Augustus Ascendant Part 5

Augustus was an extremely adroit politician and his new regime was a great coup that had wide support. He was careful not to push his luck too far and tactfully left Rome for almost three years to give the new constitutional arrangements time to take hold without seeming forced. Augustus continued to be elected consul, but left administration to hsi consular colleagues, among them the essential Agrippa.

During this time, Augustus' huge new province needed some looking after. Gaul had fallen into disarray during Rome's civil wars and Augustus brought it firmly back under control. Once he established order and conducted a census, he went to Spain. Spain presented a much harder egg to crack. The native tribes in the northern of the two Spanish provinces had never been completely conquered.

The Astures (whence the modern Asturias) and the Cantabri (in the region of modern Bilbao and Santander) tribes in particular were putting up an effective resistance. Augustus led the campaign against them, but this time without the help of Agrippa's indispensable generalship. These tribes employed guerilla tactics. They would strike out from their mountain hideouts and smartly avoid the full-scale battle for which the legion was designed. The Romans-who of course were superb soldiers-just weren't well adjusted to this style of fighting. They would march in a given direction and find themselves confronted with an enemy hidden in valleys and woods and would fall prey to ambushes.

Augustus was superstitious, and was a huge believer in omens. He had a piece of sealskin he used as an amulet for protection from thunder and lightning, which he was afraid of. The amulet proved its worth and confirmed his superstitious nature during the Spanish campaign. A flash of lightning struck so close that it scorched his litter and killed a slave who was walking ahead lighting the way with a torch. In gratitude for his survival in this close scrape with the grim reaper, he built the Temple of Jupiter Tonans (the Thunderer) on the edge of the Capitol overlooking the Forum. This temple was famous for its splendor and the famous works of art in it. Augustus--very pious in his own way-would visit this temple often in the years to come.

Augustus again became sick as he so often did when involved in a crisis-especially a military one. Augustus went to the Pyrenees and convalesced in Tarraco (modern Tarragona). During this period of illness, which lasted for about a year, Augustus wrote an autobiography, which he dedicated to Maecenas and Agrippa. No ancient sources tell us what Augustus was ill from, although Dio does say it was caused "from the fatigue and anxiety caused by these conditions." Most unfortunately, this autobiography has been lost to history. Augustus' deputy quickly brought the conflict in northern Spain to an end, which victory was credited to the military genius of Augustus--of course!

On page 213 of Anthony Everitt's Augustus: "During the late Republic, the wives of senior Roman officials did not travel abroad with their husbands. Augustus himself ruled that the legates he appointed to the provinces at his disposal should not spend time with their wives or, if they insisted on doing so, then only outside the campaigning season (generally March to October)."

"However, we have it on good authority that Livia accompanied her husband on his travels to west and east. She was probably with him in Gaul and Spain, although she will have stayed safely in the rear when Augustus was with the army, and tended him when he was ill."

Livia was an able businesswoman and over the years accumulated numerous properties and estates across the empire. Her tours around the Meditteranean as Rome's first lady allowed her to inspect her acquisitions and check that they were being well managed. In Gaul she owned land with a copper mine. Her property portfolio also included palm groves in Judea and estates in Egypt, including papyrus marshes, arable farms, vineyards, commercial vegetable gardens, granaries, and olive and wine presses."

As mentioned before, Augustus' wavering health may have been the reason he made the first major move to arrange a dyanstic succession in 25 BC (when he was only 38). He had his daughter and only child, Julia, by his second wife Scribonia, married off to his nephew, Marcellus. Julia was fourteen and Marcellus twenty. Augustus was in Spain at the time so Agrippa presided over the wedding. It would have been so interesting had Agrippa been the sort of fellow to leave his thoughts about this obvious monarchial type succession plan to history, but as Anthony Everitt states in Augustus: "...what he thought of the young man's promotion is unknown, for he kept his own counsel."

The image is of what remains of the Theater of Marcellus at nighttime. More about this theater will be explained in a later post. I may have time to do one more post today-not sure. Thanks again so very much to Jon, human being and anyone else commenting or following this blog!