052 - Caesar Augustus

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 52, Caesar Augustus. Antony and Cleopatra were dead, though no one knew it at the time, when Octavian emerged victorious from the brief war with his old triumphal colleague in 30 BC. He was also ending nearly 20 years of continuous civil war. From the time Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, the empire had been subjected to almost two decades of constant civil strife. Had the sickly Octavian died young, no doubt the victory at Actium and the conquest of Alexandria would have been just two more milestones on the long road to stability. But much to everyone's surprise, not the least of which his own, Octavian wound up living well into his seventies. This meant that his victories were not just a few more markers along the way. They turned out to be the destination.

So what was that destination? Was the Republic really dead? Would things ever go back to the way they had been before? Did anyone want things to go back to the way they had been before? Who was in control now? The Senate? Octavian? And what about the 60 legions still in arms? These were open questions with no obvious answers. We of course know now how things turned out, and know the ABCs of how Octavian solidified his personal rule, and what that meant for the long-term makeup and outlook of the Roman Empire. But as the victorious young Caesar sailed back to Rome in 30 BC, no one knew what was going to happen next.

When Octavian arrived home in August of that year, though it was not called August yet, and we'll get to that, the great constitutional questions did not have to be addressed straight away. He was, after all, still consul, which gave him all the legitimate power he needed to rule the empire. Eventually, being elected consul year after year would no longer be a sustainable base upon which to rest his authority, but for now, it was enough. His first steps were to sort through all the friends and enemies he had made in the previous decade, and decide what to do with them all.

First up on the list of names? Mark Antony, of course. Now you may think, well, Mark Antony is dead, so isn't that enough? And the answer is that no, it wasn't enough. Octavian wanted his old rival erased from the collective consciousness, so he ordered that Antony's name be literally purged from the history books. The official annals that recorded the events of the year were opened and edited. Every mention of Marcus Antonius was erased. The same was done to various monuments and statues that had been erected in the last 30 years and still bore his name. Finally, it was decreed that no future son of the Antonius clan could be named Marcus. Octavian was making it clear that there is no Mark Antony, there never was a Mark Antony, and that we have always been at war with East Asia.

As for the former allies of the now non-existent Mark Antony, Octavian decided their fates on a case-by-case basis. Unlike his uncle, Octavian was predisposed towards bloody vengeance, but with Macinus acting as a moderating hand behind the scenes, Octavian actually ordered as many pardons as he did executions. The die-hard anti-Caesareans were killed or exiled, but the rest of his former enemies were folded into the new regime. The latter fact was highly publicized, the former not so much.

In 29 BC, Octavian continued to serve as consul. Being an extremely deliberate and patient man, Octavian knew that the process of transforming himself into something bigger and greater than anything Rome had yet known would be a long process. For now, he would serve as the traditional executive, but he planned much greater heights for himself in the future. To prepare the population for his ascent to near godhood, Octavian had Macinus set his army of poets to the task of glorifying their newly victorious patron. The culmination of the poetic propaganda campaign was, of course, the Aeneid, written by Virgil. Begun soon after Octavian's return to Rome, the epic poem would be published a decade later and eventually stand as one of the few great masterpieces of Latin verse. Though the quality of the work was no doubt a pleasant bonus, Octavian, by then Augustus, was most pleased to find Virgil taking pains to highlight the Julii clan's connection to Aeneas and the description of Augustus' ascent to power as a preordained inevitability. The myth of Augustus was beginning to take shape.

The highlight of the year was the celebration of three triumphs in Octavian's honor, one each for his victories in Illyricum, Alexandria, and in Actium. Of course, with Antony now written out of the history books, the triumphs celebrating Actium and Alexandria were recast as victories over Cleopatra alone, the demonic eastern queen who had tried to conquer noble Rome. For these latter two events, Octavian forced Cleopatra's children to parade through the streets of Rome in chains. Conspicuously absent, though, was 15-year-old Caesarion. As the one real threat to Octavian's claim on the Caesar name, there was no way Octavian was going to let young Caesarion make it out of Alexandria alive. Famously remarking that two Caesars is one Caesar too many, Octavian had the boy executed. It may seem harsh, but in Roman society, when a boy reaches the age of 18 and passes through the rituals of manhood, he is a man, no less so because he is a young one. There is no hesitating over Caesarion's fate. Two Caesars is one Caesar too many.

