Discrepancy in the sources: Suet. Aug. 41.1 gives 1,200,000, Dio Liv.17.3 g'ves 1,000,000 sesterces. 117 Underestimated by Dixon 1988 (f 26л) 71. 118 RG 6.2 (the Greek text).
them, though it would be more than a decade before the boys could come into their political inheritance.
The celebration of a new lustrum — indeed, far more, a new saeculum of Rome — came, in triumphal mood, on 31 May 17 в.с.,119 and Horace's official Ode for the occasion, the Carmen Saeculare, cannot be bettered as a compendium of the ideology set before the Roman people. It is the fashion of our age to undercut official triumphalism, and there is plenty of reason in the present case. Many of the governing class exhibited irreconcilable dissatisfaction with the attempt to regulate their conduct: Augustus had been up against the plebs, but now he was up against its betters. Dio (and it must come from his source) stresses the ««-popularity of Augustus at this time, and even makes 18 в.с. the beginning of plots against him and against Agrippa,120 whose status was resented. So if, as we are commonly taught, Augustus' greatest skill was the political tact whereby he experimented to fit his de facto supremacy into a framework of what people wanted it to seem to be, he had not, in the decade down to the ludi saeculares, reaped much fruit of that alleged skill — or so we might think until we notice the consuls of 16 в.с.121
hi. 16 в.с. - A.D. 14
The consuls of 16 в.с. were young nobles (and similarly in the years that followed, so all was right in that relationship, at least). That particular pair were also related to Augustus. Publius Cornelius Scipio was the son of his former wife Scribonia by an earlier marriage, and so half-brother to Iulia, and Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus was married to Augustus' niece Antonia, one of the two women of that name, the daughters of Octavia and Mark Antony, who carried the great enemy's genes deep into the heart of the 'divine family'.122 The 'divine family' was the most distinctly Augustan innovation of all, his way of reconciling the high aristocracy. It was powerful both as fact and as concept. Practically, it secured a cadre of collaborators at the highest level; psychologically, it was the exemplar of Augustus' moral programme; and symbolically it was the 'parallel language' of dynasty and court taking over from elective republicanism. (As a matter of fact, for the second half of the year 16, the plebeian Lucius Tarius Rufus took over from P. Scipio; and that well illustrates the historian's peril in pretending to interpret the politics of the age, for we do not know why. Was it because Rufus could not be denied an honour and had to be fitted in? Or was Scipio ill, or
Pighi 1965 (в 263) 107-30, plus 131-6, shown by Cavallaro 1979 (в 217) to belong to the Augustan ludi. 120 Diouv.ij.i. 121 Syme 1986 (a 95) 53-63.
122 For all such persons see, now, Syme 1986 (a 95), via the index.
incompetent, or dissident? Many stories could be told, and a 'crisis of 16 B.C.' invented; but it would all be idle conjecture.)
In any case, the main theme of Augustus' second decade was different. Towards the end of the year 16 Augustus and Agrippa left Rome, for opposite ends of the empire, each for three years - according, as it were, to pattern. Rome was left to the consuls, plus Titus Statilius Taurus as 'prefect of the city and Italy'.[201] Agrippa's role in the East was not military: he exercised imperial policy in half the empire as collega imperii, dealing, for example, with the affairs of the remote client kingdom of the Crimea,[202] and confirming the right of the Jews of the Diaspora to their ancestral laws and customs.[203] More in need of interpretation is Augustus' purpose in the West. His departure was hastened by the flurry caused by a legionary standard lost on the Rhine,126 for rebuffs to Roman military prestige could not be allowed. According to Dio, some said he left Rome in order to consort with Maecenas' Terentia with less scandal, others that it was to avoid general unpopularity. But maybe a main theme was already emerging: imperial expansion in northern Europe, of which the two efficient stepsons would be the principal agents. Augustus was inexhaustible in experiments with the material at any time to hand: three centuries later, under Diocletian and his successors, the Roman empire would be ruled by two 'Augusti' and two 'Caesares', and the experiment of Augustus' second decade looks as if based on some such idea - save for the awkward and ominous difference that the two 'Caesares' due to be groomed for succession were a different pair of brothers entirely from the ones who were to share the present burdens.
Certain things that were done can be seen as preparatory. The generation of soldiers who had been recruited after Actium must now be pensioned off, so a big phase of veteran settlement occurred in Gaul and Spain; and it is no surprise that, connected with the discharges and new recruitments, the term of service was now[204] officially established at a minimum of sixteen years for legionaries and twelve for the praetorian guard. Thus, out of the needs of the time, emerged the formal establishment of the Roman army as a professional service (for 'other ranks', not officers). And at roughly the same time Lugdunum seems to have begun to function as a major government mint, coining gold and silver; new money was going to be needed to pay legions campaigning in north and west. Gaul was subjected to a census, and detested both the tax and the procurator.
The first big movement128 was the subjugation by the brothers, Tiberius Nero and Nero Drusus, of Raetian and Vindelician Switzerland (not without mass deportations) and the bloodless incorporation of the kingdom of Noricum. Augustus took an imperatorial salutation; the stepsons could have neither triumph nor ovation, for they were only legati Augusti, but at least Horace accorded them proud celebration, as he did also for the return of Augustus to Rome in 13 в.с.129 And in relation to that reditus a magnificent new way was invented to advertise the 'divine family': on 4 July 13 в.с., by decree of the Senate, there was inaugurated a sacred precinct and altar of the 'Augustan Peace' in the north part of the Campus Martius; it was not dedicated till 10 January 9 в.с. Its famous frieze is an imaginary depiction of a procession of the 'divine family' and the members of the great priesthoods to an inaugural celebration; contemporaries will probably have been able to identify every figure.130 Both the frieze and the independent panels of the Ara Pacis are eloquent with all the themes of Augustan ideology, not the least striking emphasis being upon children, the 'young hopefuls', the key to future glory.131
To the Ara Pacis we now have to add, as an element - perhaps the major element — in a complex architectural ensemble, the enormous public sundial and astronomical clock created, also, in the north part of the Campus.132 Its gnomon, 30 m high (with plinth), was one of the two obelisks brought from 'captured Egypt';133 the paved ground under the feet of pedestrians was itself the sundial; and the equinoctial line on the ground passed through the Ara Pacis and subtended a right angle to the Mausoleum by the Tiber. There has been detected a whole wealth of symbolism about the birth and conception of Augustus in relation to renewal and peace, adding significance to one of the best-known inscriptions of the period, the letter of the proconsul of Asia and decrees of the Joint Council of the province inaugurating a new calendar for Asia based on Augustus' birthday, which is celebrated as 'giving a new look to the cosmos'.134
Of course, both the rulers returned to Rome in 13 B.C., for their