SPQR + Religion Flashcards
quotes for essays (23 cards)
Senate - Augustus - respect
Respect:
- Majesty restored to the senate (VP 2.89)
- ‘paid off the debts of a senator friend’ Macrobius (2.4.23) (c.f. Tacitus 2.37) BUT ‘persuaded [Hortalus] with a gift of a million sesterces’ (2.37) - used personal wealth
Augustus - military coins (Actium)
‘Aegypto capta’ - Denarius of Augustus 28BC - also linking to being Romulus ‘the optimus augur’ (piety)
‘imperator Caesar’ - Denarius of Aug 29BC
Triple triumph
Victory monument (Nikopolis) - ‘peace had been achieved by land and sea’ - Pax Augusta
Senate - Augustus - sycophancy
Sycophancy
- Gave the senate the weaker provinces, kept the stronger provinces ‘under his authority’ - 2nd settlement CD 53 - ‘imperium maius’
- Senate voted him to be ‘tribune for life’ and princeps senatus - able to bring any matter before the senate first (controlling agenda) (CD 53.32-3)
‘a board of three for choosing senators’ (37) ‘censors’
35 - consilium principis - power away from senate
Equestrian (noble)- Augustus - sycophancy
Sycophancy
- ‘the rest of the nobility found a cheerful acceptance of slavery the smoothest road to wealth and office’ (Tacitus 1.2)
57 - ‘voluntarily decided to celebrate his birthday’
EQues - Aug - positive
Bradley - reorganised order, rived ancient military link
Equestrian - Augustus - criticism
Criticism
- Augustus cross examined every knight on his personal affairs (Suet 39)
- punished those with ‘scandalous’ lives (39)
Plebs - Augustus - popular
Popular
- ‘they compelled him, as it seems, to accept autocratic powers’ (CD 53.11)
(Or ‘the dictatorship was offered to me by both senate and people’ – Aug.RG.5)
Aug Plebs largesse etc.
RG 15 - ‘400 sesterces’ 29BC, 24BC, (grain) 23BC (23 ‘paid from my own funds’) - Repeated many times
‘held games’ - 22 - ‘10,000 men took part in combat’ (Also 43)
23 - naval battle of 3000 men
Secular games 17BC (with Agrippa)
Tac. Annals 1.2 ‘cheapened corn’
‘bread and circuses’ - Juvenal
Coin 26BC - grain distribution’
Denarius 16BC - vows for safety of Caesar
Suet 41 ‘generosity to all classes’
‘frequent’ largesse’
supplied grain when shortage (to improve ‘public welfare’ (42)
Agrippa acqueducts (42)
Plebs - Augustus - restoration
Republic restoration
- ‘I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people’ (Aug RG 34)
- ‘Restored the rights and laws to the people’ (Aureus (28BC))
Plebs - Augustus - principate
Principate
- ‘the power of both people and senate passed entirely into the hands of Augustus’ CD 53
- allowed ‘him to avoid the title of king’ (Tac 3.56)
But weakened tribunes, assemblies and magistrates
Augustus building programme
RG 19-21 ‘built senate house…temple of Mars’
Suet ‘divided city into districts’ ‘restored temples’ (agree with RG 100mil)
Strabo 5.3 ‘fire brigade’ ‘height limit’
Forum of Augustus - statues of family, gods, heroes, expansion of Julian forum
Senate - Caligula hate/hated
Cruelty
- ‘he put to death great numbers of them on the strength of [the letters containing charges of maiestas’ [after he had purportedly destroyed them] (CD 59.4)
- ‘Being anxious that one particular senator should be torn in pieces… hand him over for lynching to the rest of the senate’ (Suet 28)
- especially hated the senate (Joe 19.1)
Senate+People - Caligula - sycophancy
Sycophancy
- ‘the senate and a mob of people…immediately and unanimously conferred absolute power upon him’
Equestrian - Caligula - cruelty
Cruelty
- He ‘had ten thousand devices against such of the equestrian order…they were at once slain and their wealth plundered’ (Joe 19.1)
