Augustus continues to attract attention. A decade after intense scholarly attention at the bimillenium of his death in 2014, books and articles on the reign and life of Rome’s first emperor still appear regularly. Many of these focus on Augustus’ ‘afterlife’, both in antiquity and beyond. Indeed, as Penelope Goodman noted in her insightful review of twelve books that were published at or around the 2014 anniversary: ‘the most striking shared characteristic of these publications is their interest in reception topics’.[1] That makes it all the more noticeable that the work under review is the first monograph that tries to trace Augustus’ political afterlife from his death into what is commonly called late antiquity. This is an ambitious purpose, for which Marco Besl deserves praise. With under 230 pages actual text, the book clearly does not aim for completeness, but tries to show different ways through which the political example set by Augustus reverberated in the Roman world. In doing so, Besl brings together much of existing scholarship and provides the groundwork for future studies.
Inevitably, considering the relative briefness of the book, Besl’s research limits itself to only a part of Augustus’ afterlife. He explicitly notes that he has not looked at the way in which Augustus shaped imperial history through his administrative measures, nor aimed to answer the question to what extent Augustus’ later image was historically ‘correct’. Instead he has set out (p.10) ‘to investigate the extent to which Augustus functioned as a symbolic figure and interpretative category in central political and social issues of later periods, i.e. how he was received’.[2] To that end, Besl has divided the book into three parts. He notes how within ancient political culture, references to Augustus were used: “firstly to legitimise imperial rule, secondly to reflect the political reality of one’s own time in historiography, and thirdly to reassure oneself as a society in general” (p. 29).[3] The first, most traditional, part therefore deals with the role Augustus played in the legitimation of power of his successors. In the second part, he analyses how the figure of Augustus was used to reflect on contemporary political developments. The final part deals with the way Augustus functioned as an example to discuss wider societal norms.
The first part is evenly divided into one section on the Julio-Claudians and one on the rest of imperial Roman history. Since the whole part is just over 70 pages, Besl can mostly sketch the contours. In the first section, he covers well-known ground, noting how Tiberius and to a somewhat lesser extent Caligula depended strongly on Augustus as ancestor, but that the first emperor played a less prominent role under Claudius and Nero.[4] Once the principate was firmly established, Augustus could be used to boost the imperial claim, but was no longer essential. Nor was Augustus’ behaviour universally seen as ‘good’, as Besl rightly notes (p. 68). The second section deals with over three hundred years, but the substantive analysis deals with the period up to the reign of Hadrian. Besl again makes valid points about the way Augustus featured in the reigns of the Flavians, Trajan, and Hadrian, emphasising rightly that there were no other Julio-Claudian imperial exempla that could be fruitfully employed (p. 69). Throughout this part of the book, Besl makes good use of coinage to illustrate the way Augustus was employed, though it is a pity there is no significant quantification of the types that he refers to, making it difficult to assess how systematic certain images of Augustus were revived and put forward. For the late-third to late-fifth century, Besl focuses on reference to Augustus in panegyric texts – again he notices how Augustus is not just a shining example, but can be criticized to show the quality of the reigning emperor (p. 101). This is a valid point, and panegyric clearly reflects elite expectations, but again it is difficult to understand how wide-ranging such references to Augustus were. Besl is excellent in analysing case studies but more attention to frequency would be helpful to gain a systematic understanding of the reception of Rome’s first emperor.
In the part on ‘Historiographischer Reflexion politischer Geschichte”, Besl analyses the main ancient historians in the context of three major themes for which Augustus became a marking stone: the question of succession, with focus on Velleius and Tacitus (pp. 110-139); debates surrounding imperial qualities, which Besl links to the development of the genre of imperial biography, looking at Suetonius, Aurelius Victor, the Epitome de Caesaribus, and the Historia Augusta (pp. 141-161); and discussion about war and peace, which Besl discusses through the ‘world histories’ of Appian, Florus, Cassius Dio, Eutropius, Festus, and Zosimus (pp. 162-184). This reads like the core of the book, and more than in the first part, the reader gets a sense of historical development of the ways in which Augustus was brought to the fore by various authors. When leadership virtues are put forward, for instance, Besl shows how Suetonius has little choice but making Augustus an unambivalently good ruler, since there were hardly any alternatives, though Suetonius pushes Titus to a similar status a core ‘good’ ruler, who incorporates many elite virtues. Over the centuries, more good rulers were added to the list, which allowed later historians to show Augustus’ negative qualities more openly. The emperor’s sexual misbehaviour or penchant for gaming are underplayed by Suetonius, but feature prominently in Aurelius Victor or the Epitome (pp. 156-7). This further strengthens Besl’s earlier point, that Augustus was less of a ‘perfect’ example than modern historiography often assumes. That also shows when Besl demonstrates how criticism of the imperial system and the person of the first emperor are strongly intertwined, for instance in the way Tacitus discusses succession, or Dio notions of imperial behaviour during war and peace – amongst other in an excellent discussion of the famous Maecenas debate (pp. 175-179). Throughout the part, Besl demonstrates how the figure of Augustus continued to resonate with historians trying to make sense of the recent past. Eutropius and Festus emphasised Augustus’ military qualities, since the peace that he had brought was singularly lacking in their own time (pp 182-182). Augustus really was a man for all seasons.
