Applaud — Augustus: He Found Rome Brick and Left It Marble
AD 9. Publius Quinctilius Varus governs in Germania. Dio writes that the Romans hold only some districts there; legions are stationed, cities spring up, and the locals grow used to Roman customs and markets (56.18). Varus treats them as subjects. The two leaders of the conspiracy, Arminius and Segimer, dine with him at the same table. He does not listen to warnings, and scolds those who warn him for being needlessly alarmed (56.19).
Lured into the forest, he struggles on for four days under fire, and a storm of rain and gale tears the formation apart; he abandons or burns the wagons (56.20–21). In a narrow pass the soldiers collide with one another and with tree trunks. When Varus and the most senior officers take their own lives, the rest stop defending themselves (56.21–22). Three legions perish together with their commander, legates and auxiliary troops (Suetonius, Augustus 23).
Augustus learns of the defeat. Dio writes that he reportedly tore his clothes. He fears for the Germanic and Gallic provinces, and most of all for Italy and Rome, because no one of military age worth mentioning was left at home (56.23). Suetonius adds: he orders the city guarded at night, extends the terms of the governors so that the allies will have experienced men beside them, and vows games to Jupiter. He also dismisses a troop of Germanic guards that he had used until then (Augustus 23, 49).
Suetonius goes on to describe a scene that sends shivers down the spine. For months Augustus does not cut his hair or beard. Sometimes he beats his head against a doorpost and cries: “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” He observes the anniversary of the defeat every year as a day of mourning. This is the account of one author, and the details may be stylized. The defeat and the political shock are certain.
August, AD 14. Augustus is seventy-five and ill. He sails along the coast of Campania and stops for four days at a villa on Capri. Suetonius writes that there he devotes himself solely to rest and sociable amusements (Augustus 98). Remember this island.
In the Gulf of Puteoli a ship from Alexandria sails up to him. The passengers and crew, dressed in white, wearing garlands, burn incense and cry that thanks to him they live, sail the seas, and enjoy freedom and fortune. Augustus is so pleased that he gives each of his companions forty gold coins. On one condition: they must spend them only on goods from Alexandria (Augustus 98). From the same Alexandria he had entered forty-three years earlier.
He dies in Nola. On the last day, as Suetonius describes, he asks from time to time whether there is any unrest in the city on his account. He asks for a mirror, has his hair combed and his sagging cheeks set right. He summons his friends and asks whether they think he has played the comedy of life well. He adds the customary Greek formula for the end of a play: since I have played well, applaud, and send me off the stage with cheers.
Then he sends everyone away. While talking with those who have come from Rome about the sick daughter of Drusus, he dies suddenly, kissing Livia. His last words: “Live mindful of our marriage, Livia, and farewell” (Augustus 99). He died in the same room as his father, on August 19, AD 14, thirty-five days before his seventy-sixth birthday (Augustus 100).
The scene is too beautiful not to suspect literature. Scholars Brandão and Leão show that Suetonius arranges the biography of Augustus ideologically, so the details of the last moments may be stylized. The place, the date and the natural death are certain.
Suetonius adds one more detail. Augustus once cried out in sudden fear that forty men were carrying him off. Forty soldiers of the Praetorian Guard later carried out his body (Augustus 99). Senators from the towns and colonies carry it by night from Nola to Bovillae, because of the heat. By day the body lies in the basilica or the main temple of whichever town they have reached. From Bovillae the equestrians take it over. The ashes were placed in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
The will was opened in the Senate. Tiberius inherits two thirds and Livia one third; both are to take the name Augustus. The people receive forty million sesterces. For the soldiers: a thousand for each guardsman, five hundred for the urban cohorts and three hundred for the legionaries. That much cash Augustus always kept at hand (Augustus 101).
What went on in Nola when Tiberius arrived? Here the sources diverge. Suetonius writes that Augustus recalled him from the road to Illyria and spent a whole day alone with him, still alive (Tiberius 21). Tacitus tells the moment differently. Tiberius is summoned by an urgent letter from his mother, but Tacitus admits that it is not known whether he found Augustus still alive at Nola. Livia placed a guard around the house, favorable reports were issued until everything was prepared, and in a single announcement the world learned that Augustus was dead and Tiberius master of the state (Annals 1.5).
One more thing remains: a rumor about Livia. Tacitus records that some months earlier Augustus is said to have sailed in secret to Planasia to see the exiled Agrippa Postumus, and that someone suspected his wife of a part in his death. Dio adds that Livia feared his reconciliation with his grandson and reportedly smeared poison on figs that Augustus picked himself from the tree (56.30). Both write of it as rumor and suspicion, and scholars consider it very unlikely.
How much of this story is certain? Sort it out.
And now put the whole story in order, from the January handing back of the state to the death at Nola.
In the next episode: Tiberius, the stepson whom Augustus chose when the grandsons ran out. Suetonius records that people repeated that Augustus, watching Tiberius leave, sighed: poor Roman people, to be ground by such slow jaws. Suetonius himself does not believe it (Tiberius 21). Something else is certain: Augustus made this man divorce his pregnant wife, and adopted him only after the deaths of Gaius and Lucius. Now Tiberius has the throne. And the island where Augustus spent his last cheerful days.