A fresco of an actor’s mask from a room in Augustus’ house on the Palatine Hill, which may have been his bedroom. The princeps enjoyed theater and, to judge by his last words, saw himself as a performer. He asked the people around his bedside: “Have I played my part in the farce of life well enough?”
This image of Augustus is a majestic statement in stone of his imperium and auctoritas, his power and authority. Probably made in A.D. 15, the year after his death, it shows him as a beautiful young man, whose ageless features combine aspects of his actual appearance and the classic lineaments of the god Apollo, Augustus’ favorite in the Olympian pantheon. Found at his wife Livia’s villa at Prima Porta outside Rome.
XXI
GROWING THE EMPIRE
17–8 B.C.
As so often, it is as well to look below the surface of what the princeps said to what he exactly did. At bottom, he was an aggressive imperialist. Under his rule, Rome gained more new territory than in any comparable period in its previous history. His real position is set out in his official autobiography, Res Gestae, where he boasts: “I enlarged the territory of all provinces of the Roman People on whose borders were people who were not yet subject to our imperium.”
Public opinion expected nothing less of Rome’s ruler. Republican law had forbidden the Senate to declare war without provocation, without a casus belli, and indeed Rome (like Great Britain two millennia later) had acquired much of its eastern empire without altogether intending to do so. But now the idea that Rome had an imperial destiny was one of the ways by which the regime justified itself in the public mind.
Virgil writes of a Caesar “whose empire / shall reach to the Ocean’s limits, whose fame shall end in the stars”; Horace begs the goddess of luck to “guard our young swarm of warriors on the wing now / to spread the fear of Rome / into Arabia and the Red Sea coasts.”
The phrase “Ocean’s limits” reminds us how small and fuzzy at the edges was the Roman world. Accurate navigational equipment not having been invented, most explorers—usually they were traders—did not travel very far from the Mediterranean.
The Romans believed that the world’s landmass was a roughly circular disk consisting only of Europe and Asia, and that it was surrounded by a vast expanse of sea, Oceanus. They had no idea that the American and Australasian continents existed, nor that there was land beyond India. The landmass itself surrounded the Mediterranean Sea and Greece and Italy. The island of Britannia perched on its northwestern edge. The Roman empire took up a large part of the world as its inhabitants believed that world to be, and it was very tempting for its ambitious rulers to dream that they might one day conquer it all.
Maps were rare in the classical time; the first known world maps appeared in fifth-century Athens. Borrowing from Alexandrian models, the Romans, with their imperial responsibilities, recognized the practical importance of cartography. A world map was commissioned by Julius Caesar, probably as part of a triumphal monument he built on the Capitoline Hill, which showed him in a chariot with the world, in the form of a globe, at his feet.
Augustus commissioned his deputy, Agrippa, to work on a more detailed map, the orbis terrarum or “globe of the earth.” This showed hundreds of cities linked by Rome’s network of roads; it was based on reports sent in by Roman generals and governors, and by travelers. The result was a broadly recognizable picture, although distances and shapes became less and less accurate the farther places were from Rome.
The main purpose of the map was as an aid for imperial administrators, provincial governors, and military commanders; as a visual representation of the empire, it was also a powerful metaphor of Roman power. The map was painted or engraved on the wall of the Porticus Vipsania, a colonnade built by Agrippa’s sister, and was on permanent public display. Copies on papyrus or parchment were made for travelers, or information copied down.
As we have seen, Augustus and Agrippa spent many years abroad in different corners of the empire. Between 27 and 24 B.C., the princeps was in Gaul and Spain; between 22 and 19 B.C. in Greece and Asia; and between 16 and 13 B.C. in Gaul. Meanwhile, Agrippa spent 23 to 21 B.C. in the east, 20 and 19 in Gaul and Spain, and 16 to 13 B.C. in the east again. They spent their time quelling revolts, reforming or reviewing local administrations, and, above all, superintending the consolidation and expansion of the empire.
It is hard to tell whether the two men reacted to circumstances as they arose or pursued a long-term strategy. The impression is given of an orderly progression in the years that followed Actium from one priority to another. As we have seen, the eastern provinces and client kingdoms were reorganized. The frontier of Egypt was pushed southward and contact was made with the Ethiopians. An attempt was made to conquer the Arabian Peninsula, which failed. The negotiations with the Parthians were brought to a successful conclusion. Gaul and Spain were pacified.
A glance at the orbis terrarum showed that three great interrelated challenges were yet to be answered. First, the Alps were in the hands of fierce tribes and it was impossible to reach the eastern provinces by land around the top of the Italian peninsula. Second, the frontier of Macedonia was vaguely defined and hard to defend. Third, although the river Rhine, the existing Gallic frontier, ran from the North Sea to the Alps, there was constant westward pressure on it from Germanic tribes.
The ideal solution would be, first, to win control of the Alps and then move north to establish a defensible frontier lined with legions along the river Danube. In this way, buffer provinces in the north would protect Italy and Macedonia from direct attack. If the Rhine and the Danube were to mark the empire’s permanent boundary, a major strategic weakness would be likely to cause trouble in the future. This was that the heads of the two rivers formed a salient with its apex where the modern city of Basel stands today. The salient would allow hostile German tribes to operate on interior lines, giving them a huge military advantage.
So the final step would be to invade Germany and create a new frontier at the river Elbe. This would eliminate the salient and create a border roughly in a straight line between the North Sea and the Black Sea. Also, the territory thus gained would helpfully protect Gaul from eastern marauders.
This three-part plan of action may well have emerged through happenstance over the years, but its intellectual coherence and the fact that its constituent elements are interdependent strongly suggest that it was consciously conceived sometime after 19 B.C. and the final pacification of Spain. It would have been intended as a broad framework to guide future military activity, if not as a precisely worked-out blueprint.
If this was the case, it is not too fanciful to guess that the plan’s inventor was the man who had won all of Augustus’ wars for him: the indispensable Agrippa.
Important changes were taking place in the “divine family,” with multiple consequences for its members and for Rome itself. The marriage in 21 B.C. between the daughter of the princeps, Julia, and Agrippa succeeded where Augustus and Livia had conspicuously failed: it produced two sons, “an heir and a spare.” (Two daughters, Julia and Agrippina, quickly followed.) Gaius was born in 20 B.C. and Lucius in 17. With the arrival of the second boy, Augustus adopted them both and brought them up in his house. They were known thereafter as Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar. It was as if they were the offspring of two fathers, with Julia playing only a subordinate role as a human incubator.