' Manuwald 1979 (в 121).
Texts in EJ2; edition, Degrassi 1947 and 1963 (в 224) XIII, fascs. 1 and 2.
Latest arguments, Coarelli 1985 (e 19) 11 263-308.
Ovid's Fatti is a versification of the calendar material for half a year.
" Holscher 1984 (p 424); Hannestad 1986 (f 409); Simon 1986 (f 577); Zanker 1987 (f 632).
and myth-making as an integral function of all societies, and a nation's political symbols and images as essential to the understanding of any segment of its history. Finally, there stretches a vast field, on whose battles scarcely any historian has been competent to be more than an onlooker - the works of the famous figures of Augustan literature. A present trend amongst literary specialists is to see those writings as through-and-through political, whether as propaganda for the political regime or as in more or less covert resistance against it, asserting either 'Augustan values' or those of the 'alternative society'. The historian cannot avoid the challenge to regard that material also as central rather than peripheral, though his sense of the impossibility of mastering all the evidence is thereby greatly aggravated.[174]
11. 30-17 B.C.
Actium, though it is convenient to historians as a punctuation mark (Dio says we should date the years of the new ruler's 'monarchy' from 2 September 31 B.C.),[175] and was convenient to the victor as a symbol, was not quite the end of civil war. A campaign had to be mounted for Egypt,[176] and i August 30 B.C., Aegypto capta, is the real ending date, with the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra following hard upon it.
Caesar[177] now had, at just under thirty years of age, all the power there was, but not yet - if ever - was there a 'happy ever after', for there was no necessary acquiescence. The presuppositions of republican political life did not disappear overnight, and though many had gone and many survivors leapt on to the winning bandwagon, opposition did not instantly die away. That fact has received much emphasis in recent scholarship, to the point of finding in 'opposition' the key to most of what happened down to 17 B.C.,[178] but it is best not to exaggerate: such opposition had no sufficient base of power to force Caesar to take or refrain from any action. It is, perhaps, a matter of the right language to use, for there were certainly considerations that he had to face. Victory cast into his lap, along with it, all current problems and all future policies. He held power as long as he satisfied the various elements in the body politic - the armies, mostly wanting demobilization on good terms,19 his supporters who had made victory a reality, the plebs of Rome, too large, politicized and volatile to ignore,20 and the surviving governing class, without whom an empire could not be maintained. And there were pre-existing structures to which, for the very sake of power, he must relate himself, and which could not be wished away, such as career expectations and clientelae.
A career reward for an important supporter may be the banal explanation of the first momentous decision taken after Cleopatra's death, with which our tale begins. Egypt was a new responsibility. The question was, how that land should be governed; the answer, that it should be a province of the Roman empire, but with an eques, not a senator, as its governor. The choice may, at the time, have been obvious: simply, the member of the victorious junta who had successfully handled the Egyptian campaign and who deserved a major reward. That Gaius Cornelius Gallus21 was only an eques was perhaps of secondary or no consideration. Like Dio and Tacitus,22 with hindsight we seek a principle for the consigning of Egypt, ever after, to an eques: the crucial importance of its corn for Rome and the need to deny its resources to opponents. But Gallus was the man on the spot, and Upper Egypt, the old traditional part of the Double Kingdom, recalcitrant to the Ptolemies and wooed by Cleopatra, had to be integrated militarily with the rest. Meanwhile, the royal treasure-house was seized, which meant the end of shortage of funds and enabled promised payments to be made for the land bought for discharged veterans.
At Rome, tight control was exercised on behalf of his absent chief by another member of the triumphant junta, also an eques, Gaius Maecenas. He scotched an alleged plot by Lepidus, the son of the deposed triumvir, to assassinate Caesar — an unconvincing story indeed, given that Caesar was across the seas. Anyone looking for what was usurpatory and unconstitutional about the new rulers who had vaulted into power need look no further, for there is no sign that Maecenas had any formal authority at all, and there were perfectly valid consuls in office: 'non mos, non ius', yet.23 And though certain new constitutional powers were voted to the absent Caesar, the 'Vote of Athena' or power of pardon,24 the auxilii latio or power, like a tribune , to come to the aid of citizens in the city of Rome,25 and the power to 'judge when called upon'26 (which scholars seize upon in the search for a constitutional basis for the emperor as judge), they are best seen either as marks of honour, simply — for 30 B.C., with Caesar away from Rome, was hardly a time for constitution-making — or else as giving him some judicial standing in the East, in relation to former partisans of Antony, or of himself.27 (Cf. ch. i. Endnote 2.)
21 Boucher 1966 (c 37). 22 Dio li.17.1; Tac. Ann. 11.59.3. 23 Tac. Ann. 111.28.1.
Jones i960 (a 47) 95.
Dio li. 19.6 says all powers of a tribune, for life. That may have been offered; Caesar accepted (only)'most'of what was offered, li. 20.4. 26 екнХт/тбу Stxa^etv.
27 His partisans in the cities may have been calling for support.
jo—17 в.с.
For Caesar showed no sign of hurry to reach the hub of things. He entered upon his fifth consulship of 29 B.C., as he had done his fourth the year before, in absence from Rome, still in the East, where there was need for diplomatic activity and reflection (no doubt) on policy, and where a major decision was forced on him about cult of himself as the new liberator, peace-bringer and benefactor.28 Caesar was bombarded with offers of official cult, in line with what was customarily offered in the hellenistic world. Dio tells us what he decided: for the Roman citizens in the East, temples of Rome-plus-the-divine-Iulius at Ephesus and Nicaea were to be the prescribed limit of official cult; for the non-Romans, temples of Rome-plus-himself at Pergamum and Nicomedia.29 That, Dio says, was the precedent for the subsequent general pattern; like the prefecture of Egypt, and much else, what came to be settled policy sprang from a quick decision made in a particular context.
The Senate, at its first meeting of 29 B.C., excogitated further honours for the still absent victor: the right to use Imperator as his permanent first name,30 formal approval of his eastern diplomatic arrangements, and, on 11 January, the closing of the gates of Janus in sign that Rome was at total peace. (We can all notice, with Dio,31 that campaigns were going on in Spain, Gaul and Africa, but the Romans meant peace as far as they were concerned, and the 'business-as-usual' foreign triumphs by which the aspiring leaders of the Republic brought themselves to prominence, and which had gone on, significantly, all through the triumviral period, were still going on.)