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Ovid and the Domus Augusta: Rome Seen from Tomoi*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Fergus Millar
Fergus Millar
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
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Extract

The greatest works of what we normally call ‘Augustan’ literature were produced by writers who came to maturity in the Triumviral period, and were already established as major authors before January 27 B.C., when ‘Imperator Caesar Divi filius’, whom we like to call ‘Octavianus’, gained the unprecedented cognomen ‘Augustus’. By that moment the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, the Epodes and Satires of Horace, and Book 1 of the Elegies of Propertius were already written. Livy had composed his sombre Praefatio, and probably the whole first pentad, in the later Triumviral period, perhaps around the time of Actium or soon after.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 83 , November 1993 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Fergus Millar 1993. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Livy IV. 17–20, see Ogilvie ad loc., and see esp. R. Syme, ‘Livy and Augustus’, HSCPh 64 (1954), 27 = Roman Papers I (1979), 440Google Scholar, and T.J. Luce, ‘The dating of Livy's first decade’, TAPhA 96 (1965), 209.

2 See Millar, F., ‘Cornelius Nepos, “Atticus” and the Roman Revolution’, Greece and Rome 35 (1988), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and now especially Horsfall, N., Cornelius Nepos: a Selection, Including the Lives of Cato and Atticus (1989)Google Scholar.

3 For this phase see Zanker, P., Augustus und die Machtder Bilder (1987), chs 2–3Google Scholar.

4 Millar, op. cit. (n. 2), 40 and 51.

5 For the suggestion that the period from 43 to 28 B.C. might be so termed, see Syme, R., History in Ovid (1978), 169Google Scholar.

6 For difficulties in seeing Livy as ‘Augustan’, see Luce, T.J., ‘Livy, Augustus and the Forum Augustum’, in Raaflaub, K. A. and Toher, M. (eds), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and his Principate (1990), 123Google Scholar.

7 Griffin, J., ‘Augustus and the poets: “Caesar qui cogere posset”’, in Millar, F. and Segal, E. (eds), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (1984), 189Google Scholar.

8 Velleius II. 100. 2. For his repeated allusions to the consulate of M. Vinicius see PIR1 v. 445.

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12 ILS 139–40; Marotta d'Agata, A. R., Decreta Pisana (CIL XI, 1420–21) (1980)Google Scholar.

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16 It is unfortunate that so far no combined text of the two inscriptions, set out with this original line-divisions, has yet been published. The nearest one can get is the excellent English translation of the whole text provided by Sherk, R. K., The Roman Empire (1988), no. 36Google Scholar.

17 AE 1984, no. 508, Fr. 11, col. b.

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19 AE 1984, no. 508, Fr. 1. See pp. 15–17 below. For this connection see already Millar, F., ‘Imperial ideology in the Tabula Siarensis’, in González, J. and Arce, J. (eds), Estudios Sobre la Tabula Siarensis (1988), IIGoogle Scholar.

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23 Contrast the much-quoted passage on the ‘restoration’ of the res publica by Augustus (11. 89) with that on the same achievement on the part of Tiberius (11. 126).

24 Demougin, S., Prosopographie des chevaliers romains julio-claudiens (1992), no. 88 (the father); no. 108 (Velleius himself)Google Scholar.

25 Only the key references will be given. The evidence has often been collected, most recently in PIR 2 O 180.

26 ILS 932.

27 There is no room here to argue this proposition. I will merely state baldly that (for instance) it wholly vitiates the otherwise interesting paper by G. Williams, ‘Did Maecenas “fall from favour”? Augustan literary patronage’, in Raaflaub and Toher, op. cit. (n. 6), 258.

28 Suetonius, Div. Aug. 58.

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31 Syme, op. cit. (n. 29), 21f.

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33 So e.g. Williams, G., Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (1978), 54–5Google Scholar — though I cannot see why the main passage quoted, Fasti IV. 19–62, must have been written after A.D. 14. Fasti 1. 531–6, is a much clearer case (see p. 15 below).

34 See Feeney, D. C., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (1991), ch. 5Google Scholar.

35 See White, P., ‘Julius Caesar in Augustan Rome’, Phoenix 42 (1988), 334CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Tr. 11. 131–7; IV. 9. 12; v. 2. 56–8; 11. 21.

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39 Syme, op. cit. (n. 3), 38–9.

40 Davidson, J., ‘The gaze in Polybius’, JRS 81 (1991), 38–9Google Scholar.

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42 See N. Purcell, ‘Livia and the womanhood of Rome’, PCPhS 212 (1986), 78.

43 The date is given by AE 1922, no. 96 (from Praeneste, Ins. It. XIII.2, p. 135, a fragment of the Fasti Praenestini): ‘Ti. Caesar curru triumphavit ex Ilurico’ (on the same day of the year as the second battle of Philippi); see Syme, op. cit. (n. 3), 40f.

44 Dio LVII. 14. 6.

45 Suetonius, Tib. 26. 2.

46 P. 4 above.

47 cf. p. 8 above and n. 33.

48 See esp. Pippidi, D. M., ‘Tomis, cité géto-grecque à l'époque d'Ovide?’, Parerga: écrits de philologie, d'epigraphie et d'histoire ancienne (1984), 189Google Scholar. For the inscriptions see Inscriptiones Scythiae Minoris Graecae et Latinae II: Tomis et territorium (1987).

49 Mitford, T. B., ‘A Cypriot oath of allegiance to Tiberius’, JRS 50 (1960), 75Google Scholar; SEG XVIII. 578; AE 1962, no. 248. See Herrmann, P., Der römische Kaisereid (1968), esp. 102fGoogle Scholar.