I AUGUSTUS AS ‘FIRST EMPEROR OF ROME’ AND ‘FOUNDER OF THE PRINCIPATE’

A survey of the scholarship inspired by the bimillennium of Augustus’ death in 2014 has pinpointed a recent shift in scholarship whereby Augustus’ own centrality to the ‘age of Augustus’ has come into question.Footnote ¹ This is largely a reflection of the fact that interest has moved away from examining Augustus’ formal political position. Despite this shift away from analysing the Augustan era in terms of the contribution of Augustus himself, two ways of thinking about Augustus still linger in scholarly literature — as first emperor of Rome and as founder of a new constitution, the Principate — even though neither is helpful in making sense of the political changes that took place between 44 b.c. and a.d. 14. One analysis of the ‘transition from Republic to Principate’, for example, unequivocally states: ‘The Principate institutionalized by Augustus in 27 BCE was vigorously cheered by the legions and by the Roman citizens of the capital; it was welcomed by large parts of the socially ruling classes and accepted by a large fraction of the senatorial aristocracy.’Footnote ² Such a statement risks creating the impression that the ‘Augustan Principate’ sprang into being, fully formed, at a single moment. Just as writing of the ‘Roman Republic’ does more to obscure than illuminate our understanding of earlier periods of Roman history,Footnote ³ so discussion of the ‘Augustan Principate’ (with a capital letter) misleadingly encourages us to assume that it was a distinctive constitutional phenomenon.

This paper will explore how viewing political changes under Augustus in ways which go beyond the narrowly constitutional and how focusing upon contemporary texts rather than those written with the benefit of hindsight both better illuminate the process of experimentation by which Augustus and his contemporaries tried to make sense of his political position. It illustrates how one of the challenges faced by Tiberius was that there was no clearly defined Principate to which he could be the successor. Instead, this paper suggests that one of the main changes in the political landscape of Rome was the emergence of the idea of an age of Augustus, at the centre of which was Augustus as an individual with a unique destiny. Whilst not wishing to return to an interpretation of the age that sees Augustus as the only agent involved in shaping events and controlling Rome's political destiny, this paper will suggest that some contemporaries did make sense of their world in terms of the central part played by Augustus as an individual with a unique predestined role, and that this perception — rather than a formally defined political position — should be taken into account when thinking about Tiberius as Augustus’ successor.

In the popular imagination, Augustus is known as the ‘first emperor of Rome’,Footnote ⁴ even whilst scholars nowadays tend to refocus attention upon Augustus as ciuilis princeps rather than as autocrat.Footnote ⁵ So ingrained is the concept, though, that Karl Galinsky's nuanced discussion of Augustus is subtitled Introduction to the Life of an Emperor.Footnote ⁶ At the same time, another key theme that persists in both popular and scholarly accounts of Augustus is the idea that he established the Augustan Principate. When we look back at the age of Augustus, we see clearly that it was as a result of his lengthy period in power that Rome acquired a new form of government — the Principate — and that this was one of Augustus’ enduring legacies. Although Julius Caesar can be presented as the founder of the dynasty of the Caesars (notably in Suetonius’ choice of starting-point for his Vitae Caesarum), and has even been touted on occasion as a rival founder of the Principate, it is Augustus whose political achievement and legacy are more commonly celebrated.Footnote ⁷ Even though the spectre of the ‘restoration of the Republic’ has now been effectively exorcised,Footnote ⁸ the idea of the Augustan Principate persists. For example, a recent comparison of Julius Caesar and Augustus as rival founders of the Principate concludes: ‘it was not the monarchical powers, but above all the long-time survival of his constitution that decided the outcome in favour of Augustus’ (i.e. to be regarded as founder of the Principate, rather than Julius Caesar).Footnote ⁹ The problem of discerning what was Augustus’ role in shaping politics can be illustrated by Suetonius’ representation of Augustus’ own aspiration to be recognised as the ‘optimi status auctor’ (‘originator of the best state of affairs’), as expressed in a solemn edict which he quotes:

