Reign of Augustus

• 1. Applause for the Exit

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  The reign of Augustus, Rome's first emperor, is said to have closed with a line borrowed from the theatre. His famous last words were, "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit." In Latin that is Acta est fabula, plaudite.

  The man who spoke them had spent a long reign performing. He was born Gaius Octavius. He took the name of his great-uncle, Gaius Julius Caesar, who had named him primary heir in his will. Historians call him Octavian until 27 BC, when his reign as Augustus began.

  He avoided every hint of kingship. He styled himself a first citizen, and he insisted that he had restored the Roman Republic. How did that claim survive? How did a victor of civil wars gather armies, money and offices while the Senate kept granting him powers he pretended to decline? And when the performance neared its end, who could take over a role that officially did not exist?

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• 2. Egypt's Fortune

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  In 31 BC a naval battle off the northwestern coast of Greece settled who would rule Rome. At Actium, Octavian's general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa defeated the fleet of Mark Antony and his wife Cleopatra, Queen of Ptolemaic Egypt. By August of 30 BC, Octavian's forces had beaten the couple again, this time at Alexandria. Antony and then Cleopatra took their own lives.

  Egypt solved a money problem. The civil wars had left Octavian in debt, and the conquest relieved those debts. He kept the country under his direct control and forbade Roman senators to travel there. He appointed an equestrian governor, Cornelius Gallus, to run its administration and its enormously lucrative taxation.

  In Alexandria in 30 BC, Octavian visited the tomb of Alexander the Great. He admired the conqueror king and echoed him in similar artistic portraits. One ancient source alleges that Octavian accidentally snapped the nose off Alexander's body. The conquest ended the Hellenistic period that Alexander had begun. It also fixed the split between a Greek East and a Latin West, under a cosmopolitan universal monarchy now centered on Rome.

  Octavian became the first Roman pharaoh as well as the first emperor, yet he kept his distance from the role. He took no part in Egyptian coronation rites or in worship of the Apis bull. He never traveled to Egypt again after 30 BC. Historian Duane W. Roller explains that Augustus banned Egyptian religious rites inside Rome's city limits. Even so, Egyptian-style art and architecture reached the capital, as in the pyramid tomb of Gaius Cestius from 15 BC.

  Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid framed the victory as a clash of cultures. Historian Adrian Goldsworthy summarizes its view of Actium as a "victory for the virtues and traditions of a united Italy supported by wholesome deities". The enemy were the chaotic forces of the east with their weird gods, and the jackal-headed Anubis, god of the underworld, is singled out. Yet Cleopatra and her Ptolemaic ancestors were Greek. Virgil also stressed that the victory brought peace and stability.

  Octavian spent the winter of 30 BC on the Greek island of Samos before heading home. In August 29 BC he was awarded three triumphs in Rome, for Illyria, Greece and Egypt. He and Agrippa were then elected consuls for 28 BC. They were also given certain powers of the censor, without holding the office, so that they could conduct Rome's census.

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• 3. A Republic on Stage

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  On the 11th of January 29 BC, the Senate, with Octavian as consul, decreed that the doors of the Temple of Janus be shut. The ritual declared that Rome was no longer at war. Campaigns were still under way in Gaul and Hispania. Goldsworthy uses the episode to show what Romans wanted: stability, legality, civility and elections, at least in name.

  After Actium, Rome was close to lawless. Octavian could not give up his authority without risking new civil wars, yet the people would not accept a despot. His answer was the title princeps, meaning leading citizen or first citizen. The word had once honored nobles who served the Republic well. Octavian embraced it as part of his image as the Republic's restorer.

  Julius Caesar supplied the warning. He had been elected dictator for one year in 48 BC and for ten years in 46 BC. In 44 BC he became dictator perpetuo, dictator in perpetuity. A month later he was assassinated on the Ides of March. Historian Patricia Southern thinks the lesson stuck. Southern writes: "Octavian probably remembered very starkly that Caesar did not survive for more than a few weeks after accepting the appointment as dictator perpetuo".

  Historians disagree about how deliberate the whole arrangement was. Goldsworthy stresses that Augustus had no carefully planned design. In his account the principate was far from inevitable and relied on chance, experimentation, improvisation and trial and error. T. P. Wiseman points out that contemporary Roman sources received Augustus overwhelmingly well. He argues that Augustus should not be viewed as an unlawful usurper hiding monarchical wishes.

