Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T23:26:10.984Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From the Augustan Principate to the Invention of the Age of Augustus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2019

Alison E. Cooley
Alison E. Cooley*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
*
a.cooley@warwick.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores alternatives to analysing the political impact of Augustus in terms of the establishment of a new constitutional structure, the Augustan Principate. It starts by showing how the word principatus changed over time and explores the significance of the term statio. It considers how contemporaries viewed the political changes that occurred during Augustus’ lifetime, analysing the ways in which power at Rome became increasingly embodied in the person of Augustus himself. It suggests that there was an increasing recognition that Augustus was an exceptional individual, whose position in the state was supported by powers granted formally by senatorial decree and popular vote as well as informally by acclamation, but whose authority was ultimately a personal quality, supported by the gods, and predestined by birth. It traces the ways in which Augustus’ rule became increasingly personalised, with the result that one of the main challenges faced by Tiberius in a.d. 14 was how to take over Augustus’ personal role as princeps.

Keywords

AugustusPrincipatestatiobirthdayomenscalendarTiberius
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 109 , November 2019 , pp. 71 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I would like to thank the following for offering constructive feedback on drafts of this article: Ingo Gildenhard, Wolfgang Havener and members of the JRS Editorial Board.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SCPP = Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre = Eck et al. 1996.Google Scholar
Barton, T. 1995: ‘Augustus and Capricorn: astrological polyvalency and imperial rhetoric’, Journal of Roman Studies 85, 33–51.Google Scholar
Beacham, R. C. 1999: Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome, New Haven and London.Google Scholar
Bellemore, J. 1989: ‘When did Valerius Maximus write the Dicta et Facta Memorabilia?’ Antichthon 23, 67–80.Google Scholar
Béranger, J. 1953: Recherches sur l'aspect idéologique du principat, Basel.Google Scholar
Bloomer, W. M. 1992: Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility, Chapel Hill and London.Google Scholar
Bloomer, W. M. 2011: ‘Transit admiratio: memoria, invidia, and the historian’, in Cowan 2011a, 93–119.Google Scholar
Clark, M. D. H. 2010: Augustus, First Roman Emperor: Power, Propaganda and the Politics of Survival, Exeter.Google Scholar
Collins, A. 2012: ‘Callisthenes on Olympias and Alexander's divine birth’, Ancient History Bulletin 26, 1–14.Google Scholar
Cook, P. 2018: ‘Embodying the Augustan in Suetonius and beyond’, in Goodman 2018b, 58–73.Google Scholar
Cooley, A. E. 1998: ‘The moralizing message of the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre’, Greece and Rome 45, 199–212.Google Scholar
Cooley, A. E. 2006: ‘Beyond Rome and Latium: Roman religion in the age of Augustus’, in Schultz, C. E. and Harvey, P. B. Jr (eds), Religion in Republican Italy, Cambridge, 228–52.Google Scholar
Cooley, A. E. 2009: Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Corbier, M. 2001: ‘Maiestas domus Augustae’, in Bertinelli, G. Angeli and Donati, A. (eds), Varia epigraphica. Atti del colloquio internazionale di epigrafia, Bertinoro, 8–10 giugno 2000, Faenza, 155–99.Google Scholar
Cowan, E. 2009: ‘Tiberius and Augustus in Tiberian sources’, Historia 58, 468–85.Google Scholar
Cowan, E. (ed.) 2011a: Velleius Paterculus: Making History, Swansea.Google Scholar
Cowan, E. 2011b: ‘Introduction’, in Cowan 2011a, ix–xiii.Google Scholar