The phrase ‘optimi status auctor’ may be interpreted as referring to a political constitution, but, as David Wardle argues, ‘this Suetonian example highlights the key usage for this passage — in prayer or vow formulae without a constitutional sense’.Footnote ¹¹ As Wardle further points out, Suetonius’ subsequent explanation that Augustus was referring to a nouus status reflects Suetonius’ own authorial view that Augustus had set in place ‘a new state of affairs rather than a new constitution’.Footnote ¹² Similar language appears on denarii minted in 16 b.c., commemorating vows to Jupiter made on behalf of Augustus’ safety: ‘quod per eu(m) r(es) p(ublica) in amp(liore) atq(ue) tran(quilliore) s(tatu) est’ (‘because through him the state is in a more expansive and peaceful condition’).Footnote ¹³ These coins hint at the presence in Rome of inscribed monuments honouring Augustus for his role in improving the status of the res publica, whilst the highly abbreviated text on the coins suggests that the formula would have been readily recognised and was already well known in Rome. Neither the biography nor the coin legend, therefore, allows us to assume that Augustus himself was thinking in terms of constitutional reform.

This paper's first concern is to show how the word principatus changed over time, expanding on Erich Gruen's observation that its use to refer to a constitutional structure cannot be traced back to the time of Augustus: ‘Augustus never occupied a post called the Principate, nor did he exercise an office to which the title princeps was attached.’Footnote ¹⁴ Instead, the term statio was used to refer to the position of Augustus and his successors (actual and potential) in the state and this summoned up a different vision of how the role of the princeps was understood. It then considers ways in which we can see the emergence of a new understanding of Augustus’ role in the res publica, which depended upon the sense that Augustus was uniquely destined to protect Rome. Although it is clear that defining his powers legally was crucial in articulating Augustus’ political role, the Augustan Principate was not just shaped by legal and constitutional innovations. There is no doubt of the relevance of the power of images and poetry to creating and developing (and in some cases challenging) political discourse around Augustus’ leadership of the state,Footnote ¹⁵ but what impact was made by more ephemeral experiences, including omens and portents, and festival celebrations of Augustus’ birthday, in shaping what we might call the Augustan principate in a non-constitutional sense? This paper will focus on contemporary perceptions of Augustus’ position within the res publica in order to try to explore alternative approaches to the Augustan era beyond searching for the constitutional basis of the Augustan Principate. It will trace the ways in which Augustus’ rule became increasingly personalised, with the result that one of the main challenges faced by Tiberius in a.d. 14 was how to take over Augustus’ personal role as princeps.

II FROM PRINCIPATUS TO STATIO

An examination of uses of principatus makes clear that the word referring to what we would call the Principate did not emerge under Augustus, nor even in the years immediately after his death, with the first clear usage being attested only under Claudius.Footnote ¹⁶ Velleius Paterculus is often regarded as one of the voices trying to make sense of the political changes around him under Tiberius,Footnote ¹⁷ and, at first glance, he might be taken as decisive evidence that very soon after Augustus’ death, the idea of the Augustan Principate was in common circulation. For it is in Velleius that we find the earliest instance of the word principatus in an Augustan context:

The words principatus eius are commonly translated, for example, by Frederick Shipley in the Loeb edition and in Tony Woodman's commentary, as ‘of his principate’.Footnote ¹⁹ As the context makes clear, however, this is not a reference to a constitutional settlement by Augustus, but is rather a turn of phrase relating to his period of leadership, and there is a danger of making the phrase sound of more constitutional significance than it really is.Footnote ²⁰

