The Augustan Program of Cultural Renewal (part one)

Paul Zanker

The mood in Rome, even in the first years after Actium, remained pessimistic, especially among the upper class. They were not hopeful for the future, primarily because they saw the civil war and all the other calamities as a consequence of a complete moral collapse. Apparently they had internalized all the political sloganeering to this effect that they had been hearing for years. Even Livy, who was so enthusiastic about the new regime, takes a rather dim view of the present at the start of his history: ". . . up to our own time, when we can no longer tolerate either our own ills or the cure for them [... . donec ad haec tempora, quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus, perventum est]."

At the same time as his "restoration of the Republic" and the creation of his new political style, Augustus also set in motion a program to "heal" Roman society. The principal themes were renewal of religion and custom, virtus, and the honor of the Roman people. Never before had a new ruler implemented such a far-reaching cultural program, so effectively embodied in visual imagery; and it has seldom happened since. A completely new pictorial vocabulary was created in the course of the next twenty years. This meant a change not only in political imagery in the narrow sense, but in the whole outward appearance of the city of Rome, in interior decoration and furniture, even in clothing. It is astonishing how every kind of visual communication came to reflect the new order, how every theme and slogan became interwoven. Again, however, there was no master plan outlining some sort of a propaganda campaign for the revival of Rome. As in the development of imagery after Actium, much happened as if of its own accord, once the princeps had shown the way and taken the first steps.

Augustus did not need to formulate a new program himself; it had already been done for him. For generations the ills of state and society had been proclaimed, described, and lamented as incurable evils. The surprising thing, for many people virtually a miracle, was that the new ruler actually took the lament seriously and decided to do something about it. He was utterly irrepressible as he set about addressing, in terms of concrete policies, all the problems that he had himself decried back in the 30s B.C., immediately creating the foundation on which he would build his programs. In the next sections we shall observe the remarkable confidence—one might almost say naivete—with which he went about building on that framework, step by step, going through the whole catalog of ills left over from the Late Republic, until in 17 B.C. he could sail the rebuilt ship of state into a safe harbor called the Golden Age.

It started with the program of religious revival in 29 B.C. There followed efforts toward publica magnificentia and the restoration of Roman virtus in the Parthian campaign of 20 B.C. Two years later, in 18, with the Romans’ confidence in their ability to rule an empire now bolstered, a legally imposed moral renewal was required. This completed the internal overhaul of Rome, and nothing now stood in the way of the new Golden Age. Nothing could be simpler!At first, of course, each of these points in the Augustan program amounted to little more than one of the old slogans. They were statements of intention, which then had to be realized in action and in architecture and the visual arts. The princeps would need the help and cooperation of many. Since no written source gives us a picture of how the complex machinery of this cultural program actually worked, we must try to infer from the results themselves an idea of the collaboration and the mutual influence on one another of princeps, political cronies, creative poets, architects, and artistic ateliers.

PIETAS

Pietas was more than just one of the virtues of the princeps recorded on the honorary shield. It was to become one of the most important leitmotifs of the Augustan era. Ever since Cato the Elder, the dissolution of tradition and of the state, the self-destructiveness that threatened to destroy Rome, had all been ascribed to a neglect of the gods. "You will remain sullied with the guilt of your fathers, Roman, until you have rebuilt the temples and restored all the ruined sanctuaries with their dark images of the gods, befouled with smoke" (Horace Carmen 3.6).

In this regard the "savior" had to lead the way, and he acted swiftly and decisively. As early as 29 B.C. a program of religious rebuilding was proclaimed. Octavian had himself commissioned by the Senate to bring the old priesthoods up to their full complement. Cults, many of which existed in name only, were newly constituted, with statues, rituals, priestly garb, and chants all revived or, if need be, recreated in archaic style. From now on all religious texts would be followed to the letter. A year later came the dedication of the Temple of Apollo and, with it, the beginning of the great program to rebuild the ruined temples. "During my sixth consulate, by order of the Senate I restored 82 temples of the gods in Rome and did not omit a single one which was at that time in need of renewal" (Res Gestae 20).

