What did Augustus intend by this extraordinary promotion? It was the only important political decision he ever made that was completely without precedent, and he left no explanation for it. However, in the first instance, we may readily conclude that it signaled Livia’s contribution to the governance of the state during his reign. Everyone supposed she had been an important adviser behind the scenes, and the adoption was an official recognition of the fact. Augustus may also have wished to strengthen his wife’s position after his death, so that she could exert some control or at least influence over Tiberius; her political skills could complement his largely military experience. Perhaps, even, he wanted to show the world how deeply he loved his wife.
Now that Livia had become Julia Augusta, she had an official constitutional position in the state for the first time in her life. Although technically without imperium or anything approaching it, she seemed to contemporaries almost to be co-ruler with her son. During the Senate debates about decrees passed in Augustus’ honor, Dio reports that “she took a share in the proceedings, as if she possessed full powers.” It is said that for a time Tiberius’ correspondence carried her name as well as his, and letters were addressed to them both.
However, Tiberius held traditional views and disapproved of women openly intervening in public affairs. When the Senate voted her the honorific title of parens patriae, or parent of the fatherland, Tiberius rejected the offer on her behalf. It soon became clear that power lay with him alone, although, despite his annoyance at her elevation, he continued to seek his mother’s advice in private.
The funeral of a leading Roman was an event that combined terror, splendor, and solemnity, and although we do not have the details of the order of service for Augustus, it will have broadly followed the regular procedure. As was always the case, the ceremony took place at night.
A procession formed to convey the body from the house on the Palatine to its last resting place. Almost the entire population of Rome turned out onto the streets, and troops lined the route to ensure public order. The procession was managed by a dominus funeris, or master of the funeral, attended by lictors dressed in black. It was headed by trumpeters playing mournful music, and girls and boys of the nobility sang a dirge in praise of the dead man.
Farce and laughter can be a means of purging grief, or at least alleviating it. A troupe of clowns and mimes was sometimes hired at funerals; the performers would follow the musicians and singers, led by an archimimus, who imitated the speech and gestures of the dead man.
Like most wealthy Romans, Augustus will have liberated some of his slaves in his will. They came next in the procession, wearing the special cap of liberty that was given to freedmen.
The bier then appeared. This was a couch made of ivory and gold and spread with a purple and gold pall. Beneath the covering, Augustus’ body was hidden in a coffin; above it, a wax effigy in triumphal costume was displayed. The bier was accompanied by a statue of the princeps in gold and another of him riding a triumphal chariot. Statues of his ancestors were also carried, as well as personified images of the nations he had added to the empire, and of leading Romans of the past. Interestingly, Pompey the Great was among the company, but Julius Caesar was excluded on the grounds of his divinity.
The family, dressed in mourning, walked behind, among them Julia Augusta. The entire Senate were in attendance, as were many equites, and the Praetorian Guard. Anybody who was anybody was present.
The cortège stopped in the Forum, where Tiberius and his son Drusus, both dressed in gray, delivered eulogies. It then wended its way through the Porta Triumphalis, the gate through which triumphal processions entered the city, and arrived at Augustus’ mausoleum in the Campus Martius. The awe-inspiring climax of the ceremony approached.
In the early Republic, Romans were usually buried, but by the end of the first century B.C. almost everyone was cremated. Augustus’ body was laid on a pyre in the ustrinum, or crematorium, next to the mausoleum. Once the bier was in place, all Rome’s priests marched around it, followed by the equites. Then the Praetorian Guard circled it at a run and threw on the pyre all the triumphal decorations (often valuable silver or gold plaques) any of them had received from the princeps in recognition of acts of valor.
Centurions lit the pyre, and as the flames rose an eagle was released and flew up into the sky, as if bearing Augustus’ spirit into the heavens. A former praetor, presumably a man with an eye for the main chance, solemnly swore that he saw the spirit of the princeps on its journey upward. Julia Augusta rewarded his sharpness of sight with the huge sum of one million sesterces.
Perfume was thrown onto the fire, as well as things that the dead man would have enjoyed—cups of oil, clothes, and dishes of food. The ghosts of the dead, the manes, liked to drink blood, which reinvigorated them; this may have been supplied by gladiators, who were often hired to fight at funerals, their duels lit up by the flames.
When the fire had burned out, wine was poured over the embers. A priest purified those present from the taint of death by sprinkling water over them with a laurel or olive branch. The mourners were then dismissed, each of them saying “Vale” as he or she left the scene.
Eventually, only one person was left beside the ashes—Julia Augusta, widow and now daughter of the dead princeps. The old lady remained where she was for five days. Then, attended by leading equites, who were barefoot and wore unbelted tunics, she collected the bones and lodged them in the mausoleum.
INTO THE FUTURE
Making a show of reluctance before the Senate, Tiberius assumed full powers and authority. Broadly, the new emperor maintained Augustus’ policies. However, the divine family became increasingly dysfunctional. Livia, or Julia Augusta as she now was, got on badly with her son once he became emperor. Although he admired her sagacity, he was irritated by the fact that she was credited with having made him emperor. In A.D. 26, Tiberius abandoned Rome for Capri off the Bay of Naples, where he spent the rest of his reign; his mother was probably one of the reasons for his second and final self-exile.
Germanicus was given a commission in the east, but died in A.D. 19 at the age of thirty-four, perhaps from poisoning (as usual, Livia was blamed). In A.D. 23 his contemporary, Tiberius’ son Drusus, also died; he may have been a victim of the emperor’s scheming favorite, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, but more probably of an epidemic raging in Rome that year.
The elder Julia did not long outlive her unforgiving father, dying in A.D. 14 at Rhegium. Postumus’ death removed her last hope of recall. According to Tacitus, Tiberius pitilessly “let her waste away to death, exiled and disgraced, by slow starvation. He calculated that she had been banished for so long that her death would pass unnoticed.”
The younger Julia never left her little island in the sun, and died some twenty years after her enraged grandfather had sent her there. Her lover, Silanus, was more fortunate. He was allowed to return to Rome in A.D. 20; Tiberius remarked quizzically that he was gratified that Silanus should return from his “pilgrimage to far lands.”
As for Ovid, Tiberius and Livia turned a deaf ear to his pleas for a reprieve. He cultivated the young Germanicus, but to no avail. In A.D. 17 he died among his barbarians at Tomis. He asked that he be buried near his beloved city, Rome, and one can hope, but without much confidence, that this last wish was granted.