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‘Since My Part has Been Well Played’: Conflicting Evaluations of Augustus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

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

In his Life of Augustus Suetonius records that just before his death the emperor requested that his appearance be made right, and that he then spoke some lines of Greek verse:

petito speculo capillum sibi comi ac malas labantes corrigi praecepit et admissos amicos percontatus, ecquid iis uideretur mimum uitae commode transegisse, adiecit et clausulam:

ἐπεὶ δὲ πάνυ καλῶς πέπαισται, δότε κρότον

καὶ πάντες ἡμᾶς μετὰ χαρᾶς προπέμψατε

(Suet. Div. Aug. 99)

Asking for a mirror, he ordered that his hair be done and that his drooping jaws be set straight. And having summoned his friends, he asked whether he seemed to them to have played life's farce adequately and added this ending:

Since my part has been well played, give me applause

And all of you dismiss us with a kind farewell.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2000

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References

1. A request for applause is found at the end of Menander’s Dyskolos, Samia, Sikyonios and in frag. 771. See Gomme, A.W. & Sandbach, F.H., Menander: A Commentary (Oxford 1973), 288Google Scholar.

2. rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli, RG 34.1. For the text of RG 1 have used Brunt, P.A. & Moore, J.M., Res Gestae Diui Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus (Oxford 1967Google Scholar). I have also consulted Gagé, J. (ed.), Res Gestae Diui Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Antiocheno Latinis et Apolloniensi Graecis (Paris 1935Google Scholar).

3. I prefer the term ‘pro-Augustan’ to ‘Augustan’, because if the opposition is stated as ‘Augustan’ versus ‘anti-Augustan’ then ‘Augustan’ becomes privileged as the normative term. On this see Barchiesi, A., The Poet and the Prince: Ovid and Augustan Discourse, tr. Crowley, L.-A. (Berkeley 1997), 6Google Scholar.

4. Kennedy, D.F., ‘“Augustan” and “Anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London 1992), 26–58Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, T. Habinek’s description of the paper as ‘a justly celebrated essay’ (The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity and Empire in Ancient Rome [Princeton 1998], 167Google Scholar). Sharrock, A.R., ‘Ovid and the Politics of Reading’, MD 33 (1995), 97–122Google Scholar, concludes her excellent paper which offers ‘a commitedly anti-Augustan reading’ by asserting that her paper in a sense legitimises Augustan authority. See also the remarks of O’Gorman, Ellen, ‘Love and the Family: Augustus and Ovidian Elegy’, Arethusa 30 (1997), 103–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 104f. So far only Barchiesi expresses caution: ‘I am convinced that the field has more of a future than Kennedy himself allows us to foresee’ (n.3 above, 6 n.6)—though even he calls the paper ‘a watershed in the discussion’ (84 n.7) and ‘critical’ (272 n.19).

6. Kennedy (n.4 above), 41 (emphasis original).

7. As Yavetz remarks, Z., ‘It is essential to remember that the Res Gestae was intended as a record for future generations, to be put up in public only after his deàth’ (‘The Res Gestae and Augustus’ Public Image’, in Millar, F. & Segal, E. [eds.], Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects [Oxford 1984], 15Google Scholar).

8. Suetonius, Div. Aug. 101.4.

9. Cf. RG 35.2.

10. The actual eulogy was delivered by Tiberius, according to Dio (56.34).

11. See, for example, Goodyear, F.R.D., The Annals of Tacitus Vol. 1. (Annals 1. 1-54) (Cambridge 1972), 155Google Scholar: ‘T. depreciates matters on which Augustus prides himself in the Res Gestae.’

12. As Goodyear (n.11 above, 156) notes: ‘In this “favourable” assessment we find as much apologia as laudation.’

13. Cf. Lucan’s Brutus’ accusation that the Senate, consuls and other nobles are about to fight under Pompey duce priuato (‘the leadership of a private citizen’, BC 2.278) and Domitius’ stress on his army’s legitimacy: his soldiers bear arma…/non priuata (‘arms not private’, 2.532f.).

14. For this point see Haverfield, F., ‘Four notes on Tacitus’, JRS 2 (1912), 198Google Scholar.

15. For the force of trucido see OLD s.v. 2: ‘to kill (human beings) in a savage or wholesale manner, slaughter, butcher, massacre’, trucidauerunt is the reading favoured by both Brunt and Moore (1967) and Gagé (1935).

16. At 1.10.4 (nee domesticis abstinebatur, ‘nor did they spare his private life’) Tacitus clearly stops using RG, for, as Ramage, E., The Nature and Purpose of Augustus’ Res Gestae (Stuttgart 1987), 14Google Scholar, notes: ‘In the RG no aspect of his personal life or outlook and no member of his family make any appearance, except as they relate to the emperor’s activities as political, military, and religious leader of the Roman state.’

