#imperium augustus

[theantonian]

IULLUS ANTONIUS: Antony's only surviving son

He was the son of the Triumvir Mark Antony and his second wife Fulvia Flacca Bambula.

He was raised in his father's divorced wife Octavia's household after he was orphaned when his father committed suicide following his defeat at the battle of Actium in 30 BC.

Iullus was to leave for Alexandria along with this elder brother Marcus Antonius Antyllus according to their father's wishes sometime in 34 BC, but for reasons unknown, his stepmother Octavia only sent Antyllus and kept him with her.

Named after Julius Caesar by his father, Iullus married his stepsister Claudia Marcella Major after her divorce from Agrippa in 21 BC. He became praetor in 13 BC, consul in 10 BC and Asian proconsul in 7 BC and was said to be highly regarded by Augustus. He is mentioned by Horace in his own poetry where he speaks of an occasion when Iullus intended to write a higher kind of poetry praising Augustus for his alleged success in Gaul. Iullus was a poet and is credited with having written twelve volumes of poetry on Diomedia sometime before 13 BC, which were destroyed after his death.

Although when it began is unsure, Iullus became a lover of Julia the Elder. Marcus Agrippa died in 12 BC and Julia had been forced to remarry her stepbrother, Tiberius. Julia's marriage to her stepbrother had become a disaster and she was desperate to divorce him. Tiberius had left Rome in 8 BC leaving Julia and her five children by Agrippa, Gaius Caesar, Lucius Caesar, Julia the Younger, Agrippina the Elder, and Agrippa Postumus, in Rome. Julia felt that her children were unprotected and may have approached Iullus to be a protector for her children, especially her two elder sons, Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, who were Augustus' joint heirs.

Tacitus censures Augustus in “calling, as he did, a vice so habitual among men and women by the awful name of sacrilege and treason, he went far beyond the indulgent spirit of our ancestors, beyond indeed his own legislation.”

In the telling of Cassius Dio:

when [Augustus] at length discovered that his daughter Julia was so dissolute in her conduct as actually to take part in revels and drinking bouts at night in the Forum and on the very rostra, he became exceedingly angry. He had surmised even before this time that she was not leading a straight life but refused to believe it. For those who hold positions of command, it appears, are acquainted with everything else better than with their own affairs; and although their own deeds do not escape the knowledge of their associates, they have no precise information regarding what their associates do. In the present instance, when Augustus learned what was going on, he gave way to a rage so violent that he could not keep the matter to himself but went so far as to communicate it to senate. As a result, Julia was banished to the island of Pandateria, lying off Campania, and her mother Scribonia voluntarily accompanied her. Of the men who had enjoyed her favours, Iullus Antonius, on the ground that his conduct had been prompted by designs upon the monarchy, was put to death along with other prominent persons, while the remainder were banished to islands. And since there was a tribune among them, he was not tried until he had completed his term of office. As a result of this affair many other women, too, were accused of similar behaviour, but the emperor would not entertain all the suits; instead, he set a definite date as a limit and forbade all prying into what had occurred previous to that time. For although in the case of his daughter he would show no mercy, remarking that he would rather have been Phoebe’s father than hers, he nevertheless was disposed to spare the rest. This Phoebe had been a freedwoman of Julia’s and her accomplice and had voluntarily taken her own life before she could be punished. It was for this that Augustus praised her.

Both contemporary and modern historians have suggested Iullus had designs upon the monarchy and wanted to marry Julia before her children Gaius and Lucius came of age possibly to form some sort of regency. Although no substantial evidence was ever provided by Augustus for such a claim. It is possible that she planned to divorce Tiberius and make Iullus Antonius protector of her sons.

The scandal finally broke in 2 BC, Augustus took action on his daughter Julia's alleged promiscuity. Iullus was exposed as her prominent lover. The other men accused of adultery with Julia were exiled but Iullus was not so lucky. He was charged with treason and sentenced to death. He was either executed or according to Velleius Paterculus, died by his own hand rather than be humiliated by execution.

He had at least 3 children with Claudia Marcella, namely Iullus Antonius, Lucius Antonius and Iulla Antonia.