  On the 13th of January 27 BC, Octavian made a show of returning full power to the Senate. He relinquished control of the provinces and their armies. The gesture had a catch. Soldiers and veterans remained loyal to him, and the careers of many clients depended on his patronage. Historians Werner Eck and Sarolta Takács trace his strength to three sources. These were powers of office delegated by the Senate and people, an immense private fortune, and patron-client ties across the empire.

  The public knew how much money he commanded. In 20 BC he failed to persuade enough senators to pay for road networks in Italy, so he took responsibility for them himself. Coins issued in 16 BC advertised the fact. By then he had donated vast sums to the aerarium Saturni, the public treasury.

  On the 16th of January 27 BC, the Senate proposed that Octavian, victor of the civil wars, again take command of the provinces. This ratified power he already held outside the constitution. He feigned reluctance, then accepted a ten-year charge over provinces regarded as chaotic. They included all of Hispania and Gaul, Syria, Cilicia, Cyprus and Egypt. Command of them gave him control of most of Rome's legions. This agreement is known as the first settlement.

  The balance of force was lopsided. The Senate kept North Africa, an important grain producer, along with Illyria and Macedonia. But its three proconsuls commanded only five or six legions, while Augustus held twenty. Precedent softened the arrangement. In 67 BC Pompey had received sweeping command around the Mediterranean, including shorelines reaching 50 miles inland, with legates who answered to him rather than the Senate. That was for the war on pirates and then the Third Mithridatic War against Mithridates VI of Pontus.

  The line between his provinces and the Senate's soon blurred. After the first settlement, Augustus sent instructions and edicts even to independent proconsuls governing public provinces nominally under senatorial control.

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• 4. The Revered One

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  The Senate gave Octavian a new name on the 16th of January 27 BC. The name was augustus, from the Latin augere, meaning to increase. It can be translated as illustrious one, sublime or revered. Greek speakers in the eastern empire used sebastos. The title was religious rather than political, and it suggested that Octavian now approached divinity.

  Goldsworthy points to the word's roots in augury, the Roman tradition of seeking divine approval. Ennius, Rome's earliest and most revered poet, wrote of the City being founded with "august augury". Romans knew that passage as well as we know famous lines of Shakespeare.

  Munatius Plancus championed the idea. Roller credits him with building the Temple of Saturn and leading the 20 BC negotiations that brought peace with the Parthians. He also credits him with recommending the title to Octavian in 27 BC. Eck, Takács and Goldsworthy add that Plancus introduced the Senate motion, and may have acted on Octavian's instructions.

  Octavian had earlier styled himself Romulus, after the legendary founder of Rome. That name suggested a second founding of the city. It was also tied too closely to monarchy and kingship, an image he wanted to avoid. The Senate also confirmed him as princeps senatus, the senator with the highest precedence.

  Imperator Caesar divi filius, "Commander Caesar son of the deified one", became his formal style. It flaunted his family link to the deified Julius Caesar. The word imperator tied him permanently to the Roman tradition of victory. Caesar had been a cognomen of one branch of the Julian family, and he turned it into the name of a new imperial line. Later emperors inherited the honorific augustus, and it became the emperor's main title. In the 1st century AD, Vespasian took the name Imperator Caesar Vespasianus Augustus to help legitimize his reign.

  The Senate granted Augustus the right to hang the corona civica, the civic crown, above his door and drape laurels on his doorposts. He renounced the scepter and the diadem. He also refused the golden crown and purple toga that Julius Caesar had worn. The Senate still honored him with a golden shield in the Curia. It bore the words virtus, pietas, clementia, iustitia, meaning valor, piety, clemency and justice.

  He did not need to stay in Rome to keep any of this. He left for Gaul in the summer of 27 BC. From 26 to 24 BC he governed the empire from Tarraco in Roman Spain, overseeing military campaigns on the Iberian peninsula.

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• 5. Crisis of 23 BC

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  By 23 BC, the settlement of 27 BC was showing its un-republican side. Augustus kept holding the annual consulship, which advertised his dominance and cut in half the chances for others to reach the top office. He also stirred trouble by wanting his nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus to follow him as princeps one day. For co-consul he chose Calpurnius Piso, a noted republican who had fought against Julius Caesar and backed Cassius and Brutus. His first choice, Aulus Terentius Varro Murena, had died unexpectedly.