The necessity for such measures had long been recognized. The identity crisis of the Late Republic is nowhere so clearly expressed as in its interest in traditional religion. The best example is the polymath and writer M. Terentius Varro (116—27 B.C.; praetor in 68 B.C.), who composed a sixteen-volume work, Antiquitates rerum divinarum, in which he gathered all that was then still known of the ancient cults and tried to reconstruct what had already been utterly forgotten. Augustus’s program of restoration could not have been carried out so extensively without Varro’s work. He undertook his research with patriotic zeal and great enthusiasm. In a fragment quoted by Augustine in the City of God, Varro says he feared that the gods would be driven out, not by enemy attack but by the indifference of the Roman people. He would save them from destruction with his books and preserve them in the memory of good men. This he considered more worthy than Metellus’s rescuing of the sanctissima from the Temple of Vesta or Aeneas’s saving the Penates in the sack of Troy.

These were images of great emotional power, which had a profound impact on Augustus. Varro had dedicated his work to Julius Caesar, in the hope that it would spur him on to action. But no matter how vigorously the idea of religious revival may have been discussed in those years—one thinks of all the temples planned in the 30s BCE—a systematic program was only possible in the changed circumstances after Actium.

In 32 BCE the impulse for temple building still had to come from outside. In that year Atticus, the cultivated and wealthy friend of Cicero and father-in-law of Agrippa, had inspired Octavian to rebuild the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius, arguing that then the dux Italiae could liken himself to the heroic founder of Rome. Clearly Octavian liked this sort of display. For his declaration of war on Antony and Cleopatra he went to the Circus Flaminius, dressed in the traditional garb of the fetialis, to cast the ritual wooden lance into the symbolic enemy territory and utter a magic formula. This kind of performance was at first probably off-putting or was interpreted by the more educated as an affected archaism. But soon such gestures multiplied: in 29 B.C., as a symbol of peace, the doors of the Temple of Janus were solemnly closed, an archaic ritual which no one in Rome had ever seen before; the old augurium salutatis was restored and consecrated to the healing of the state; and in the next year the actual restoration of "all" the old temples was ostentatiously begun. By now no one could doubt that Augus-tus was serious about this return to the old gods. He was evidently determined that, with himself as "founder and restorer of all sanctuaries" (Livy 4.20.7), "the temples would no longer show signs of age" (Ovid Fasti 2.61).

AUREA TEMPLA

Such an extensive program demanded careful planning and organization. This began with the apportioning of the various building activities, which would in the future be more strictly separated into sacred and secular. Even the residence of the ruler did not take precedence over the building of sanctuaries, which Augustus considered his most important mission. Among Agrippa’s many building projects, by contrast, there are no temples, apart from one special case, the Pantheon, intended for the ruler cult. Tiberius, however, as designated successor of Augustus, could rebuild in marble two hallowed old temples in the Forum, those of the Dioscuri and Concordia, and officially dedicate them in A.D. 6 and 10, respectively.

"Nothing is too good for the gods" was now the slogan. The gleaming white temple facades, built of marble from the new quarries near Luni (Car-rara), with their dazzling ornament, sometimes of real gold, became hall-marks of the new age. The best architects and artists of the East flocked to Rome, drawn by the prospect of large and lucrative commissions.

The chief among these will no doubt have received explicit directives concerning the purpose of these projects and the basic concept of the program for religious renewal. There would be no more temples built in the old style, out of tufa, with heavy wooden roofs and terra-cotta decoration (fig. 1). Instead, the idea was to imitate the finest and most impressive elements of Greek temples, even to surpass them, but also to combine them with certain traditional elements of the Italic/Roman temple: the high podium, deep pronaos, and the steeply sloping, exuberantly decorated pediment.

The temple facades depicted on the reliefs of the so-called Ara Pietatis (fig.2) give us a better idea than the actual remains of the original effect of these marble temples, which were designed specifically to set off the impressive facade. A steep, free-standing staircase, often with the altar incorporated in it, was placed in front of the podium (fig. 3).

