Augustus
Augustus of Prima Porta, Vatican Museums, Rome.
Index 1. Octavianus Augustus, a timeline 2. Private life of Augustus according Suetonius Suetonius 2.1. Augustus´birth and infancy 2.2. Augustus´marriages 2.3. Augustus´character 2.4. Oratory and liberal studies 2.5. Augustus and the matters of religion 2.6. Augustus´descendants Augustus´descendants 2.7. His death
3. Two women in his life: Livia and Julia Julia
1. OCTAVIANUS OCTAVIANUS AUGUSTUS A TIMELINE
The Roman Empire at the time of Augustus
63 B.C.: B.C. birth of Octavianus to Gaius Octavius and Atia, niece of Iulius Caesar. 47 B.C.: B.C. Octavianus becomes an adult. He is elected to the Pontifical College. 45 BC.: BC Octavianus in Caesar’s campaign in Hispania.
44 B.C. B.C.: Gaius Julius Caesar murder. Octavianus is named as Ceasar' heir it his Will. He assumes his uncle's name (Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus) and he becomes a senator.
Younger Octavianus, Museo Capitolino, Rome
43 B.C.: B.C Antony is sent against Antonius, who has left to Mutina. He is elected as a consul. He marries Claudia, Antonius’ stepdaughter. 42 B.C.: B.C Brutus and Cassius are defeated at Philipi. Octavianus takes control of Gallia, Hispania and Italia. 40 B.C.: B.C Treaty of Brundisium: Octavianus, Antonius and Lepidus form the second Triumvirate (Triumviri). Their enemies are killed, including Cicero. Octavianus controls the West, Antonius the East, Lepidus Africa.
Antonius marries Octavianus聞 sister, Octavia. Octavianus marries Scribonia. 39 B.C.: B.C He divorces Scribonia and marries his third wife Livia Drusilla. His daughter from Scribonia, Iulia, is born. 36 B.C.: B.C. Octavianus and Lepidus launch an operation against Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. Lepidus is expelled from the triumvirate. 3535-34 B.C.: B.C. Octavianus campaigns in Illyricum. 33 BC: Second consulship of Augustus
Temple of Mars Ultor
32 BC: BC Octavianus denounces Antonius in the Senate. Antonius divorces Octavia, having been married to Cleopatra since 37 BC. 31 B.C.: B.C Octavianus (as a consul for the third time) defeats Antonius and Cleopatra at Actium.
30 BC: BC Egypt becomes a Roman province. Virgil publishes
Georgica and begins writing the Aeneid. 29 BC: BC Octavianus returns back to Rome. Three day celebration for his conquest of Illyricum, his victory in the Battle of Actium, and annexation of Egypt. Dedication of the Temple of Divus Iulius.
Battle of Actium, Lorenzo Castro, 1672, National Maritime Museum, London
27 B.C.: B.C 1st Constitutional Settlement. Octavianus receives the title of Augustus. a proconsular province including Hispania, Gallia, Syria and Egypt, and imperium (the power to command the army) for ten years. 25 B.C.: B.C Iulia marries Marcellus, son of Octavia and Antonius 23 B.C.: 2nd Constitutional Settlement. Augustus resigns from his consulship held continuously since 21 BC. He receives
maius imperium, which gives him authority over all other magistrates and commanders, and tribunicia potestas, which gives him legislative authority. Marcellus, Iulia’s husband, dies. Horatius publishes the first three books of his Odes. 21 BC.: Iulia marries Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’ general and friend.
Coin depicting Gaius and Lucius
2222-19 B.C.: B.C. Augustus travels to the East 18 BC: BC Augustus passes legislation promoting family values and regulating adultery and marriage. 17 BC: BC Augustus adopts Iulia’s sons Gaius and Lucius 1616-13 BC: Augustus in Gallia 12 B.C.: B.C Augustus becomes Pontifex Maximus.
Octavianus as Pontifex Maximus
11 BC: Tiberius is forced to divorce his wife and marry Iulia after the death of her husband. Octavia dies. 9 BC: BC Dedication of Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) on Augustus’ return from Gallia and Hispania.
Ara Pacis
7 B.C.: He divides Rome in 14 regions. 2 B.C.: B.C Augustus is named pater patriae, i.e. father of the country, and dedicates the Forum Augustum and the Temple of Mars Ultor in Rome. He exiles Iulia accusing her of adultery and treason. His grandson Lucius Caesar dies.
