The House of Augustus — Augustus: He Found Rome Brick and Left It Marble

The way into Augustus’s house is through marriage. Augustus’s own marriages end quickly, until the third. Suetonius describes them without ornament. He swaps his first betrothed, the daughter of Servilius Isauricus, for Claudia, Antony’s stepdaughter, to seal the accord with his rival. He divorces her before they have even lived together, after quarreling with her mother Fulvia. Then he marries Scribonia and divorces her too, because, as he himself writes, he could not bear her spiteful character (Augustus 62).

Right after that, Augustus takes Livia Drusilla. Suetonius: he takes her from her husband, Tiberius Nero, although she was pregnant. Dio adds a detail: in the sixth month, with Drusus, and Augustus asked the college of pontiffs whether he was allowed to marry her. He got permission (48.44). Suetonius writes that he loved her and respected her to the end, with no rival.

They have no children together. One pregnancy ends in a premature birth, and Augustus very much wants an heir (Augustus 63). He does have a daughter, Julia, from his union with Scribonia, and two stepsons by Livia, Tiberius and Drusus.

Julia is his most valuable card. He marries her first to Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia, who is barely more than a boy. After Marcellus’s death he marries her to Agrippa, and has to persuade his sister to give up her son-in-law, because Agrippa is already married to one of the Marcellas, Octavia’s daughters, and has children by her (Augustus 63).

Agrippa and Julia have three sons, Gaius, Lucius and Agrippa Postumus, and two daughters, Julia and Agrippina. Augustus adopts Gaius and Lucius, symbolically buying them from their father. He himself teaches them to read, swim and imitate his handwriting. He does not sit with them at table except on the lowest couch, and on journeys they are to ride beside his carriage (Augustus 64).

The women in his house learn spinning and weaving. His daughter and granddaughters he forbids to say or do anything that could not be entered in the household diary. A young man who dared to visit his daughter at Baiae he rebukes for his audacity in a letter.

For many years everything goes according to plan. Then Suetonius writes: at the moment of greatest happiness and confidence about his family, fortune proved fickle (Augustus 65). First to die is Marcellus, who was to be first in line. Then Agrippa. The widow Julia is given a third husband: Augustus’s stepson Tiberius. Augustus forces him to divorce his wife, who is pregnant and with whom he already has a child (Augustus 63). Thus Tiberius, until now a stepson, becomes Augustus’s son-in-law.

In 2 BC all of Rome pays Augustus homage. The people, and then the Senate, confer on him the title Father of the Country. Suetonius quotes the words of the Senate and Augustus’s reply: with tears in his eyes, he asks the gods only that he may keep the consent of the Senate to the end of his life (Augustus 58). The year is given by Res Gestae 35: it happened in Augustus’s thirteenth consulship.

In the same year he learns what his daughter is doing. Dio writes that Julia holds nocturnal revels and drinking bouts in the Forum, and even on the Rostra. Augustus falls into such an immense rage that he cannot keep it to himself and speaks of it in the Senate. Suetonius adds that a quaestor read his letter for him, and he himself was ashamed to show himself to people for a long time. Julia is sent to the island of Pandateria, and her mother Scribonia goes with her voluntarily. The men who enjoyed her favors meet with punishment: Iullus Antonius, who according to Dio had designs on power, is executed, the others go into exile (Dio 55.10).

The severity toward his daughter is unusual even for a father. Julia gets no wine or luxuries, and no man may approach her without Augustus’s permission and without a description of his height, complexion and the marks on his body. After five years Augustus moves her from the island to the mainland, but never allows her to return. When the Romans repeatedly ask for a pardon, he does not yield. Of her confidante Phoebe, who took her own life, he says: I would rather have been Phoebe’s father (Augustus 65).

Meanwhile the successors disappear one after another. See how fast.

Lucius dies in Massilia, Gaius in Lycia, within eighteen months (Augustus 65). Tacitus adds a sentence that will cling to Livia for centuries: they died “by fate or by the treachery of their stepmother Livia.” It is only a supposition tossed off in passing, without proof (Annals 1.3).

Augustus then adopts a third grandson, Agrippa Postumus, and with him his stepson Tiberius (Augustus 65). This is June 27, AD 4 (Velleius 2.103). Postumus he soon disinherits: he had, as Suetonius writes, base tastes and a violent character. He sends him to Surrentum, and according to Tacitus Postumus ends up on the island of Planasia (Annals 1.3). Tiberius, in turn, must adopt his nephew Germanicus, although he has a son of his own: Dio writes that Augustus feared Tiberius would lose his balance and cause a rebellion (55.13).

The dynasty is set. Tiberius has the throne within reach, Germanicus waits behind him. And then, in AD 9, news comes from the forest.