  In the late spring Augustus fell severely ill, apparently on his deathbed. Goldsworthy notes that he had suffered periodic liver problems before. Southern thinks a liver abscess was the most likely cause. He made arrangements to keep the principate going in some form. He also tried to ease senators' suspicions that he was anti-republican.

  Augustus prepared to hand his signet ring to his favored general Agrippa. To his co-consul Piso he gave all his official documents, an account of public finances and authority over listed troops in the provinces. Marcellus came away with nothing, which surprised many who expected an heir to be named. Augustus left his designated heirs only properties and possessions. An obvious system of inherited rule would have provoked republican-minded Romans who feared monarchy. Marcellus was 19, and Augustus apparently thought him not ready. The ring most likely told the legions to keep obeying Agrippa.

  His personal physician, Antonius Musa, brought him through. Musa most likely came from the Hellenized eastern half of the empire. He reversed the usual treatment of warm compresses and used cold ones instead. Augustus lavished him with gifts. The Senate gave him money and the right to wear a golden ring, and it exempted him from taxation. It also set up a statue of Musa beside one of Asclepius, the god of healing.

  On the 1st of July 23 BC, Augustus gave up the consulship. He would hold it again only in 5 and 2 BC, both times to introduce his grandsons to public life. The move was clever. Aspiring senators gained a better chance at the office, and Augustus gained wider patronage within the senatorial class.

  The Marcus Primus affair showed the cost of resigning. In late 24 or early 23 BC, Primus, a former proconsul of Macedonia, was charged with waging war on the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace without the Senate's approval. Its king was a Roman ally. His defender, Lucius Licinius Varro Murena, told the court that Augustus had personally ordered the attack. Later Primus testified that the orders came from the recently deceased Marcellus.

  Macedonia was a senatorial province, so such orders would have breached the settlement of 27 BC. They would have exposed Augustus as a first among equals in name only. They would also have shown that he meant the young Marcellus to replace him, which amounted to monarchy.

  Augustus turned up at the trial uninvited and swore under oath that he had given no such order. Murena rudely demanded to know why he had come to a trial where nobody had called him. Augustus replied that he came in the public interest. Primus was found guilty, but some jurors voted to acquit. Not everyone believed the "August One".

  Two pressures now pointed the same way. Augustus wanted to keep his consular imperium across the whole empire, and the Primus trial had embarrassed him. Together they produced a second compromise with the Senate, known as the second settlement.

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• 6. Powers Without Offices

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  Imperium proconsulare maius, meaning greater proconsular power, anchored the second settlement. The Senate gave Augustus proconsular authority across the whole empire, not just his own provinces. It also made that authority superior to every other proconsul's. He stayed in Rome during the renewal process and gave veterans lavish donations to win their support. His status was renewed in 13 BC.

  The second settlement also gave him tribunicia potestas, the power of a tribune, for life and without the title. For some years he had held the immunity of a tribune of the plebs. Patricians were legally barred from the tribunate, a status Augustus had acquired through Julius Caesar's adoption. The power let him convene the Senate and people, lay business before them and veto the actions of either body. He could also preside over elections and speak first at any meeting. The tribunate lost prestige as he gathered its powers. To restore it, he made the post mandatory for any plebeian wanting the praetorship.

  Censor's powers came bundled into his tribunician authority. They covered supervising public morals, scrutinizing laws and holding a census. They also covered deciding who sat in the Senate. Rome had no precedent for combining tribune and censor powers in one position, and Augustus was never elected censor. Historian Walter Eder says he used them to appeal to Roman patriotism, banning every garment but the classic toga in the Forum. Goldsworthy doubts the garbled claims of Dio, and thinks many of these powers may have been temporary or refused.

  The pomerium, Rome's sacred boundary, posed a puzzle. Proconsuls normally lost their imperium when they crossed it. Inside the city, Augustus might hold less constitutional power than a serving consul. The Senate therefore voted that his greater proconsular imperium would not lapse within the walls. Armed forces in the city, once under the urban praetors and consuls, came under his sole authority. It is unclear whether this happened in 23 BC or in a renewed grant of 19 BC. He did control the praetorian cohorts before 19 BC.

  Many of the plebeian supporters of Augustus missed these subtleties, and they sometimes formed violent mobs. When he refused to stand for consul in 22 BC and went to Sicily on another tour, the Comitia centuriata voted him co-consul for the next year. He was not even a candidate. On the 1st of January 21 BC, only one consul, Marcus Lollius, took office, and the factions of the two remaining candidates fought in the streets. Augustus summoned both men to Sicily and admonished them. He banned them from future elections and had one of them serve out the year as co-consul.