The rest of the children were handed over to Octavia to care for, and she attended to them lovingly until the eldest daughter was married to the king of Numidia. The new bride took her brothers and sisters with her to Africa, where they lived the rest of their lives in peaceful obscurity. But just as the triumphs marked the passing of Cleopatra's young children from the world stage, the celebrations also saw the introduction of two Roman teenagers onto the same stage. Joining Octavian and his triumphal chariot were 14-year-old Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the eldest son of Octavia, and 13-year-old Tiberius Claudius Nero, Octavian's stepson. There was no mistaking the dynastic implications of their prominent inclusion in the procession. Soon enough, it would become clear that Octavian was grooming his nephew Marcellus to succeed him, just as his uncle Julius Caesar had groomed him to rule the empire. Tiberius, despite heavy lobbying from his mother Livia, would remain a backup plan. In fact, he would remain the backup plan for most of his life, as Augustus cast about the family trying to find someone, anyone who could replace him. In the end, he was able to find none, and Tiberius, who was never supposed to become emperor, became emperor.

In 28 BC, Agrippa joined Octavian in the consulship, and the two worked together to shore up Octavian's power while simultaneously restoring order to the empire. One of the first things they did was formally annul all the laws that had been enacted during the second triumvirate. As I mentioned at the end of last week, it was time for Octavian to leave his ruthlessly ambitious past behind him. Though it may seem odd that he cancelled laws and decrees he himself had enacted just a few years previously, but he wanted to send the message that he was not that man anymore, that the rule of law had returned to Rome for good. Cancelling a few laws, though, was just a matter of bookkeeping. The real question facing Octavian and Agrippa was what to do with the 60 legions that remained mobilized.

Obviously, there was no need to keep so many men under arms. Not only could the treasury not support them, but what were they all going to do? Knowing full well that a restless army is a dangerous army, Octavian and Agrippa worked through a plan to demobilize half the men and keep the rest posted on the frontiers where they would guard the empire from foreign invasion. Eventually, they settled at keeping on 28 legions, around 150,000 men, posted primarily in Gaul, Spain, and Syria. As I mentioned last week, one of Octavian's overriding goals after Actium was to capture Egypt and hold it as a personal territory. Having achieved this goal, he was now able to more or less tell 150,000 soldiers to go home without worrying about bonus rides. Here is your retirement check, paid for from the riches captured in Alexandria. Have a nice life. No IOUs this time around. He had money to pay them all.

During this year, Octavian and Agrippa also appointed themselves to be censors, the powerful office that was in charge not only of the mundane task of determining the population, but also the much more controversial task of determining who was in and who was out of the Senate. Right away they fiddled with the senatorial ranks, reducing the total number from 1,000 to 800, and subbing in prominent supporters from across the empire rather than relying strictly on old Roman families to fill the ranks. The pushback from the existing Senate, though, was swift, and Octavian prudently backed off his plan, granting waivers to anyone who wanted to remain in the Senate to settle the matter. But like I say, Octavian was a patient man. By no means was he done trying to mold the Senate into something more to his liking, but there was no reason to risk it all in a showdown with the old guard right away. There were still appearances to keep up.

Over the course of 28 BC, Octavian and Agrippa also added two great temples to the Roman skyline, beginning the process of turning the city of brick into a city of marble. First was the temple to Apollo that Octavian had vowed to build if he emerged victorious from the war with Sextus Pompey. Built on the Palatine Hill, adjacent to his slowly expanding residence, the temple would take on great public significance when Octavian ordered that the Sibylline books be moved there from the temple of Jupiter, where they had been kept from the time of the kings. Ever so subtly, Octavian was consolidating all power, religious, political, and martial, under his own roof. Agrippa, meanwhile, took the lead on building a great temple to all the gods, to be called simply the Pantheon. Today, the Pantheon remains one of the great tourist destinations in Rome, and if you ever get a chance to see it, don't miss out. Keep in mind, though, that the Pantheon standing today is actually a rebuild commissioned by Trajan in 126 BC, the original construction having been destroyed by a devastating fire in 80 AD. But, cognizant of the historical significance of the temple, Trajan ordered his Pantheon built to the original blueprints, right down to the inscription on the cornerstone which reads, Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the third time, built this. It's pretty cool.

