Breaching the Alps

The Roman preoccupation with the Alps as the tutamen of Italy owed its epistemic immediacy to a much more recent event—the Cimbric Wars (113-101 BCE). This traumatic episode had reawakened imagery of the northern enemies penetrating the “Wall of Italy,” which in some cases went all the way back to the Mid-Republican narrative traditions of the Gallic Invasions and the much more frequently debated shock of Hannibal’s invasion. The significance of this imagery continued even beyond the Augustan era, so that remnants of the same Roman insecurity about the “Wall of Italy” being breached, especially by northerners, are preserved in narratives about later Julio-Claudians such as Caligula and Nero. This article first looks at the likely origins of the idea of the Alps as the “Wall of Italy” in Middle-Republican perceptions, projected back onto the past and presenting Rome as predestined to dominate Italy and the Gauls in particular as external intruders in the peninsula. Next, the Late Republican and Augustan stages of the motif is reviewed, and the impact of the Cimbric Wars on this imagery is debated. Finally, there will be brief discussion of anecdotes found in Tacitus and Suetonius about later Julio-Claudian episodes in which the fear of a northern invasion breaching the Alps seem to have gripped the Romans.

Archaeology and Material Culture of Nabataea and the Nabataeans

The Nabataeans were an Arab people who inhabited northwest Arabia over two thousand years ago. Their center was the city of Petra, located in what today is the southern part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. They appear in Greek accounts around 312/311 BCE when the armies of Antigonus Monophthalmos attempted to raid the small, but well-defended kingdom of traders in their capital of Petra. They were reportedly a small, but extremely wealthy, Arab people who transported aromatics, frankincense, and myrrh from the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean coast and Egypt. They were skilled stone cutters, a craft developed in the Hellenistic period when they hewed and plastered large cisterns for their exclusive use along desert tracks in the Negev. The Nabataeans became an important element in the geopolitical deposition of the southern Levant at a time when Rome was becoming increasingly involved in the region. They controlled trade routes in the desert regions of the Negev and Sinai Peninsula and extended their rule northward into Syria and southward to the Red Sea coast of Arabia. Their control of the Negev led to the establishment of towns along the main route between Petra and Gaza, called the Incense Road, as well as along other major tracks. By the Roman era they were also master potters, producing exquisite, thin-walled vessels that took the place of glass. In the increasingly competitive markets of the Augustan era, they responded by producing perfumed oils packaged in ceramic unguentaria produced at Petra that they marketed abroad. The increased revenues that they received in an era of high international demand allowed the Nabataeans to indulge in the monumental architecture that can still be viewed with awe today. Nabataea was a client state during the reign of Augustus, and it was ruled by a series of native kings until its annexation by Rome in 106 CE, upon which its territory became the Roman province of Arabia. Loss of self-rule does not seem to have affected the prosperity of the Nabataeans or the production of pottery and aromatics at Petra, and their role in international trade continued until Roman collapse in the region in the 3rd century CE. Nabataean language, culture, and religion continued under Roman rule well into the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods. In those periods, their written language—Aramaic—was transformational, leading to the development of written Arabic as known today.

Contrasting Nature, Gender, and Genre in Anne Finch's "A Nocturnal Reverie"

Anne Finch came to be considered one of the most influential female figures of the Augustan era because of her free, intimate exploration of nature and gender through poetry as well as her ability to seamlessly blend both classical and modern genres. In this article, Finch's unique style, voice, and perspective are examined in the context of "A Nocturnal Reverie," the final poem in her only published collection in 1713. "A Nocturnal Reverie" best showcases Finch's subtle but subversive style as she revisits scenes from John Milton, criticizes the idyllic presentation of mankind's relationship with nature, and makes a proto-feminist argument against woman's confinement to the domestic sphere all while operating under the pretext of nature poetry.

Painted Worlds and Porous Walls

Propertius’ fourth and final book of elegies also dramatizes the anxieties that emerge when one draws a map. The false promise of order and control, of being able to determine what is “in” and differentiate it from what is “out,” what is “Roman” as opposed to what is “non-Roman” returns in the guise of an Augustan-era map that the young wife, Arethusa, consults in elegy 4.3 and of the walls around early Rome in Tarpeia’s story of transgression from elegy 4.4. Propertius intertwines cartographic fines with the fortified boundaries of the new city, until he retrospectively reconstructs the problem of porous limits as an originary one for Rome, one that does not solely spring up with the imperial expansion of the Augustan age but always already existed at the very beginnings of the city.