The altar thus seemed to form part of the facade, and the facade itself could serve as a backdrop for rituals at the altar. Behind rises a dense row of extremely tall columns, almost always in the Corinthian order. This type of capital (fig.4) was no doubt chosen for its highly elaborate quality, and as a result, the other orders soon disappeared from religious architecture. Not only are the column capitals richly decorated, but also the bases, cornices, simas, and friezes. Then came the extravagant sculptural decoration, in the pediments, along the staircase, and for the acroteria. The tendency toward excessive ornamentation, which in the 30s had been the result of competition among patrons, was now simply a form of serving the gods, of living up to the motto "nothing is too good for the gods."

The skillful mixture of such varied architectural elements presupposes that it had all been well thought out in advance. In particular, the magnificent facades suggest that the religious revival, as the pious princeps conceived it, was nothing like that envisioned by the antiquarian Varro. These marble temples were not simply a stately setting for newly revived rituals, but were in themselves an expression of the new mood of self-confidence. The worship of the gods and publica magnificentia could go hand in hand.

All this had to be made clear to the leading artists of the day, so that their artistic talents could be properly channeled. There had to be on-going discussion, a continuous give-and-take of ideas from all sides. Perhaps the few top artists and architects had access to those elite circles, the sort we hear about from the poets, which would meet at the house of a Maecenas and sometimes even had direct access to the princeps. Certainly there was a commission to oversee each of the major projects and issue guidelines. Since the artistic and the poetic expressions which grew out of certain key events, like the victory over the Parthians or the Secular Games, share to a great extent the same themes and slogans, we must assume that leading artists very quickly got wind of the new imagery formulated by the poets. In this whole process, however, the role of the visual artist was somewhat different from that of the poet. While the latter was essentially free to express his praise for the ruler and his deeds in any way he liked—or not at all, as, for example, in the case of Tibullus’s elegies—the architects, sculptors’ work-shops, and those in charge of staging festivals and religious rituals were all directly answerable to their patrons. It was their job to fulfill someone else’s desires, not their own. In this sense, the concept of the artist making "art for art’s sake" was unknown in antiquity.

In the case of the renewal and new construction of temples, the princeps himself set the guidelines by determining the location and the level of ex-penditure for raw materials and building costs. In principle all the old temples were to be restored, but in practice the expenditure allotted for the worship of each divinity varied considerably. The most lavish structures were not those in the oldest sanctuaries or for the principal gods of the old Republic, but rather for those most closely associated with Augustus: Apollo on the Palatine and Mars Ultor in the new Forum of Augustus. These new temples could even rival that of Jupiter Capitolinus, thanks to their surrounding porticoes and ancillary buildings, their rich decoration and votive offerings, and not least the rituals and state ceremonies for which they provided the setting. Despite the ostentatious dedications with which Augustus constantly honored Jupiter, the god was supposed to have complained that his worshippers were being diminished (Suetonius Augustus 91.2). And in fact under Augustus he was no longer the chief focal point of the state religion. He lost the Sybilline books to the Palatine Apollo (17 or 12 B.C.), and the ceremonies before and after a military campaign were transferred to Mars Ultor, whose temple became the center for the staging of activities relating to war and peace (p. 113). But the Temples of Venus, Apollo and Mars were not the only ones directly linked with the princeps. The cult of Jupiter on the Capitol, with its new temple, was also brought into close association with him.

In the campaign against the Cantabri, Augustus had been miraculously spared when a lightning bolt grazed him and struck the slave lighting the way for him. Was this not a sign that he was the chosen of Jupiter, on intimate terms with the thundering sky god? Immediately he built an exquisite small marble temple to Jupiter Tonans, right in the vicinity of the great Temple of Jupiter, and called attention to it by his frequent visits. On a series of coins issued after the "victory over the Parthians," the hexastyle temple appears, its cult statue a Zeus by the Late Classical sculptor Leo-chares (fig. 5a), significantly associated with Mars, the recaptured standards, and the honorary tokens of 27 B.C. (fig. 5b).