As 27 BC arrived, Octavian felt secure enough in his position that he decided to work out the details of his New World Order with the Senate. The trick, of course, was to maintain the pretense of Republican governance while at the same time keeping power in his own hands. In performing this trick, he was actually aided by a willing Senate. You may think that the body who stood to lose the most by Octavian's power grab would also protest the most, but while some members disliked Octavian's rule, most of the hardcore Republicans had long since been purged and replaced by men handpicked by Octavian. Not surprisingly, when in January 27 BC, Octavian announced to the assembled body that he was stepping down from his position and wished no more to bear the burdens of government, the Senators present tripped over themselves, begging Octavian to reconsider. Reluctantly, Octavian agreed that if the Senate, as the representatives of Republican authority, deemed him worthy of remaining Rome's leading man, how could he possibly say no?

The deal worked out with the Senate, all arranged in advance, of course, granted Octavian ten years pro-consular authority over the provinces of Spain, Gaul, Cilicia, Syria, and Egypt. These particular provinces were important because they all stood on the borders of the Empire. If a foreign threat, say from the Germans or the Parthians, was going to threaten Rome, it was essential that the strong and wise hand of Octavian was there to protect the Empire. The brass tax of the agreement, though, was that of the 28 standing legions, 20 of them were stationed in provinces ceded to Octavian. There had never been any confusion about where young Caesar's authority had always rested. With this grant of pro-consular authority, Octavian guaranteed that three-quarters of Rome's military was under his personal command. The rest of the provinces were left to the Senate to administer. If you go to thehistoryofrome.typepad.com, you'll find a map breaking down the territorial divisions of the 27 B.C. settlement.

As you may have noticed, these agreements showed that unlike Julius Caesar, who had pushed a radical new governmental structure, Octavian was seeking to work within existing precedent. He was not proclaiming himself dictator for life or a new king of Rome. He was simply a humble consul, duly elected by the people, who had been granted by the Senate's authority pro-consular powers wherever they had seen fit for him to govern. Who was he to argue with the representatives of the people?

The last little bit to come out of the constitutional settlement of 27 B.C. was the small matter of what to call Octavian in this new order. The Senate decided that he ought to at least be given a title of some distinction, something that acknowledged the indispensable nature of the man. The Senate finally settled on a new name, the name by which most people know Octavian today, and the name by which this podcast will henceforth refer to him, Augustus, or Revered One.

If this were a History Channel documentary, this is the point where we would cue a new actor for the reenactment, gone the fresh-faced young man, replaced by the serious-faced old man. I had toyed with the notion, and if I had more guts I might have done it, of eschewing the common practice of referring to him as Augustus from this point on. I think the name switch has the effect of subconsciously dividing up his career, making it seem as if it really was two different men doing all of these things. To call him Octavian through the last portion of his life would really bring home the idea that it is Octavian who is ruling the empire from here on, not some new guy named Augustus who was called in off the bench as a second-half replacement, the wise and all-knowing substitute for the young and ruthless starter. I'm not going to do it, because sometimes fighting convention just isn't worth it. But please don't forget to keep the same face in your mind when you picture Octavian now as Caesar Augustus. Don't replace the actor in your head. He is still the same man.

To complicate things even further, just as Octavian never really went by Octavian, he was always Gaius Julius Caesar to the Romans, he never really went by Augustus much either. When you're trying to maintain the facade of republican virtue, it's not really in your best interest to go around referring to yourself as revered one. It sends the wrong message. So Octavian, Augustus, whatever, requested that in practice he be called simply Princeps, or First Citizen. Simple, classy, unpretentious.