Dreyer, B. and Engelmann, H. 2006: ‘Augustus und Germanicus im ionischen Metropolis’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 158, 173–82.Google Scholar
Eck, W., Caballos, A. and Fernández, F. (eds) 1996: Das Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre, Munich.Google Scholar
Everitt, A. 2006: The First Emperor: Caesar Augustus and the Triumph of Rome, London.Google Scholar
Ewald, B. C. and Noreña, C. 2010: ‘Introduction’, in Ewald, B. C. and Noreña, C. (eds), The Emperor and Rome: Space, Representation, and Ritual, Cambridge, 1–43.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. 2007: Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Flaig, E. 2011: ‘The transition from Republic to Principate: loss of legitimacy, revolution and acceptance’, in Arnason, J. P. and Raaflaub, K. A. (eds), The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, Malden, MA, 67–84.Google Scholar
Flower, H. I. 2010: Roman Republics, Princeton and Oxford.Google Scholar
Friesen, S. J. 2001: Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins, Oxford.Google Scholar
Galinsky, K. 2012: Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Geiger, J. 2018: ‘The first emperor? Augustus and Julius Caesar as rival founders of the Principate’, in Goodman 2018b, 74–86.Google Scholar
Gibson, A. G. G. (ed.) 2013: The Julio-Claudian Succession: Reality and Perception of the “Augustan Model”, Leiden and Boston.Google Scholar
Gildenhard, I. 2011: Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches, Oxford.Google Scholar
Goldsworthy, A. K. 2014: Augustus: From Revolutionary to Emperor, London.Google Scholar
Goodman, P. J. 2018a: ‘Twelve Augusti’, Journal of Roman Studies 108, 156–70.Google Scholar
Goodman, P. J. (ed.) 2018b: Afterlives of Augustus, AD 14–2014, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Griffin, M. 1991: Cicero: On Duties (with translation by Atkins, E. M.), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Gruen, E. S. 2005: ‘Augustus and the making of the Principate’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, Cambridge, 33–51.Google Scholar
Gury, F. 2001: ‘Septem triones. Un thème de la prédestination dynastique à Rome’, in Molin, M. (ed.), Images et représentations du pouvoir et l'ordre social dans l'antiquité. Actes du colloque d'Angers, 28–29 mai 1999, Paris, 181–8.Google Scholar
Hall, J. 2002: ‘The Philippics’, in May, J. M. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, Leiden, 273–304.Google Scholar
Harlow, M. and Laurence, R. 2017: ‘Augustus senex: old age and the remaking of the Principate’, Greece and Rome 64, 115–31.Google Scholar
Haselberger, L. 2011: ‘A debate on the Horologium of Augustus: controversy and clarifications’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 24, 47–73.Google Scholar
Heslin, P. 2007: ‘Augustus, Domitian and the so-called Horologium Augusti’, Journal of Roman Studies 97, 1–20.Google Scholar
Hillard, T. 2011: ‘Velleius 2.124.2 and the reluctant princeps: the evolution of Roman perceptions of leadership’, in Cowan 2011a, 219–51.Google Scholar
Hölscher, T. 2009: ‘Monuments of the Battle of Actium: propaganda and response’ (trans. C. Nader), in Edmondson, J. (ed.), Augustus, Edinburgh, 310–33.Google Scholar
Hurlet, F. 1997: Les collègues du prince sous Auguste et Tibère. De la légalité républicaine à la légitimité dynastique, Rome.Google Scholar
Judge, E. 1974: ‘“Res publica restituta”: a modern illusion?’ in Evans, J. A. S. (ed.), Polis and Imperium: Studies in Honour of Edward Togo Salmon, Toronto, 279–311.Google Scholar
Koortbojian, M. 2013: The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents, Consequences, Implications, New York.Google Scholar
Köstermann, E. 1932: ‘Statio principis’, Philologus 87, 358–68, 430–44.Google Scholar
Laffi, U. 1967: ‘Le iscrizioni relative all'introduzione nel 9 a.C. del nuovo calendario della provincia d'Asia’, Studi Classici e Orientali 16, 5–98.Google Scholar