  A food shortage in Rome in 22 BC sparked widespread panic. The urban plebs called on Augustus to take dictatorial powers. After a theatrical display of refusal before the Senate, he accepted authority over the grain supply through his existing proconsular imperium. The crisis ended almost immediately. Only in AD 8 did a similar crisis lead him to create a praefectus annonae, a permanent prefect in charge of procuring Rome's food.

  The expansion of his powers worried some people, and the worry surfaced in the apparent conspiracy of Fannius Caepio. Before the 1st of September 22 BC, a man named Castricius gave Augustus information about the plot. Murena, the outspoken consul from the Primus trial, was named among the conspirators. They were tried in absentia, with Tiberius as prosecutor. The jury found them guilty, though not unanimously, and all were sentenced to death for treason. They were executed as soon as they were captured, without ever testifying in their defense. Augustus then ensured that the facade of republican government went on, with an effective cover-up.

  In 19 BC the Senate granted him a general consular imperium, probably imperium consulare maius. Once again he gained power from an office he did not actually hold. He was allowed to wear the consul's insignia in public and before the Senate. He could also sit in the symbolic chair between the two consuls and hold the fasces, the emblem of consular authority. This seems to have calmed the populace.

  On the 6th of March 12 BC, after former triumvir Lepidus died, Augustus became pontifex maximus, high priest of the College of Pontiffs. It was the most important position in Roman religion. Later emperors held it until the fall of the Western Roman Empire, after which the papacy in Rome adopted the title. On the 5th of February 2 BC he also received the title pater patriae, father of the country. It was inscribed in places such as the Senate chambers in the Forum Romanum.

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• 7. Frontiers and Embassies

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  By AD 13, Augustus could boast that his troops had proclaimed him imperator 21 times after victories. Almost the entire fourth chapter of his publicly released memoir of achievements, the Res Gestae, is devoted to military victories and honors.

  Virgil gave the ambition divine backing. He has a legendary ancestor of Augustus declare, tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. That means "Roman, remember to rule the Earth's peoples with authority!" In Book 1 of the Aeneid, Jupiter promises Rome imperium sine fine, sovereignty without end. Southern writes that this idea came into doubt only after the disaster at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in AD 9.

  Credit for victories flowed to Augustus. After 19 BC most of Rome's armies sat in provinces he commanded through legati, his deputies. His greater proconsular imperium also let him claim any major victory won in a senatorial province. With few exceptions he alone could receive a triumph. Licinius Crassus, grandson of the triumvir, won one for fighting the Germanic Bastarnae in Thrace in 29-27 BC, but was denied other honors. Cornelius Balbus celebrated his victory over the Garamantes in Roman Libya in 19 BC. He was the last person outside the family of Augustus to receive a triumph.

  Agrippa was awarded a triumph for his victories in Spain in 19 BC and refused to celebrate it. Southern thinks the refusal may fit Octavian's wish to limit triumphs to his immediate family. Her reasoning is that "Generals parading to the Capitol in their triumphant garb might just start to develop ideas above their station". Tiberius, eldest stepson of Augustus by his wife Livia, received a triumph in 7 BC for victories in Germania in 8 BC. He received another for Illyria in AD 9, celebrated in AD 12.

  In Spain, Agrippa quelled the rebellious tribes of Asturias and Cantabria in 19 BC. The region proved a major asset in funding later campaigns. It was rich in mineral deposits, especially the very rich gold at Las Médulas. Conquering the Alpine peoples in 15 BC followed the disastrous defeat of Lollius in 17-16 BC. It gave Rome a large territorial buffer between Italy and the enemies in Germania. Horace dedicated an ode to the victory, and the Trophy of Augustus was built at La Turbie near Monaco.

  The Alps then served the next offensive, in 12 BC. Augustus's stepsons Tiberius and Drusus attacked the Pannonian tribes of Illyricum and the Germanic tribes of the eastern Rhineland respectively. Drusus's forces reached the Elbe River by 9 BC, but he died soon after from an injury suffered in a fall from his horse. Tiberius rushed from Italy to Germany to see his brother before the end. He then escorted the body back to Rome, where he and Augustus both delivered eulogies. By the end of the reign, Augustus had cut the standing army from roughly 500,000 soldiers in the civil wars to 300,000.

