4—
Drusus, Augustus, and Barbarian Babies

Description

On BR I:2 (pls. 4–6, 14) Augustus is enthroned slightly right of center, surrounded by an entourage of seven lictors (see p. 215 n. 16 for damage after 1899). The lictors have axes in their fasces and wear tunics and paludamenta, not the toga. The figure of Augustus is nearly identical to that on the other side of the cup: enthroned, togate, facing three-quarters left, right arm bent and stretched slightly out, left arm flexed at the side with a rotulus in the left hand. The difference is that the emperor, slightly more in "narrative profile," now sits on a sella castrensis (hinged, flat-topped camp stool with fringed seat cover) on a low, two-stepped dais, here signifying a military tribunal. Behind the emperor at the far right are two soldiers, his guard. The outer one, in high relief, stands at ease in dress armor (Praetorian?)^[1] and crested helmet; the other steps into the background, seen from behind,^[2] a simple soldier in tunic and plain helmet with a trumpet(?) under his left arm.^[3]

The left field is taken up by a party of foreigners to whom Augustus' gesture of greeting is directed (now missing). This party consists of three bearded adults with infant children, a youth, and an unaccompanied adult. The adult males have long beards that are trimmed to a point, curling hair growing down over the neck, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and domed skulls. Their costume consists of a long-sleeved tunic belted tight about the waist, hemmed with a tufted fringe; tight leggings; tight-fitting ankle-high boots or shoes; over all, a fringed mantle falling to mid-thigh, fastened at the right shoulder by a roundheaded pin. The children wear a modified version of this costume: a briefer tunic (also belted) that just covers the top of the buttocks, similar shoes, and (the foremost child) a cloak: it is not clear whether they wear leggings or are bare-legged.

The individual figures of this group of foreigners are as follows. At the edge of the scene, farthest back in the group, is a standing adult whose child rides on his shoulders. Next, an adult stoops forward, guiding his young son with his right hand; with his left he pulls forward the youth, an older son, by the right arm. Closest to the emperor, the leading foreigner has gone down on one knee in order to steady his baby son before him with both hands. This infant, like the one behind it, reaches out to Augustus, and turns up its face, smiling; both, like the child on its father's shoulders behind, are evidently too young to walk unaided. The last adult is represented by a face in shallow relief between the barbarian youth and the Roman officer, who stands in the middle of the barbarian party (pls. 20–22).

This party of foreigners is being presented to the emperor by a beardless officer standing among them—Drusus the Elder (now missing). His figure is fully frontal, his head turned in profile toward Augustus. He wears dress armor, a fitted cuirass of early imperial type, like that worn by Mars on the other side of the cup; he bears a sheathed sword under the left arm, the fingers of the left hand splayed round its hilt. A mantle is bunched on his left shoulder and wound from behind around his left arm. His right hand is caught down by the second barbarian infant, so that he steadies that child as it is ushered forward.

Commentary: The Nature of the Image

In contrast to BR I:1, an allegory whose only human participant is the emperor himself, BR I:2 is a classic example of Roman documentary historical relief. an image that presents itself as the literal transcription of an actual and singular event as it would have been visible to a real observer. The only concessions to the artistic limits of the relief panel are, first, the shorthand by which seven lictors, two soldiers, and three barbarian parents with children do duty for what will have been larger numbers in actuality and, second, the spreading out of the participants to afford a point of view that, though evocative of "real" perspective, would not in fact have been available to any single spectator of the actual audience.

Real space and time are indicated here, in contrast to the panel on the other side. In that allegory single figures predominate, isolated in space, spread out in paratactic disposition, exhibiting neoclassic conservatism in the illusionistic exploitation of relief planes to suggest penetration into the depths of the relief ground. These figures breathe some Olympian air that reaches far above their heads, as they stand frozen in gracefully static poses, even those meant to be in motion. Thus not only the subject and

iconography but the mode of depiction as well lift this event into some extratemporal realm of essential reality. The submission scene, on the other hand, has only human actors, who crowd all three dimensions, massed in complex groups deep into the background, cramming the width and height of the panel.^[4] Here is no lofty, over-arching atmosphere: the full height of the relief is filled with heads and intersecting lictors' rods. The actors seem caught in the midst of spontaneous, rather than posed "balletic," movement. The interplay of their various gestures and poses implies an immediate past and future: the foremost infant has just thrust its arms out and smiled, the adult of the second pair has just started to stoop in moving forward toward the kneeling presentation of his child, as the father behind him waits still at rest to take his turn in line; the legionary at far right is caught moving with realistic lack of grace around the back of Augustus' dais.

Note how though the same figure type is used to depict Augustus in both scenes, the context gives that figure a very different flavor in either case. In the allegory, the emperor with his globe seems a serenely poised figure who has been waiting thus and will continue to pose thus for an undefinable extent of time. In the documentary narrative, his gesture seems a responsive motion toward the approach of the barbarians, especially toward the gesture of the child at his feet. In both compositions the lines of motion conform to a series of curves. While those in the allegory loop rhythmically across the field in a symmetrically balanced pattern, in the bustling crowd scene those curves make up a single dominant arc, curving down from the top left to swing up suddenly at a much sharper angle to the central figure of the emperor; the line of motion in the crowd scene is an individually modulated and asymmetrical curve in place of cool symmetry. If BR I:1 has its literary counterpart in the panegyric odes of Horace, then BR I:2 is artistic cousin to the prose of the Roman historians, the ostensibly "straight" narrative of historic achievement of Caesar's De bello Gallico or Augustus' Res gestae .

