Birthplaces of Roman Emperors

I've posted a map here before showing the birthplaces of Roman authors - here's another one showing the birthplaces of some of the more famous Roman emperors. Again, surprisingly few of them were actually born within the city of Rome itself.



View Birthplaces of Roman Emperors in a larger map

hospites Romani

If you could have dinner with three Romans, who would you invite? I was thinking about this the other day, and here is my guest list:

Cicero was my first choice. I suspect that he was a bit of an arrogant git, but there’s no doubt that the man was a genius. From humble(ish) origins he rose to become one of the most influential men in Rome. He was consul in 63 BC, and Julius Caesar invited him to join the first triumvirate (Cicero refused because he hated Caesar, but that’s another story). He had a sense of humour and a bitterly sharp wit, and was incredibly educated- he studied oratory in Athens, and in his later years when he was effectively side-lined from politics he spent his spare time translating Greek philosophy into Latin. He also lived in one of the most interesting periods of time in Roman history- the final years of the republic- and knew lots of fascinating people- not only Caesar, but Antony, Octavian, Cleopatra, Catullus (and Lesbia/Clodia). He didn’t like most of them, but that only makes him a more entertaining guest.

It would be tempting to invite some of Cicero’s acquaintances (perhaps Catullus and Lesbia?) just to watch the fireworks, but in the interest of variety my next guest would be Agrippina, mother of the emperor Nero. Agrippina was one of the last of the fascinating, but troubled, Julio-Claudian family. Her brother was the emperor Caligula, and her uncle (later also her husband) was the emperor Claudius. Caligula didn’t like her much (he sent her into exile) but she had considerable influence over Claudius, and when Nero came to power she was for a time effectively co-emperor. Later Nero grew to resent her, and eventually had her killed. Such a powerful and ambitious woman so closely connected to three different emperors would undoubtedly have a few good stories to tell, though you’d probably need to watch the food closely (she was said to have poisoned Claudius).

I can imagine the conversation at my dinner party getting pretty heavy with those two, and can think of no one better to liven the mood than the poet Ovid. Whereas Cicero’s humour was (I suspect) bitter and vicious, Ovid comes across in his poetry as fun-loving, warm and generous, if sometimes a bit vulgar. At times he is completely over the top and it seems like he has trouble taking anything seriously, though he was by no means a light-weight- in addition to his love poems and manuals he wrote mythological poems (not just the light-hearted Metamorphoses, but the Heroides as well), a kind of historical calendar (the Fasti) and a version of Medea, sadly lost to us. As part of the literary circle of Maecenas he knew many of the other eminent poets of his day (Propertius, Tibullus and Horace for example), and probably Augustus himself. Whether he knew Augustus personally or not he certainly did something to upset him (we don’t know exactly what- it’s one of the things I would ask him if I had the chance), and he was banished from Rome in AD 17 never to return.

That’s my list, who would you invite?

superbus

Superbus is an odd Latin word. It’s obviously the root of ‘superb’, but the meaning of the Latin word is quite different to that of its English derivative, which generally has only positive connotations. Superbus has the basic meaning of ‘proud’, but can be used in a positive or a negative sense. For example in Book VIII of the Aeneid (where the word occurs seven times), it can be used to describe Hercules, the heroic slayer of the monster Cacus (and 'type' of Augustus):

nam maximus ultor
tergemini nece Geryonae spoliisque superbus
Alcides aderat…
For our great avenger, the son of Alceus [Hercules] was at hand, exalting in the death and spoils of three-bodied Geryon…

Virgil, Aeneid VIII.201-2

Saturnalia

The other day marked the start of the Roman festival of Saturnalia- a celebration associated with the god Saturn, and often thought of as the Romans' version of Christmas. Saturnalia has three important features in common with Christmas:

• The timing; Saturnalia was not on exactly the same date as Christmas, but it was in late December (17th-23rd) which is close enough.


• The food; Saturnalia was celebrated with lots of eating and drinking, just like Christmas is today (at least in my family).


• The presents; Romans gave each other small gifts at the time of the festival. The poet Martial mentions as presents a pig, a parrot, dice, knuckle bones, moneyboxes, combs, toothpicks, a hat, a hunting knife, an axe, lamps, balls, perfumes, pipes, a sausage, tables, cups, spoons, items of clothing, statues, masks, and books (among other things).

But what characterised Saturnalia most of all was the role reversal of slave and free. Freeborn Romans would wear the pileus- a hat usually only worn by freedmen, and slaves would recline at luxurious banquets, waited upon by their masters. During this time slaves were also permitted to gamble, and could not be punished by their masters. It was a time of general relaxation, enjoyment and hilarity, much enjoyed by the Roman people- Catullus calls Saturnalia the best of days (die... optimo dierum) and attempts by the emperors Augustus and Caligula to shorten the celebrations failed, due to overwhelming popular support.