Image: Juan Diego Botto as Iullus Antonius in Imperium: Augustus

[girlcaelius]

sincerely sorry for the continued imperiumposting but i can't get over this

[myfavoritepeterotoole]

Peter O'Toole and Sergio Ercolessi on the set of Imperium: Augustus

Imperium: Augustus (2003) (Also Known As: Augustus) directed by Roger Young

Peter O'Toole as Augustus Caesar

* Sergio Ercolessi: first assistant director

[domitiaa]

Octavian, Agrippa and Maecenas in IMPERIUM: AUGUSTUS (LUX VIDE) and ROME (HBO)

[wolframpant]

16 November: Emperor Tiberius was born in 42 BC. Here are some of his portrayals on screen:

André Morell in The Caesars (1968) George Baker in I, Claudius (1976) Peter O'Toole in Caligula (1979) James Mason in AD (1985) Michele Bevilacqua in Imperium: Augustus (2003) Max von Sydow in The Final Inquiry (2006) Giovanni Carta in Barbarians (2020) Benjamin Isaac in Domina (2021)

[vernicosa]

What a Livia!

[saehaerys]

Instrument of Your Father's Will

"Have I ever been anything but an instrument to fulfill your destiny!"

- Julia the Elder to Augustus, Imperium: Augustus

"Ha, Freche du! Frevelst du midi? Wer bist du, als meines Willens blind wählende Kür?"

- Wotan to Brünnhilde, Der Ring des Nibelungen

"Princess Saera watched from the window of her cell. Jonquil Darke, her gaoler, made certain that she did not turn away."

- Fire & Blood

[meditando-en-paris]

My friend (@helldava): You may leave the Teutoburg forest, but the Teutoburg forest does not leave you.

Me: You don't come out of the Teutoburg forest, my friend.

[sforzesco]

behold, the self cannibalizing bloated corpse of Rome and Empire

The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Magno

Blood in the Arena: the Spectacle of Roman Power, Alison Futrell

[uncleclaudius]

The Lyon Tablet, a transcript of the speech Emperor Claudius had given in the Senate in 48 AD, arguing for the admission of senators from Gaul.

1. I should say at the outset that I reject the first thought that will, I am sure, be the very first thing to stand in my way: namely that you will recoil from my suggestion as though I were introducing some revolutionary innovation.  Think, instead, of how many changes have taken place over the years in this state and how many forms and constitutions our state has had, from the time of its very foundation.

2. At one time this city was held by kings, though they did not pass it along to successors from their own families. People from other families came to the throne and even some foreigners.  Numa, for example, succeded Romulus, and was a Sabine; that made him a neighbor, certainly, but at the time he was also a foreigner. Another example is Tarquinius Priscus, who succeded Ancus Marcius: because of his impure blood--his father was the Corinthian Demaratus and his mother was from Tarquinii, to Tarquinius Priscus supposedly had a Greek father and an Etruscan mother. And though well-born she was very poor, which is why she was forced to marry such a husband.--Tarquinius was kept from positions of honor in his own land and thus emigrated to Rome, where he became king.  Between Tarquinius and either his son or his grandson (for our authorities disagree on this point) there came Servius Tullius.  And according to the Roman sources Servius Tullius had as a mother a prisoner of war, Ocresia; according to the Etruscans he had been the faithful companion of Caelius Vivenna and took part in his adventures, and later, when he was driven out by a change of fortune, he left Etruria with all the suriving troops of Caelius and seized the Caeliian hill, which thus takes its name from his leader Caelius, and after changing his name (for his Etruscan name was Mastarna) he was given the name I have already mentioned, and became king, to the very great advantage of the state. Then, after the behavior of Tarquinius Superbus came to be hated by our city--and not only his behavior but that of his sons--the people obviously became tired of monarchy, and the administration of state was transferred to the consuls, who were annual magistates.