To understand Velleius’ use of principatus, we can draw upon earlier authors, since the word principatus existed before what we call the Principate came about in any shape.Footnote ²¹ We can see it used in relation to the position of princeps senatus (leader of the Senate) held by M. Scaurus in Cicero's speech delivered in defence of Scaurus’ son in 54 b.c.;Footnote ²² otherwise its earliest use appears to be by Caesar, in describing the Gallic chieftain Dumnorix: ‘qui eo tempore principatum in ciuitate obtinebat ac maxime plebi acceptus erat’ (‘who at this time was holding onto principatus in the state and was especially popular with the people’).Footnote ²³ The expression then appears more regularly and evolves rapidly in the works of Cicero written in 45/44 b.c. De natura deorum was a work written during the months leading up to Caesar's assassination, and shows uneasy reflections on the urge towards principatus in the natural world that prefigure the more extended discussion in De officiis, written in the aftermath of the Ides. At De natura deorum 2.29, Cicero offered a gloss to explain his understanding of the concept of principatus, and that he had derived it from the Greek word hegemonikon: ‘principatum autem id dico, quod Graeci hegemonikon uocant, quo nihil in quoque genere nec potest nec debet esse praestantius’ (‘I use the term principatus as the equivalent of what the Greeks call hegemonikon, meaning that part of anything which must and ought to have supremacy in a thing of that sort’).Footnote ²⁴ Later on in the same work, Cicero used the word principatus to refer to the dominance of the sun over the stars (‘sol, qui astrorum tenet principatum’).Footnote ²⁵ Given Caesar's reorganisation of the Roman calendar, with his implicit claims to control the constellations thereby,Footnote ²⁶ we might wonder whether Cicero's words were entirely innocent of political resonance. By late 44 b.c., however, Cicero had begun to explore the problematic nature of principatus in the light of Caesar's assassination. In De officiis, Cicero traced how man shared with animals a natural impulse for principatus, which could play a role as the basis for the virtue of greatness of spirit:

He saw only too clearly in the case of Caesar, however, how this natural impulse had led him astray: ‘declarauit id modo temeritas C. Caesaris, qui omnia iura diuina et humana peruertit propter eum, quem sibi ipse opinionis errore finxerat principatum’ (‘The rash behaviour of Gaius Caesar has recently made that clear: he overturned all the laws of gods and men for the sake of the principatus that he had imagined for himself in his mistaken fancy’).Footnote ²⁸ Elsewhere, Cicero returned to the theme of the corrupting potential of an excessive desire for dominance, or principatus: ‘sed illud odiosum est, quod in hac elatione et magnitudine animi facillime pertinacia et nimia cupiditas principatus innascitur’ (‘It is a hateful fact that loftiness and greatness of spirit all too easily give birth to wilfulness and an excessive desire for principatus’).Footnote ²⁹ For Cicero, then, principatus was both a natural impulse that could underlie one of the cardinal virtues, and yet one that might also become distorted to the detriment of the state.

Returning once more to Velleius, before using principatus in an Augustan context, he had echoed Cicero's discussion of the natural impulse to dominance in referring to the desire for principatus on the part of Crassus, which motivated his desire to form an alliance with Caesar and Pompey: ‘Crassus, ut quem principatum solus adsequi non poterat, auctoritate Pompei, uiribus teneret Caesaris’ (‘Crassus hoped that by the influence of Pompey and the power of Caesar he might achieve that principatus which he had been unable to achieve on his own’).Footnote ³⁰ In the case of Velleius’ text with which we started, in referring to Augustus it may then be more accurate to translate the word principatus as ‘pre-eminence’ or ‘leadership’ rather than ‘Principate’. This fits with Velleius’ political outlook, which led him to focus upon Tiberius as a continuation of republican values and military leadership, rather than upon explaining the emergence of a new political system.Footnote ³¹

So the word principatus did not yet in a.d. 14 signify a specific constitutional settlement to which Tiberius could step up as heir and continuator; instead, what Tiberius inherited was his paterna statio:

Velleius’ choice of this military metaphor of a soldier on guard duty reflects contemporary political discourse, with Tiberius taking over from Augustus a responsibility to guard and protect the res publica. Footnote ³³ It seems likely that Augustus was the first to adopt this innovative expression to describe his position within the state, in a letter written to Gaius Caesar in a.d. 1, as recorded by Aulus Gellius, ending:

