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Abstract
This essay analyzes the ways that Augustus's Res Gestae elaborates on the conditions of imperial rhetoric and power. Augustus's text documents the augmentation of the religious foundations of his power through the redefinition of the concept of authority, auctoritas, and through a vigorous effort to blend civic and religious spaces. The implications of these efforts can be appreciated by comparing auctoritas with earlier Republican conceptions of ethos. Such a comparison clarifies how increased control over civil and religious space characteristic of the Imperial period accompanied the shift in Roman imperial rhetoric, best understood as a movement toward more epideictic modes of address.
Notes
Ilon Lauer is an Assistant Professor of Communication as Western Illinois University. Correspondence to: Department of Communication, 300 Memorial, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL 61455. Email: mi‐[email protected]. The author thanks Tom Lessl, Celeste Condit, Edward Panetta, Sarah Spence, Mario Erasmo, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on drafts of this essay. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2001 National Communication Conference in Atlanta.
Theodore Mommsen, A History of Rome under the Emperors: Based on the Lecture Notes of Sebastian and Paul Hensel, 1882–6, trans. Clare Kroijzl (London: Routledge, 1992), 125.
George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton: University Press, 1972), 301–2.
Horace, Epodes and Odes: A New Annotated Latin Edition, ed. Daniel H. Garrison, Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture 10 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 38: Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis, qui feros cultus hominum recentum voce formasti catus et decorae more palaestrae. Italics and translation mine. Horace depicts the god in all of his activities, playfully moving from glib Mercury to the thief Mercury's innocent stealing of Apollo's herd, and abruptly ending with the matter‐of‐fact description of Mercury controlling life and death and meting out divine justice. Horace must have modeled his ideas after the Homeric hymn to Hermes. Interestingly, the reference to the palaestra is only found in Horace. See “Hymn to Hermes 1,” in The Homeric Hymns, trans. Charles Boer (Spring Press: Woodstock, 1970), 18–58.
Cicero, Orator, trans. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library 342 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 337. Italics mine.
Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988); John Hanson, Roman Theater‐Temples (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
Kennedy, 384.
References to the Res Gestae are cited in the text using the abbreviation RG: Augustus, Res Gestae Divi Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, trans. P.A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). For an excellent overview of the history of textual transmission, including relevant archaeological information, see Arthur E. Gordon, “Notes on the Res Gestae of Augustus,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968): 126–38.
The subject matter of the inscription justifies naming it an epitaph, but its length distinguishes it from the standard epitaphs of the era. See Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962). On the other hand, its monumentalizing and public nature establish it in the more original tradition of epitaphoi, which were public funeral orations provided at the expense of the Athenian city. See Nicole Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classic City, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
Augustus Res Gestae, preface. For a more thorough description of the Mausoleum complex along with some helpful reconstructions, see Penelope J. E. Davies, Death and the Emperor: Roman Imperial Funerary Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).
Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 42.
Gordon, 128.
Ramage, 26, notes Augustus's stylistic similarities to the eulogy: “Augustus leaves the virtues with their heavy connotations of eulogy firmly fixed to the shield and so in the hands and minds of the senate and the Roman people.” Overall, classicists have yet to agree on the exact nature of the genre. A succinct discussion of the debate and further bibliography can be found on 135–9. Edwin S. Ramage, The Nature and Purpose of Augustus' “Res Gestae” (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GMBH, 1987).
Edwin A. Judge, “The Rhetoric of Inscriptions,” Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period: 330 B.C – A.D. 400, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 807–28.
Ramage, 11.
Brunt and Moore, “Introduction,” 1.
Suetonius, The Lives of the Caesars: Volume 1 Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Caligula, trans. J. C. Rolfe, Loeb Classical Library 31 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 173.
Suetonius, 165.
Chaim Wirszubski, Libertas: As a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Ramage; Zanker; Kurt Raaflaub and Mark Toher, Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton: University Press 1996), have documented the political function and significance of auctoritas in the Augustan Age and have highlighted the pivotal nature of this term in any study of Augustan political culture.
Ramage, 43.
Vitruvius, On Architecture, trans. Frank Granger, Loeb Classical Library 251 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 3. For additional discussion of the close proximity of the aucta and auctoritates in this passage, see Ramage, 63.
James L. Kastely, “The Recalcitrance of Aggression: An Aporetic Moment in Cicero's De Inventione,” Rhetorica 20 (2002): 235–62; Michael Leff, “Cicero's Pro Murena and the Strong Case for Rhetoric,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 (1998): 61–88.
