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The Fabrication of Tradition: Horace, Augustus and the Secular Games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

P.J. Davis
P.J. Davis*
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
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Extract

      Now, at this season when selected girls
      And the boys who are about to venture upon them,
      Though still in bud, sing what will please London…

(C.H. Sisson, 1974)

Rome's first emperor proved remarkably successful in shaping a positive image for himself in his own and subsequent eras. Here was a man who came to power through that most criminal of means, through victory in civil war, and yet managed to persuade his own and succeeding generations of his right to rule. How did the enthusiastic proscriber of the innocent and the brutal destroyer of Perusia transform himself into the sublime Augustus? Here was one of Rome's great militarists, a man who, by one reckoning, doubled the size of the Roman empire. How could this warlord be perceived as a ‘prince of peace’? One answer to these questions is that this transformation of perception, both ancient and modern, was achieved through die emperor's promotion of a complex of ideas designed to accomplish precisely this perceptual shift, a complex of ideas which we variously call ‘Augustan ideology’, ‘Augustan discourse’ or even ‘Augustan cultural thematics’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 2001 , pp. 111 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2003

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References

1. Sisson, C.H., Carmen Saeculare: An Imitation in Carne-Ross, D.S. and Haynes, Kenneth, Horace in English (Harmondsworth 1996), 260Google Scholar.

2. For his behaviour after the capture of Perusia see Suet. Aug. 15; for his enthusiasm for proscription see Suet. Aug. 27. Appian claims that 300 senators and 2000 equestrians were proscribed by the members of the second triumvirate (4.5). For an assessment of the behaviour of the young Octavian see Seneca De dementia 1.9.

3. See Hornblower, S. & Spawforth, A. (eds)., Oxford Classical Dictionary 3 (Oxford 1996)Google Scholar, 217 col. 2: ‘The incorporations of this period doubled the size of the provincial empire.’

4. See, for example, Lewis, N. and Reinhold, M., Roman Civilization Selected Readings Vol. 1: The Republic and the Augustan Age 3 (New York 1990), 573Google Scholar.

5. In this paper I use the adjective ‘Augustan’ either to denote a period (27 BCE-14 CE) or as the equivalent of ‘Augustus’ in the possessive case. I do not use it to mean ‘pro-Augustan’. The phrase ‘Augustan cultural thematics’ has been coined by Galinsky, Karl, ‘Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Augustan Cultural Thematics’, in Hardie, Philip, Barchiesi, Alessandro & Hinds, Stephen (eds.), Ovidian Transformations: Essays on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and its Reception (Cambridge 1999), 103–11Google Scholar. He prefers this term as a less controversial alternative to ‘ideology’.

6. For recent statements of a straightforwardly pro-Augustan view see Galinsky, Karl, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton 1996), 121–25Google Scholar, and the introduction to David West’s translation of Virgil, , The Aeneid (Harmondsworth 1990), ix–xGoogle Scholar. More complex views are widely held. See e.g. Griffin, Jasper, ‘Augustus and the Poets: Caesar qui cogere posset’, in Millar, F. & Segal, E. (eds.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford 1984), 189–218Google Scholar, at 213 (‘he [Aeneas] is presented by Virgil in a light which brings out both the triumph and the cost of empire’), and Tarrant, R.J., ‘Poetry and Power: Virgil’s Poetry in Contemporary Context’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge 1997), 180Google Scholar (‘it is no longer possible to read the Aeneid as straightforwardly panegyrical’). The most recent statement of the anti-Augustan position is by Thomas, Richard F., Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. This is not to deny the polysemous character of both visual works of art and religious festivals. On this issue see Eisner, J., ‘Cult and Sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Paris Augustae’, JRS 81 (1991), 50–61Google Scholar, esp. 51ff. See also Beard, Mary and Henderson, John, Classical Art: From Greece to Rome (Oxford 2001), 170Google Scholar, who point out the possibility of a subversive reading of the temple of Mars Ultor (a possibility suggested by Ovid Tr. 2.296). However, I do believe that one function of the critic is to attempt to decode the intentions of artists or patrons. For argument in defence of this position in relation to works of literature see Davis, P.J., ‘“Since my Part has Been Well Played”: Conflicting Evaluations of Augustus’, Ramus 28 (1999), 1–15Google Scholar.

8. Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988)Google Scholar, 109f.

