The Rise of the Centumviral Court in the Augustan Age

Scholars rightly hold that the restoration of social and political order under Augustus involved restricting certain long-standing arenas of aristocratic competition. Less well known is that aristocrats generated new arenas of competition to fill the lacuna. This chapter examines the centumviral court, a civil court with jurisdiction over wills and succession matters. Virtually invisible in Cicero’s day, when the criminal courts reigned supreme, it emerged in the Augustan age as an important venue for aristocratic competition. This rise in status can be attributed to its continuing to offer large juries and large crowds (assisted by its installation in the refurbished Basilica Julia) even as the criminal courts lost prominence. Other new arenas for competitive eloquence (declamation, recitation, forensic oratory before the Senate or emperor) involved smaller, select audiences. The centumviral court therefore became ever more attractive to aristocratic orators aspiring to public visibility in the early principate.

Maecenas and the Augustan Poets

Attending to the historical and cultural background behind the desire to promote Latin literature allows us to interpret the partnership between Maecenas and the so-called Augustan poets without recourse to traditional notions of poets as instruments. This chapter argues that the poets’ activities, at once cultural and civic, were influenced by a philosophy of history of which Polybius, Cicero, and (in the Augustan age) Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus were exponents. The poets were also encouraged by a new idea, largely initiated by Cicero and supported by Athenodorus in the entourage of Augustus, that one could benefit one’s homeland not only through politics but also through writing. Maximum effectiveness, however, required the authority to be heard at the highest level of the state. In this context, Maecenas’ patronage was a weighty asset. His proximity to the princeps and his auctoritas allowed the poets a real freedom of speech.

Augustus as Magpie

This chapter examines some instances where Augustan initiatives seem to have adapted or continued republican reforms and experiments. A well-known example is Augustus’ “revival” of the lex Pompeia de provinciis of 52, which required a five-year interval between civic magistracy and provincial command. This measure tends to be interpreted as a means of securing Augustus’ power while maintaining a veil of republicanism; this chapter argues that it shared the purpose as well as the mechanism of its Pompeian predecessor, namely to combat corruption in Rome and the provinces. Other examples, including changes to judiciary procedure, anti-bribery measures, and arrangements for the oversight of the treasury, suggest that Augustus took inspiration not only from Pompeius Magnus but even from the younger Cato. Recognizing these connections between republican and Augustan initiatives sheds light both on the continuities between Republic and principate, and on the aims and achievements of republican reformers.

The Alternative Augustan Age

“The Augustan Age” is a dominant term in historical, literary, and cultural scholarship, not to mention teaching. This introductory chapter highlights some of the limitations of thinking of a period of many decades and constant change in terms of a single “Augustan age.” It makes the case for looking beyond conventional “key dates” and the figure of Augustus himself to recover the alternative contemporary perspectives and processes of negotiation and compromise. Doing so (as the following chapters demonstrate) reveals the resilience of Roman (republican) culture and the extent to which individuals other than Augustus were able to shape the Augustan principate.

Acting “Republican” under Augustus

A long-standing republican institution, the mint at Rome, had been inactive for two decades before Augustus revived it. The precious metal coinage it produced from 19 BCE has been understood as a symbol of the tension between the ambition of individual Roman aristocrats and the ideological program of the Augustan principate. C. Antistius Vetus and C. Antistius Reginus are regarded as the last moneyers to pursue traditional strategies of gentilician promotion. Through an examination of their coin types, this chapter challenges scholarly views of the relationship between “republican” and “Augustan” image making. Rather than treating these modes as a binary, it considers the ways in which images of Augustus could serve “republican” ends and how aristocratic self-interest could give rise to “Augustan” images.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Marcus Agrippa?

This chapter offers a reconsideration of Agrippa, usually seen as the “right-hand man” of Augustus. Traditional republican culture demanded that a victor of Agrippa’s accomplishments had to earn the highest stature, but only the most extraordinary honors could reflect Agrippa’s achievements. Much like Cn. Pompeius Magnus before him, he embraced this path, advertising his exceptionalism by declining conventional honors and pursuing extraordinary ones, yet also ostentatiously avoiding the sort of solipsistic ambition that had led to civil war in the past. The promotion of Agrippa to someone of unprecedented excellence also worked well for Augustus. By elevating the independent status of his partner, he increased the value of Agrippa’s endorsement of the status quo.

Rebuilding Romulus’ Senate

In 18 BCE the ancient procedure for revising Senate membership, the lectio senatus, was radically changed. Thirty specially chosen senators were to nominate five individuals, with one of the five chosen by lot to become a senator; these thirty would in turn nominate five individuals. In this way, a Senate of perhaps 850 was to be reduced to its ancient size of 300. But a Senate of 300 never emerged, with 600 eventually chosen by Augustus himself amid acrimony and threats. Moreover, Augustus, trumped by Antistius Labeo’s legal auctoritas, was unable to exclude his rival Lepidus from the new Senate. By examining the lectio process and seeking to recover the legal minds behind it, this chapter shows that in 18 BCE Augustus’ hold of the res publica was not absolute, and that others, who did not know the future, had something meaningful to say about the shape of their political life.

Hopes and Aspirations

This chapter concentrates on the idea of alternatives by examining the negotiations between Imperator Caesar and his community that took place in 28–27 BCE in the wake of his return to Rome after the battles at Actium and Alexandria. It focuses particularly on the proclamation of a restoration of leges et iura in 28 BCE and the relationship between this claim and a potential subsequent claim that res publica had been restored. The publication by Rich and Williams (1999) of an important aureus drew attention to the prevalence of the expression leges et iura in the literature of these and the preceding years. This chapter sets out the current state of scholarly thinking about these issues. It also explores the ramifications of some alternative readings of the well-known evidence for the experimentation with the phrase res publica that took place during the lifetimes of Augustus and Tiberius.

The Reputation of L. Munatius Plancus and the Idea of “Serving the Times”

The evaluation of the career of L. Munatius Plancus has been inextricably bound up with the idea of “serving the times”—a phrase which Cicero once used in reference to him. But was survival through various political vicissitudes the chief virtue or achievement of Plancus? Did he see it that way? By putting Plancus back at the center of his own story, this chapter explores how his reputation was constructed in a complex process of competition and in-fighting with his contemporaries, as his peers critiqued his actions and he tried to defend and glorify them. Unpacking Plancus’ negative reputation ultimately proves to be an important part of reconstructing not only his career, but also the political discourse of the period.

Inventing the Imperial Senate

The Senate under Augustus was a strikingly different institution from the one known from Cicero. It became one of the pillars of the regime, allowing Augustus to lay claim to a rhetoric of continuity and legitimacy he could not have achieved in any other way. But there was a fundamental change in the way senators themselves saw their role, and the relationship Rome’s political, economic, and social elite had to senatorhood more broadly. This chapter explores how the Senate itself became largely cooperative rather than competitive, and developed a new corporate personality. This shift fed into many of Augustus’ own goals, but it also represented a rational response by the senators to their new reality.