Jakob Wisse, Ethos and Pathos: From Aristotle to Cicero (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1989); James May, Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988). Roman rhetoricians lacked a word that directly corresponded to the Greek term ethos, which never appears in Cicero's corpus, but his writings contain passages formulating the rhetorical uses of character.
Richard L. Enos and Karen R. Schnakenberg, “Cicero Latinizes Hellenic Ethos,” Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, ed. James S. Baumlin and Tita F. Baumlin. (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994), 191–210.
See Wisse's instructive translation of De Oratore 2.182, 229–30: “Well then, it is a very important contribution to winning a case that approval should be given to the character, the habits, the deeds and the life, both of those who plead the case and of those on whose behalf they plead, and that these characteristics of the opponents are likewise disapproved of; and that the minds of the audience are, as much as possible, won over to feel sympathy towards the orator as well as towards the person the orator is speaking for. Now people's minds are won over by a man's worth, the things he has done, and an evaluation of his life—things easier to embellish if present than to fabricate if totally lacking—; anyhow, the effect of these things is enhanced by a mild tone of voice on the part of the orator, the intimation of restraint by the expression on his face, and kindliness in the use of his words: and, if you press some point somewhat vigorously, by seeming to act against your inclination, because you are forced to do so. It is very useful that signs be given of flexibility, magnanimity, mildness, respectfulness, gratefulness, of not being desirous or greedy; and all things typical of people decent and unassuming, not severe, not obstinate, not litigious, not harsh, really win sympathy, and alienate the audience from such as do not possess them. And these same considerations must likewise be employed to ascribe the opposite qualities of the opponents.”
Wisse, 249: “Whereas Aristotle's ethos is ‘rational’ and not aimed at any emotion, Cicero's ethos comprises all aspects of the persons of the orator and client that may put them in a favourable light, and is aimed at sympathy.”
Wisse, 249, advised that he had not been able to assimilate some of the conclusions of May's study, but he recognized that the significance of May's work lay in his emphasis on Cicero's speaking career: “Cicero, though aiming at a more abstract and philosophical basis for oratory than handbook theory had to offer, and though certainly not inconsistent, is sometimes rather loose on the conceptual level, but never loses sight of oratorical practice.”
Wisse, 249, concludes that the characteristics of the speaker are a vital component of a speaker's development of ethos: “Cicero is clearly aware that ethos and pathos, thus defined, both play upon the audience's feelings, but consistently maintains the distinction. Moreover, ethos should not, as has frequently been done, be equated with leniores affectus (‘gentle emotions’) without an essential qualification: it is indeed aimed at one of the gentle emotions, viz. sympathy (and the opposite towards the opponents), but it remains tightly bound up with character.”
Enos and Schnakenberg, 198: “This sort of long‐term, cumulative effect of ethos is central to understanding and appreciating not only Cicero's views on the social dynamism of creating ethos but also its diachronic development. Rhetoric could ‘create’ ethos at the moment of discourse and its effect could transcend the event and remain as either a residual force or a detriment for the rhetor long after the situation.”
Enos and Schnakenberg, 206.
For an explanation of the orators' need to convey their dignitas, which could be flexibly established through one of its constituent parts, ingenium, prudentia, or diligentia, see Enos and Schnakenberg, 197: “the concept of Ciceronian ethos includes three essential traits of character: ingenium (also termed natura), prudentia, and diligentia. Cicero firmly believed that every great rhetor earned his reputation by manifesting ingenium, or natura, a natural capacity for eloquence (De Oratore 1.146).” For further elaboration on these components, see Enos and Schnakenberg, 201: “Ingenium, prudentia, and diligentia are the triumvirate of character traits of Ciceronian ethos; together they constitute his notion of dignitas.” Prudentia constitutes the orator's ability to recognize applications of the orator's own unique traits and explicate their similarities to the rhetorical circumstances. In other words, prudentia was contextually dependent, and the context extended beyond the immediate speaking situation to encompass the broader connections between the orator, audience, and rhetoric. See Enos and Schnakenberg, 198: “Complementing the manifestation of natural talent is the trait of prudentia. Sagacity to adapt and modify rhetorical discourse to the context of the situation was a trait that others, such as Brutus (Epistulae ad Brutum 11) and Quintilian (6.5.9–11), praised in Cicero, who manifested it throughout his legal career (Enos, Literate Mode).”
Joseph J. Hughes, “'Dramatic' Ethos in Cicero's Later Rhetorical Works,” Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, 212.
Hughes, 213.