9. Zosimus, 2.1–6.

10. Dio, 54.18.2. According to Zosimus, the celebrations took place in 509, 348, 249 and 149. For discussion of the reliability of these dates see Weinstock, S., Divus Julius (Oxford 1971), 191–97Google Scholar. Beard, M., North, J. and Price, S., Religions of Rome Volume 1: A History (Cambridge 1998), 71Google Scholar and 111, accept that the festival had actually been held only twice before, in 249 (71) and 149 (111).

11. See Moretti, L., ‘Frammenti vecchi e nuovi del commentario dei Ludi Secolari del 17 A.C, Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 55–56 (1982–1984), 361–379Google Scholar, at 366.

12. Moretti (n.ll above), 366.

13. Moretti (n.ll above), 370; at 375 Moretti notes that in the list the Capitoline triad (words missing) is immediately followed by Apollo, Latona and Diana.

14. Pighi, B., De Ludis Saecularibus Populi Romani Quiritium (Amsterdam 1965), 108Google Scholar.

15. Pighi(n.l4 above), 109f.

16. Pighi (n.14 above), HOf. This part of the festival is also recorded on coins. See Sutherland, C.H.V. and Carson, R.A.G., The Roman Imperial Coinage Vol. 1 (London 1984), 67Google Scholar (no. 350); pi. 6 shows Augustus, seated on a stool inscribed LVD(i) S(aeculares), giving out suffimenta.

17. Pighi (n.14 above), 11 If.

18. Pighi (n.14 above), 112.

19. Pighi (n.14 above), 112f.

20. Pighi (n.14 above), 113–19.

21. At RG 21.2 Augustus notes that he, with Agrippa as his colleague, was magister of the XV uiri.

22. Zosimus 2.6; Phlegon, Fragmenta, in Jacoby, FrGrHist Vol. 2A, 1189–91Google Scholar (257 fr. 37, lines 30ff.). For translation of the oracle as reported by Phlegon see Hansen, William (ed.), Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels (Exeter 1996)Google Scholar, 56f.

23. Dio 54.17: . Scholars rightly reject Suetonius’ date for the editing of the Sibylline books, i.e. after Augustus’ becoming pontifex maximus in 12 (Aug. 31). For the connection between the Sibylline books and the temple of Palatine Apollo before 17 see, for example, Tibullus 2.5.17f.

24. Dio 54.17; Suet. Aug. 31.1

25. For details of the relationship between Augustus’ house and the temple of Apollo Palatinus see Gros, P., ‘Apollo Palatinus’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae 1: A-C (Rome 1993), 54–57Google Scholar. Indeed Gros speaks of the complex as designed to create confusion between the house of the princeps and the house of the god: ‘Le sanctuaire apollinien du Paiatin, concu pour établir une confusion entre la résidence princière et la demeure du dieu protecteur du Princeps…’ (57). Hence Ovid could address Palatine Apollo as Phoebe domestice (Met. 15.865).

26. Crook, J.A., ‘Political History 30 BC to AD 14’, in Bowman, A.K., Champlin, E. & Lintott, A. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History2 Volume X: The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C.-A.D. 69 (Cambridge 1996), 77Google Scholar.

27. Beard, North & Price (n.10 above), 205. That the oracle was composed specifically for the festival is widely held. See, for example, Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford 1957), 365Google Scholar: ‘Moreover, we possess the full text of the oracle which the Sibyl was kind enough to produce precisely at the moment when such a manifestation was required by Augustus and his learned advisers.’ Fraenkel cites in support Diels, Nilsson and Altheim.

28. Zosimus 2.6. Coarelli, Filippo, ‘Note sui Ludi Saeculares’, in Spectacles sportifs et scéniques dans le monde Étrusco-Italique: Actes de la table ronde organisee par l’Équipe de recherches étrusco-italiques de l’UMR 126 (CNRS, Paris) et l’École franÇaise de Rome, Rome, 3–4 Mai 1991 (Rome 1993), 211–45Google Scholar, treats Augustan invention of the cycle of 110 years as an established fact (‘un fatto accertato’, 215).

29. Beard, North & Price (n.10 above), 205, wrongly report Varro as supporting the Augustan position. See Pighi (n.14 above), 37f. = Censorinus DN 8: cum multa portenta fierent et mums ac turns, quae sunt inter portam Collinam et Esquilinam, de caelo tacta essent et ideo libros Sibyllinos XV uiri adissent, renuntiarunt uti Diti patri et Proserpinae ludi Tarentini in campo Martio fierent tribus noctibus et hostiae furuae immolarentur, utique ludi centesimo quoque anno fierent (‘When many portents were occurring and the wall and the tower between the Colline gate and the Es-quiline had been struck by lightning and for that reason the Board of Fifteen had approached the Sibylline books, they reported that Tarentine games should be held to father Dis and Proserpina on the Campus Martius on three nights and that dark-coloured victims should be sacrificed, and that the games should take place in each hundredth year’). The passage of Varro cited by Augustine at CD 22.28 need not refer to the Secular Games.