This letter, however, contains mixed messages, a sense of uncertainty, and a level of anxiety, with Augustus’ code-switching into Greek in the phrase ἀνδραγαθούντων ὑμῶν καὶ διαδεχομένων perhaps betraying a consciousness of the relevance of Hellenistic monarchy to this hope. It is interesting, however, that Augustus did not write with reference to his position as princeps (in contrast with how he writes of himself in the Res Gestae). Perhaps he thereby intended to intimate that Gaius and Lucius would be breaking new ground in Roman politics in taking over from him. On the other hand, there is a sense of unease in the contrast between Augustus’ singular position (‘stationem meam’) and the plural references to both Gaius and Lucius. After all, given that the letter was addressed to Gaius himself, there was no real need to bring Lucius into the frame at all, and the Romans did not exactly have a good track record when it came to brothers sharing power. Furthermore, the use of the present participle in the genitive absolute διαδεχομένων raises questions about when precisely Gaius and Lucius actually become diadochoi, whilst Augustus’ sense of anxiety about the current situation is reflected both in the occasion of the letter — prompted by his reaching the ‘climacteric’ of his sixty-third birthday, which was regarded as a moment of peril — and by the over-compensating superlative description of the status rei publicae as felicissimus. Footnote ³⁵

Nor was the idea of the statio an idiosyncratic view relevant only to heirs of Augustus. In the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre (SCPP), the Senate continued to perpetuate the image of the statio. In petitioning Tiberius to recover from his grief at Germanicus’ death, it exhorted him to turn his attention to Drusus:

Similarly, Velleius’ final prayer for the future of Rome at the very end of his work also anticipated that Tiberius’ mortal statio would pass in due course to successors:

What is so interesting about this choice of metaphor is that it does not evoke an image whereby the individual who is performing the statio is strongly interventionist, as shown by Valerius Maximus’ use of the word on two occasions in his exempla relating to the traditional institutions of ancient Rome, composed during the Tiberian era:Footnote ³⁸ at 2.1.9 he described the respectful tradition of the elite youth of Rome of escorting their elders to the Curia, and then keeping statio outside, waiting for their elders within to finish their debates before then accompanying them back home:

Further, at 2.2.6 he described how senators would keep their statio in the Forum Romanum, as they waited to be summoned to attend a meeting:

Furthermore, Valerius drew attention to the exemplary value of the imperial family prominently in the preface to Book 6, in describing how Pudicitia kept a constant statio on the Palatine: ‘tu Palatii columen Augustos penates sanctissimumque Iuliae genialem torum adsidua statione celebras’ (‘you frequent with constant statio the summit of the Palatine, the august household gods, and the most holy marriage bed of Julia’).Footnote ³⁹ Essentially, then, the idea of statio evokes an image of the princeps as someone waiting and watching for occasions on which the res publica needs help. A hint that this continued to be regarded as the ideal role for Rome's leaders emerges in one of Seneca the Younger's letters, written in a.d. 62:

His reference to his own role as having been one of a statio (albeit a hapless and thankless one) might be taken to betray how Seneca saw himself as the ideal leader of Rome, following in Augustus’ footsteps, in contrast to the autocratic Nero.Footnote ⁴¹

The whole idea of statio fits nicely with descriptions of the princeps as protector and saviour of the res publica, one of the central ideological principles for future generations of principes too.Footnote ⁴² In writing of a failed coup against Tiberius, a passage which is generally thought to allude to Sejanus, Valerius Maximus gave a vivid impression of the dependence of Rome upon Tiberius for its wellbeing, describing Tiberius as ‘auctor ac tutela nostrae incolumitatis’ (‘originator and protector of our safety’).Footnote ⁴³ The Senate further extended this special relationship between princeps and res publica to the domus Augusta more widely, in praising the army for its recognition that Rome's safety depended uniquely upon Tiberius and his family:

We therefore have a coherent picture in contemporary texts that the role of Rome's leader should be one of protecting and defending the res publica. What is noteworthy, though, from Augustus’ letter to Gaius onwards, is the expectation that the individuals taking over the statio from Augustus should prove themselves worthy of the responsibility. By a.d. 20, with the SCPP, we find that the claim to ethical and political leadership was becoming increasingly articulated as the preserve of the imperial family, in the form of the domus Augusta.Footnote ⁴⁵ This was an extension of an earlier tendency to mark out Augustus as an exceptional individual, to which the next section of this paper will turn, and arguably an attempt to solve the problem posed for his successors in justifying Augustus’ own position as princeps in a very personal way by creating a sense that other members of the imperial family, too, shared in distinctive ethical superiority which they were then to transmit to the rest of Roman society, in virtue of having themselves been brought up in Augustus’ household.Footnote ⁴⁶

III BORN TO GREATNESS?