As soon as the power-sharing agreement was reached with the Senate, Augustus decided to leave town for a while and tour his new provinces. He was acutely aware of the effect he had on the people in general, and the Senate in particular. One of his overarching goals through this early period of his reign was to undercut the Senate's real authority while simultaneously building it back up into an organization with some prestige. If he remained in Rome, he would be a constant reminder that you know what, the Senate is just a powerless social club. By absenting himself from the capital, he allowed the Senate a degree of autonomy that went a long way towards rebuilding their bruised egos. But make no mistake about it, it was about building back up their egos, not their real power.

Augustus first went to Gaul, where years of Roman neglect had reduced the province to somewhere between organized revolt and outright anarchy. It did not take long, though, for the steadying hand of mighty Caesar to put all the tribes conquered by his uncle back on their best behavior. So from Gaul, he traveled to Spain where the situation was just as chaotic, but this time the natives were not simply awed by the power of Caesar. Even though Hispania had been one of the first overseas territories claimed by Rome back during the Punic Wars, the local Spanish had never really taken to foreign rule, and were, in many places, subjects in name only. Augustus had a mind to put a stop to all of that once and for all. He spent the next few years in Spain, but as was so often the case, for most of the time he was not leading troops in battle, but rather recovering from a severe illness that overtook him not long after crossing the Pyrenees. The early going of the pacification campaign had proved to be full of false starts and frustrating engagements with guerrilla fighters, and as usual, the stress of the hard campaign weakened Augustus' immune system and he was forced to retire from the field. While he recovered beside the mountain springs and the Pyrenees, his lieutenants continued the fight and eventually brought it to a successful conclusion. Spain was, at least for now, under firm Roman control, or perhaps more accurately, under firm Augustan control.

The severity of the illness which befell Augustus in Spain, which laid him up for at least a year, focused his attention more acutely on the problem of succession. If an heir was not solidly in place, the death of the princeps would plunge the Roman world back into civil war. To that end, Augustus bucked his wife's usually persuasive advice and continued to hone in on his nephew Marcellus rather than Livy's son Tiberius as his heir apparent. In 28 BC, Augustus arranged for Marcellus to marry his own daughter Julia, leaving no doubt as to who he felt should take over when he died. I should point out here that to the staunchly patriarchal Romans, familial bonds followed from the men and the men alone. So Julia and Marcellus, though they were first cousins by blood, were not thought to have entered into anything resembling an untoward, incestual marriage. Julia was the daughter of Augustus, Marcellus the son of Gaius Claudius Marcellus. When it came to marriage, Octavia's relation to Augustus did not matter at all.

In addition to the bonds of marriage that now tied Marcellus to Augustus, the princeps arranged for the passage of special legislation granting his nephew-slash-son-in-law the right to be exempted from traditional age requirements for holding office. With life-threatening illnesses always knocking at the door, it was important to bring Marcellus into public life as quickly as possible, not just to give him the experience he would need if he was going to be an able governor, but to introduce him to the Roman people. Augustus made sure that the 21-year-old would be elected aedile for 23 BC. From this office, which you will recall was in charge of public games, Marcellus would be able to throw lavish festivities that were bound to make him extremely popular with the common man. With Augustus bankrolling everything, the games of Marcellus promised to be a spectacle of unprecedented proportions.

Augustus returned to Rome in 24 BC to oversee his nephew's emergence onto the public stage, but before he could preside over that happy event, he was treated to a tragic falling out with Macinus. At some point during the year, a plot against Augustus was either uncovered or invented depending on who you talk to, and among those implicated was one of the consuls for the year, Aulus Terentius Varro Marina. Marina just so happened to be Macinus' brother-in-law, and when Macinus came home and discussed the uncovered plot with his wife, she quickly warned her brother to flee the city. When Augustus found out about the breach in trust, the relationship between the two men was altered forever. Although Macinus continued to support the regime, he was out of the inner circle for good, a casualty of high-stakes politics.

