Chapter 6 the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE Would Have Far-Reaching

chapter 6 Walls

The battle of Actium in 31 BCE would have far-reaching effects on Rome, even if these effects were not realized immediately. The suicide of Cleopatra soon after the battle marked the end of an era, for she was the last of the Hellenistic rulers; that of Antony similarly signaled an end to the preceding decades of civil war, although this would have been less immediately apparent to con- temporaries. Actium, together with the earlier defeat of Sextus Pompey at Naulochus, left Octavian in possession of great power. This power would not ultimately be shared among equals, although it was in fact shared—at least to a degree. His trusted companions, like Agrippa and Maecenas, lacked his insistent, personal connection with Julius Caesar; quick punishments, like that meted out to Gallus in Egypt, offered a vivid lesson that it was safer to be second-best. Through the 20s, Octavian carved out a new position for himself in the Roman political arena: the Principate.1 Ultimately, this position detracted from the significance of elite competition in the public sphere. With one higher authority established, the risks and rewards of officeholding were lower; those of attempting favor were correspondingly higher. Regardless of an individual’s view of the princeps, this change in government gradually but irrevocably changed the nature of elite dialogue.2 The Augustan age is thus marked as a period of transition. In 27 BCE, Octavian took on the honorary name of Augustus. According to later sources, he had flirted with the idea of using ‘Romulus’ instead.3 This choice was ultimately rejected, supposedly because he did not want to be seen as a king. The tradition may be apocryphal; as we have seen, the name ‘Romulus’ was not unsuitable for leaders in this period. It had been connected to the salvation of the city and its beautification, a project that Dio and Suetonius knew

1 See e.g. CAH2 vol. 10, chapters 3 [Crook] and 9 [Talbert]; Talbert 1984. 2 There is, of course, a vast bibliography on this topic. In addition to the several companions to Augustus (Blackwell, 2003; Cambridge, 2005; Edinburgh, 2009), works dealing more explicitly with the transition include Raaflaub and Toher (eds.) 1990; Gurval 1995; Galinsky 1996; for impact on the eastern empire, Spawforth 2012; for the Augustan age as a period of transition, the papers collected in Farrell and Nelis (eds.) 2013. All have wide-ranging bibliographies. The locus classicus for this change, though, is Tac. Ann. 1.2. 3 See e.g. Suet. Aug. 7.2; Dio 53.16.7. The association between Augustus and Romulus was long ago laid out by Kenneth Scott (1925); see more recently Starr 2009 for echoes of Romulus in the Res Gestae.

Augustus was proud of.4 But by the 20s, the name had unpleasant associations with civil war. Nonetheless, Augustus promoted the founder as a victorious king and model for his own role as princeps through his use of imagery. This primarily positive depiction also separated the founder from his twin. By setting Remus in the background, Augustus tried to downplay the suggestion of rivalry or ten- sion between the two. When Remus appeared, it was as part of the strongly Republican imagery of the she-wolf and twins, reasserting the princeps’ claim to have restored the state. Augustus’ own use of the founder was thus carefully selected and selective: he capitalized on the gains which could be made from his association with Romulus, while trying to minimize its potential problems. The literature of the Augustan era teems with references to Romulus. Because these references build on and respond to the assertions of the 40s and 30s, a brief reminder of the changes seen in those decades may be helpful. In earlier chapters, I argued that the negative depiction of Romulus that we see in authors such as Horace was primarily a response to the political strife of the triumvirate. The founder’s depiction earlier had been more ambivalent; his image later was again less directly negative, but also more cautious. Surviving Augustan material does not indicate that Romulus’ name was used with negative weight in this period—nor was it even paired with an insulting adjective, as in Sallust’s comment about Sulla. Instead, surviving authors show similari- ties to Augustus’ own usage, although not necessarily with the same tone. Under Augustus, Romulus is primarily a figure to be emulated, a status that grows stronger throughout Augustus’ reign. The princeps himself does not problematize the twins’ relationship as a form of dyadic rivalry; instead, he emphasizes the survivor’s positive qualities. Remus is a less important figure than his brother; among contemporary authors, Ovid gives him the largest role, and it is only to clear Romulus of blame. This refusal to problematize the twins is an eloquent silence, and may reflect upon the relatively limited oppor- tunities available to the elite at this time, compared with the Republic. As a new political culture emerged with Augustus, the significance and semantics of Roman mythic history underwent a shift as well. Ultimately, this change would end the use of the twins as a tool to think with; in later regimes, it is the founders of the Republic, not the city, whose tales are retold. Augustan evidence offers a last hurrah for Romulus and his relationships. The founder twice attempts to share power, with both Remus and Titus Tatius. These stories are best known from Dionysius and Livy, who offer the full- est surviving account of the foundation, but also appear in the works of the

4 See RGDA 19–21 and 24 for beautification; 1–6 for salvation.