If we take principatus as referring to Augustus’ pre-eminence in the state, rather than to a constitutional structure, we can extend our understanding of how that pre-eminence was constructed beyond the granting of political powers and honours to him by the Senate. One of the most distinctive and innovative features of the Augustan era was the promotion of astrological symbolism and the idea that Augustus’ birthday had predestined him for rule.Footnote ⁴⁷ His exceptional destiny was allegedly apparent from the birthmarks on his body, laid out, according to Suetonius, in the pattern of the constellation Ursa Major, which was not only closely associated with myths of Jupiter, but was also regarded as situated on the North Pole, the axis around which the universe rotated, as well as echoing the image of the cosmos itself with its seven stars paralleling seven planets.Footnote ⁴⁸ By the time that Suetonius composed his imperial biographies, it was clear that Augustus’ greatness had been heralded by many omens, from the moment of his birth, when the astrologer Publius Nigidius Figulus was supposed to have declared the ruler of the world to have been born,Footnote ⁴⁹ to the lightning-strike in his last months that was interpreted to presage his deification by creating the Etruscan word for god by melting the C at the start of CAESAR beneath one of his statues.Footnote ⁵⁰ Towards the end of the biography, from chapter 94 to 97, Suetonius lists twenty-five omens and dreams ‘by which his future greatness and perpetual good fortune could be expected and observed’.Footnote ⁵¹ Chapter 94 itself is the longest in the whole biography, and throws this material into sharp relief.Footnote ⁵² It is foreshadowed towards the start of the biography too, where Suetonius relates the strange happenings in later years that occurred at Augustus’ possible birthplace near Velitrae, where a man, who ignored local scruples and slept in the room where Augustus was said to have been born, was found flung out of bed, half-dead.Footnote ⁵³ Even though these signs of divine favour clearly owed much to hindsight, the idea that rising to imperial rule (and indeed falling from it) was a predestined phenomenon is woven through Suetonius’ biographies as a whole, illustrating that the idea that emperors were born to greatness was an accepted part of Rome's political landscape by the Hadrianic period, whilst the idea of divinely sanctioned rulers had been prefigured under the Republic.Footnote ⁵⁴ Indeed, the whole sequence of Lives ends with Domitian's dream of a golden hump sprouting from his back, which Suetonius declared to be a portent that richer and happier times were at hand for the empire.Footnote ⁵⁵

Tales of Augustus’ predestined greatness were, therefore, well established by the second century a.d., but it seems that they were also a feature of his lifetime. Some hint of future developments can already be found in the Philippics of Cicero, who must take some responsibility for providing the initial impetus towards singling out the future Augustus through his exaggerated language. His ‘rhetoric of crisis’,Footnote ⁵⁶ to use Jonathan Hall's expression, produced extremes of language that foreshadowed the language of imperial eulogy. For example, Cicero referred to the young Caesar's actions in recruiting his private armies as ‘deorum immortalium beneficio, diuina animi, ingenii, consilii magnitudine’ (‘by gift of the immortal gods, through the divine greatness of his spirit, character and planning’).Footnote ⁵⁷ What Cicero did not anticipate, though, was how this language would over the coming decades become internalised within ways of speaking of the same young Caesar, now undisputed leader of Rome.