4 AD: AD Gaius Caesar dies. Augustus adopts Tiberius, son of his wife Livia, and his youngest grandson Agrippa Postumus.
Forum Augusti
8 AD: AD Month Sextilis is renamed by the Senate in honor of Augustus. 9 AD.: AD Three Roman legions are defeated by the Germans at Teutoburger forest. Italy in panic.
14 AD (9th of August): August) Death of Augustus at Nola, at the age of 76. Tiberius succeeds him.
Mausoleum Augusti
Augustus in older age, National Archaeological Museum, Athens
2. PRIVATE LIFE OF AUGUSTUS ACCORDING SUETONIUS
2.1. Augustus´birth Augustus´birth and infancy Augustus was born just before sunrise on the ninth day before the Kalends of October during Marcus Tullius Cicero´s and Gaius Antonius´ consulship in the Palatine quarter, where a shrine was built in his memory shortly after his death.
“Nutrimentorum eius ostenditur adhuc locus in avito suburbano iuxta Velitras permodicus et cellae penuariae instar, tenetque vicinitatem opinio tamquam et natus ibi sit.” SVETONI TRANQVILII, VITA DIVI AVGVSTI, 6
In his infancy he was given the surname Thurinus in memory of his ancestors´origins. Later on, he took the name of Gaius Caesar, the former by the will of his great-uncle. At the age of four he lost his father. In his twelfth year he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honour of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming the gown of manhood, he received military prizes at Caesar's African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war on account of his youth.
2.2. Augustus´marriages In his youth he was betrothed to Publius Servilius Isauricus´ daughter, but when he became reconciled with Antony after their first quarrel he married Antonius´ stepdaughter Clodia instead, who was Fulvia´s and Publius Clodius´daughter. However, because of a falling out with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her before they had begun to live together.g Shortly after that he married Scribonia, who had been wedded before to two ex-consuls, and was a mother by one of them. He divorced her also, "unable to put up with her shrewish disposition," as he himself writes, and at once took Livia Drusilla from her husband Tiberius Nero, although she was pregnant at the time
Ac statim Liviam Drusillam matrimonio Tiberi Neronis et quidem praegnantem abduxit dilexitque et probavit unice ac perseveranter SVETONI TRANQVILII, VITA DIVI AVGVSTI, 62
2.3 Augustus´character He did not readily make friends, but he clung to them with the utmost constancy, not only suitably rewarding their virtues and deserts but even condoning their faults, provided they were not too great. In return he demanded of his friends affection on their part, both in life and after death. As patron and master he was no less strict than gracious and merciful. In the other details of his life it is generally agreed that he was most temperate and without even the suspicion of any fault. He lived at first near the Forum Romanum in a house which had belonged to the orator Calvus; afterwards, on the Palatine, having short colonnades with columns of Alban stone, and rooms without any marble decorations or handsome pavements. For more than forty years too he used the same bedroom in winter and summer; although he found the city
unfavourable to his health in the winter, yet continued to winter there. The simplicity of his furniture and household goods may be seen from couches and tables still in existence, many of which are scarcely fine enough for a private citizen. They say that he always slept on a low and plainly furnished bed.
Except on special occasions he wore common clothes for the house, made by his sister, wife, daughter or granddaughters; his togas were neither close nor full, his purple stripe neither narrow nor broad, and his shoes somewhat high-soled, to make him look taller than he really was. But he always kept shoes and clothing to wear in public ready in his room for sudden and unexpected occasions. He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally, with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests.
Octavian aureus, British Museum
He was unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for personal adornment
Forma fuit eximia et per omnes aetatis gradus venustissima...
Oculos habuit claros ac nitidos;
dentes raros et exiguos et scabros; capillum leviter inflexum et subflavum; supercilia coniuncta; mediocres aures; nasum et a summo eminentiorem et ab imo deductiorem; colorem inter aquilum candidumque; staturam brevem. SVETONI TRANQVILII, VITA DIVI AVGVSTI, 79
Portrait of Emperor
Augustus wearing
a gorgoneion and a
sword-belt., British
Museum
2. 4. Oratory and liberal studies studies
He wrote numerous works of various kinds in prose, some of which he read to a group of his intimate friends, as others did in a lecture-room. He cultivated a style of speaking that was chaste and elegant, avoiding the vanity of attempts at epigram and an artificial order, and as he himself expresses it, "the noisomeness of those far-fetched words," making it his chief aim to express his thought as clearly as possible.
