24 Virgil. Aeneid: 2.557. In the poem, the headless corpse is Priam’s; the detail that Virgil was echoing a description of Pompey we owe to Servius. The description was almost certainly from Asinius Pollio’s history of the civil war. (See Morgan (2000), pp. 52–5.)
25 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: 7.70.1
26 Justin: 28.2.8
27 Suetonius. The Deified Julius: 77
28 Cicero. Philippics: 6.19
29 Plutarch. Titus Quinctius Flaminius: 12.6
30 Livy: 1.3. The observation probably dates to the decade after Caesar’s assassination. See Luce.
31 Cicero. In Defence of Marcellus: 27
32 Pliny: 8.155
33 Cicero. Philippics: 3.12
34 Ovid. Fasti: 2.441. Ovid transposes the oracular command to the time of Romulus, but its actual date was 276 BC. See Wiseman (2008), p. 76.
35 Plutarch. Julius Caesar: 61.4
36 Cassius Dio: 44.11.3
37 Cicero. Republic: 2.30.52
38 Gaius Matius, a businessman whose entire career was marked by a deep suspicion of politics. He is being quoted with deep disapproval by Cicero. Letters to Atticus: 14.1
39 Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews: 14.309
40 From the Memoirs of Augustus, fragment 6. Quoted by Ramsey and Licht, p. 159.
2 Back to the Future
1 Livia was born, almost certainly in Rome, on 30 January 59 – or possibly 58. See Barrett (2002), pp. 309–10
2 Virgil. Eclogues: 4:61
3 Plutarch. Roman Questions: 102
4 Seneca. On Mercy: 1.14.3
5 Barrett (2002: p. 348, n. 18) notes the lack of explicit evidence identifying Livius Drusus as the adoptive father of Drusus Claudianus, but acknowledges the circumstantial evidence to be overwhelming.
6 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: 3.67.5
7 Cicero. Against Verres: 5.180
8 Cicero. On the Responses of the Haruspices: 13.27
9 Cicero. For Marcus Caelius: 21
10 Tacitus: 1.4.3. Scholars are agreed that the darkening of the Claudians’ reputation occurred at some point in the first century BC; Wiseman (1979) convincingly dates it to the late 50s and 40s.
11 Valerius Maximus: 1.4.3
12 Lucan: 2.358
13 Cicero. On his House: 109
14 For the significance of the crocus stamen as a flower part used ‘to promote women’s menstrual and reproductive cycles’, see Sebasta, p. 540, n. 33.
15 Plutarch. Romulus: 15.5
16 Appian: 4.11
17 Velleius Paterculus: 2.71.2
18 Valerius Maximus: 6.8.6
19 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 2
20 Although according to Dio (47.49.3), it was lost at sea. Another tradition is recorded by Plutarch (Brutus: 53.4), who reports that Antony had Brutus’s body cremated and the ashes sent home to his mother.
21 Appian: 4.8
22 ‘In Praise of Turia’: the quoted passage comes from a eulogy carved by a mourning husband on the tombstone of his wife. The dead woman has long been identified with a paragon of selfless heroism named Turia, who – according to an anecdote recorded by Valerius Maximus (6.7.2) – risked everything to save her husband from the evils of the Proscriptions. Classicists, as is their way, are now more sceptical than they were of this identification – but not entirely dismissive.
23 Appian: 4.4
24 Suetonius (Augustus: 15) says that 200 senators and knights were offered as a literal sacrifice. The story clearly derives from a hostile source – but although much exaggerated, it is clear that that its origin must lie in an authentic episode.