The rebuilding of temples for the old state gods, such as Castor and Pollux or Concordia, required no less an expenditure, but in these and other instances the location and sometimes even the plan were fixed by the dictates of religio, now so strictly observed. This meant severe restrictions in the overall plan, no matter how lavish the individual elements. Much further down the scale were the eighty-two temples and shrines of the old gods which had been restored in 28 B.C. They were for the most part only spruced up, and the tufa columns got a new coating of stucco, but the old-fashioned wooden roofs and terra-cotta roof tiles were retained. This of course made painfully obvious their status vis-a-vis the new marble buildings for the gods of the imperial house.

The princeps had no use for the Oriental and Egyptian gods which were at this time extremely popular in Rome, especially Isis. She was not included in the official calendar of the state religion, and periodically her cult was even banned. For Augustus, as he proceeded to expand and reshape the traditional Roman religion and associate the venerable cults with himself and his house, the Oriental cults presented a problem. These ecstatic cults promising salvation appealed to people as private individuals, not as Roman citizens, and were thus incompatible with the principles of the Roman state religion. The new regime, just as had the Senate much earlier, saw in these cults a danger of alienation, the dissolution of society, and the creation of secret sects. An exception was made only for those foreign cults that had long been rooted in Rome and thanks to their services to the state had been accepted into the state religion. But here again the hierarchy was clear.

The Temple of Magna Mater (Cybele) on the Palatine, which had been erected in 205 B.C. in response to a command from the Sybilline Books, burned down in A.D. 3. Even though the poets emphasized Magna Mater’s position as a state divinity, her link with the ancient Trojans, and her role as protectress of cities and city walls, Augustus did not rebuild the temple, which lay near his house, in marble, but only in tufa (peperino) and relegated the exotic cult, with its ecstatic dances and long-haired priests (galli), to freedmen. Apparently Augustus had not actually repaired all the old temples in 28 B.C., as he claims in the Res Gestae. Some projects were more pressing than others. Among the less pressing was, significantly, the popular Temple of the Dionysiac Triad (Liber [Bacchus], Libera, and Ceres) on the Aventine, which was suddenly destroyed by fire in the year after the Battle of Actium. It was not rededicated until A.D. 17, under the Emperor Tiberius (Dio 50.10; Tacitus Annals 2.49).

The varying levels of expenditure in the building of so many temples created in the popular mind a vivid impression of the different status of each divinity. The dominant ones were clearly those to which Augustus felt closest.

The grandeur of each temple corresponded with that of the divinity (Ovid Fasti 5.553). But the multiplicity of small Archaic cults which now sprang up with renewed attention between the great sanctuaries were clear testimony that this religious revival was closely bound to the traditions of the old Republic. The new pietas was the equivalent of the primitive religiosity of early times, but of course on a much grander scale.

A NEW KIND OF IMAGERY

The vast program of temple building, carried out over a period of forty years, created for the leading artists and architects problems of organization and execution on a scale which the Greco-Roman world had only rarely witnessed before, as for example in the great building program of the kings of Pergamum. The wealth of architectural decoration required by those who handed out the commissions, the sometimes great expanses that had to be decorated within a limited space of time, demanded not only a coherent overall plan, but the creation of carefully thought-out decorative schemes. How, for example, could the long porticoes of the sanctuaries of Apollo and Mars be filled with the kind of meaningful and didactic ornamentation that the princeps required, at least for the buildings he personally commis-sioned? How would the many temple facades be decorated, so as to bring out equally their ancient traditions and their relevance to the present? How should the temple cella and interior rooms and the cult statue be thematically linked with the rest of the decorative program? The occasion for the new temple, the relation of other divinities to the one worshipped there, and the association of all of them to the restored Republic and of course the princeps himself—all this had to be taken into consideration.

The Temple of Concordia, as it appears on a coin (fig. 6), gives a good idea of the web of imagery in the facade of a typical Augustan temple. Above the central axis of the pediment stood three closely overlapping figures, probably Concordia with two divinities linked with her in meaning and in cult, such as Pax and Salus or Securitas and Fortuna. The motif of the three divinities embracing was of course a meaningful symbol. The side acroteria, figures carrying armor and trophies, made the connection with the patron and his triumph, which was the occasion for the new temple. In addition there would have been the pedimental sculpture, not shown on the coin but no doubt containing a carefully chosen grouping of divinities, as illustrated by the pediment of the Temple of Mars Ultor. Even on the staircases there were two suggestive figures, Hercules and Mercury. The former stood for the security, the latter for the prosperity that the new regime, symbolized by Concordia, had brought.