In his everyday conversation he used certain peculiar expressions, fact which appears from letters by his own hand. He was equally interested in Greek studies, and in these too he excelled greatly. His teacher of declamation was Apollodorus of Pergamon, whom he even took with him in his youthful days from Rome to Apollonia, though Apollodorus was an old man at the time. Later he became versed in various forms of learning through association with the philosopher Areus and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor. Yet he never acquired the ability to speak Greek fluently or to compose anything in it.
2. 5. 5. Augustus and the matters of religion He was not indifferent to his own dreams or to those which others dreamed about him. Certain auspices and omens he regarded as infallible. He treated with great respect such foreign rites as were ancient and well established, but held the rest in contempt.
Head of Augustus. Bronze, Roman artwork, ca. 27-25 BC. Found in Meroe in Nubia , British Museum
He was somewhat weak in his fear of thunder and lightning, for he always carried a seal-skin about with him everywhere as a protection. At any sign of a violent storm, he took refuge in an underground vaulted room; he was once badly frightened by a narrow escape from lightning during a night journey.
2.6. Augustus´ descendants By Scribonia he had a daughter, named Julia; by Livia no children at all. He gave Julia in marriage first to Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia. After the death of Marcellus, she married Marcus Agrippa. Agrippa also died , so Augustus finally chose his stepson Tiberius as his son-in-law. From Agrippa and Julia he had three grandsons- Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa, and two granddaughters- Julia and Agrippina. He married Julia to Lucius Paulus, the censor's son, and Agrippina to Germanicus, his sister's grandson, and he adopted Gaius and Lucius.
2.7. 2.7. His death His death and his deification after death, were known in advance by unmistakable signs. On the last day of his life he asked every now and then whether there was any disturbance without on his account; then calling for a mirror, he had his hair combed and his falling jaws set straight.
He died in the same room as his father Octavius, in the consulship of two Sextuses- Pompeius and Appuleius, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September at the ninth hour, just thirty-five days before his seventy-sixth birthday. His body was carried by the decurions of the municipalities and colonies from Nola all the way to Bovillae, in the night time because of the heat of the season, being placed by day in the basilica of the town at which they arrived or in its principal temple. At Bovillae the members of the equestrian order met him and bore him to the city, where they placed him in the vestibule of the house. In their desire to give him a splendid funeral and honour his memory, the senators so vied with one another that among many other suggestions some proposed that his cortege was extraordinaire. He had made a will a year and four months before he died, in two note-books, written in part in his own hand and in part in that of his freedmen Polybius and Hilarion. These the Vestal virgins, with whom they had been deposited, now produced, together with three rolls, which were sealed in the same way. All these were opened and read in the senate. He appointed as his chief heirs Tiberius, to receive two-thirds of the estate, and Livia, one-third.
LIVIA, AUGUSTI CONIUNX Livia Drusilla was as one of the most significant and influential women in Roman history. After her marriage she was called Livia Augusta. She is also known as Iulia Augusta. She was the third wife of the Emperor Augustus. Augustus She was the mother of the Emperor Tiberius, Tiberius paternal great-grandmother of the Emperor Caligula, paternal grandmother of the Emperor Claudius, and maternal great-great grandmother of the Emperor Nero. She was deified by Claudius, who acknowledged her the title of Augusta.
Livia, Paestum
Livia was born in 58 BC. She was the daughter of Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus by his wife Aufidia. The diminutive Drusilla suggests that she was the second daughter of Marcus Livius. She belonged to and had the prestige of both the Livii and the patrician Claudii, noble and powerful families.
Livia, National Archaeological Museum of Athens
She was probably married at the age of 14-15, in 43, BC with Tiberius Claudius Nero, who was fighting against Octavian. In 40 BC her family had to flee to Sicily and later on to Greece. Her first child, the future Emperor Tiberius, was born in 42 BC. When she first met Augustus, in 39 BC, she was pregnant with her second son, Nero Claudius Drusus. Octavian divorced Scribonia and Tiberius Claudius Nero divorced Livia. Octavian and Livia married on January 17. Livia and Octavian remained married for 51 years. They didn’t have any living children. They both formed the the role model for Roman households. They lived modestly. Livia set the pattern for the noble Roman matrona and served as a model for Roman decorum. decorum However, Livia had the reputation of a dutiful wife but there are stories or rumors about her that make us think that she could also be an ambitious schemer.
In 35 BC Octavian gave Livia the honour of ruling her own finances and dedicated a public statue to her. She
had her own circle of clients and pushed many protégés into political offices. offices In 9 BC a second statue was dedicated to her, just after the death of her son Drusus, in order to call attention to her as a mother of important sons. However, after Augustus’ death (14 BC) it seems, at least according to Tacitus, that her son Tiberius tried to limit his mother’s power and influence. However, she became the first priestess of the newly deified Augustus.
