Res Gestae Divi Augusti

But like so many of those monuments, Augustus claims that he did it all, just brushes over Julius Caesar's involvement.

So in chapter 21 of the Res Gestae, the epitaph of Augustus, he says, I built the theater by the temple of Apollo on a site, most of which was purchased from private owners, intending that it should bear the name of my nephew, Marcus Marcellus, hence theater of Marcellus.

No

mention of Caesar.

So I should preface, uh, this answer with saying that whilst the Parthian standards is the most popular interpretation, there have been, uh, scholars and academics who have suggested there, this is a different return of a different set of standards, because the Parthian standards are not the only standards to be returned to Rome and to Augustus during his lifetime.

And he makes this clear in his Res Gestae in chapter 29, uh, when he talks about how, um, several military, uh, standards were returned, having been lost by several Roman commanders.

But he does emphasize the Parthian standards as being particularly important ones.

And I think the Parthian standards make the most sense, not only because we can read the iconography of the figure, this non-Roman figure wearing a tunic and trousers, um, having potentially a diadem on his head.

What also makes Parthia particularly plausible is the dominance of Parthia in Roman literature, both prior to the return of the Parthian standards in 19 BCE and afterwards.

So the Augustan poets make a really, really heavy, heavy emphasis on how Rome will conquer Parthia, will avenge the taking of the Parthian standards prior to the return.

And then after the return, we still see this emphasis on, uh, the extent of Rome's power and empire through the conquest of Parthia and, and compelling the Parthians to return the standards, which is what Augustus tells us in Res Gestae, chapter 29.

Ovid, in his, uh, book five of his Fasti, when he describes the Forum of Augustus and the Temple to Mars Ultor, the Parthians are pretty prominent there, which is relevant because the return of the Parthian standards, as Augustus tells us, were, um, dedicated in the sanctuary in the Temple of Mars Ultor.

So surrounding the central scene, we have the heavenly bodies, solar movement, Mother Earth, the support of Apollo and Diana linking into the Lude secularis, and we have the provinces that Augustus has brought to peace.

And he tells us about this in his Res Gestae, about pacifying Spain and Gaul and returning triumphant from the East as well, for which he gains, in the case of returning from the East, the Temple of Fortuna Redux in 19 BC and returning from Spain and Gaul, he gets the Altar of Augustan Peace in 13 BCE.

And that's it for part one.

Check back for part two of this mini-series on the Prima Porta.

We also have Cassius Dio, who's writing under the Severans, and he is probably our most detailed source, but of course is writing far, far removed in a very different context.

We do have Augustus' autobiographical inscription called the Res Gestae, and we also know that Augustus did write an autobiography that we do not have.

Suetonius and Cassius Dio claim to have read that, and they will quote bits of it.

But there's no source that can be trusted unanimously, and so scraping away the spin from the fact is very challenging.

We have other examples of imperial autobiography.

For example, the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the accomplished works of the Emperor Augustus, he writes in the first person, but it's cleaned up and it's whitewashed and it's propaganda.

That is, writing we get out from emperors, right, or associated with emperors, is whitewashed and propagandistic during the Roman Empire.

Marcus, in contrast, it's like the meditations couldn't be more different from the race guesti of the deified Augustus.

And then there's the mystery of the entrance.

In front of the mausoleum, there were two obelisks, and between them, bronze tablets inscribed with the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Augustus' own account of his achievements, which he wanted to be displayed at his tomb.

That's one of the most important historical documents we have from antiquity, and it was literally nailed to the front of his burial place.

Wait, so the Res Gestae was set up at the mausoleum? I thought it was displayed in Rome and provinces.

It was, but the original bronze version was at the mausoleum.

We know that from the text itself, which says, "I accomplished these things," and is headed with the phrase, "Below is a copy of the achievements of the deified Augustus." Copies were sent to provincial temples, but the master copy was in Rome, right there at his tomb.

You know, this tomb is such a fascinating window into how Augustus thought about legacy.

He wasn't just building a burial spot, he was constructing a narrative.

Both rulers ended up immortalizing their victories.

Augustus boasted in his Resgestae that his armies laid waste to Napata and his reach extended well into Nubia.

A bronze head of Caesar, once belonging to a statue of Alexandrian make, now housed in the British Museum, was found buried under the threshold of one of the temple doors in Meroe.

It is believed to have been seized during the Kushite raids of 25 and deposited there on Amanarenas' orders, as all future visitors would symbolically trample the emperor's image every time someone entered the building.

It's a dodgy, dodgy position.

Yes, and if we think about the autobiography of Augustus, his [laughs] splendidly titled Things Done, Things Achieved, Res Gestae.

Uh, let's say the pronoun in use is I, not we, and, uh, he doesn't attribute...

Uh, he, he just says, "I did this, I did that, I built that, I built the other, I defeated these and those, and I got X numbers of triumphs." And there's g- no mention of Agrippa.

in civil wars, but this is completely different.

And even Augustus, as he is later, will say in his epitaph, in the Res Gestae, the things done by the deified Augustus, the very first sentence of that epitaph is, "At the age of 19, I engaged an army on my own initiative and at my own expense, and with it I set the state free from the slavery which the conspirators had imposed on it."

Mm.

All right, so in the first half of that, that's illegal, but he does something noble with it.

He marches on Rome.

Mm.

I have to say that he does not talk about this in the Res Gestae.

All of that comes under that, I, I, you know, I liberated them from slavery really.