17. Kennedy (n.4 above), 40.

18. Kennedy (n.4 above), 40.

19. Rabinowitz, N.S., Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women (Ithaca 1993), 23Google Scholar. Of course, ‘reading the text with the ideology’ is not always a straightforward procedure. In the case of the Aeneid, for example, it is precisely this which is contested.

20. Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (Cambridge 1998), 49Google Scholar.

21. By contrast, another reception theorist, Martindale, Charles, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge 1993Google Scholar) claims that ‘a writer can never control the reception of his or her work’ (3f.; his italics).

22. Kennedy (n.4 above), 41.

23. Ars Amatoria 1.637: expedit esse deos et, ut expedit, esse putemus.

24. Kennedy (n.4 above), 45.

25. Hinds (n.20 above), 47.

26. AM, F., ‘The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome’, AJP 105 (1984), 174–208Google Scholar, at 187.

27. Hinds, S., ‘Generalising about Ovid’, Ramus 16 (1987), 4–31Google Scholar, at 26.

28. Kennedy (n.4 above), 46.

29. Kennedy (n.4 above), 31.

30. Of course the converse ought also to be true. All texts should turn out to be capable of ‘anti-Augustan’ readings. But that is a line which Kennedy does not pursue.

31. The text I use is A.L Wheeler (ed. and tr.), Ovid: Tristia, Ex Ponto, rev. G.P. Goold (Cambridge MA 1988). In the edition of Hall, J.B., P. Ovidi Nasonis: Tristia (Stuttgart 1995Google Scholar), the opening sentence is the same length.

32. E.g. Luck, G., P. Ovidius Naso Tristia (Heidelberg 1967-), 238Google Scholar. He also notes ex Ponto 2.1 and 3.4.

33. See Galinsky, K., ‘The Triumph Theme in Augustan Elegy’, WS 3 (1969), 75-107Google Scholar, at 102.

34. Syme, R., History in Ovid (Oxford 1978), 114-34Google Scholar, esp. 122.

35. Cf. Pont. 1.1.17f. where Ovid notes that in this second collection of exile poems addressees will be named.

36. Wheeler (n.31 above), 177.

37. Green, P. (tr.), Ovid: The Poems of Exile (Harmondsworth 1994), 72fGoogle Scholar.

38. OLD s.v. ciuilis 7, citing this passage as the first example.

39. For ciuilis in imperial contexts see Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Ciuilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King’, JRS 72 (1982), 32–48Google Scholar. He speaks of ciuilitas as ‘a ritual of condescension’ (48).

40. RG proem, 1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 7.1, 25.1, 34.1.

41. Habinek (n.5 above), 166.

42. See, for example, Davis, P.J., ‘Praeceptor Amoris: Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and the Augustan Idea of Rome’, Ramus 24 (1995), 181–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 182ff.

43. See, for example, Boyle, A.J., ‘Postscripts from the Edge: Exilic Fasti and Imperialised Rome’, Ramus 26 (1997), 7–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 12f.; Davis, P.J., ‘Instructing the Emperor: Ovid, Tristia 2’, Latomus 58 (1999), 799–809Google Scholar.

44. See, for example, Coleman, R., ‘Structure and Intention in the Metamorphoses’, CQ 21 (1971), 461–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 475ff; Lateiner, D., ‘Mythic and Non-mythic Artists in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, Ramus 13 (1984), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 4ff.; Barchiesi (n.3 above), 82; Newlands, C.E., Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Ithaca 1995), 41ffGoogle Scholar.

45. As in Tristia 4.4.15: res est publico Caesar (‘Caesar is the state’), on which see the previous paragraph Note too how Ovid points to the inclusion of Julian domestic celebrations (festa domestica uobis, ‘feast-days belonging to your house’) in the state calendar (Fasti 1.9). See Herbert-Brown, G., Ovid and the Fasti: An Historical Study (Oxford 1994), 23Google Scholar: ‘The result of his hard-won supremacy was that the national calendar became flooded with feriae on the Julian (now also Augustan) anniversaries, first of the individual, then of his family. Between the years 45 BC and AD 10 the number of NP days celebrating Roman feriae increased by twenty, bringing the number of 49 in the pre-Julian calendar to a total of 69 before the death of Augustus.’ Also important is the transfer of the cult of Vesta from the Roman forum to the interior of Augustus’ house on the Palatine. See Fraschetti, A., Roma e il Principe (Rome 1990), 342ffGoogle Scholar., Barchiesi (n.3 above), 135ff., and Newlands (n.44 above), 130ff.

46. Habinek (n.5 above), 166.

47. I am happy to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council for my research. This paper was first presented at the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar organised by Temple University in Rome in 1999 and subsequently at the Roman Crossings Seminar at the University of Sydney. I would like to thank the organisers of both these conferences for their hospitality and the participants for their comments and advice. I would particularly like to thank John Penwill for his generous help, for his positive suggestions and for saving me from error.