Lewis, A.-M. 2008: ‘Augustus and his horoscope reconsidered’, Phoenix 62, 308–37.Google Scholar
Lorsch Wildfang, R. 2000: ‘The propaganda of omens: six dreams involving Augustus’, in Wildfang, R. Lorsch and Isager, J. (eds), Divination and Portents in the Roman World, Odense, 43–55.Google Scholar
Lott, J. B. 2004: The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Marincola, J. 2011: ‘Explanations in Velleius’, in Cowan 2011a, 121–40.Google Scholar
Millar, F. 1968: ‘Two Augustan notes’, Classical Review 18, 263–6.Google Scholar
Millar, F. 1993: ‘Ovid and the Domus Augusta: Rome seen from Tomoi’, Journal of Roman Studies 83, 1–17 (= F. Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, Vol. 1: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution (ed. H. M. Cotton and G. M. Rogers), Chapel Hill, NC, 2002, 321–49).Google Scholar
Morrell, K., Osgood, J. and Welch, K. (eds) 2019, in press: The Alternative Augustan Age, Oxford.Google Scholar
Osgood, J. 2013: ‘Suetonius and the succession to Augustus’, in Gibson 2013, 19–40.Google Scholar
Pandey, N. B. 2018: The Poetics of Power in Augustan Rome: Latin Poetic Responses to Early Imperial Iconography, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pelling, C. 2011: ‘Velleius and biography: the case of Julius Caesar’, in Cowan 2011a, 157–76.Google Scholar
Pollini, J. 2012: From Republic to Empire: Rhetoric, Religion, and Power in the Visual Culture of Ancient Rome, Norman, OK.Google Scholar
Rehak, P. 2006: Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (ed. Younger, J. G.), Madison, WI.Google Scholar
Schmid, A. 2005: Augustus und die Macht der Sterne. Antike Astrologie und die Etablierung der Monarchie in Rom, Cologne.Google Scholar
Schnegg-Köhler, B. 2002: Die augusteischen Säkularspiele, Munich and Leipzig.Google Scholar
Sherk, R. K. 1969: Roman Documents from the Greek East. Senatus Consulta and Epistulae to the Age of Augustus, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Shipley, F. W. 1924: Velleius Paterculus, Compendium of Roman History and Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Stern, S. 2012: Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies, Oxford.Google Scholar
Syme, R. 1978: History in Ovid, Oxford.Google Scholar
Vassileiou, A. 1984: ‘Caius ou Lucius Caesar proclamé princeps juventutis par l'ordre équestre’, in Walter, H. (ed.), Hommages à Lucien Lerat (2 vols), Paris, 2.827–39.Google Scholar
Veyne, P. 2002–3: ‘Qu’était-ce qu'un empereur romain? Dieu parce qu'empereur’, Diogène 199, 3–25.Google Scholar
Volk, K. 2009: Manilius and his Intellectual Background, Oxford.Google Scholar
Vout, C. 2013: ‘Tiberius and the invention of succession’, in Gibson 2013, 59–77.Google Scholar
Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1982: ‘Civilis princeps: between citizen and king’, Journal of Roman Studies 72, 32–48.Google Scholar
Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1983: Suetonius: the Scholar and his Caesars, London.Google Scholar
Wardle, D. 2005: ‘Suetonius and Augustus’ “programmatic edict”’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 148, 181–201.Google Scholar
Wardle, D. 2012: ‘Suetonius on Augustus as god and man’, Classical Quarterly 62, 307–26.Google Scholar
Wardle, D. 2014: Suetonius: Life of Augustus, Oxford.Google Scholar
Weber, G. 2000: Kaiser, Träume und Visionen in Prinzipat und Spätantike, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Weinstock, S. 1971: Divus Julius, Oxford.Google Scholar
Woodman, A. J. 1977: Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (2.94–131), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Woodman, A. J. 1983: Velleius Paterculus: The Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41–93), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Zanker, P. 1988: The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. Shapiro, A.), Ann Arbor.Google Scholar