The speeches over, the cortège moved on to the Campus Martius, where the body was burnt on the pyre prepared for it, and the ashes ceremoniously collected by eminent equites, who according to custom wore only their tunics, without the toga, ungirdled, and with bare feet. The urn was then deposited in the Mausoleum which Augustus had himself erected in B.C. 28 on the Campus close to the curving river-bank, which had already received the ashes of his nephew Marcellus, of his sister Octavia, of his two grandsons, and of his great friend and minister Agrippa, but was sternly closed by his will to his erring daughter and granddaughter.
His will, and other documents left by him.
Always careful and businesslike, he left his testamentary dispositions and the accounts of his administration in perfect order. His will, which had been deposited with the Vestal Virgins and was now read aloud by Drusus in the Senate, made Tiberius heir to two-thirds, Livia to one-third of his private property. In case of their predeceasing him it was to be divided between Drusus (son of Tiberius), Germanicus, and his three sons, as “second heirs.” There were liberal legacies to citizens and soldiers and to various friends. The property thus disposed of was the res familiaris: the Patrimonium Cæsarum—Egypt, the Thracian Chersonese, and other estates—went to his successor in the principate. The will contained an apology for the smallness of the amount thus coming to his heirs (150,000,000 sesterces or about £1,200,000) on the plea that he had devoted to the public service nearly all the vast legacies which had fallen to him. By the will Livia was also adopted into the Iulian gens and was to take his name. She was thenceforth therefore known as Iulia Augusta, and seems to have assumed that thereby she obtained a certain share in the imperial prerogatives, a claim which led to much friction between herself and her son.
Besides the will, and a roll containing directions as to his funeral, there were two other documents drawn up by Augustus with great care. One was a breviarium totius imperii, an exact account of the state of the Empire, the number of soldiers under colours, the amount of money in the treasury or the fiscus, the arrears due, and the names of those freedmen who were to be held responsible. As a kind of appendix to this were some maxims of state which he wished to impress upon his successor: such as, not to extend the citizenship too widely, but to maintain the distinction between Roman and subject; to select able men for administrative duties, but not to allow them to become too powerful or think themselves indispensable; and not to extend the frontiers of the Empire.
A third roll contained a statement of his own services and achievements (index rerum a se gestarum). Meant to be preserved as an inscription, it is in what we might call the telegraphic style, a series of brief statements of facts without note or comment beyond the suggestiveness of a word here and there designedly used. Yet it is essentially a defence of his life and policy—the oldest extant autobiography. He directed it to be engraved on bronze columns and set up outside the Mausoleum. This was no doubt done, but the bronze columns have long ago disappeared.[316] Fortunately, however, copies of the inscription were engraved elsewhere (with a Greek translation) in temples of “Rome and Augustus,” as at Apollonia in Pisidia and Ancyra in Galatia. That at Ancyra (Angora) exists nearly complete to this day, and some portions at Apollonia. No life of Augustus could be complete without this document, which is therefore given in an English dress at the end of this book.
The Senate at once proceeded to decree divine honours to him. A temple was to be built at Rome, which was afterwards consecrated by Livia and Tiberius. Others were erected elsewhere, and the house at Nola in which he died was consecrated. His image on a gilded couch was placed in the temple of Mars, and festivals (Augustalia) were established with a college of Augustales to maintain them in all parts of the Empire, as well as an annual festival on the Palatine which continued to be held by succeeding Emperors.
Rumours as to the death of Augustus.
The usual foolish rumours followed his death. Some said that Tiberius did not reach Nola in time to see him alive; that he had died some time before, but that Livia closed the doors and concealed the truth. Others even said that his death had been hastened by Livia by means of a poisoned fig; and professed to explain it by a piece of secret court history. Shortly before his death, they said, Augustus had gone attended only by Fabius Maximus on a secret visit to Agrippa Postumus in the island of Planasia, to which he had been confined since the cancelling of his adoption in A.D. 5; and that Livia fearing that he would relent towards him and name him as successor, determined that he should not live to do so, Fabius Maximus having meanwhile died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously. But the authentic accounts of his last illness and death give the lie to such an unnecessary crime. Unhappily the jealousy of the unfortunate Agrippa Postumus was a fact which helped to spread such stories, but it was a jealousy roused by the knowledge of some secret plots to carry him off and set him up as a rival, and “the first crime of the new reign”—his assassination by his guards—must, we fear, lie at the door of either Tiberius or Livia. Another report was that the soul of Augustus flew up to heaven in the shape of an eagle that rose from his pyre. Nor must the ingenious Senator—Numerius Atticus—be omitted, who declared on oath that he had seen the soul of the Emperor ascending, and was said to have received a present of 25,000 denarii (about £1,000) from Livia in acknowledgment of this loyal clearness of vision.
The continuous government.