But in this whole process the artists had very little freedom of choice. As we shall see, relatively few mythological figures and stories fitted into the new official mythology of the state. In addition, the princeps’s modesty and the simplified tokens of honor set further limits. Furthermore, an artistic vocabulary was imposed on them that would be quiet and static, at the be-ginning at least restricted to Archaic and Classical styles (cf. p. 239). Many areas of traditional ruler iconography were apparently off-limits, because they were considered to be in the "Asiatic" style. Augustan art has virtually no battle scenes or glorification of the ruler in the form of animated, heavily populated narrative scenes. Compared with the extraordinary possibilities open, for example, to the designer of the Pergamum Altar, Augustan artists had extremely narrow scope within which they could create new imagery. What they could do was to combine the various symbols or deliberately exaggerate them, invent noble personifications and outfit them with appropriate attributes, and design sacred memorials and divine statuary in archaistic or classicistic style. The only aspect of a public building in the de-sign of which they had a free hand was the decorative ornament. The richness of the ornament they evolved had never been seen before and was not constrained by any traditional canon. This was true not only for the ornamental borders of architectural members, but for every part of the figural decoration. For example, the bases of statues and votive dedications overflow with virtual cascades of decorative bands (fig. 7).

In these new sanctuaries the viewer was confronted with something he had never experienced. Never before had he encountered such an extensive, fully integrated set of images. Through didactic arrangements and constant repetition and combination of the limited number of new symbols, along with the dramatic highlighting of facades, statues, and paintings, even the uneducated viewer was indoctrinated in the new visual program. The key messages were quite simple, and they were reiterated on every possible occasion, from festivals of the gods to the theater, in both words and pictures. Even the rich decorative program of the Forum of Augustus was built around very few images (fig. 8).

Ovid’s description provides a synopsis and selection of images which conveys some idea of the effect they would have had on the average visitor.

The text shows how intimately architecture and imagery were linked to corresponding ceremonies, while particular images were linked to widespread expectations and slogans. No matter how multifaceted and complex the individual symbols, or how elitist the archaizing or classicizing style of the images, the message was comprehensible to all. That the monumental devotion of the ruler was in the end seen as a sign of his own greatness is not just Ovid’s panegyric of the princeps.

FESTIVAL AND RITUAL

This account of the Temple of Mars Ultor is equally applicable to all Augustan temples. These were no mute stones, but monuments that came alive in the festivals connected with them, especially on the dies natales. Increasingly, these festivals to celebrate an ex-voto or the foundation of a sanctuary were made to fall on commemorative days for the princeps or to coincide with important events in the life of his family. New sanctuaries were dedicated only on festival days of the imperial house and gradually many of the old foundation days were moved onto these as well. On the basis of marble calendar inscriptions found in various Italian cities and from the Fasti of Ovid we can ascertain a fairly full picture of the schedule of festivals in a typical year during the early Empire, both in Rome and in the western provinces. It was filled with memorial days and festivals of supplication and thanksgiving for the imperial house. The days of Augustus’s personal celebrations were particularly crowded with feasts of the gods; on his birthday, for example, there were no fewer than seven. Several feast days clustered around a major one and were turned into holidays by the addition of theat-rical and circus games. For the contemporary Roman each year unfolded in a continuously repeating pattern of religious/dynastic festivals filled with spectacle. On every feast day rituals took place, in which priests and sacri-ficial animals moved in procession to the appropriate temple. The imagined temple facade set immediately adjacent to the ritual scene thus takes on a deeper symbolic meaning and is spotlighted by the accomplishment of the sacrifice. The close association of ritual with its architectural setting created the indispensable prerequisite for the aurea templa to achieve their full effect.