Suetonius’ list of omens captures some glimpses of contemporary texts that had from early on in Augustus’ pathway to power marked him out as destined for greatness. Suetonius explicitly attributed to the Theologumena by Asclepiades of MendesFootnote ⁵⁸ (perhaps himself an imperial freedman) a dream about Augustus’ conception coming about after a visitation by a snake experienced by his mother Atia while she was sleeping in a temple of Apollo.Footnote ⁵⁹ This episode is redolent of similar tales of the conception of Alexander the Great,Footnote ⁶⁰ and indeed the prophetic dreams associated with Augustus’ birth appear to be a new phenomenon that evoked the world of Alexander. This is not surprising given Asclepiades’ origins at Mendes in the Nile delta region,Footnote ⁶¹ but it is also suggestive of the context in which reports of such dreams may have arisen. It seems plausible that dreams about Augustus’ birth presaging his world rule belong to the run-up to Actium, when Antony was casting aspersions upon his rival's family background, especially since an epigram by Domitius Marsus (one of Maecenas’ circle) on his parentage can be dated to the period 41–31 b.c.Footnote ⁶² It may be precisely the Hellenistic and Egyptian affiliations of Antony that prompted the inspiration for such dreams of Augustus’ birth to be generated in the first place, but in any case they marked an important new way of talking about a potential ruler of Rome.Footnote ⁶³ It is unclear how widespread such accounts were, but it is possible that they spread into visual media too, if the identification of an oval carnelian cameo now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, as a depiction of Atia's encounter with the snake is correct.Footnote ⁶⁴

The moments of Augustus’ conception and birth, therefore, were from as early as the 30s b.c. already promoted as portending his future greatness. Subsequently, the date of his birth came to be embedded into Rome's ritual year. Games to mark his birthday were first decreed in 30 b.c., then in 20, 13 and 11 b.c., and became an annual feature of the calendar from 8 b.c.Footnote ⁶⁵ The equestrian order also regularly celebrated his birthday at Rome.Footnote ⁶⁶ Augustus’ birthday became more prominent in the capital in other ways too: it was the dedication date of various temples, including those of Jupiter Stator, Juno Regina, Neptune, Mars and Apollo Sosianus, and the layout of the solar meridian on the Campus Martius may have further expressed in monumental form the idea that Augustus’ birthday had cosmic significance.Footnote ⁶⁷

Other imperial anniversaries celebrated at Rome equally served to underline Augustus’ unique role as saviour and protector of the state.Footnote ⁶⁸ Augustus in his Res Gestae mentioned four-yearly vows for his good health performed by consuls and priests and the games held in fulfilment of those vows (9.1); his name incorporated into the hymn of the Salii (10.1); 890 days on fifty-five occasions on which thanksgiving was offered by the Senate (4.2); the consecration of the altar of Fortuna Redux and the naming of the day on which he had returned to Rome from Syria, 12 October, as the Augustalia (11). Other texts mention annual vows on 1 January for his welfare, and libations poured to him at public and private feasts.Footnote ⁶⁹ The years following 9 b.c. continued to make the person of Augustus central to the city of Rome: the compital shrines at the heart of the reorganisation of the city of Rome in 7 b.c. created a special relationship between Augustus and the freedmen and slaves who were appointed as cult officials, and the month Sextilis was re-named August in 6 b.c.Footnote ⁷⁰ Even though Augustus was not the recipient of official state worship at Rome, his unique place in Roman religion, history and society was apparent. All of this added up to creating an overwhelming sense of Augustus’ charismatic authority, something that was not entirely down to his own personality or cunning manipulation of public opinion, but something that resulted from people's own readiness to entrust their safety to him.Footnote ⁷¹ Participation in religious ceremonies and rituals associated with Augustus as staged in the city of Rome would have consolidated people's perception that he was their destined leader since such activities stimulated participants’ emotional and sensory engagement.Footnote ⁷²

In addition to celebrations focused around Augustus’ birthday, the celebration of the ludi saeculares in 17 b.c. articulated an important stage in the development of the sense that what contemporaries were witnessing was nothing less than the dawning of a new age.Footnote ⁷³ The whole festival was preceded by rituals of purification, with distributions to the citizen body of suffimenta (substances such as sulphur and asphalt) so that they could fumigate and so purify their households, as commemorated on coinage and described in the inscribed dossier regulating and memorialising the games.Footnote ⁷⁴ Augustus, as president of the quindecimviri who were responsible for overseeing the festival on the instructions of the Sibylline Oracles, was prominent during the rituals. He shared the lead in sacrifices and prayers with his colleague Agrippa, and may even have written a letter to the quindecimviri concerning the festival's conduct. Horace's hymn composed for the occasion, and sung by a select group of girls and boys, highlighted the role of Augustus, described as the offspring of Venus and Anchises, in mediating with the gods on behalf of the Roman people, as they chanted:

