The House of Augustus: A Historical Detective Story by T.P. Wiseman (review)

The author of this book will be well known to anyone interested in Roman history. What Wiseman (W.) has provided on this occasion is a thought-provoking examination of the Palatine hill in Rome. The subtitle of the book is "A Historical Detective Story," which is an appropriate way to describe the content. Following the trail of Augustus to try to discover who he was, uncovering potential problems with the identification of structures on the Palatine, and interrogating the ancient literary sources, W. has produced an entertaining if at times complex narrative that provides the reader with much to think about. Not everyone will agree with his conclusions, but they are both provocative and provide a different approach than is on offer elsewhere.

The book is divided into ten chapters. Chapter 1 looks at the background to Augustus as revealed by contemporary sources; it is followed by a close examination of the archaeological remains on the Palatine in Chapters 2 and 3. After consideration of the prehistoric hill in Chapter 4, W. investigates the legends that deal with the Palatine and especially with Romulus in Chapters 5 and 6, then provides a consideration of the religious aspects of the site and its importance to Augustus in Chapters 7 and 8. The final two chapters, a survey of poets contemporary to Augustus and their association with the Palatine (Chapter 9) alongside a final rebuttal to the traditional view of Augustus (Chapter 10), provide a nice balance to the opening chapter.

It is not clear who the intended audience is, which is one of the problems. At times, it seems that this book is for the general reader given the explanations provided (e.g., who Agrippa was), but there is much here that would be confusing to someone without a good knowledge of the Palatine itself. Furthermore, the detailed discussion in the archaeological descriptions of the site makes following some of W's arguments rather challenging. The book also contains a great number of images (there are 71 figures in total) but sometimes the detail is difficult to see because of the scale and quality of the paper. This decision is unfortunate since W. refers to these images repeatedly and the large-size format of the book should have allowed the plans to be printed at a larger scale for easier viewing.

The main thrust of the book is that scholars have been blinkered by earlier accounts of the Palatine, especially the earliest archaeological reports, and have thus accepted these explanations without question for far too long. This is particularly the case concerning the identification of buildings on the hill that date to the Augustan period. W. argues therefore that a re-evaluation is needed. Through his detective work—trawling through both the ancient sources and the archaeological reports—W. offers an alternative to these received views, arguing for example that the identification of the House of Augustus is incorrect (Chapter 2). His reassessment of the evidence for the Temple of Apollo (Chapter 8), especially concerning the orientation, is convincing. But while such a re-examination may well be warranted, the tone of the book is quite polemical and it seems that the evidence is being made to fit W's ideas in some places. That tendency is most obvious when it comes to the treatment of the ancient literary sources, which are accepted without question for the most part. In one place, authors contemporary with the reign of Augustus (e.g., Horace, Virgil, Propertius, and Vitruvius) are noted as providing "uniquely authoritative evidence" (122) without considering why those authors might have written about the Palatine in the way they did at the time. Elsewhere, Tacitus is dismissed for his portrayal of Augustus since it does not fit with W.'s own assessment (Chapter 10). There is some consideration about the reasons why Tacitus might have viewed Augustus as he did—to the ancient author...