3. Why need I mention the dictatorship--more powerful even than the consulship--which was what our ancestors came up with when wars were particularly hard or there was serious civil disturbance?  Or why need I mention the the creation of tribunes of the plebs, to provide assistance for the plebs?  Why mention transfer of imperium from consuls to the decemviri, and at the end of the reign of the decemviri the return of imperium back to the consuls?  Why mention the distribution of the consular power to multiple recipients, called tribunes of the soldiers with consular power, who were first six and then eight in number?  Why should I mention the fact that offices that were once patrician ones were shared eventually with the plebeians, religious ones as well as military?

4. If I were to tell of the wars, which our ancestors started with and which have continued down to the present day, I fear that I would appear too boastful, and look as though I wanted to boast about my glory in extending the empire beyond the Ocean.  But let me instead return to my original point.  Citizenship can ... [some text is lost here]

[column II]

5. Certainly it was a new thing when my great-uncle Augustus and my uncle Tiberius decided to admit into this Senate house the flower of the coloniae and the cities from all over the empire--all of them good and wealthy men of course.  But, you may say, is not an Italian senator more useful than a provincial one?  When I start explaining this aspect of my censorship I will reveal what I think about that.   But certainly I  think that provincials should not be rejected, as long as they will be a credit to the Senate.

6. Behold that most glorious and flourishing colony of Vienne: how long has it provided senators for this chamber?  From Vienne comes an ornament of the equestrian order with few equals, Lucius Vestinus, whom I esteem greatly and retain even now in my service.   May his children, I beseech you, enjoy priesthoods of the first rank, and after that, in the years to come, may they proceed to further honors.  (I will not utter the dire name of that brigand—I detest him, that monster of the wrestling-ring—or the fact that he acquired the consulship for his family before his colony had ever obtained the solid benefit of the Roman citizenship.  And I could say the same thing about his brother, who suffered a pathetic and fate, and was thus no use to you as a senator.)

7. It is time now, Tiberius Caesar Germanicus, to reveal to the senators where your speech is headed; for you have already come to the extreme limits of Gallia Narbonensis.

8. Consider all the distinguished young men I see before me: the fact that they are senators should cause no more regret than that felt by Persicus--a most distinguished man and a friend of mine--when he reads the name Allobrogicus among the images of his ancestors.  And if you agree that this is true, what should I not also point out to you that the land beyond Gallia Narbonensis already sends you senators?  We do not, after all, regret that we have men in the senate from Lugdunum.

9. I was somewhat hesitant, senators, about leaving the boundaries of provinces that were well known to you, but now I must make the case for Gallia Comata with some seriousness.  If anyone concentrates on the fact that the Gauls resisted the divine Julius in war for ten years, he should consider that they have also been loyal and trustworthy for a hundred years, and had this loyalty tried to the utmost when we were in danger.  They it was who provided my father Drusus with secure internal peace when he was conquering Germany, even though he was summoned to the war while in the middle of a census, which was then a new and strange business for the Gauls.  And we know from our own experience how difficult the census can be, even though for us it involves nothing more than the public recording of our resources. (tr. E. M. Smallwood)

[theantonian]

"For Rome, who had never consented to fear any nation or people, did in her time fear two human beings: one was Hannibal and the other was a woman."

~ W. W. Tarn, Cambridge Ancient History

Anna Valle as Cleopatra in Imperium: Augustus (2003)

[girlcaelius]

him apples btw

[catilinas]

I just finished reading the Masters of Rome series and all of Mary Renault's books set in ancient Greece, the Alexander trilogy, and the Theseus duology, and a few by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Do you have any recommendations for similar books or series that you've enjoyed?

i think i've answered something similar about historical fiction somewhere in /tagged/book list so i will tag this post w that so you can maybe find a more detailed answer. but. yeah here is some!

the cicero trilogy (imperium, lustrum, dictator) by robert harris <- cicero is there. if you got Really into masters of rome you might get pissed off at some of the oversimplification of politics but the cicero characterisation is Really good and also they are Fun

roma sub rosa series by steven saylor <- roman republic detective novels that turned me into The catilina apologist i am today + there are a LOT of them + yes the major historical ficgures are cool but you Will get invested in this fictional detective's wild family drama

rome trilogy?? (the key, the lock, the door in the wall) by benita kane jaro <- do it for him (caelius the world's most unreliable narrator)

augustus by john williams <- epistolary novel about Him composed of made up sources. fun.