Artistic depictions of such events had always emphasized the prescribed number, type, and appearance of the sacrificial animals. On one of the reliefs of the so-called Ara Pietatis, the splendid bull is being readied for sacrifice. And on one of the silver bowls from Boscoreale we see an attendant (popa) delivering a mighty coup-de-grace (fig. 9). The new iconography conveys the dramatic experience of the ritual slaughter, which was able to unleash powerful emotional forces every time. Artists heightened the effect by representing the moment of the final blow and by pushing this scene into the foreground of an image.

This was also true of the interior rooms of temples, which were lavishly decorated in the most expensive materials (fig. 10). Because of the valuable dedications displayed here, these rooms were usually closed off. But on dies natales and on days of especially important sacrifices (supplicationes) the temple doors were wide open, sometimes even in every sanctuary in the city. The cult statue could then be glimpsed through the open doors (cf. fig. 6). Upon entering, the visitor was immediately surrounded by a plethora of images, not only the cult statue, but the precious votives and souvenirs filled with historical associations. The Temple of Concord, for example, housed a whole collection of sculpture which Tiberius had put together. The recovered battle standards once lost by Crassus to the Parthians were set up in the Temple of Mars, next to colossal statues of the gods in the apse. Because the temples were open so rarely, curiosity to see what was inside was naturally all the more intense.

In an earlier age, before the superabundance of new imagery, religious rituals were real experiences. Special occasions, such as the celebrations in connection with the initiation of the saeculum aureum in 17 B.C., when the princeps himself uttered magic formulas and carried out arcane rituals, were remembered and retold for years. Otherwise the mint masters would not have put such scenes on the coins they issued. Since ritual and sacrifice played such a central role in everyday life, it is not surprising that this type of imagery gradually came to dominate the new pictorial vocabulary. There is hardly a single monument or building that does not include in its decorative scheme the skulls of sacrificial animals, offering bowls, priestly tokens, or garlands wound with fillets, even when the structure itself is purely secular. These images recalling sacrifice, which had in the past served merely as conventional ornament, now became meaningful symbols. Artists were at pains to intensify their effect even further by expressing them in new ways.

On the interior of the Ara Pacis, a sacred precinct is suggested by a con-struction of planks and scaffold (fig. 12). But the illusion of reality is then transformed into fantasy, to the point where the symbolic bucrania seem to hover in midair, although they carry heavy garlands. These bucrania are also associated with the idea of sacrifice through the addition of fillets and emblematic libation bowls. As elsewhere, the garlands here take on their own particular significance. The many different fruits express thanks to the god and at the same time convey the notion of blessings and abundance.

The particular trees and plants sacred to each of the gods were continually incorporated into this imagery, whether playfully or reverentially. An example are the branches of white poplar on a base of superb quality (possibly for a statue) from a small sanctuary of Heracles. Here too the bucranium appears significantly in the middle of the picture, like a divine epiphany (fig. 13).

The effectiveness of such symbols of piety derived from their infinite repetition and from the close association of image and ritual experience. What seems to us now merely ornamental or decorative was then something new and exciting in the emotional mood of the "new age."

THE CHIEF PRIESTHOODS

The priesthoods founded or reorganized by Augustus starting in 29 B.C. naturally played an important part in all festivals and sacrifices to the gods. Priests wore traditional garb, and each could be recognized by his special attribute: the leather cap with metal point (apex) and long-haired woolen cloak for the flamines (fig. 14), or the cloak with bared shoulder for the XV viri sacris faciundis, who were principally responsible for the cult of Apollo (fig. 15). It seems, however, to judge from the few extant representations, that the dress of important priests was subject to only modest archaism in the religious revival, likewise the detailed regulations governing their behavior. These were sufficient to reflect the high antiquity of the priesthoods, without becoming too burdensome for the priest himself (cf. Tacitus Annals 4.16). Still, the old ritual dances had to be performed, the ancient songs, now largely incomprehensible, still sung.