Livia died in 29 AD at the age of 86. 86 She had a modest public funeral and was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Augustus
Livia Drusilla as Ceres, National Archaeological Museum of Spain
Ovidius, Ex Ponto 1. 116116-118 Caesaris est coniunx ore precanda tuo, quae praestat virtute sua, ne prisca vetustas laude pudicitiae saecula nostra premat: quae Veneris formam, mores Iunonis habendo sola est caelesti digna reperta toro.
IULIA, AUGUSTI FILIA Julia was the only child of Augustus. Augustus Her mother was the second wife of Augustus, Scribonia, Scribonia whom he divorced just after his daughter’s birth, in order to marry Livia. Iulia was born in 39 BC and she was under Augustus’ parental control, according to the Roman custom. She lived with her stepmother Livia, in order to be strictly educated as an aristocratic Roman girl. In 37 BC, Octavian's friends Gaius Maecenas and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa concluded an agreement with Octavian's rival Marcus Antonius, which was sealed with an engagement: Antonius' ten-year-old son Marcus Antonius Antyllus was to marry Julia, who was two years old at that time. They never got married, since civil war broke out.
In 25 BC, at the age of 14, Julia married her cousin Marcus Claudius Marcellus, son of Augustus’ sister, who was about three years older than she. Her first husband died two years later, when she was 16 years old. He was the first to be buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Augustus, hoping for a grandson to succeed him, arranged for her to marry Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a trusted friend and general of his, who was much older than her. According to rumors she had many affairs during her marriage. Iulia gave birth to five children: Gaius Caesar, Vipsania Julia (known as Julia the Younger), Lucius Caesar, Vipsania Agrippina (wife of Germanicus and mother of Emperor Caligula), and Agrippa Postumus. Gaius and Lucius Caesar were adapted by Augustus but both of them did live long.
Between 17-13 BC she traveled with Agrippa to the East and she also visited Greece (Lesbos, Mitylene, Priene, Ilion, Pergamon, Ephesus, Andros, Athens). In Athens she gave birth to her daughter Vipsania Agrippina. After Agrippa’s death, in 11 BC, Iulia married Augustus’ stepson, Tiberius, Tiberius son of Livia Drusilla, but their marriage was also unhappy, since Tiberius had to divorce his beloved wife, in order to marry Augustus’ daughter. In 2 BC she was arrested being involved in a scandal. She was accused of adultery and treason. She was also accused that she was plotting against her father, who at that time he was passing a legislation to promote family values. It is difficult to reconstruct what actually happened. Historians agree that she had taken part in nightly drinking parties on the Roman Forum. Several men have been mentioned as her supposed lovers. They were exiled. One of them, Iullus Antonius, son of Marcus Antonius, possibly her lover, was forced to commit suicide. Maybe they have tried to remove Tiberius from Augustus’ favour and replace him with Antonius, although it’s hard to believe that Iulia would betray her sons, in order to serve Antonius’ plans.
Julia was sent to exile to a barren island, Pandateira (Vantotene, off the coast of Latium and Campania), accompanied by her mother, and a few years later she was allowed to stay in Rhegium (Reggio, Calabria).
When
Augustus died, Tiberius ordered that she be confined to the one room in her house, and that she should be deprived of all human company. She died, probably of malnutrition, after Augustus’ death, before 15 BC, BC while her daughter Vipsania Julia was charged with adultery and also sent into exile and her son Agrippa Postumus was executed by Tiberius. Marcobius mentions that Iulia was witty and Augustus admired her wit. She was popular among Roman people people not just because she was goodgood-hearted and kind but also because of "her kindness and gentleness and utter freedom from vindictiveness. However, Iulia, as many Roman women of her status, was submitted to three marriages that aimed at promoting her father’s father’s political plans (alliences and heirs). Her life was not controlled by her will, despite her effort to be independent, but by the political circumstances and the goals of people involved in Augustus’ succession.
References: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius /12Caesars/Augustus*.html
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/suetonius/suet.aug.html#61ht tp://vulcan.fis.uniroma3.it/ventotene/ventotene.html http://www.livius.org/jo-jz/julia/julia03.html http://www2.cnr.edu/home/araia/MacrobiusJulia.html http://www.roman-emperors.org/livia.htm http://www.skidmore.edu/classics/augustus/augustustimeline.pdf http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_time_augustus .htm http://www.the-romans.co.uk/timelines/augustus.htm http://www.colorado.edu/classics/clas4091/Text/REHO6.htm
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