The final part is a more exploratory one, illustrating ways in which Augustus functioned like a reference point for societal changes. Oddly enough, Besl does not seem to be aware of Matthew Roller’s seminal work on exemplarity.[5] Still, he makes valid points, noting how only specific episodes were put forward as an exemplum Augusti, and not necessarily in a consistent way. Those emphasising the famous felicitas Augusti, for instance, often chose to ignore the many personal and political setbacks which Augustus faced during his lifetime (p. 198). Augustus also figured as a reference point when thinking about literary freedom: there was clear awareness that the principate had brought limits to literary (political) expression, but Augustus’ support of various authors and his own writing simultaneously allowed him to function as a positive example of a ruler supporting literary culture, and even as a legitimation for speaking openly (pp. 212-214), as Martial makes clear when he states: ‘Augustus, you surely absolve my witty little books, knowing how to speak with Roman candor’, or when Lucian relates an episode in which Augustus defends a misspoken man by noting that it is ‘his meaning not his words that you must consider’.[6] The quality of Augustan literature, not least the Aeneid, further guaranteed the positive associations between Augustus and literature in late Antiquity.
Throughout this book, then, Besl shows how the life, reign and person of Augustus were reshaped over time, with specific elements appropriated for individual purposes, continuously reflecting contemporary issues. He has managed to assemble and analyse an enormous amount of material. The book does not aim for a systematic collection of a complete corpus of references, but rather sketches a convincing picture of relevant themes in which Augustus’ example continued to matter for several centuries – mainly in our literary sources, but also through images on coins. Besl rightly shows that Augustus’ shadow sides also gained traction over time. Indeed, it was the malleability of the Augustan example, in combination with its recognisability for a wide range of people, and the undoubted importance of the political role of Rome’s first emperor, that made Augustus such a useful example to turn to. The emperor Julian in his Caesars already recognised the first emperor’s skill at adapting himself to changing circumstances, noting how he was ‘changing colour continually, like a chameleon, turning now pale, now red’ (Julian, Caes. 309A-B). His afterlife, it seems, could be equally adapted to changing circumstances.
Notes
[1] Penelope J. Goodman, ‘Twelve Augusti’, JRS 108 (2018), 156–70. Cf. also Penelope J. Goodman, Afterlives of Augustus, AD 14-2014 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018).
[2] …zu untersuchen, inwieweit Augustus als Symbolfigur und Deutungskategorie in zentralen politisch-gesellschaftlichen Fragen der späteren Zeit funktionierte, also rezipiert wurde.‘
[3] … zum einen kaiserliche Herrschaft zu legitimieren, zum anderen die politischen Realitäten der eigenen Zeit in der Geschichtsschreibung zu reflektieren, wie drittens sich allgemein als Gesellschaft selbst zu vergewissern’.
[4] For a comparable analysis, see already Emmanuel Lyasse Le Principat et son fondateur. L’Utilisation de la référence à Auguste de Tibère à Trajan (Brussels, Éditions Latomus, 2008), about whom Besl is somewhat overly critical (p. 17) and now Philpp Brockkötter, Die imitatio Augusti in der frühen Kaiserzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2025), which appeared too late for Besl to refer too, but comes to similar findings.
[5] Matthew B. Roller, Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
[6] Mart. Epigr. 11.20, translation Shackleton Bailey; Lucian, Pro lapsu inter salutandum 18, translation Kilburn.