Peacefully winning over both the aristocratic élite and the Roman people to that view, and persuading them to accept that liberty was finished for all of them, was a gargantuan task that required a clever political vision and a clinical, glacial ruthlessness. It was a happy coincidence, then, that the task fell to Augustus. This man’s genius for politics would perhaps surpass that of all Romans who came before and after him. So too, however, would his capacity for cruelty, his assiduous ability to do whatever it took to seal power.
Augustus
In the year 17 BC, between 31 May and 3 June, the city of Rome witnessed the greatest show on earth. The Games of the Ages was a festival the likes of which no Roman had ever seen before, nor would ever see again. The buzz surrounding them had been building for weeks. Heralds in ancient, traditional dress had taken to the streets of Rome and had announced in advance the extraordinary scale of events to come: three days of visually spectacular sacrifices at sanctuaries and cult places around the city, followed by seven days of chariot races, tragedies and comedies in Latin and Greek, plus stunning exhibitions of trick riders, animal hunting and mock battles. A special song had been composed for the occasion, and it was to be sung on the last day by two choruses – one of twenty-seven boys and one of twenty-seven girls – all dressed in white. The anticipated mood was of celebration, euphoria and unbounded optimism. Rome, they said, was at peace, prospering and enjoying a new golden age. But the preparations for the games hinted at a more serious purpose at work.
On the day before festivities began the priests went to the top of the Aventine, one of the seven hills of Rome, and received from citizens there the first fruits of the year. These they would distribute to the thousands of Romans attending the festival. But the fruits were not the only handout. They would also dole out sulphur, tar and torches. These were to be burnt by every citizen in a private religious ritual so that every Roman citizen might cleanse himself before the celebrations got under way. The carefully contrived publicity stunt caught on. Behind the public relations drive, however, was a powerful political idea. The real theme of the festival, indicated these preliminary activities, was systematic regeneration, mass renewal, and the purification of the whole Roman state.
The stage manager, host and master of ceremonies was Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. The theme of expiation and regeneration was for him the perfect message, the apposite note to strike. For these games would mark a watershed in Roman history. This was the moment at which Romans not only celebrated a new regime of peace and stability, but healed themselves from what had gone before: at least two decades of brutal civil war. From the moment in 49 BC that Julius Caesar had crossed the Rubicon until 31 BC Rome had been devastated by an apocalyptic period of social and political meltdown, a time in which the vast expanse of the Roman empire had seen battlefield after battlefield blackened with blood. It was blood spilt by Romans, not at the expense of their barbarian enemies, but from the veins of their very own Roman friends, cousins, brothers and fathers.
Beyond the aim of healing, however, Augustus ensured that the festival delivered a second, highly sophisticated political message. The key to it lay in the theme of history. For the Games of the Ages were celebrated by Romans every 110 years. They connected the present glorious moment with the very earliest period of the Roman republic. On the one hand, their celebration inspired a belief in Roman citizens that the republic had been ‘restored’, that there existed a harmonious continuity between Rome’s cherished ancient history and the present golden age of Augustus. On the other hand, buried deep in this message, was a quite different reality. The central, most prominent part played at the games was that played by Augustus. It was he who gave the festival to the Roman people. It was he who paid for it. It was he, above all, who at night and before a mass audience took the central role when he sacrificed a pregnant sow to Mother Earth. This starring performance communicated to the Roman people – through their emotions, through their hearts – a completely new political reality. The games were at once traditional and a highly inventive, contemporary take on tradition.
For the truth was that Augustus had not restored the republic, but had achieved just the opposite. He was in the process of ending the political freedoms of the republic. He was rebuilding the Roman state around himself and his power. He was, with subtlety and deft political skill, forging a new age – the age of the Roman emperors. The Games of the Ages in 17 BC were just one example of an extraordinary sleight of hand. They celebrated the arrival of the greatest revolution in all Roman history: Augustus’s transformation of the Roman republic into an autocracy – rule by one man.
To achieve this feat he used a whole raft of means, sometimes force, sometimes law. His preferred instrument, however, was persuasion. He deployed it to such effect that the Roman people and the élite of Roman senators and knights would give up their cherished freedoms willingly and hand over power to a single head. It was a brilliant political manoeuvre, the greatest political trick ever to be pulled off in Roman history.
ACTIUM
The anaesthetic which dulled Augustus’s surreptitious surgery of the Roman state was peace. In bringing about this peace after so many years of war, Augustus had played a key role too. His part in concluding the civil war was far more gruesome than the one he would later like to play as emperor. Nonetheless it was a role he inhabited with commitment and will power from the very start.
When Augustus heard the news of Julius Caesar’s murder in 44 BC, he was known as plain old Gaius Octavius. He was nineteen years old and cut a surprising figure for someone who would eventually win the twenty-year-long civil war. His small, weak frame was prone to illness, his blond hair was unkempt, and his teeth were full of gaps.1 He was the son of an undistinguished ‘new man’, but that relatively humble connection to the senatorial élite was dramatically outshone by another family tie. Through his mother Atia, Octavian (as we call him) was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar. More importantly, he was also Caesar’s adopted son and heir. Claiming revenge for his adoptive father’s assassination, Octavian reignited the civil war in 43 BC. In reality he was making a bid for power.
His first move was bold and calculated. He started calling himself ‘Caesar’. In the eyes of the people, the powerful, magnetic brand of Caesar’s name had been confirmed by a comet which was sighted just before sunset for seven consecutive days in 44 BC.2 To most it was proof that Octavian’s adopted father was indeed divine. After an initial period of rivalry, Octavian eventually joined forces with the dead dictator’s political ‘heir’, Mark Antony, and together they went to war with Caesar’s assassins. As a soldier Octavian was dwarfed by the giant, heroic figure of his new ally. A story did the rounds that at one battle of the civil war Octavian disappeared for two days and cowered in a marsh. He even stripped off his armour and discarded his horse, perhaps to avoid detection. He did return to his army, but long after the action had been decided.3 Behind the young man’s unswaggering manner, however, there was a vicious sting. The puny constitution of Caesar’s young heir belied the ruthlessness of his mind and the cold-blooded ease with which he took violent measures.