May, 47: “We catch a glimpse of the bitterness and loneliness of Cicero the novus homo, seeking acceptance among the nobles; we can focus upon his dilemma and are made to sympathize with him as he struggles and succeeds to mold a persona that can counteract their inherent prejudices and win for itself a place of dignity, respect, and leverage in Roman society.”
May, 163.
May, 77.
For a characterization of the post reditum speeches, see May, 127: “Once again he is searching for a persona, struggling to reassert his authority in the state.”
May, 161: “He is, as he had portrayed himself more than a decade earlier, the personification of the Republic, upon whose survival rests the survival of the state.”
May, 141, specifies that the shift led to a trumping of the ethical forms of argumentation.
May, 24: “In order to make such identification more explicit, Cicero employs throughout the speech two metaphors: the image of the Republic as a wounded or afflicted body, and the reference to the movement for Cicero's recall as the causa, or “court case” of the Republic. He has already described the alliance of Piso and Gabinius with Clodius in terms of the afflicted state: “they handed over the Republic to Clodius, prostrate and fettered, and then ratified the pact by shedding of Cicero's blood.”
May, 54.
May, 169.
For an additional discussion of this transition, see Jeffrey Walker, Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, trans. James May and Jakob Wisse (Oxford: University Press, 2001), 216.
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, vol. 1, trans. H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library 124 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 465.
Suetonius, 251.
Richard Graff, “Reading and the ‘Written Style’ in Aristotle's Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 11 (2001): 19–44.
John Crook, Consilium Principis: Imperial Councils and Counsellors from Augustus to Diocletian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).
Suetonius, 181.
S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984), 135–6, 140, 143.
Price, 136.
Price, 107: “The control of the proceedings was the duty of a special official, the panegyriarch, who is found at both local and provincial festivals.”
Price, 107.
Menander Rhetor, ed., trans., and commentary D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). For additional accounts of imperial epideictic theory, see Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire, intro. and ed. Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Russell and Wilson, xxxviii, address the question of Menander's attribution in their introduction, noting that the question of Menander's authorship can be advanced on consideration of the stylistic differences between treatise one and two, but that this question does “not amount to formal proof of different authorship, and [is] strictly compatible with the hypothesis of the same author writing at different times.”
E. G. Hardy, ed., The Monumentum Ancyranum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 10.
Hardy, 10.
Gordon, 130.
One intriguing temple, the Temple of Dendur, poses more questions than answers but gives some indication that temple construction coincided with imperial expansion. No translation of the hieroglyphics exists, but a broad description and explanation of certain scenes is available. See “The Temple of Dendur,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 36 (1978): 5–108. Enough information is available to suggest that (1) the scenes depict Augustus as both ruler over Egypt and as a semi‐divine being; and (2) the scenes connect Augustus's religious deeds to the continued success of his rule. The temple uses Egyptian religious themes and ideals as a vehicle to convey Roman principles. Most interesting is the secret “trap door” in the rear of the temple that seems to allow an egress from the temple to a convenient locale for addressing a gathering. Pictures from early nineteenth‐century temple visitors show the temple lying amid the Nile, and although it is difficult to determine whether a broad gathering space was present next to the temple, it appears doubtful. Even though this structure does not appear to be a full Templum Rostratum, it adapts some of the principles of this design and is highly suggestive of the rhetorical uses of temples under the empire.
Crook, 107, takes up this discussion but notes the ways that the positioning of other rhetorical events, i.e., legal rhetoric/forensic/judicial proceedings, occurred in controlled physical spaces: “Augustus adhered faithfully to the traditional cognitio pro tribunali of the Roman magistrate, sometimes in the forum, sometimes in the portico of the temple of Hercules at Tibur. For the hearing of the Jewish embassies after the death of Herod, on a specially solemn public occasion, the council sat in the temple of Apollo itself, on the Palatine. Even in old age, Augustus did not abandon these sessions in public, though he no longer went beyond the Palatine.”
Zanker, 81: “These monuments set up by or for Octavian transformed the appearance of the Forum. Wherever one looked, there were symbols of victory. In the pediment of the recently completed Temple of Saturn, for example, instead of an image of the ancient god of the sowing season, there were Tritons gaily blowing on trumpets. Triton was widely recognized as one of those marine creatures who had assisted in the victory at Actium, and the temple's patron, Manutius Plancus, thus joined in the universal praise of Octavian.”
Roger Ulrich, The Roman Orator and the Sacred Stage: The Roman Templum Rostratum (Brussels: Latomas, 1994), 185.
