Abstract
Having defeated all his political enemies and expanded the rule of Rome enormously, Octavian, from 27 BC known as Augustus, ended the civil wars which had plagued the Late Republic and founded the system known as the Roman Principate. The Res Gestae purports to be a retrospective survey by Augustus of his own public achievements in restoring the res publica and conquering the world. It was published in Rome but the only surviving copies were found in the new and distant province of Galatia. In this paper I will try to explain how Augustus, as the founder of the new era known today as ‘the Roman Empire’, envisages and presents Roman rule under his leadership by analysing the content of the Res Gestae. From it we can see that there indeed emerges a concept similar to our ‘empire’. The narrative structure of the Res Gestae shows that Roman imperial rule is conceived of by Augustus in a scheme of core-periphery, in which the core is composed of the provinces under direct Roman control, while the periphery is an area of more vaguely subject people or places maintained by threats and intervention, or more weakly by ‘friendship’ (amicitia), which vary according to the historical specifics of contact between these areas or peoples and Rome. In both cases, whether subjection is in the name of the ‘rule’ or the ‘friendship’ of Roman people, it is Augustus’ personal authority that appears to matter the most, which indicates that Augustus’ institution of a monarchic system was a decisive element in the development of this new holistic concept of Roman imperial rule.
Highlights
In studying how the Romans of the Augustan period viewed and conceived of their ‘empire’, an obvious starting point is the summary account of his achievements written himself by Augustus, his so-called Res Gestae, because it is a coherent survey of events by the main agent in the changes that took place in his time.The Res Gestae, possibly one of the documents entrusted to the Vestal Virgins before his death, is the final statement of the first Roman emperor on his achievements.[1]
The narrative structure of the Res Gestae shows that Roman imperial rule is conceived of by Augustus in a scheme of core-periphery, in which the core is composed of the provinces under direct Roman control, while the periphery is an area of more vaguely subject people or places maintained by threats and intervention, or more weakly by ‘friendship’, which vary according to the historical specifics of contact between these areas or peoples and Rome
Together with the theme of ‘world-wide peace’, they all indicate a new era inaugurated by Augustus in which the world is under Roman rule
Summary
In studying how the Romans of the Augustan period viewed and conceived of their ‘empire’, an obvious starting point is the summary account of his achievements written himself by Augustus, his so-called Res Gestae, because it is a coherent survey of events by the main agent in the changes that took place in his time. Scholars have debated whether there are compositional strata in the Res Gestae, it seems to have been revised and updated, if not written, in his final years, and possibly touched up by Tiberius.[10] Augustus himself states at the end of the work that ‘when I wrote this I was in my seventy-sixth year’ (35.2), which indicates after 23 September AD 13, less than one year before his death on 19 August AD 14 It echoes the words near the beginning that ‘I have been consul thirteen times at the time of writing, and I have been the holder of tribunician power thirty-seven times’ (4.4).
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