23 BC would prove to be a watershed year for the empire. It was a year that showed just how quickly fate could wreak havoc on the carefully laid plans of men. Just as Marcellus was stepping into the office of Aedile, Augustus became deathly ill. This time, his sickness was so bad that most everyone, including Augustus himself, did not believe he would survive. Consumed by what scholars now believe was typhoid fever, Augustus was faced with a difficult choice. He had planned for Marcellus to succeed him, but the young man was simply not experienced enough yet to take over. So Augustus turned to the man who had stood by his side all these years, who, though not technically a blood relative, was still his brother in all things, Marcus Agrippa. In Agrippa, Augustus could be sure he was leaving the empire in competent hands, a man who would rule wisely until Marcellus was ready to share in the burdens of state. Everything was arranged, and Agrippa was prepared to confidently step into the power vacuum his old friend was about to leave behind, when suddenly, due to some inventive treatment by his creative doctor, Augustus recovered.

Over the course of the illness, though, it became apparent that the Senate was more than ready for Augustus to die and Agrippa to take over. Though he had tried mightily not to step on senatorial toes, Augustus couldn't help but secretly butt into provinces over which he had no authority. Even more emotionally important, though, Augustus's never-ending succession of consulships was creating a logjam of men vying for the year's one remaining slot. Men who were denied access to the high office year after year were becoming embittered, and when they visited him on his deathbed, he could see that they were ready for him to go. Arcavian could now see plainly that the popularity of his regime was not what he had hoped it would be. It was time to amend the settlements of 27 B.C.

The first step he took was to resign the consulship on July 1, 23 B.C., a day which would go down in history as the date Augustus himself marked the official beginning of his imperial reign. In return for this concession, he had arranged to be named Tribune in perpetuity, an ingeniously simple maneuver that allowed him to abandon the consulship without actually giving up any power. A tribune, you recall, has the right to attend senatorial sessions, propose legislation, and veto legislation. Is there really anything else that a despotic ruler needs to control the empire? Well, actually there is. While Augustus was supremely powerful in his own provinces, when it came to the senatorial provinces or Italy itself, he was left awkwardly without any real legal authority. So he had the senate award him what amounted to, at large, pro-consular authority. From here on out, whatever province he was in, Augustus would have the last word on everything.

Having been granted all these prerogatives, however, prerogatives which would form the legal basis for the rest of his reign, Augustus was smart enough not to indulge in them. When it came to provincial administration, he usually deferred to the local governor, and when it came to legislation, he neither personally proposed many bills nor broke out the veto stamp very often. This was all possible because he had signaled behind the scenes how he wanted things to go, of course, but still, by avoiding public displays of power whenever possible, he left everyone feeling like they at least had some say in the matter. Sure, Augustus controls everything, but it's not like he's some crazy tyrant. The successors of Augustus would have done well to study exactly how Rome's first emperor managed to reign for over forty years, while they were usually assassinated after just a few years at the helm.

The final piece of the so-called second constitutional settlement was the elevation of Agrippa to political heights almost as high as Augustus himself. It was clear that the senate felt more comfortable with Agrippa holding some kind of formal power, and Augustus was obliged to agree. Granted similar at-large pro-consular authority himself, Agrippa had now become something of a co-emperor. At this point, there is some disagreement over what happened next. What we know is that Agrippa left Rome and set up a base of operations on the island of Samos. What is unclear is why exactly he did so. In the account offered by Suetonius, Agrippa was sent into exile by Augustus because the latter was concerned his old general's growing power would interfere with his planned elevation of Marcellus. But by another account, Agrippa was sent east because he was the only one Augustus could really trust to look after his interests there. The role that Agrippa would subsequently play in the negotiations with the Parthians over the recovery of Crassus's lost legionary standards seems to point to the second reading.

In the end, of course, whether or not Agrippa was getting in the way of Marcellus or not proved to be a moot point. At the end of 23 BC, with his successful year in the Aedile ship winding down, Marcellus became sick and suddenly died after a brief illness. This threw Augustus's plans into complete disarray and sent his sister Octavia into mourning for the rest of her life. Suddenly left without an acceptable heir, the status and rank of Agrippa now loomed large. As he had so many times before, Augustus turned to Macinus for advice. Macinus thought about the matter for a bit and then told Augustus, well, you have made Agrippa so powerful that he now must either become your son-in-law or be killed. And that was how Agrippa officially joined the Julio-Claudian dynasty.