- ‘Many men of decent family were branded…sent down the mines…thrown to wild beasts…sawn in half and not necessarily for major offences’ (Suet 27)
Plebs - Caligula - sycophant
Sycophant
- ‘slave to the plaudits of the multitude’ (Joe 202)
- Allowed elections by the people and plebs, gave ‘a great number of gifts…delighting the rabble’ (CD 59.9)
Plebs - Caligula - Positive
Coin showing tax remission with a freed slaves cap (pileus) (minted 3x) Suetonius 16.3 and Tacitus Annals 1.78.2, 2.42.4 show other tax breaks – with Tacitus showing that it was used to subdue protest over taxation
Plebs - Caligula - Hated
Hated
- ‘Now he was spat upon… His statues and his images were dragged from their pedestals, for the people in particular remembered the distress they had endured.’ (CD 59.30)
Revival/strengthening - religion under Augustus
- ‘you’ll pay the gods for, Roman, till you restore their temples’ (Horace Odes 3.6)
‘fertile in sin’ - adultery fashionable (Odes 3.6) - Julian Laws 18BC - adultery an offence, encouraged marriage (age limits)
Similarity to Sallust 10 (decline in quality of ‘youths’) - Virgil ‘shall bring back again the age of gold…where once Saturn ruled’ (6.792) ‘ Caesar, son of a god’
-‘Augustus showed great respect towards all ancient and long-established foreign rites, but despised the rest’ (Suet 93) (RG 8.2 ‘brought back…exemplary practices of our ancestors’ - respect for priests, made more and gave them more privileges (Suet 31)
- Held many religious positions, ‘I have been pontifex maximus, augur…‘(RG 7)
- Rebuilt in the city ‘82 temples’ ‘cost me 100 million sesterces’
- Denarius of Augustus 16BC - Augustus and symbols for his 4 preisthoods (lituus, tripod, patera, simpulum)
Imperial Cult under Augustus
- ‘did not prevent the building of a temple at Pergamum to himself and the City of Rome’ (Tac 4.37)
- ‘renamed the month of Sextilius ‘August’ (Suet 31)
- ‘temple dedicated to Caesar Augustus by the union of all the Celtic people’ (Strabo 4.3.2)
- People of Narbonne ‘bound themselves to worship his divinity for ever’ (Inscription on the altar to the nomen of Augustus (12-13BC))
Lares revived ‘a thousand twin lares now, and a leader’s genius’ (Ovid Fasti 5.140)
Inscription in Rome about the cult (7BC)- banning foreign cults and ‘great respect to all ancient’ Roman cults
Augustus - using Religion
Actium ‘offering of 10 ships’ - to tie Apollo to his victory (Strabo 7.7)
Actium shield Virgil Aeneid 8 ‘Caesar, leading the Italians….the great gods’ (immediately followed by mentioning sacrifices at 300 temples and joy of the people)
Tacitus Annals 12 - Englargement of ‘Sacred boundary of Rome’ - expanding empire
Suet 31 burning ‘more than 2000’ prophetic texts, editing ‘Sybilline books’
Imperial Cult under Caligula
- ‘actually built in Rome itself one temple of his own’ (CD 59.28)
- ‘asserted his own divinity’ (Joe 19.1)
- ‘pretend that he was Jupiter…pose as Neptune…impersonated Hercules, Bacchus, Apollo…often taking the role of Juno, Diana, or Venus…might seem really to resemble them’ (CD 59.26)
- ‘he established a shrine to his own godhead, with priests…a life size golden image’ (Suet 22)
- ‘the most revered or artistically famous statues of the gods, including that of Jupiter at Olympia…have their heads replaced by his own’ (Suet 22)
Other Religion - Augustus - control
Augustus using it a method of control
- ‘Augustus collected all the copies of Greek and Latin prophetic verse…and burned more than two thousand. He kept only the Sybilline Books, and edited even these’ (Suet 31)