Capital Scripts

This chapter surveys capital letterforms, which have been in use from the second century BC until the present day. It defines two types of capitals in use since the Augustan Era: formal Square Capitals and informal Rustic Capitals, and traces the development of Rustic Capitals as a text hand in manuscripts of classical authors until the sixth century AD as well as the use of Square Capitals until the late fifth century AD. It closes with a look at the use of Rustic Capitals in rubrics of eighth-century manuscripts from England, and Rustic and Square Capitals found in Carolingian contexts.

Close Encounters

This chapter explores the metaleptic incursions of deities into various spheres of narrative and acts of narration, focusing on two cases in Latin love elegy. It first sketches some of the key dynamics of divine epiphany in Greco-Roman poetry from Homer on, differentiating epiphanies in which the divinity inspires the poet from those in which characters receive prophetic information. In Latin love elegy, these categories can overlap, since the elegist is both the hero of his own story and simultaneously the omniscient extradiegetic narrator. So in [Tibullus] 3.4, Apollo appears to the poet Lygdamus, but, instead of acting as the god of poetic inspiration, simply informs Lygdamus of the infidelity of his puella Neaera, tells the story of his own love affair with Admetus, and offers advice about love. This epiphany is compared with its primary intertext, the visit of Amor to the exiled poet in Ovid, Ex Ponto 3.3. The chapter argues that elegy, as a genre in which author and narrator usually share a name but fulfil multiple narrative functions, is especially liable to a strong form of metalepsis; and that these two poems in particular use metaleptic divine epiphany to elide the differences between gods and poets, revisit the Augustan-era obsession with who has the authority to say what to whom, and thereby show how the forces of elegy destabilize hierarchies beyond those of gender and class. The chapter suggests in conclusion that both poems may owe something to the lost work of their predecessor Gallus.

Subsidia dominationi: The Early Careers of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Nero Claudius Drusus Revisited

SummaryWhereas many aspects of the Augustan age continue to enjoy ongoing or renewed interest, the early careers of Tiberius Claudius Nero (born 16 November 42 BCE) and Nero Claudius Drusus (March/April 38 BCE), Livia’s sons from her marriage to Ti. Claudius Nero (pr. 42), have not been subject to much discussion or controversy of late. On the one hand, this could, perhaps, be explained in that they were quite young during the formative stages of the so-called Augustan monarchy, the critical settlements being those of 27, 23 and 19 BCE, the eye-catchers par excellence in the political history of the early Augustan era. On the other hand, Livia’s sons only really emerge into the spotlight of both ancient sources and modern scholarship after the untimely passing of M. Vipsanius Agrippa in 12 BCE. This paper aims at revisiting the evidence for Tiberius’ and Drusus’ careers in the decade or so before the latter’s premature death in Germany in 9 BCE, the period preceding the rapid rise (and demise) of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. There are, indeed, strong indications that Livia’s sons played a far more important part than has hitherto been recognized, both in terms of their official position and their role in assisting Augustus with one of his most important political objectives, namely the imperial monopolization of the public triumph.

The Man in the Background: The Search for Maecenas

Since the late sixteenth century parts of the ‘imperial frieze’ of the Ara Pacis have been known. The most striking figure in the background of the southern frieze is that long thought to be a portrait of Maecenas, the Etruscan prince and literary patron of the Augustan era. This article attempts three things: to discover 1.Where and how this identification originated,2.What evidence there now is for that identification, and3.What alternative identifications can be offered.The bibliography is substantial, the trail is complicated and highly paradoxical, and fantasy has often played a large role. The ‘evidence’ in play for centuries has sometimes evaporated into thin air. The identities proposed are, in fact, numerous. Not of least interest is the hidden or mistaken identity, in turn, of crucial modern scholars. A method is proposed at last for evaluating the identifications of this background portrait, including obvious comparison with other background figures. This analysis emphasizes how much is still not known about the most famous piece of Augustan art. An attempt is nevertheless made in the last analysis, to support what can be offered, in the light of current understanding, as the most plausible identification.

Egyptian Victories

The first princeps placed the newly conquered province of Egypt not under a senatorial governor but an equestrian prefect. This constituted a precedent in various respects. Being a new form of provincial administration, the prefecture offered its holders ample opportunity to distinguish themselves, not least in the field of military glory. This chapter addresses the questions of how the first praefecti, C. Cornelius Gallus, L. Aelius Gallus, and P. Petronius, exploited these opportunities and how their efforts were perceived by the princeps and the members of the senatorial elite. The praefectura provides an excellent case study to analyze the mechanisms underlying the development of a new elite in the Augustan era, as well as the ambitions and limitations of its individual members.