Augustus: Life at Court

Now that we are going back to Augustus I would like to post some information from Anthony Everitt's Augustus (p.256), that give a little more insight into his character and what life at his household and court was like: "The princeps took a friendly interest in professional entertainers of all kinds and got to know some of them personally. However, there were limits of propriety on which he insisted; he banned gladitorial contests sine missione, that is where a defeated fighter could not be reprieved and so had to be killed by his opponent. Augustus wanted to see bravery, but disliked pointless bloodshed. He also severely punished actors and other stage performers for licentious behavior. Women were not allowed to watch athletic contests (competitors did not wear clothes), and Augustus banned them from sitting alongside men at other entertainments; they were banished to the back rows."

In these articles about our powerful subject-Augustus-it has been stated before that he tried to project a public image of virtue, diligence, enterprise, thrift, modesty, and clemency. However, there are very few (if any) public personaes that strong rulers have promulgated that transmit the whole truth, and Augustus is in this group. Outside of Rome and the public eye, Augustus and his family lived a luxurious-even extravagant lifestyle.

There is a rocky island called Pandateria in ancient times (modern Ventotene) around 30 miles west of Naples, where Augustus built a grand palace, the site of which is currently being excavated. There is a huge building with many rooms here that previously housed servants, slaves, and guards. From here, the ground curves and narrows into a small valley, where fountains would have gurgled sumptuously among a colonnaded portico with plenty of seats that would have created a delightful sylvan area for family and guests to engage in conversation. The main house stood on a rocky promontory, where it overlooked steep cliffs. This massive, horseshoe shaped building would have had a beautiful central garden area. A breathtaking vista of sea and sky would have been offered by a viewing platform at the very tip of the promontory.

Among the magnificent splendour, Augustus could play host to his guests-all of them wealthy and powerful-but some of far more agreeable temperment than others-even disreputable folk-thus the need for privacy away from the prying eyes and chatting mouths of Rome's citizenry. Men like his strong, loyal, and capable general and friend, Agrippa, or the sybaritic but civilized Maecenas wouldn't have had any of what we would think of as "image" problems these days with Rome's populace. The same could not be said of a man such as Publius Vedius Pollio, the son of a wealthy freeman. Vedius had tanks where he kept giant eels. He also had the very evil and unpleasant habit of putting slaves in these tanks who had made him angry-the eels had been trained to become maneaters.

Augustus was the dinner guest of Vedius one evening when a slave broke a valuable crystal goblet at dinner. The enraged Vedius ordered the hapless young man thrown to the eels. Falling to his knees before Augustus, the boy begged for his life. Augustus then tried to reason with Vedius to have mercy on the slave. Vedius ignored Augustus, which in turn made the sole ruler of the Roman Empire angry. Augustus told Vedius: "Bring all your other drinking vessels like this one, or any others of value that you possess for me to use." Once this was done, Augustus ordered every last one to be smashed. This put Vedius in his place as he certainly couldn't order Augustus thrown to the eels! The slave-boy was pardoned from what would have been a gruesome fate.

Augustus publicly endorsed strict private morals, and history shows yet another fascinating aspect of this multi-faceted man. Going from the records from his time, Augustus apparently had a diverse and strong sexual drive. Ovid wrote that his house "though refulgent with portraits

of antique heroes, also contains, somewhere,

a little picture depicting the various sexual positions

A friend and slave dealer, Toranius, is said to have aided the emperor in his sexual conquests and would have women stripped of their clothes so Augustus could inspect them and choose among them. As an elderly man Augustus is said "still to have harbored a passion for deflowering girls, who were collected for him from every quarter, even by his wife!"

The cena or main meal of the day started about 3 in the afternoon for most Romans. This was so much more than our lunch or average dinner hour of modern times. The cena wasn't only for family and guests were often invited. Many various clubs and societies held regular feasts. The patrician class invited one another to an annual cena. Augustus and Livia would have their cena after a regimen of excercise and a bath.

The triclinium was a dining room with three communal couches covered by mattresses, arranged along three sides of a room with a table in the middle. This is the area where dinner parties were held, and for larger functions the same layout was repeated. Reclining to eat a meal was a highly-valued luxury, and up to three diners per couch lay alongside one another, with their heads nearest the table and their left elbows propped on cushions. Women would sit on chairs but by the time of Augutus it was becoming popular for them to recline with the men. Children would sit on stools in front of their fathers' places if they were allowed to be present.

Augustus held extravagant dinner parties and great care was taken with the guests social standing and providing a good variety of personalities at these meals. However, the Emperor himself was often not interested in eating and would arrive late and leave early-and of course no displeasure was expressed about his habit!

The meal would begin with the gustatio tasting, during which appetizers were served. These could be anything from pickled fruit, vegetables, cabbage in vinegar, heavily spiced concoctions such as nettles, sorrel, cider, and snails, clams, and small fish. A favorite delicacy was stuffed and roast dormice. A wine-and-honey mixture accompanied the gustatio. The main course would be a variety of meat dishes-anything from wild boar, turbot, chicken, sow's udders, and pork (50 different ways of preparing pork were known). The Romans added a sauce called garum or liquamen to almost everything. This was made from slowly decomposed mackerel intestines (yummy;-). The closest modern sauce to garum (alhtough still quite different) would be Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Dessert would be honey-soaked cakes, fruit and nuts.

Of course, wine was served with the meal, but heavy drinking would commence only when the meal was over. The Romans took this part of the evening quite seriously too. A roll of the dice would determine the rex bibendi ("king of what is to be drunk"). The rex bibendi was put in charge of mixing the wine and coming up with the number of toasts which everyone had to drink.

Augustus was a superb host and many times brightened his guests' evening with performances by story-tellers, circus acts, musicians, and actors. He also had the ability to make his guests feel individually valued and was able to engage with the shyest of them.

One publicly proclaimed virtue that Augustus did follow through with in his private and public life was hard work. Most Romans went to bed early but their ruler would still be found attending to matters of state. He would retreat to his study and dictate letters to secretaries, read dispatches and give advice or orders to be followed. Finally, by 11 p.m. he would retire but as a light sleeper woke up 3 or 4 times during the night; sleeping a maximum of 7 hours. Many times he found it hard to go to sleep again and would send for readers or story-tellers until he was able to drift off.

To anyone who reads or follows this blog- I apologize for such a lengthy interim between posts here! I am putting myself on a kind of schedule for the things I enjoy and like to blog about. For this blog and My Favorite Monsters, hopefully there won't be any more long periods between articles--two to three weeks at a very maximum--and hopefully much less. I am also going to work on my fiction writing on this schedule so I also hope to start posting at Beyond the Baryon Wall when I have a complete story written. The research credit for this article goes to Anthony Everitt's Augustus, in the "Life At Court" chapter (pp 245-260). The image at top is of the Arch of Constantine. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!