30. Livy fr. 63.1 as reported in Pighi (n.14 above), 38. Coarelli (n.28 above, 215) notes that late-republican sources were unanimous in recording a cycle of 100 years.

31. Gagé, J. (ed.), Res Gestae Diui Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Antiocheno Latinis et Apolloniensi Graecis (Paris 1935)Google Scholar: (‘I held the festival called secular which occurs every 100 years’, 22.10f.).

32. Zosimus 2.4.2.

33. As Taylor, L.R., ‘New Light on the History of the Secular Games’, AJP 55 (1934), 101–20Google Scholar, at 105, points out. The new dates were: 456, 346, 236, 126. Coarelli (n.28 above, 215) agrees, concluding that the games of 456, 346, 236 and 126 were apocryphal and that this cycle was probably invented by Ateius Capito.

34. Pighi (n.14 above), 110, line 25: centesimo et d[ecimo anno …]).

35. As Taylor (n.33 above, 103f.) observes. She cites Zosimus 2.1–6, Livy Per. 49, Varro ap. Cens. 17.8, Verrius Flaccus ap. Pseudo-Aero, Scholia in Horatium CS 8, Val. Max. 2.4.5.

36. Val. Max. 2.4.5 has the same stories concerning Valesius and Publicola. He notes that Publicola was the first consul.

37. As Putnam, M.C.J., Artifices of Eternity: Horace’s Fourth Book of Odes (Ithaca 1986), 16Google Scholar, points out: ‘The resultant combination of peace, both abroad and civil, with an attempt at the moral regeneration of Roman citizenry, created an obviously appropriate moment to announce, with grand public display, that Rome was on the threshold of a renewed golden age.’

38. Weinstock, S., Divus Julius (Oxford 1971), 17Google Scholar.

39. Suet. Aug. 1.1; Weinstock (n.38 above), 14.

40. Livy 4.29.7; Weinstock (n.38 above), 12.

41. Val. Max. 1.5.7.

42. Suet. Aug. 70.

43. Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988), 50Google Scholar.

44. Zanker (n.43 above), 68f.

45. Zanker (n.43 above), 85.

46. Zanker (n.43 above), 240. Cf. Prop. 2.31.15f.; Plin. Nat. 36.25 (Apollo), 36.32 (Diana), 36.24 (Latona).

47. Pighi (n.14 above), 116f. The line referring to the pregnant sow is missing from the description of the sacrifice but it is referred to in Augustus’ prayer.

48. See also Macrobius Saturnalia 1.12.20: quod sus praegnans ei mactatur, quae hostia propria est terrae (‘because a pregnant sow is sacrificed to her, which is the appropriate victim for earth’).

49. Cf. Fasti 4.633.

50. Agricultural fecundity is of course a major theme in Augustan art. See Zanker (n.43 above), 172–83.

51. See Treggiari, S., Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniugesfrom the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford 1991), 60Google Scholar.

52. Pighi (n.14 above), 115.

53. Pighi (n.14 above), 116.

54. The same concern for the promotion of the family as an institution is manifested on the Ara Pacis. Apparently modelled on the Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon, the Augustan frieze is distinguished from its Attic model primarily by its representation of family groups. As Kleiner points out, this is ‘astonishing when viewed against the background of Roman Republican art, but it is thoroughly consistent with the social policies of Augustus’. Kleiner, D.E.E., ‘The Great Friezes of the Ara Pacis Augustae: Greek Sources, Roman Derivatives, and Augustan Social Policy’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, Antiquité 90 (1978), 753–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 772. See also Zanker (n.43 above), 158f.

55. Pighi (n.14 above), 113f.

56. If these books are the same as those referred to in Moretti’s fragment A (‘ant[i]queis libreis’, Moretti [n.11 above], 366) they may well be, as Moretti suggests, commentaries of the XV uiri or even the Annales Maximi.

57. As Beard, North & Price (n.10 above, 205) observe. Although these words are missing from the account of the Augustan festival, they are plausibly restored by editors on the basis of the Severan Acta.

58. The theatres of Marcellus and Balbus were not completed until 13.

59. Pighi (n. 14 above), 114: ludique noctu, sacrificio [co]nfecto, sunt commissi in scaena quoi theatrum adiectum nonfuit, nullis positis sedilibus.

