Roman Imperial Texts: A Sourcebook

2. Augustus

2 Augustus Augustus (63–14 bce; emperor 27 bce–14 ce) 1. DEEDS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE DIVINE AUGUSTUS (RES GESTAE DIVI AUGUSTI 27 BCE-14 CE) 1 The Deeds Accomplished by the Divine Augustus, or Res Gestae Divi Augusti, is a statement of Augustus, the first emperor, in which he documents all that he did for the Roman people and the world. Scholars have thoroughly debated the precedents for Augustus’s statement. After considering funerary inscriptions, celebratory inscriptions for military triumphs, or even the possibility that Augustus wrote the Res Gestae as support for his eventual apotheosis, John Scheid offers Cornelius Nepos’s On Illustrious Men as a literary precedent for the Res Gestae, with the conclusion that the latter is a sort of “political autobiography.”2 By contrast, Alison Cooley identifies the closest precedents to be an inscription in which Pompey offered his battle spoils to a goddess and a poem on the gravestone of Cornelia, a daughter of Scribonia, the first wife of Augustus. Points of contact with other genres lead Cooley to identify the Res Gestae of Augustus as a one-of-a-kind document that allowed Augustus to specify his place in the political and social spheres of the Roman people.3 One aspect of Augustus’s genius is that he knew how to remind the Mediterranean world of all the good he brought to it, as can be seen clearly in this document. 1. Res Gestae Divi Augusti; editor’s translation of Latin text in Velleius Paterculus and Res Gestae Divi Augusti, ed. and trans. Frederick W. Shipley, LCL (London: William Heinemann, 1924); critical editions of the Latin and Greek texts are available in John Scheid, Res Gestae Divi Avgvsti: Hauts Faits du Divin Auguste (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007); Allison E. Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 2. Scheid, Res Gestae Divi Avgvsti, XLIII–LIII. 3. Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 32–34. Pompey’s inscription is found in Diodorus Siculus 40.4; the funerary poem of Cornelia is found in Propertius 4.11. 13 But often, as those in the lower levels of any society know, a favor from someone more powerful can also be a bid for control. This document would evoke different responses from those who heard it, depending on whether they had benefited or experienced loss by means of the Roman peace. The scope of “deeds accomplished” detailed in the document, however, helps us understand the long reach of this new political office that Augustus occupied as a princeps who was also a son of god.§1. When only nineteen years old, I initiated and funded an army by which I won liberty for the Republic when it was bullied by a faction.4 Because of this, the Senate, with honor-bestowing resolutions, added me to its rolls, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, granting both the right to vote as a consul and the office of propraetor over soldiers.5 Because I was a propraetor, the Republic charged me, along with the consuls, to make sure no harm came to the Republic.6 On top of this, when both consuls fell in war that same year, the people made me consul and a member of the ruling trio, because I consolidated the Republic.7§2. I exiled those who killed my father, bringing their crime under proper judgment, and later when they warred against the Republic, I defeated them twice. 8§3. I spearheaded civil and foreign wars throughout the whole earth, on land and sea, and after winning them I always let those citizens who asked for pardon live. I chose to save rather than kill foreign peoples who could safely be spared. Around 500,000 Roman 4. Mark Antony and his followers. 5. January 1, 43 bce; see Cicero, Phil. 5.28, 45–46. “Consul” denotes one of two head magistrates, who ruled the Roman Republic for terms of one year (a “consulship”). A “propraetor” denotes an office occupied by those who, after completing service as a “praetor” (an official who assists the consuls in ruling Rome), was assigned to govern a province. 6. Cicero, Phil. 5.34; Velleius Paterculus 2.61.3; Suetonius, Aug. 10.3; Appian, Roman History 3.51; Dio, Roman History 46.31. 7. Suetonius, Aug. 11.1; Tacitus, Ann. 1.9–10; Livy 120. The triumvirate consisted of Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian (who later came to be known as Augustus...