  On the eastern front, Augustus preferred negotiation. Tiberius restored Tigranes V to the throne of Armenia in 20 BC. He placed the crown on his head personally and replaced his brother Artavasdes IV as king. Also in 20 BC, Augustus negotiated with Phraates IV of Parthia for the return of the battle standards lost by Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae. Eck and Takács say Romans who wanted revenge by force were disappointed. Augustus used the return as propaganda for Parthia's submission. It appears on the breastplate of the statue Augustus of Prima Porta. The Temple of Mars Ultor, meaning Mars the Avenger, was built to house the standards.

  Later, Phraates V of Parthia managed to pull Armenia away from Roman control. In 1 BC Augustus sent his grandson Gaius Caesar with an army to Syria. The resulting diplomatic pressure convinced Phraates V in AD 2 to concede to Roman demands.

  A queen of Kush, Amanirenas, gave Rome one of its sharpest rebuffs in Africa. In 24 BC she invaded Roman Egypt and sacked Aswan and Philae. Gaius Petronius, prefect of Egypt, counterattacked and sacked Napata in Nubia before withdrawing. Amanirenas invaded again in 22 BC and threatened Primis. Petronius reinforced it and withstood the assault. She then sent diplomats to Augustus on Samos. The treaty moved the border to Maharraqa from Aswan and lessened the Roman tribute. It guaranteed peaceful trade between Roman Egypt and Nubia for the next three centuries.

  South Arabia went worse. In 26 BC Augustus had Gaius Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, invade the Kingdom of Saba in modern Yemen. The aim was a share of its profitable trade with India. Roman troops, with Jewish and Nabataean Arab auxiliaries, besieged Marib. A shortage of water forced them to retreat to the Hejaz.

  The worst defeat came in Germania in AD 9. At the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, three entire legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus were destroyed. Their conqueror was Arminius, leader of the Cherusci, a Roman citizen and apparent Roman ally. Augustus sent Tiberius to pacify the Rhineland in AD 10 and AD 11, with some success. But he advised Tiberius against further conquests, and Rome abandoned expansion beyond the Rhine. Augustus lamented the loss. His Res Gestae glosses over it, saying only that he pacified Germania up to the mouth of the Elbe.

  Diplomacy ran through Augustus personally. Embassies usually came to him rather than to the Senate. When Parthian ambassadors arrived in 20 BC, he referred them to the Senate, which sent them straight back to him. His court included emissaries from as far east as India. It also included political exiles from the British Isles, the chieftains Dubnovellaunus and Tincomarus. In AD 8 the elderly emperor handed the exhausting embassy work to three ex-consuls. They could decide anything that did not need serious debate in the Senate or his own oversight.

  The Roman historian Florus claimed that the silk-producing Seres, possibly the Han Chinese, visited Augustus alongside diplomats from India. Augustus does not mention them in his Res Gestae. Ancient Chinese historians record no official Han contact with Rome, called Da Qin, before AD 97. In that year the commander Ban Chao sent his ambassador Gan Ying toward Rome. Gan Ying never reached further west than the Persian Gulf under Parthian control.

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• 8. Heirs and Last Days

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  Historian Ronald Syme warned what a sudden death might bring. Romans remembered the Battle of Pharsalus, the Ides of March, the proscriptions, Philippi and Actium. Another round of civil war was a real danger. Augustus's lifelong struggle with ill health made the question of an heir urgent. Any successor had to earn the position through publicly proven merit, in small and undramatic steps that did not stir fears of monarchy.

  Some Augustan historians think Marcellus was the intended heir. He was the son of Augustus's sister Octavia and had been quickly married to Augustus's daughter Julia the Elder. Others point to the will read aloud to the Senate in 23 BC, which preferred Agrippa. He was Augustus's second in command and arguably the only associate who could control the legions.

  Marcellus died in 23 BC. In 21 BC Augustus married Julia to Agrippa, and the couple had five children. They were Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Vipsania Julia, Agrippina and Agrippa Postumus, named Postumus because he was born after his father died. In 18 BC, and perhaps earlier, Agrippa received a five-year term administering the eastern half of the empire. He held the imperium of a proconsul and the same tribunician power as Augustus, though it did not trump his. His seat of governance was Samos. The grant upset some senators of the old aristocracy. It may have pleased the Caesarian party, since one of their own shared considerable power.