the ides of march by thornton wilder <- also in epistolary format but with wild timeline shenanigans? i enjoyed it

dancing with the lion series by jeanne reames <- about the early life of alexander the great + they are just so detailed + i read the first book in one (1) day

the golden mean by annabel lyon <- i have not actually read this but it's been on my tbr for like one million years. about aristotle and alexander the great and maybe i will get round to it this year :/

lavinia by ursula k. le guin <- i think this is the most similar to the theseus duology in occupying a fictional space between myth and history. if that makes sense. i also read it in one (1) day

mutuals if you have any other historical fiction recommendations hi hello eye emoji ?

[domitiaa]

"Goodbye, Livia, never forget our wedding."

I, Claudius (1976) - Brian Blessed/Siân Phillips

Imperium: Augustus (2001) - Benjamin Sadler/Martina Stella

Rome (2005 - 2007) - Simon Wood/Alice Henley

Domina (2021 - 2023) - Matthew McNulty/Kasia Smutniak 

[gardenofkore]

"Of all the prophecies in verse foretelling a future Saviour to which the West has given birth, Vergil's Fourth Eclogue is the most famous. Before celebrating in his mighty epic the future of Imperial Rome, the poet painted in this relatively short poem his picture of the future ruler of the world. He lent him all the attributes of the Messiah: as befits a son of the Gods he shall greet Life with a smile, he shall bring peace on earth and the Age of Gold, and shall evoke once more the kingdom of Apollo. The Middle Ages never paused to reflect that Vergil's promises might seem to be fulfilled in Augustus, Emperor of Peace, the poet's patron. To that Christian age such prophetic verses could bear one interpretation only — a miraculous fore telling of Christ's advent. That they foretold a "Ruler" was no deterrent, for men were wont to praise Christ as "King of the World" and "Emperor of All," and to represent him graphically, in a mandorla, throned on clouds, bearing the globe and law book in his hand and on his head the diadem: the stern Ruler of the Cosmos. To the pious mind it was but one miracle the more, that the heathen Vergil, like the prophets of the Ancient Covenant, had known and told the coming of the Redeemer. Thus this short poem, with its miraculous fore knowledge, earned for Vergil the admiration and reverence of the medieval world. This Vergilian prophecy provided the inspiration both in manner and matter for the song in which the Campanian poet, Peter of Eboli, extravagantly hailed the birth of Henry V’s only son. It is by no means without significance that Vergil thus stands by the cradle of the last and greatest Christian Emperor of the German Roman Imperium.

The learned Peter of Eboli was not the only poet and sooth sayer who offered his prophetic wares to the new-born child on the day following the Christmas of 1194. Godfrey of Viterbo, the tutor of Henry VI, hailed the boy as the future Saviour foretold of prophets, the time-fulfilling Caesar. Even before the birth Godfrey had in sibylline speech informed his master that the coming son was destined to prove the long-awaited King of all the World, who should unite East and West as the Tiburtine sibyl had foretold. And later the story ran that East and West had cried aloud with joy at the birth of the imperial heir. Meanwhile other and less flattering predictions gained currency which had likewise accompanied the birth of the youngest Hohenstaufen. The Breton wizard Merlin was said to have spoken of the child's "wondrous and unhoped for birth" and in dark mysterious words to have hinted at disaster. The child would be a lamb, to be torn in pieces, but not to be devoured; he was to be a raging lion too amongst his own. The Calabrian Cistercian, the Abbot Joachim of Flora, the "Fore-runner" of St. Francis, was swift to recognise in the new-born child the, future Scourge of the World, the AntiChrist who was to bring confusion in his train. The Abbot, indeed, full of prophetic fire, was said to have informed the Emperor betimes that the Empress — overlain by a demon — was pregnant, without yet knowing of her pregnancy. The Empress too had had a dream and it had been revealed to her that she was to bear the fiery brand, the torch of Italy.