25 Suetonius. Augustus: 62.2. Suetonius is quoting Augustus’s own words (fragment 14).
26 Ibid
27 By Brunt (1971), pp. 509–12
28 Virgil. Eclogues: 1.11–12
29 Propertius: 4.1.130
30 Virgil. Eclogues: 9.5
31 Horace. Satires: 2.1.37
32 Ibid: 1.6.72–3
33 Virgil. Georgics: 1.505
34 Strabo: 6.1.2
35 Propertius: 2.1.29
36 Velleius: 2.88.2
37 Horace. Epodes: 7.17–20
38 Horace. Odes: 2.13.28
39 Horace. Satires: 2.2.126–7
40 Appian: 5.132
41 Ibid: 5.130
42 Plutarch. Antony: 24
43 Virgil. Aeneid: 4.189–90
44 Seneca. Letters: 94.46. The quotation is from Sallust, The Jugurthine War: 10.6.
45 Seneca. On Benefits: 3.32.4
46 Strabo: 5.3.8
47 Horace. Epodes: 9.5
48 Horace. Satires: 1.5.29
49 Ibid: 1.6.61–2
50 Ibid: 2.6.58
51 Ibid: 2.6.1–3
52 Res Gestae: 25.2
53 Virgil. Aeneid: 8.678–9
54 Horace. Odes: 1.37.1
55 Ovid. Fasti: 1.30
56 Cicero. On Duties: 2.26
57 Livy: 1.10
58 Cornelius Nepos. Life of Atticus: 20.3
59 Or rather, in accordance with what the young Caesar and his agents claimed to have been venerable custom. Just as likely is that the entire ritual was made up. See Wiedemann, p. 482.
60 The name was stamped on sling-shot. The young Caesar was also accused on the sling-shot of being a ‘cocksucker’ and having a loose anus. See Hallett (2006), p. 151.
61 The link between the defeat by Sextus and the adoption of the name Imperator was first made by Syme in a classic essay (1958).
62 Horace. Satires: 2.6.55–6
63 Virgil. Georgics: 4.90
64 For the impenetrable nature of the murk that envelops the origins of the triumph, see Beard (2007), pp. 305–18.
65 Dionysius of Halicarnassus: 2.34.2
66 Virgil. Aeneid: 8.717
67 Propertius: 2.8.14
68 Virgil. Aeneid: 1.291
69 Cassius Dio: 51.24
70 Livy: 4.20
71 An inscription from a recently discovered coin, minted in 28 BC. See Rich and Williams.
72 Achievements of the Deified Augustus: 6.1
73 Ibid: 34.1
74 Aulus Gellius: 5.6.13
75 The inscription is from a coin minted in 19 BC. See Dear, p. 322
76 Cassius Dio: 53.6
77 Ibid: 53.20
78 Horace. Odes: 3.8.18
79 Ibid: 1.35.29–30
80 Ibid: 3.14.14–16
81 Ovid. Sorrows: 4.4.13–16
82 Some scholars dispute whether this temple was in fact built, but the evidence – consisting as it does of both coins and the explicit statement of Dio that it was indeed raised on the Capitol ‘in imitation of that of Jupiter’ (54.8) – seems to me irrefutable.
83 Ovid. Fasti: 1.609–10
84 Macrobius: 2.4.20
85 Ibid: 2.4.12
86 Quoted in Suetonius. Life of Horace
87 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 70.2
88 Servius. On the Aeneid: 4.58
89 Velleius Paterculus
90 Plutarch. Antony: 75
91 Virgil. Aeneid: 8.720
92 Just as the vast temple of Jupiter on the Capitol was dedicated to Juno and Minerva as well, so did Liber share his temple with Ceres and Libera. Wiseman (2004: p. 68) convincingly argues that this was no coincidence, and that the temple of Liber was consciously founded as a counterpoint to the huge temple on the Capitol.
93 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 79.2
94 Ovid. Sorrows: 1.70
95 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 94.4
96 Ibid: 72.1
97 Cicero. In Defence of Murena: 76
98 Horace. Satires: 1.8.16
99 Cicero. On the Agrarian Law: 2.17
100 Ibid. To Atticus: 1.19.4
101 The number of tribunes increased over the succeeding decades. By 449 BC, there were ten.
102 Cassius Dio: 54.10
103 Macrobius: 2.4.18
104 Horace. Odes: 3.6.1–2
105 Ibid: 7–8
106 Ovid. Fasti: 1.223–4
107 ‘In Praise of Turia’
108 Horace. ‘Carmen Saeculare’: 47–8
109 Ibid: 57–60
110 Ovid. Fasti: 6.647
111 From Suetonius’s life of Horace
112 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 58.2
113 Ovid. Fasti: 3.709
114 Ibid: 5.553
115 Suetonius reports that all these statues were dressed as though for the celebration of a triumph; but we know from the fragments of them found that in fact some of them were shown wearing togas.
116 Suetonius. The Deified Augustus: 31.5
117 Horace. Odes: 4.14.6
3 The Exhaustion of Cruelty
1 Funeral Lament for Drusus: 351. In Poetae Latini Minores 1, ed. E. Baehrens (1879)