  Augustus then made his intent clear by adopting his grandsons Gaius and Lucius as his own children. At age 14 Gaius was elected consul for 6 BC, but Augustus judged him too young to serve. He was later nominated for the consulship of AD 1, after serving in the priesthood until age 21. Lucius died before his designated consulship. Augustus also favored his stepsons Drusus and Tiberius, the children of Livia's first marriage, though he seemed to prefer Drusus. He gave both military commands and public office.

  Agrippa died in 12 BC. Tiberius was then ordered to divorce his wife, Vipsania Agrippina, and marry Augustus's widowed daughter Julia once mourning ended. Drusus's marriage to Augustus's niece Antonia was treated as unbreakable. Vipsania, a daughter of Agrippa by his first marriage, was judged less important.

  Tiberius shared in Augustus's tribunician powers from 6 BC, then soon went into retirement on Rhodes, reportedly wanting no further role in politics. No specific reason is known. He may have felt envy and exclusion over the favor shown to the younger Gaius and Lucius. They joined the college of priests early, were presented to spectators in a favorable light and were introduced to the army in Gaul. His failed marriage to Julia may also have played a part. In 2 BC Augustus banished Julia to the island of Pandateria, modern Ventotene, for adultery. Around AD 8 he exiled the poet Ovid. Ovid suggested it was reprisal for his poem Ars Amatoria and for a mistake, perhaps witnessing a sexual scandal involving one of the Julias.

  Lucius died in AD 2 and Gaius in AD 4, after Drusus's death in 9 BC. Tiberius was recalled to Rome in June AD 4. Augustus adopted him on the condition that he adopt his nephew Germanicus, continuing the tradition of presenting at least two generations of heirs. In AD 4 Tiberius received the powers of a tribune and proconsul. In October AD 12 he received proconsular imperium over the entire empire, and in AD 13 an equal level of imperium with Augustus for ten years. That authority did not cover Rome and Italy, so a special law let him conduct the census with Augustus in Italy.

  The only other possible claimant was Agrippa Postumus. Augustus exiled him to Sorrento in AD 6 and to Planasia in AD 7. A senatorial decree made the banishment permanent, and Augustus officially disowned him for his lack of good character and alleged involvement in a conspiracy. Historian Erich S. Gruen cites contemporary sources calling him a "vulgar young man, brutal and brutish, and of depraved character". After Tiberius succeeded Augustus, he was most likely the one who had Agrippa killed in exile.

  On the 19th of August AD 14, Augustus died at Nola, where his father had also died. Tacitus and Cassius Dio both wrote that Livia was rumored to have killed him with poisoned fresh figs. Some historians see the story as a salacious fabrication by supporters of Postumus or other enemies of Tiberius. Livia had long been the target of similar rumors, most or all probably untrue. Another reading is that she did supply a poisoned fig, since she grew a variety named for her. In that case it was an assisted suicide. His health had declined for months, and he had made significant preparations for a smooth transition. He seemingly improved at Nola, so it has been speculated that he and Livia chose the moment together to protect the succession.

  An enormous funerary procession traveled with his body from Nola to Rome, and all public and private business closed on the day of burial. Tiberius and his son Drusus delivered the eulogy while standing atop two rostra. The coffin was cremated on a pyre close to his mausoleum. Tiberius succeeded him as emperor, but no clear legal framework for imperial succession existed until Vespasian.

  People in Rome's eastern provinces had worshipped Augustus as a living deity since Actium. There was limited worship of him as a living god in some western provinces, mainly at Lugdunum, modern Lyon, and Oppidum Ubiorum, modern Cologne. In Rome itself the claim was highly taboo during his reign, and only his genius, his spirit or general divine nature, could be worshipped. After his death the Senate proclaimed him a god alongside Julius Caesar.

  Historian D. C. A. Shotter notes that Augustus had favored the Julian line over the Claudian, which might have given Tiberius cause for open disdain. Instead Tiberius was quick to rebuke anyone who criticized Augustus. Shotter suggests the deification obliged him to suppress resentment, together with his extremely conservative attitude toward religion. Historian R. Shaw-Smith points to letters in which Augustus shows affection for Tiberius and regard for his military merits. Tiberius aimed his anger elsewhere, at Gaius Asinius Gallus for marrying Vipsania, and at the young Caesars Gaius and Lucius.

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