We are most fully informed about the rites of the Arval Brethren. This priesthood, revived by Augustus and once restricted to patrician families, was originally concerned with the worship of the simple fertility goddess called Dea Dia. Now the Brethren reenacted primitive ceremonies a few times a year, by distributing fruit and grain at a public feast, uttering solemn formulas, and assembling in a sacred grove of the goddess far outside the city. But their primary activity consisted of prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the imperial family. At all gatherings a specific protocol was observed, which governed with strictest precision even the most routine aspects of the ritual. According to ancient belief, this insured the religious validity of the proceedings, while at the same time it showed that prayers on behalf of the emperor were bound up with the most ancient traditions. On certain occasions the Arval Brethren apparently wore simple wreaths of grain, a reference to the fertility of the fields, for which these aristocrats prayed. But when Augustus himself was represented wearing this wreath, his contemporaries will have been reminded rather of his efforts to insure the grain supply in Rome. Thus it made sense that the prayers of the Arval Brethren were primarily for his benefit.

Membership in a given priesthood was alotted to a specific social class, in accordance with the ranking of each collegium. The highest priesthoods and fraternities were naturally reserved for the upper class, particularly for patricians. (The emperor could, however, elevate men of his choice to patrician status.) Since the total membership of the highest priesthoods was far smaller than the number of seats in the Senate, holding one or more priesthoods was a sign of extremely high status. Some felt driven to suicide when they were removed from one of these coveted priesthoods. The frequent public appearances of the priests and the special privileges attached to their office, such as places of honor in the theater, were constant reminders to the general public of their status in society.

We must bear all this in mind when studying the Ara Pacis Augustae, which was erected by the Senate from 13 to 9 B.C., in honor of Augustus’s safe return from campaigns in Gaul and Spain. A solemn procession is depicted on two long relief panels on the exterior of the marble structure enclosing the altar (fig.16 a, b). Two-thirds of these scenes are occupied by members of the four principal colleges of priests (pontifices, augures, XV viri sacris faciundis, VII viri epulonum) and the four chief priests (flamines). At first glance these figures seem scarcely distinguished from the dense rows of others. But while most of the participants in the sacrificial procession are merely wreathed, the priests, like the two togati on the north side, have their togas pulled up over their heads, signifying that they will actually perform the sacrifice. On careful examination we notice that most of the lictors stand beside Augustus and that the procession is gathering about him, his companions forming a kind of circle around him. Is he starting the sacrifice?

It was typical of the innovations brought about by Augustan state religion that the annual sacrifice to the Pax Augusta at the Ara Pacis was entrusted not to a single college, but to officials of all the major priesthoods, including the Vestal Virgins (Res Gestae 12). Previously the individual priesthoods had performed only those functions specifically assigned to them, sometimes in so doing also enjoying considerable political influence (especially through the interpretation of omens and consultation of the Sibylline Books in critical situations). Under Augustus, however, the various colleges acted more often in conjunction, creating an impressive outward appearance but obscuring the fact that their common responsibilities now consisted only in prayers and otherwise allowed them hardly any influence. Bad omens were eliminated, the purified Sibylline Books remained well hidden beneath the cult statue of Palatine Apollo, and before military campaigns the princeps himself took the (always positive) auspices (fig. 17). In his hand was the augur’s staff (lituus), which he may also have carried on the Ara Pacis, simply as a sign of priestly office, marking him as a kind of mediator between men and gods.

The veiled heads of the officiating priests on the Ara Pacis show that the ceremonies have already begun. A woman in the foreground gives the command for silence. The dense rows of figures all similarly veiled in their togas give the impression of unity and uniformity. The sculptural style and composition, inspired by Classical reliefs, elevates the scene beyond the histori cal occasion into a timeless sphere. Not all the figures depicted were actually in Rome on the day of the dedication. The Senate, which commissioned the monument, was concerned not that every figure be recognizable, but with the correct grouping of each of the priesthoods. Significantly, only the most important men have portrait features, while the rest have idealized faces that conceal their individual identity. The figure embodies the office, not the man who happened to hold it at the time. Self-glorification and rivalry between office holders have given way to the common cause. In the service of the newly revived pietas all problems of status and power disappear. The historical moment becomes emblematic of an eternal order.