Here are two Roman accounts of Saturnalia, one from Seneca the younger, the other from Macrobius:

December est mensis: cum maxime civitas sudat. ius luxuriae publice datum est; ingenti apparatu sonant omnia, tamquam quicquam inter Saturnalia intersit et dies rerum agendarum.

It is now the month of December, when the whole city sweats. The right of luxury is given to all people; everywhere you can hear the sound of great preparations, as if there were some real difference between the days devoted to Saturn and those for doing normal business.

(Epistulae Morales II.XVIII)

inter haec servilis moderator obsequii ammonet dominum familiam pro sollemnitate annui moris epulatam. hoc enim festo religiosae domus prius famulos instructis tamquam ad usum domini dapibus honorant: et ita demum patribus familias mensae apparatus novatur.

Meanwhile the head of the slave household came to tell his master that the household had feasted according to the annual ritual custom. For at this festival, in houses that keep to proper religious usage, they first of all honour the slaves with a dinner prepared as if for the master; and only afterwards is the table set again for the head of the household.

(Saturnalia I.XXIV.22)

HSC Latin exam

Well, I've had a look at today's HSC paper, and I'm pretty happy. It was a pretty good paper, in that there weren't really any surprising or tricky questions; everything was clearly related to the prescribed study areas, and the passages chosen were of obvious importance, with lots that could be said about them. Here are a couple of the questions:

Brutus illis luctu occupatis cultrum ex vulnere Lucretiae extractum, manantem cruore prae se tenens, "Per hunc" inquit "castissimum ante regiam iniuriam sanguinem iuro, vosque, di, testes facio me L. Tarquinium Superbum cum scelerata coniuge et omni liberorum stirpe ferro igni quacumque dehinc vi possim exsecuturum, nec illos nec alium quemquam regnare Romae passurum." Cultrum deinde Collatino tradit, inde Lucretio ac Valerio, stupentibus miraculo rei, unde novum in Bruti pectore ingenium. Ut praeceptum erat iurant; totique ab luctu versi in iram, Brutum iam inde ad expugnandum regnum vocantem sequuntur ducem.

(AUC I.59.1-2)

Analyse the dramatic presentation of Brutus in this extract, with reference to Livy's aims. (8 marks)

The questions worth the most marks have tended to be double barrelled ones in the last few years, which gives you plenty to write about. In terms of drama in this passage, there's the direct speech Livy gives to Brutus with its formal tone and rhetorical devices. Livy also describes Brutus' actions in quite a dramatic way, emphasising the dagger throughout as Brutus first pulls it out of Lucretia's wound, then holds it up for all to see, then passes it to his companions to swear upon. It's all a bit melodramatic.

The drama of the passage allows you to talk about Livy's aims in two ways; firstly he is holding Brutus up as a moral exemplar, someone whose example in standing up to tyranny he wants his readers to follow. Livy intended above all his history to be one which provided a moral message. But Livy also aimed to entertain his readers, and we see that in his dramatic portrayal of Brutus- he presents the story with a certain creativity, which perhaps detracts from the accuracy of his narrative, but adds to its power to engage and entertain.


hinc procul addit
Tartareas etiam sedes, alta ostia Ditis,
et scelerum poenas, et te, Catilina, minaci
pendentem scopulo Furiarumque ora trementem,
secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem.

hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar
cum patribus populoque, penatibus et magnis dis,
stans celsa in puppi, geminas cui tempora flammas
laeta vomunt patriumque aperitur vertice sidus.
parte alia ventis et dis Agrippa secundis
arduus agmen agens, cui, belli insigne superbum,
tempora navali fulgent rostrata corona.
hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis,
victor ab Aurorae populis et litore rubro,
Aegyptum virisque Orientis et ultima secum
Bactra vehit, sequiturque (nefas) Aegyptia coniunx.

(Aeneid VIII.666-70, 678-88)

Analyse Virgil's use of characterisation and contrast to reveal heroic attributes in this extract. (7 marks)

Another double-barrelled question! This passage is the climax to Virgil's descrition of Aeneas' shield, and I would have been surprised if it wasn't in the exam. There's lots to talk about in terms of characterisation and contrast. Augustus is shown alongside the senate, the people and the gods of Rome, in fact he is even portrayed as a god himself, with images of light and fire, whereas Antony is foreign- barbaric even- and sacrilegous, and in contrast to Augustus who stands high on the prow of his ship, he slinks along behind a foreign woman!

This strong contrast shows us what Virgil considers true heroism- it involves both courage in leading, and a deep respect and reverence for the gods (pietas). These are the qualities we see in Aeneas throughout book VIII, and these are the qualities Virgil also assigns to Augustus, and shows to be lacking in Antony.

mors Augusti

Yesterday marked (if my calculations are correct) 1,993 years since the death of Rome's first Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Augustus wasn’t his really his proper name- he was born Gaius Octavius, but when he was adopted by Julius Caesar he changed his name (according to Roman custom) to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, from where his other well known name – Octavian – comes.