In this way, the sense was created that Augustus was ushering in a new age in Rome's history, but not yet do we get the impression that he was in any key sense actually responsible for creating the saeculum. Instead, the new age was represented as being the end of a natural cycle of years marking the ‘longest span of human life from birth to death’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Whether this cycle was 100 or 110 years in length, the celebration was intended to secure prosperity for Rome and its empire for the next cycle of years, as recorded in the final lines of the Sibylline Oracles: ‘Then shall this land, the land of Italy and all its peoples too, accept your yoke upon their necks, and live beneath your sway for ever more.’Footnote ⁷⁷ Nevertheless, the impression is given that, although Augustus may not have created the new age, its future prosperity could only be guaranteed by his presence at the head of the state.Footnote ⁷⁸ Augustus and his family were uniquely prominent in the prayer repeated several times during the rituals, since the gods were asked not just to promote the military success and prosperity of the Roman people, but also to be well-disposed towards ‘me, my family and household’.Footnote ⁷⁹ In addition, the emphasis upon the goddesses of childbirth may have taken on particular resonance for Augustus’ family, given the birth of Lucius at around the time of the games.Footnote ⁸⁰

Consequently, the ludi saeculares offer a good example of how Augustus organised public ceremonials in which he played a leading role. Their staging on temporary structures raised for the purpose over several nights and days and the emphasis on the participation of all members of the citizen body in the celebrations make clear that the festival must have had enormous impact upon Rome's citizen population.Footnote ⁸¹ The impression was formed that Augustus was the individual upon whom Rome's successful intercession with the gods depended. Consequently, vows and prayers on behalf of Augustus’ welfare reflected his importance to Rome's continuing prosperity at home and abroad. Public ritual and ceremonials at Rome had for many years elevated Augustus above his peers, but the year 9 b.c. seems in many respects to mark the beginning of a new degree of dominance, with the dedication of the Ara Pacis Augustae. Even without the controversial shadow allegedly cast upon it from the obelisk,Footnote ⁸² the centrality of Augustus and his family to Roman public life was clear. Firstly, Pax Augusta was the first of the August(an) deities to be introduced to Rome.Footnote ⁸³ Secondly, the altar was dedicated on Livia's birthday, 30 January.Footnote ⁸⁴ Thirdly, Augustus led the procession depicted on the life-sized reliefs; and, finally, annual sacrifices by magistrates, pontifices and Vestals ensured that the altar and its cult remained the centre of attention at least once a year.Footnote ⁸⁵ Before the age of electronic mass media, transitory spectacles typically leave little trace in the historical record, but unless we try to imagine the pomp and circumstance of processions, sacrifices and prayers, their sights, smells and sounds, we shall underestimate the impact of Augustus upon the inhabitants of the city of Rome.

Changes to the calendar of the province of Asia in 8 b.c., where the date of Augustus’ birthday, 23 September, was officially recognised as New Year's Day in the province as part of the move towards adopting Rome's Julian calendar, illustrate how the ideas being formulated at Rome were also spreading in the Greek East.Footnote ⁸⁶ The proposal to introduce Augustus’ birthday as New Year's Day was made on the initiative of the Roman proconsul himself, Paullus Fabius Maximus. The epigraphic dossier preserving copies of the proconsul's edict and decrees of the koinon from several cities in the province illustrates that the governor took care to couch his recommendations in non-authoritarian language, even whilst in effect giving out a set of instructions; even so, the koinon did not accept his recommendations wholesale, but made some modifications to the calendrical scheme which he had proposed in order to ensure that it was actually workable.Footnote ⁸⁷ We should also note his personal ties to Augustus, given that he was married to Augustus’ cousin Marcia, and that her relationship to Augustus was recorded on at least one inscription in the East, at Paphos in Cyprus.Footnote ⁸⁸ In his edict, the governor explained the significance of Augustus’ birthday as marking the moment at which the world could be rescued from its headlong rush to ruin:

