Caesar’s Heir Asserts Himself

Caesar once, after a blitzkrieg campaign, famously claimed that “I came, I saw, I conquered” (veni, vidi, vici). Octavian’s lightning debut on the Roman scene, when one looks at it in retrospect, may seem marked by similar success: entering Rome in May of 44 BC, he became the youngest consul in Roman history a mere sixteen months later, in August of 43. These months, however, are instructive not for their outcome, which was only the beginning of even greater challenges, but for amply illustrating that this outcome was anything but preordained. It could easily have been different because the amount of variables involved was immense. They were a mosaic of calculations and miscalculations, steps and missteps, sudden vicissitudes that required instinctive response, and both human actors and turns of events that were not susceptible – there and then – to the kind of careful analysis that is afforded to historians later. Certainly, a major reason Octavian prevailed was his determination. At the same time, he was at the mercy of circumstances that were not easily controlled.

After the Ides

What was the situation like after Caesar’s death? Who were the major players who could influence events? We can begin with Brutus and Cassius. As Shakespeare’s Antony said, they were honorable men – denizens of Cyprus, whom Brutus charged 48 percent interest on loans, might have had a different perspective – but their action exemplified the shortsighted mindset typical of their class: they had no constructive program whatsoever. Happy days would simply return after Caesar was out of the way. In essence, we are looking at a major reason both for the failure of the Republic and the failure of their coup. Caesar was dead, but the problems that had beset the Roman Republic for several decades did not die with him. In Rome, the urban plebs, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, continued to be a volatile mass, even though or precisely because they were on the dole. The army of some 500,000 had gotten used to fighting civil wars as much as foreign opponents, and most of the soldiers had greater allegiance to their commanders, who could deliver the goods, than to the res publica, the commonwealth. Further, Rome had long ceased to be a small city-state on the Tiber and could not be governed as if it still were.

“As Augustus’ public fortune had been successful, so that of his household was unfortunate,” intones Tacitus in his account of the recall from exile, under Tiberius, of Decimus Silanus, one of lovers of the younger Julia, Augustus’ granddaughter (Ann. 3.24.3). Both ancient writers and modern academics are fond of such dichotomies and there is certainly some truth to Tacitus’ statement. Its stark absolutes, however, need to be given more contours; we have seen, for instance, that even Augustus’ public life was not a simple sequence of benign Fortune smiling on him, but a continuing series of challenges, tests, and ongoing exertions. The physical setting of this chapter, Augustus’ house (not to be identified with the current “House of Augustus” on display), itself provides an appropriate perspective: the Roman upper-class house combined public and private functions. That is all the truer of Augustus’ residence because, as we have seen, it incorporated the public cult of Vesta and her shrine.

We can connect this theme with the truism that our greatest strengths often are also our greatest liabilities. While Augustus’ unrelenting persistence had much to do with his success in public life, it also shattered the fortunes – emotional, psychological, and physical – of some of his closest family members. Pursuit of happiness for them was not Augustus’ objective. Instead, they were shuffled around as pawns in a dynastic game that took its toll on them and him. Amid all this, life went on with its usual contradictions: our sources stress Augustus’ penchant for wit, humor, and hilarity – Macrobius offers a Top Eighteen list (Sat. 2.4) – while, at the same time, family members were torn asunder and some of them rotted in dismal exile, being deprived of human contact and more. Not all, of course: he was close to others and they were close to him. Here, Fate could cast its dark shadows as several of them died at an early age. Welcome, then, to the private world of Augustus, which was inextricably intertwined with his public one.

Preface

The story of Augustus’ life is as stunning as his achievements. Frail and only eighteen years old, he stepped on the stage of history when Caesar, slain on the Ides of March of 44 BC, named him, his grandnephew then known as Octavius, as his heir and posthumously adopted him. If the young man had followed the counsel of his mother and stepfather and refused to accept the will, history would have taken a different course and this book (and many others) would not have been written. He had no résumé to speak of at the time, yet some thirteen years later he defeated Antony and Cleopatra and, in his own words, had “power over all things.” He became the sole ruler of Rome’s Mediterranean empire and profoundly reshaped it and its culture. In the process he reinvented himself from a murderous warlord who took no prisoners to the model of an effective leader who gave Rome stability for almost two centuries. No question, then, that he is a key figure not only of classical antiquity but also of world history.

Given his tumultuous ascent to power, the range of his actions and policies, his immense impact, and the many sides of his personality, unanimity of opinion is the last thing we should expect, let alone wish, from biographers and historians, whether on the myriad of individual issues or on his overall attainments. Not waiting for others, he presented the latter, with his own perspectives, in the most monumental inscription from Roman times, the Res Gestae. It is not an autobiography – the one that he wrote has not survived – and the focus is not on personal details; his wife Livia, for instance, is not mentioned, although she was a great influence on his life.

Death of an Emperor

“So Augustus fell sick and died,” writes Dio (56.30). Of course, no respectable biographer, ancient or modern, would be content with such a shocking display of brevity, and Dio was not either. The death of a legend, and especially a legend in his own time, called for more detail and drama. It was supplied in ample doses; most writers, for instance, reach into the usual grab bag of omens similar to those that, retrospectively, presaged his birth, and the procedure makes for nice bookends of his life. Besides, hooting owls and thunderbolts, for example, handily negotiate the space between the grossly incredible and the merely humdrum.

When we sift through the accounts especially of Suetonius, Dio, Tacitus, and Velleius, we can arrive at a reasonably accurate reconstruction that stays clear of biases such as Tacitus’ usual demonization of Livia. In August of AD 14, Augustus sent Tiberius to Illyricum, the territory of the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia (see Map 1), to “strengthen the peace” there. He planned to accompany him as far south as Beneventum and also wanted to take in some athletic contests in Naples. On the way, he fell sick – precisely because diarrhea is so banal, it sounds authentic – and took a break of a few days on Capri. According to Suetonius (Aug. 98), it became the occasion for tangibly promoting the mix, endemic to Roman culture, of Greek and Roman: “He distributed togas to the Greeks and Greek cloaks (pallia) to the Romans; insisting that the Romans should speak Greek and dress like Greeks, and that the Greeks should do the opposite.” Ever the jovial host that we know from the Palatine, he presided over a lively dinner party where the young guests had a great time and Augustus gleefully took part in the general merriment (p. 139). He also joked about some events on the island and teased Tiberius’ astrologer. No gloomy premonitions here.