On both sides of the altar enclosure the procession of priests is followed by the family of the princeps, also wreathed and carrying laurel branches. The safety of the state did indeed depend on them: "that the house which insures peace may last forever," was the priests’ prayer (Ovid Fasti 1.719). The women wear simple garments, sometimes draped in the manner of Classical statues. In their midst appears Drusus, distinguished by his general’s garb, then on campaign in the North. And of course children occupy the foreground, the promise of the future, clinging to their parents. The seemingly casual arrangement of figures actually conceals a significant ordering. Children and parents belonging to the imperial family, as far as we can identify them, are disposed according to their proximity to the throne.

The sacrificial procession on the Ara Pacis is a carefully planned, idealized reflection of the renewed Republic, designed not by order of Augustus himself, it is important to remember, but of the Senate, to honor itself and the state. In essence we are seeing here the newly constituted leading aristocracy of Rome as it wished to be represented and as it wished, at least outwardly, to be closely identified with the new order. To what extent this spectacle suppresses certain things or passes over others in silence, to what extent the artificialities of the style betray a deeper deception; in short, how much of this ideal vision consists of wishful thinking—all this is another matter. But even if the image presented here seems to us to go far beyond political realities, to Augustus’s contemporaries it would not have seemed so far removed from reality. For they had experienced many such ritual processions and over the years had come to realize that power and public office, the Senate, or even military conquest were not what mattered most, but the worship of the gods and the well-being of the imperial house.

The same notion lies behind a relief frieze with still-life that must come from a public building at or near the Porticus Octaviae (fig.18a, b). In place of the members of the highest priesthoods, as on the Ara Pacis, here only their attributes and implements refer to them symbolically: the lituus (curved staff) of the augurs, the apex (headgear) of the flamines, the acerra (incense box) and libation jug with laurel branches of the XV viri sacris faciundis, the simpuvium (ladle) of the pontifices, the patera (offeringbowls) of the VII viri epulonum. Along with these are implements belonging to the ritual, hand towel and aspergillum (sprinkler), sacrificial instruments for the attendants (axe, dagger, and knife), and—again especially emphasized—bucrania and candelabra. Not only is this systematic arrangement of sacred objects new, but they are mixed in with parts of ships: prow and stern, rudder and anchor. These surely refer to the victory at Actium, and among them are some that are clearly marked as belonging to the victors by the addition of busts of gods, the Roman she-wolf, and perhaps even portraits. The meaning of this artful arrangement is apparent: the superiority of the victors at Actium resulted from their respect for the gods. Sacred fillets flutter over all the arms and cult instruments, indicating that pietas and virtus are the twin pillars of the renewed Republic.

This frieze is a good demonstration of how skilled composition and high quality of execution could engage the viewer and alleviate the monotony of the message. Repetition and an accessible aesthetic norm were essential to the spread and acceptance of the new imagery and constituted a not incon-siderable part of their power.

PRIESTHOODS AND SOCIAL STATUS

The princeps offered himself as the most impressive paradigm of piety. He was a member of the four most important colleges of priests and was de facto chief priest long before he was able officially to assume the office of pontifex maximus. Coins celebrate this role (fig. 19a), and Augustus himself described it thus: "I was pontifex maximus, augur, belonged to the colleges of the XV viri sacris faciundis and the VII viri epulonum, was an Arval Brother, sodalis Titius, and fetialis" (Res Gestae 67).

Certainly from the time of the Secular Games in 17 B.C., and probably much earlier, in the 20s, the princeps must have made it known that henceforth he preferred that statues put up in his honor show him togate at sacrifice or prayer. His piety was put on display for every Roman to see, making it clear that he considered the performance of his religious duties his greatest responsibility and highest honor. It is astonishing how many portraits of Augustus made during his lifetime, both on coins (fig. 103b, c) and as honorific statues, show him veiled in a toga (fig. 20). Many such statues were even exhibited in Greece and Asia Minor, where this type of ruler portrait was surely quite alien. The pious princeps got what he wanted or, looking at it from the position of the dedicators, many eagerly seized the opportunity to honor him in this modest form. This new type of honorary statue was a brilliant choice. It obviated entirely the delicate question of Augustus’s political power and the problem of its visual expression. It was the most striking contrast possible to the emphatic nude statues of the period before the "restoration of the Republic" and symbolized most explicitly the princeps’s view of himself.