The name Augustus itself is more of a title than a name- it means something like ‘sacred’ or ‘majestic’, and was granted to him by the Roman senate after his victory over Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Here's how the Roman biographer and historian Suetonius described his death:

Supremo die identidem exquirens an iam de se tumultus foris esset, petito speculo, capillum sibi comi ac malas labantes corrigi praecepit, et admissos amicos percontatus [est] ecquid iis videretur mimum vitae commode transegisse... Omnibus deinde dimissis, dum advenientes ab urbe de Drusi filia aegra interrogat, repente in osculis Liviae et in hac voce defecit: "Livia, nostri coniugii memor vive, ac vale!" sortitus exitum facilem et qualem semper optaverat...

On his last day, he would ask now and then if there was any disturbance in the forum on his account, and calling for a mirror, he ordered his hair to be combed, and his hollow cheeks to be adjusted and he enquired of his friends, who were there, if he seemed to them to have performed life's play well enough... Then, having dismissed them all, while he was questioning some who had just arrived from the city, about Drusus's sick daughter, he suddenly died, amidst the kisses of Livia, and with this cry: "Livia! Live with the memory of our marriage; and now, farewell!" having been granted an easy death, and of such a kind as he had always wished for.

[Suetonius, Divus Augustus 99]

Rome, the past and future

As my year 12 class has studied Aeneid VIII this year, we've been looking at how Virgil represents Rome's past and future (ie the future from Aeneas' point of view. For Virgil it was the present, for us it's the past.). It's easy to spot references to the Rome of Virgil's day as you read Aeneid VIII, but it's more difficult to explain Virgil's purpose in doing so. I recently read an article which, I thought, expressed it well. Talking about the "interweaving of present, past and future" it says:

‘One of the themes of the book is the union of different peoples. The Trojans, the past inhabitants of Italy, fuse with her present inhabitants into a future people, the Italians. The fact that Evander anticipates this development and thus speaks of “we Italians” (VIII, 331 f.) is not one of Virgil’s “inconsistencies”, but serves to underscore this theme explicitly. A last example of this interplay of the various time levels may be taken from the Hercules-Cacus episode itself. Evander speaks of Hercules’ adventure as if he and his men had been present (200-1):

attulit et nobis aliquando optantibus aetas
auxilium adventumque dei.
It would seem, then, that Evander, Hercules and Aeneas were contemporaries. This was chronologically untenable, and thus the event, represented first as contemporary, is later projected into the mythical past (268-9):

ex illo celebratus honos laetique minores
servavere diem.
On a different level, the et nobis may well refer to Vergil’s contemporaries, the god whose advent is being celebrated being Augustus. Thus the line between past and present is again blurred, and the “Augustan future” is superimposed on the original time level.’

[Karl Galinsky, "The Hercules-Cacus Episode in Aeneid VIII," AJP 87 (1966) 22 f. Thanks to James for recommending this article.]

Aeneid part I- A New Kind of Epic

My year 11 class are doing an introduction to the Aeneid at the moment. We'll be translating ten short passages from the Aeneid, and looking at what they tell us about its story and themes. As we go through each passage I'll post it here, along with a translation and a short discussion of what makes it an important passage. Here's the first instalment.

Aeneid I.1-7

arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.

I sing of battles, and of the man who first came from the shores of Troy, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shores of Lavinia, greatly harassed on land and sea by the power of the gods, for the sake of the unforgetting anger of Juno; many things he suffered too in war, before he could at last establish a city, and bring his gods to Latium, from whence comes the Latin race, the Alban fathers and the walls of lofty Rome.


Virgil’s Aeneid is essentially the story of a man (virum)- Aeneas, a Trojan prince who leads a band of survivors from the ruined city of Troy to a new homeland in Italy. This was a story that was well known to the Romans and had been told before by the Roman poets Naevius and Ennius. The story of the Trojan War had of course also been told by Homer from the Greek perspective in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In fact, Virgil in his first two words deliberately refers to Homer’s poems. Broadly speaking the Iliad is a poem about battle, and the Odyssey about a man- Odysseus. In fact the first word of the Odyssey is 'ανερ' (aner, man), echoed in sound by arma, and in meaning by virum. Virgil’s point is that his poem is in the same tradition of epic poetry as Homer, dealing with the same themes (wars, gods, heroes). Indeed much of the material in the Aeneid is based on Homer’s poetry, and the Aeneid is often broken into two halves; the story of Aeneas' journey in books I-VI (Virgil’s Odyssey) and the story of the battles he must fight when he reaches Italy in books VII-XII (Virgil’s Iliad). But in this passage Virgil also introduces a new element, something that sets his poem apart from those of Homer: Romae- left til the end of the sentence for emphasis and dramatic effect. Virgil’s poem is not only the story of war and heroes, it is also about Roman identity, morality and destiny. The Aeneid is in a sense Roman propaganda- written in a time when Rome was just emerging from decades of civil war it is a reflection on what made Rome great, and a vision of what Virgil hopes she (and her ruler, Augustus) may become.