Constance obsessed the imagination of her contemporaries as few empresses have done. The strangely-secluded girlhood of the heiress of Sicily, posthumous daughter of the gifted Norman king and state-maker, Roger II, the great blondbearded Viking: her belated marriage, when she was already over thirty, with Barbarossa's younger son, her junior by ten years: her nine years of childlessness: the unexpected conception by the ageing woman: all this was — or seemed — mysterious enough to the people of her time to furnish ample material for legend. According to current rumour Constance's mother, Beatrice, daughter of Count Gunther of Rethel, had been a prey to evil dreams when, after the death of King Roger, she was brought to bed of the future Empress. And the augurs of the half-oriental Norman court declared that Constance would bring dire ruin on her fatherland. To avert this evil fate, no doubt, Constance was at once doomed to be a nun. The fact that the princess actually spent long periods in various nunneries in Palermo may well have strengthened such a report. The story further ran that Constance had been most unwilling to marry at all, and this coloured Dante's conception of her: because she left her "pleasant cloister's pale" under pressure and against her will, he gave the Empress a place in Paradise. The tale that Constance had taken the veil was widely believed, and later deliberately circulated by the Guelfs out of malice towards her son. The similar super stition of a later day foretold that a nun should be the mother of Anti-Christ. Meantime this first and only pregnancy of the forty-year old empress gave rise to another cycle of legend. It became the fashion to represent Constance as being consider ably older than she was, in order to approximate the miracle of this belated conception to Bible precedent, and she is tradition ally depicted as a wrinkled old woman. The rumour that the child was supposititious was bound to follow, and it was given out that he was in reality the son of a butcher. Shrewd woman that she was, Constance had taken measures to forestall such gossip: she had had a tent erected in the open market place, and there in the sight of all she had borne her son and proudly displayed her well-filled breasts — so the counterrumour ran.

Not in Palermo, but in Jesi, a small town dating from Roman times, in the March near Ancona, Constance brought her son to birth. After he was Emperor, Frederick sang the praises of his birthplace in a remarkable document. He called Jesi his Bethlehem, and the Divine Mother who bore him he placed on the same plane as the Mother of our Lord. Now the Ancona neighbourhood with its landscapes belongs to the most sacred regions of Renaissance Italy. As soon as the Italian people awoke to self-consciousness it recognised this as a sancta regio and consecrated it as such. From 1294 — a hundred years after the birth of the Staufen boy — the Virgin's house from Nazareth stood in the Ancona Marches, and Loreto, where it eventually came to rest, became one of the most famous places of pilgrimage in Italy. So it need cause no surprise that the March — the home moreover of Raphael — supplies the actual landscape basis (so far as a mythical landscape has a real prototype) for innumerable pictures of the Madonna playing with the Holy Child. These sunlit scenes played no part in the actual childhood of the boy. A few months after his birth Constance had the " blessed son " — to whom for the moment she gave the name of Constantine — removed to Foligno near Assisi and placed in the care of the Duchess of Spoleto, while the Empress herself hastened back to her Sicilian kingdom. She had only stayed in Jesi for her confinement, while the Emperor Henry travelled south to repress a Sicilian insurrection. This he accomplished with severity and bloodshed, and at last, after years of toil and fighting, he took possession of the hereditary country of his consort. All that Barbarossa had once dreamed, and had hoped to achieve through the Sicilian marriage of his son: to checkmate the exasperating Normans who always sided with the enemies of the Empire; to secure in the extreme south a firm fulcrum for the Empire of the Hohenstaufen, corresponding to their stronghold north of the Alps, and from these two bases — independent of the favour or disfavour of the German princes — to supervise and hold in check the Patrimonium between, and the ever-restive Italy: all this had reached fulfilment one day before the heir to this imperial power was born. Escorted by Saracen trumpeters, Henry with unexampled pomp entered as victor into the conquered city of Palermo, the terrified populace falling on their knees as he rode by, and on Christmas Day 1194 he was crowned King of Sicily in the cathedral of the capital. He was soon able to announce in one and the same letter both the victorious outcome of his cam paigns and the birth of his son and heir. The assurance of the succession gave full value to the conquest of the southern kingdom, a hereditary not an elective monarchy, and to the other great achievements of the indefatigable Emperor."

