Small Bandwidth: Augustus’ (Non)Reception in America and its Context*

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To say that Augustus was one of the dominant figures of Greco-Roman antiquity would be an understatement. He was a conqueror and added more territory to Rome’s empire than any Roman before him.¹ For good reason, Alexander was a model and inspiration and the Macedonian’s anastolé, even if more sedately, became part of the iconic image of Augustus. At the same time, he oversaw a period of profound transformation within the empire² and it is no coincidence that Ovid, who in his way is the most Augustan poet, chose mutatas formas as the theme of his master work.³ Amid all this, Augustus was not a demiurge, let alone a micromanager; it has been well observed that not everything that happened under Augustus happened because of Augustus, but the result—and, unsurprisingly, Alexander figures in here, too—was an oikumenē of many cultures, religions, peoples, and traditions under the big tent and stable aegis of Rome, the Pax Augusta and Romana, a stability that lasted for some two hundred years. The multifarious richness of all these aspects is paralleled by the range of his personal behaviors and, even more so, his res gestae, to which he literally set a monument in the form of the largest Roman inscription. An endemic companion of that range and richness has been controversy. It is to be expected in the reception of great figures—to each their own Alexander or Napoleon.

And so it was with Augustus, Tacitus’ two concise chapters (Annals 1.9–10; cf. Seneca, Clem. 1.11.1) being an early and influential exhibit. For rulers, however, he became a model and, to paraphrase Jupiter’s prediction about the imperium Romanum in Aeneid 1 (278–79), there were neither metae rerum nor temporal limits. An interesting example of his reach beyond the boundaries of his empire in the decades after his death is the self-representation of Kudjula Kadphises, the founder of the expanding Kushan Empire, who ruled from ca. 30–80 AD. On some of his coins, he is shown as sitting on a curule chair (FIG 1a–c); the immediate model for this particular image may have been the splendid aureus of Octavian, minted in 28 BC in the province of Asia (FIG 2).⁴ As for transcendence of time, especially medieval Christian rulers such as Charlemagne and Frederic I Barbarossa were seen as harking back to Augustus.⁵ The Christians from early on hailed Augustus’ rule as willed by God as the pax Augusta provided an ideal setting for the birth of Christ (a notion that was enhanced by stories such as the Sibyl directing Augustus to pay homage to Mary and the infant Jesus).⁶ When one looks at major alternatives, such as the Han Dynasty in China, that is not an altogether unreasonable conclusion.⁷ Later European rulers followed suit. An egregious example is Louis XIV, who, inspired by Suetonius’ account of Augustus’ closing the doors of the Janus Temple (Aug. 22), planned to rebuild his version of that temple in Paris with his representation as maître de l’univers and arbitre de la paix on top of its dome.⁸ Rulers of Saxony, such as Frederick II Augustus (1694–1733), were into a full-scale imitatio Augusti in the cultural realm, whereas Augustus emerged as far more controversial in “Augustan” England; as Howard Weinbrot summarized it, his reputation bounced up and down like a cork on the tide. He curried even less favor with European intellectuals, such as Montesquieu, Gibbon and Voltaire, who were among his harshest critics,⁹ and the reign of Napoleon did nothing to dissuade such voices; while the French emperor never cast himself outright as Augustus many of his endeavors, such as creating a unified empire and his building programs, evoke, and perhaps were meant to evoke, parallels with Rome’s first princeps.¹⁰ A century later, of course, there was the...