60. Pighi (n.14 above), 115: deinde ludi Latini, in th[ea]tro ligneo quod erat constitutum in Campo s[ecu]ndum Tiberim, sunt commissi., ibid. 116: ludi ut pridie facti sunt. Pompey’s theatre was used during the seven days of honorary games after the festival proper.

61. Syme, R., Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939), 382Google Scholar, notes that Sentius Saturninus was deputy-master of the college.

62. Pighi (n. 14 above), 111.

63. As Beard, North & Price (n.10 above, 202) observe. They claim that the formula is an editorial restoration. It is at line 97, but not at line 99 (CIL 6.2.4.3241). It is used in On Agriculture (134 [twice], 139, 141 [twice]).

64. Oliensis, E., Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge 1998), 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Oliensis at 149 argues that Horace’s support of Augustus ‘does not mean that Horace’s poems are not open to “resistant” readings but that such readings must be undertaken against the grain’.

65. Oliensis (n.64 above), 152.

66. Fraenkel (n.27 above), 378.

67. Putnam, M.C.J., Horace’s Carmen Saeculare: Ritual Magic and the Poet’s Art (New Haven 2000), 94Google Scholar.

68. The temple of Palatine Apollo was the first temple of Apollo to be built within the city’s sacred boundary, the pomerium (Asc. Tog. 81). The temple of Apollo Medicus Sosianus, first dedicated in 431, seems to have been restored by Gaius Sosius in the 30s BCE. The temple’s anniversary was changed under Augustus to coincide with the emperor’s birthday (Claridge, Amanda, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide [Oxford 1998], 245–47Google Scholar). Sosius was one of the Board of Fifteen presiding over the Secular Games.

69. As Feeney, Denis, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts and Beliefs (Cambridge 1998), 34Google Scholar, points out: ‘The eclipse of the old Capitoline deities by the Palatine gods of the princeps is most remarkable, and it has been exposed more nakedly in ten minutes of singing than it had been in three days of ritual action.’

70. Prop. 2.31.11. For this point see Hardie, P., ‘Vt pictura poiesis? Horace and the Visual Arts’, in Rudd, N. (ed.), Horace 2000: A Celebration. Essays for the Bimillennium (Bristol 1993), 120–39Google Scholar, at 125f.

71. Zanker (n.43 above), 33.

72. Zanker, P., ‘Der Apollontempel auf dem Palatin: Ausstattung und politische Sinnbeziige nach der Schlacht von Actium’, in de Fine Licht, Kjeld (ed.), Città e architettura nella Roma imperiale: Atti del seminario del 27 Ottobre 1981 nel 25° anniversario dell’Accademia di Danimarca (Odense 1983), 21–40Google Scholar, at 33.

73. This is true whether authors associated the title ‘Lucina’ with Diana or Juno. See, for example, Ovid Fasti 2.450, 3.255, 6.39; Pomponius Porphyrio on Horace Carm. 3.22.4; Servius on Georgics 3.60, Aeneid 2.610; Varro L.L. 5.69.

74. The word is used at Ovid Am. 2.13.21, Met. 9.283, and Plin. Nat. 25.73. The use of the phrase lenis…Ilithyia in Amores 2.13 (on the subject of abortion) is more likely to allude to Horace than vice versa.

75. I have borrowed the phrase ‘female yokemates’ from Lee, Guy, Horace: Odes and Carmen Saeculare (Leeds 1998)Google Scholar. The use of iugare to mean ‘unite in marriage’ was still new, the only previous instances being Cat. 64.21 and Virg. Aen. 1.345.

76. Putnam (n.67 above), 61–64.

77. The only examples I have been able to find are: Tac. Ann. 15.5 (super petenda Armenia et firmanda pace), 15.24 (super optinenda Armenia), Amm. 14.7.12 (super adimenda uita praefecto) and Digest 28.1.20.3.1 (quae…diximus super prohibendis testimoniis).

78. Although Putnam (n.67 above), 74f., is right to point out the connection between castus Aeneas and the pueri casti of line 6, it seems odd to speak of Virgil’s Aeneas as being sexually chaste given the events of Aeneid 4.

79. As Putnam (n.67 above), 80, points out: ‘The new Aeneas, as Horace would have us imagine the emperor, both absorbs and puts into practice the ethical inheritance of Anchises in a way that Virgil does not allow his hero fully to implement in the course of his epic.’

80. I would like to thank Rhiannon Evans for her comments on an earlier draft of this paper.