Ernst Kantorowicz, Frederick the Second, pp. 3-6

[blueiscoool]

The Rise and Fall of The Praetorian Guard

THE PRAETORIAN GUARD WERE AN ELITE UNIT WITHIN THE IMPERIAL ARMY, SERVING PRIMARILY AS PERSONAL PROTECTORS AND INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVES FOR THE ROMAN EMPERORS.

The roots of the guard can be found during the Roman Republic, when soldiers served as protectors for Roman generals and important figures, or as elite guards for military praetors.

High-ranked generals with imperium held public office by serving as a magistrate or promagistrate. They were assigned a civil servant, lictors, to serve as an attendant and bodyguard. Where no personal bodyguard was assigned, senior field officers safeguarded themselves with temporary bodyguard units of selected soldiers.

Around 40 BC, Octavian, who would later become Emperor Caesar Augustus, installed praetorians within the pomerium (a religious boundary around the city of Rome), the first example of troops being permanently garrisoned in Rome proper.

Members of the guard accompanied Augustus on active campaigns, protecting the civic administrations and rule of law. At camp, the cohors praetoria (a cohort of praetorians guarding the commander), were posted near the praetorium, the tent of the commander, which the guard is believed to be named after.

After the construction of Rome’s Praetorian camp known as the Castra Praetoria around 23 BC, their role extended to escorting the emperor and the members of the imperial family, and to serve as a policing force during times of riot.

According to the Roman historian and politician, Tacitus, the guard around this time numbered nine Praetorian cohorts (4500 men, the equivalent of a legion), however, an inscription from near the end of Augustus’s rule suggests that their numbers were briefly increased to twelve.

The Praetorian Guard, like all legionaries, shared similar insignia, mainly on their shields. Praetorian Guard shields included wings and thunderbolts, referring to Jupiter, and also uniquely included scorpions, stars and crescents.

The first military engagement of the Praetorian Guard took place during the mutinies of Pannonia and the mutinies of Germania. Drusus Julius Caesar, son of Tiberius, accompanied by two Praetorian cohorts, the Praetorian Cavalry, and Imperial German Bodyguards, suppressed the mutinies of Pannonia. Germanicus, later known as Germanicus Julius Caesar, led a force of legions and detachments of the Praetorian Guard in a two-year campaign in Germania against the uprising.

In the three centuries that followed, the guard influenced imperial politics by overthrowing emperors and proclaiming the successor. Members of the guard were also directly involved in the assassination of emperors, such as: Aurelian, Balbinus, Caligula, Caracalla, Commodus, Elagabalus, Galba, Pupienus, Pertinax, Philip II, and Probus.

In AD 305, Diocletian and Maximian abdicated, and the former Caesares, Constantius and Galerius became Augusti. Although two sons of emperors, Constantine I and Maxentius were eligible, they were passed over for a new tetrarchy, and Valerius Severus and Maximinus Daza were appointed Caesars.

Severus planned to disband the Praetorian Guard on the orders of Galerius, resulting in the guard giving their allegiance to Maxentius and proclaiming him emperor. By AD 312, Constantine I marched on Rome with a force of 40,000 soldiers to eliminate Maxentius, facing off against an army that encompassed the bulk of the Praetorian Guard garrisoned in Rome at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge on the River Tiber.

Contemporary accounts record Maxentius’s forces being pushed back against the river and retreating across the bridge. The weight of soldiers fleeing caused the bridge to collapse, stranding elements of the guard on the northern bank of the river who were either killed or taken prisoner.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus, a Christian author and advisor to Constantine recorded the events: “The bridge in his rear was broken down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven headlong into the Tiber [drowned].”

Maxentius’ body was fished out of the Tiber and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets of Rome. Supporters of Maxentius were eliminated and the Praetorian Guard and Imperial Horse Guard were disbanded. The remaining guard were sent in exile to the corners of the empire, and the Castra Praetoria was dismantled in a grand gesture that marked the end of the Praetorians.