Ulrich, 14–16, points out that a new Templum Rostratum was constructed after Augustus's time, but that the three that he had initiated were remodeled and enlarged. This suggests the end of an evolution of the structure and a new stage in Roman politics.
Ulrich, 72.
Ulrich, 83.
Ulrich, 55.
Ulrich, 113–5.
Ulrich, 126–7.
Eric Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 197–8: “Thus these actions were originally directed specifically against Pompey; Caesar appropriated Pompey's special divinity just before the critical battle, almost in the matter of an evocation…. Certainly the actions of Caesar in constructing a forum and a temple closely associated with his family set a precedent which was subsequently followed by many of the emperors. This temple should be viewed not so much as the last Republican state temple, but rather as the first Imperial building project.”
Hanson, 51.
Ulrich, 150.
Ulrich, 118–9.
Ulrich, 155: “The Temple of Venus Genetrix and its setting recalled the axial layout of the Etruscan sacred sanctuary, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which rose above the city, and the Temple of Castor with its façade platform and history as a setting for public debate. Caesar's temple was designed specifically to evoke his claims of divine lineage as well as his status as the undisputed political leader of Rome.”
Ulrich, 177: “In conclusion, the location and plan of the Temple of Divus Iulius would have filled the contemporary Roman's mind with several associations: the familial relationship between the slain dictator and the cult of Venus Genetrix, his public manifestation of pietas as Pontifex Maximus of the city, and his role as an advocate of the people, represented most eloquently by the speakers' platform itself.”
Ulrich, 185.
Ulrich, 180: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the fundamental ideas behind the planning of the Temple of Divus Iulius were inspired by the Temple of Venus Genetrix. … Augustus may have placed a statue of the deified Julius Caesar in the cella of the Temple of Venus Genetrix which resembled the cult image which stood in the Temple of Divus Iulius. The representations included a star on Caesar's forehead, reference to the comet that appeared after his funeral, the sign confirming his apotheosis.”
Ulrich, 188–9, raises some doubt about whether orations were delivered here generally. That this image was chosen as imperial propaganda still makes the essential point about speech's political and religious associations during this time.
Gregory S. Aldrete, Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 156.
Aldrete, 168, even argues that rhetoric was not needed as much as role enactment: “Ultimately, this role‐playing resulted in somewhat of a loss of individuality upon the part of the emperor, as his personality became submerged in the various roles he was required to perform as emperor. The more thoroughly documented interactions between emperor and plebs in the later Roman Empire and in the Byzantine Empire illustrate both the persistence of these models and the extreme degree to which such behaviors became formalized.”
Aldrete, 167.
Orlin, 159: “[T]he Senate played an active role by appointing special commissioners to let the contract and by providing the funds for construction. Private initiative mingled with public oversight to create a situation in which both sides shared in the rewards; a sharp distinction between private and public is again not possible.”
Orlin, 161.
Orlin, 158.
Cicero, De Oratore, 218.
Zanker, 278.
Ramage, 52: “As a final comment on Augustus' auctoritas it might be observed that if the tribunician power, the title imperator, and the office of pontifex maximus reflected his civil, military, and religious authority and prestige, then their almost routine appearance as the emperor's titles on the coins and in the other formal public documents of the period surely served to underline and advertise his auctoritas. Here is another indication of the importance of this idea in the Augustan scheme of things. Just as his supreme auctoritas is constantly to the fore in the RG, so it was constantly in front of the populace, surrounded as they were by such combinations as Imp. Caesari divi f. Augusto p.p. pontifici maximo trib. Potest. XXXIII.”
See Cicero, De Oratore, 71, where Crassus identifies the pedagogy of the palaestra as the form of rhetorical training: “If we do win this boon from you both, I shall be deeply grateful, Crassus to this school in your Tusculan Villa, and shall rank these semi‐rural training quarters of yours far above the illustrious Academy and the Lyceum.”
Cicero, Orator, 498–501: “For as we observe that boxers, and gladiators not much less, do not make any motion, either in cautious parrying or vigorous thrusting, which does not have a certain grace, so that whatever is useful for the combat is also attractive to look upon, so the orator does not strike a heavy blow unless the thrust has been properly directed, nor can he avoid the attack safely unless even in yielding he knows what is becoming.”
Cicero, Orator, 314–5: “Let us assume, then, at the beginning what will become clearer hereafter, that philosophy is essential for the education of our ideal orator: not that philosophy is everything, but that it helps the orator as physical training helps the actor (for it is frequently illuminating to compare great things with small).”