The ideals of Augustus. A counterpart to the governmental reorganization effected by Augustus was his attempt to revive the old time Roman virtues which had fallen into contempt during the last centuries of the republic. This moral regeneration of the Roman people he regarded as the absolutely essential basis for a new era of peace and prosperity. And the reawakening of morality was necessarily preceded by a revival of the religious rites and ceremonies that in recent times had passed into oblivion through the attraction of new cults, the growth of skepticism, or the general disorder into which the public administration had fallen as a result of civil strife.
The revival of public religion. One step in this direction was the reëstablishment of the ancient priestly colleges devoted to the performance of particular rites or the cult of particular deities. To provide these colleges with the required number of patrician members Augustus created new patrician families. He himself was enrolled in each of these colleges and, at the death of Lepidus in 12 B. C., was elected chief pontiff, the head of the state religion. A second measure was the repair of temples and shrines which had lapsed into decay. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, those of Quirinus and the Magna Mater, besides eighty-two other shrines of lesser fame, were repaired or restored by him. One of his generals, Munatius Plancus, renewed the temple of Saturn in the forum. A new temple was erected by [pg 214]Augustus to Mars the Avenger on the forum begun by Julius Caesar, another to the deified Julius himself on the old forum, and a third on the Palatine hill to Apollo, to whom he rendered thanks for the victory at Actium.
The Lares and the Genius Augusti. Among the divinities whose cult was thus quickened into life were the Lares, the guardian deities of the crossways, whose worship was especially practiced by the common folk. Between the years 12 and 7 B. C. each of the two hundred and sixty-five vici into which the city of Rome was then divided was provided with a shrine dedicated to the Lares and the Genius of Augustus, that is, the divine spirit which watched over his fortunes. This worship was conducted by a committee of masters, annually elected by the inhabitants of these quarters. In this way the city plebs while not worshipping the princeps himself, were yet encouraged to look upon him as their protector and guardian.
The imperial cult. A new religion which was to be symbolic of the unity of the empire and the loyalty of the provincials was the cult of Rome and Augustus, commonly known as the imperial cult. The worship of the goddess Roma, the personification of the Roman state, had sprung up voluntarily in the cities of Greece and Asia after 197 B. C. when the power of Rome began to supplant the authority of the Hellenistic monarchs for whom deification by their subjects was the theoretical basis of their autocratic power. This voluntary worship had also been accorded to individual Romans, as Flamininus, Sulla, Caesar and Mark Antony. As early as 29 B. C. the cities of Pergamon in Asia and Nicomedia in Bithynia erected temples dedicated to Roma and Augustus, and established quinquennial religious festivals called Romaia Sebasta. Other cities followed their example and before the death of Augustus each province in the Orient had at least one altar dedicated to Roma and the princeps. From the East the imperial cult was officially transplanted to the West.
In the year 12 B. C. an altar of Rome and Augustus was established at the junction of the rivers Rhone and Sâone, opposite the town of Lugdunum (modern Lyons), the administrative center of Transalpine Gaul apart from the Narbonese province. Here the peoples of Gaul were to unite in the outward manifestation of their loyalty to Roman rule. A similar altar was erected at what is now Cologne in the land of the Ubii between 9 B. C. and 9 A. D. Both in the East and in the West the maintenance of the imperial cult was [pg 215]imposed upon provincial councils, composed of representatives of the municipal or tribal units in which each province was divided.
The imperial cult in the provinces was thus the expression of the absolute authority of Rome and Augustus over the subjects of Rome, but for that very reason Augustus could not admit its development on Italian soil; for to do so would be to deny his claim to be a Roman magistrate, deriving his authority from the Roman people, among whom he was the chief citizen, and would stamp his government as monarchical and autocratic. Therefore, although the poet Horace, voicing the public sentiment, in 27 B. C. acclaimed him as the new Mercury, and both municipalities and individuals in southern Italy spontaneously established his worship, this movement received no official encouragement and never became important. However, from the year 12 B. C. onwards, there were established religious colleges of Augustales, or priestly officers called Sevìri Augustales, in many Italian municipalities for the celebration of the cult of Augustus either alone or in conjunction with some other divinity such as Mercury or Hercules. As these Augustales were almost exclusively drawn from the class of freedmen who were no longer admitted to full Roman citizenship, Augustus avoided receiving worship from the latter, while assuring himself of the loyalty of the liberti and gratifying their pride by encouraging a municipal office to which they were eligible.
The leges Juliae and the lex Papia Poppaea. However, Augustus was not content to trust solely to the moral effects of religious exercises and resorted to legislative action to check the degenerate tendencies of his age. The Julian laws of 19 and 18 B. C. aimed at the restoration of the soundness of family life, the encouragement of marriage, and the discouragement of childlessness, by placing disabilities upon unmarried and childless persons. These measures provoked great opposition, but Augustus was in earnest and supplemented his earlier laws by the lex Papia Poppaea of 9 A. D. which gave precedence to fathers over less fortunate persons among the candidates for public office. A commentary on the effectiveness of his earlier laws was the fact that both the consuls who sponsored this later one were themselves unmarried. To prevent the Italian element among the citizens from being swamped by a continuous influx of liberated slaves, Augustus placed restrictions upon the right of manumission and refused freedmen the public rights of Roman citizens, although granting these to their sons. By example as well as by precept he [pg 216]sought to hold in check the luxurious tendencies of the age, and in his own household to furnish a model of ancient Roman simplicity.
The Secular Games, 17 B. C. To publicly inaugurate the new era in the life of the state begun under his auspices, Augustus celebrated the festival of the Secular Games in the year 17 B. C., for which Horace wrote the inaugural ode, his Carmen Saeculare.