Fabius Maximus was thus making a claim that the birth of Augustus had made a definitive difference to people's lives.Footnote ⁹⁰ This calendrical innovation marked a new step in the promotion of the idea that Augustus’ birth date itself had predetermined his future as ruler of the world, and it may not be sheer coincidence that it was the same year that saw the institutionalisation of the ludi natalicii at Rome as an annual feature in the city's calendar.Footnote ⁹¹

The overall perception of Augustus’ predestined role as ruler of Rome is most clearly articulated in the astronomical poem of Manilius, whose verses summed up the significance of Augustus’ birth under the zodiac sign of Libra:

IV THE INVENTION OF THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS

In the end, then, what this paper seeks to explore is what the Augustan principate (rather than Principate) might mean in non-constitutional terms, and how contemporaries viewed the political changes that developed over the decades of Augustus’ lifetime. It analyses the ways in which power at Rome became increasingly bound up with the person of Augustus himself. We do not necessarily have to jettison all references to the ‘Augustan principate’ from our scholarship, but we should be more cautious in how we use the term. Overall, what we witness in Augustus’ lifetime, is not so much the creation of the Augustan Principate as a new constitution, but an increasing recognition that Augustus himself was an exceptional individual, whose position in the state was supported by powers granted formally by senatorial decree and popular vote as well as informally by acclamation, but whose authority ultimately was a personal quality, supported by the gods and predestined by birth. The personalisation of the Augustan era occurred over time, as the sense of Augustus’ unique destiny, as determined by his horoscope, began to take firm hold.Footnote ⁹³ Thinking in terms of the emergence of an ‘age of Augustus’ brings us closer to contemporary perceptions of Augustus, as shaped by the lived experience of the city of Rome, than trying to view the changes in Roman politics in a strictly constitutional framework.Footnote ⁹⁴

According to Suetonius, a senator in the days following Augustus’ death proposed ‘ut omne tempus a primo die natali ad exitum eius saeculum Augustum appellaretur et ita in fastos referretur’ (‘that all time from the very day of his birth until his demise should be called the Augustan Age, and entered thus into the calendar’).Footnote ⁹⁵ This is entirely consistent with references made by Augustus himself in his Res Gestae to ‘saeculum nostrum’ (‘our era’, 8.5) and ‘aetas mea’ (‘my age’, 16). What Tiberius inherited in a.d. 14 was his paterna statio, but now that his father was a god, he was faced with certain problems, most of all how to negotiate successfully the shift from rule by a princeps to rule within the framework of a Principate.Footnote ⁹⁶ As Eleanor Cowan has observed, ‘the Principate was not inevitable, nor did it arrive fully-formed in terms of either its political structures or its ideological or iconographical messages’.Footnote ⁹⁷ One problem faced by Tiberius derived precisely from the overwhelming focus on the person of Augustus himself: how could he successfully take over a rule that was largely based upon personal authority and prestige?Footnote ⁹⁸ One solution was for Tiberius to set himself up as being somehow imbued with at least some of Augustus’ special status, and contemporaries such as Strabo considered that Tiberius was ‘making Augustus the model of his administration and decrees, as are his children, Germanicus and Drusus, who are assisting their father’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Nevertheless, Tiberius seems only too willing to pick and choose Augustan precedent to suit his purposes in different situations,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ and, it seems, was content to continue the tradition that Augustus was exceptional, refusing divine honours for himself, and trying to work with the Senate. What he did inherit, though, was the ideological principle that the princeps should above all protect the res publica, and an emerging sense that members of the domus Augusta were peculiarly suited for this responsibility as a result of their possessing virtues inherited directly through their proximity to Augustus himself. Augustus’ leadership of the state was regarded as divinely predestined, and his leadership within Rome increasingly became personalised, but his ability then to pass on his individual qualities to younger members of his household both fitted traditional Roman aristocratic values concerning the transmission of virtues from father to son and also justified to whom the paterna statio should next pass.