late republic the city became a municipium, or citizen settlement, and before the death of Lucius Caesar, probably in the Triumviral period since it was called Julia rather than Augusta, the city was converted into a colony, becoming formally the Colonia Opsequens Iulia Pisana, probably with a settlement of legionary veterans called coloni Iulienses. Obsequens (propitious) was an epithet borrowed from Venus, patron goddess of the Julian clan. Pisa evidently continued to be quite successful in the early empire (a trove of ships lost in the ancient harbor, now silted-up, were discovered in 1999) although it is only rarely attested in literary sources. Archaeology has not revealed much of the plan or buildings of the ancient city. However, the remains of a theater, an amphitheater, a temple for Vesta, and necropoleis outside the city gates as well as the existence of a temple of Augustus (DPL 1) show that the colony was equipped with the regular urban amenities expected of a prosperous Italian city.

As in most Italian citizen communities in the early principate, the local government at Pisa consisted of a town council and a set of regular magistracies. The town council (senatus or curia) was made up of decuriones, normally one hundred leading citizens selected by co-option, service in a magistracy, or birth. The council oversaw public administration and finances and regulated and advised the magistrates, and maintained relations with Rome and the emperor. The town council, like the senate at Rome, enacted its will primarily through decrees (decreta decurionum), and the inscribed texts commemorating Gaius and Lucius are both display copies of such local decrees.

As discussed in the introduction, part of the significance of the texts concerning Germanicus Caesar is their overlap with the historian Tacitus. Before reading the TS, TH, and SCPP it is, therefore, important to read Tacitus’ account of the end of Germanicus’ life. The relevant sections are provided here.

The translation is that of A. Woodman, The Annals of Tacitus, 2004. Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Book 2

So in front of the fathers he (Tiberius) discussed these things and those concerning Armenia which I recalled above: the tremors in the East could not be settled except by the wisdom of Germanicus, he said, for his own life was declining and that of Drusus had not yet sufficiently matured. Then by a decree of the fathers Germanicus was entrusted with the provinces that are separated by the sea, and, wherever he went, with a greater command than that entrusted to those who held them by lot or on dispatch from the princeps.

But Tiberius had removed from Syria Creticus Silanus, who was connected with Germanicus by marriage (Silanus’ daughter had been betrothed to Nero, the eldest of his children), and had placed in charge Cn. Piso, temperamentally violent and a stranger to compliance, with the innate defiance of his father Piso (who in the civil war helped the resurgence of the party in Africa with the keenest of service against Caesar and then, after following Brutus and Cassius, was allowed to return but refrained from seeking office until he was spontaneously solicited to accept a consulship tendered by Augustus). But besides his father’s spirit he was fired by the nobility and wealth of his wife too, Plancina: he scarcely yielded to Tiberius and looked down on the man’s children as greatly beneath him. Nor did he have any 318 doubt that he had been selected for installation in Syria to curb Germanicus’ hopes. (Certain people believed that secret instructions had been given to him by Tiberius; and without doubt Augusta warned Plancina in womanly rivalry to assail Agrippina.) For the court was divided and disaffected by silent devotion to either Drusus or Germanicus. Tiberius fostered Drusus as being special and of his own blood; love for Germanicus among the rest had been increased by his uncle’s estrangement.