I have just been at pains to emphasize the differences between the two panel compositions of BR I; what most immediately strikes the viewer is, of course, the compositional similarities, principally anchored by the togate, seated figure of Augustus, who is approached by at least one infant figure, beyond whom stands a frontally posed young male with nude (or seemingly nude) torso. This chapter demonstrates how BR I:2 locates in real time and history, as we experience it, the transcendent reality explicated in the allegory BR I:1. It is as if the viewer looked at history as an annalist and as a poet at once, his shifting between the two panels a kind

of shifting between different sensations of temporality and modes of vision focused on the same central object, Augustus. In this realm, style becomes iconography. The meaning of the individual panels, and of the cup as a whole, is predicated not least on formal correspondence between specific figure types embedded in specific compositional structures.

Such graceful binary pairings can be recognized as characteristic of other works of Augustan art, major and minor. An Arretine ware matrix of ca. 30 B.C. preserves a comparable cup pattern:^[5] on one side Hercules-Antony and on the other Cleopatra-Omphale are drawn in a triumphal centaur chariot led by a straining servant, followed by appropriate attendants—young men with Hercules' weapons, maidens with flowers, fan, and parasol. The compositions function in a mythic-allegorical mode to comment on Antony's self-proclaimed roles as New Dionysos and New Hercules, though whether the humor is meant to be gentle or savage is not clear. The Casa del Menandro skyphoi pair the couplings of Mars and Venus with the couplings of a human pair on the other side—the latter familiar from Arretine cups.^[6] Such compositional pairing is just as characteristic of Augustan monumental art (to which Arretine ware was closely linked). The Ara Pacis (fig. 71), a staple of introductory slide lectures, furnishes the best example: a correctly angled view takes in Augustus and Aeneas as figures identical in pose and gesture, both capite velato, in an obvious equation of Augustus with his own ancestor. Here, as on the cup, Augustus' historical, real actions are depicted for the viewer as having a different temporal dimension, in this case an identity with events of the far past; and Augustus' own unique, semidivine persona is explicated by this pendant figure.

As the panel BR I:2 purports to narrate a historical event, it needs historical analysis. Reading an allegory, one looks for the concept conveyed by the sum of the elements present, adding up their individual significance, and the significance of their joint presence, as if setting up the equation for a chemical reaction. Historical time exists only as the setting for the making of the artifact itself. At what point in time could this idea have been formulated? At what time was it most likely to have been formulated? In a depiction of a historical event, however, historical time is part and parcel of the subject of the depiction. Whatever the extrahistorical significance of the themes located in the depiction, to read that image is to search for an individual historical moment. In a documentary scene, the identities of the participants are dependent one upon the other. We do not ask of the allegory, Given that this is Venus, when did she meet Augustus? Here we do ask, Given that this is Augustus, who are the barbarians, who

is this young general, and at what point could they all have participated in this event?

The first fixed point is the emperor. He is outside the city of Rome, as the lictors have axes bound into their rods; he is in a military encampment, for he is seated on a military commander's stool, and the participants are limited to his own lictors, and to foreigners and military figures. Augustus is abroad, then, in an encampment in the territory of the foreigners represented and must be commander in chief, as he sits in the commander's place on a tribunal/dais; however, as he is in civilian dress, he must be understood to be presiding in a sphere under the immediate supervision of the young commander who presents subjects for audience and acts under Augustus' consular auspicia . Once we identify the young general and the barbarians and explain what they do with the children we can discuss the implications of the event and its portrayal.

The Identification of Drusus the Elder: Agents and Heirs

It is curious that few have tried systematically to identify the young general in BR I:2; even if his features were destroyed like those of the sacrificant of BR II:1, the composition and figure type would lead an attentive observer to see in this young general a prince of the Julio-Claudian house.^[7] To use only the frame of reference provided by the cup itself: this is a person of high-enough stature to sponsor a legation to the emperor and appear before him in dress armor with a sword. He is strongly linked by composition and iconography to two of the divinities on the other side of the cup. In dress and function, this prince is Mars' analogue: Mars, beardless and in the same smooth, fitted cuirass,^[8] also sponsors foreign beings before the emperor. The young general's location in the composition points to the other young male in the allegory: the Genius of the Roman People also stands at the left, his body facing front, his head turned sharply in profile. Each has a very young child at his feet (Amor/foreign child); each has his lower legs hidden by figures in procession; and both supply the same visual note, the gleaming accent provided by the smooth and compact curves of their ideally modeled torsos—the Genius literally naked, the general in a fitted body cuirass that gives the same effect. In a scene focused on Augustus, a subordinate likened to the Genius of the Roman People and to Mars, youthful embodiments of the vis and virtus of the Roman people, must belong to the imperial family himself. And in relation to the other cup, this young general is the analogue to the cuirassed imperator Tiberius sacrificing to Jupiter.

Second, the young general's features (pl. 21) show that the artist did try to execute a distinctive portrait of an individual. Subsidiary and anonymous figures on these cups generally have regular oval heads and classicized features, like the young Doryphoros-type lictor in front of Angustus; this general has a much blockier head. His features are also quite different from those of Tiberius on BR II:2, who has a long, slim face with attenuated bony features and an aquiline, pointed nose; this prince has a broad, squared visage with a firm jaw and short, straight nose, hair cropped straight across his brow.

These features, together with the northern European setting indicated by the Celtic dress of the foreigners, suggest that this is Drusus the Elder. or his son Germanicus, either of whom could easily be associated with a triumphant Tiberius in the reign of Augustus. Since the depiction can be firmly tied to depictions of the Boscoreale children on the Ara Pacis (figs. 76–77; 13-9 B.C.) and on coins of 8-7 B.C. (fig. 87), this event took place when Germanicus was a child or yet unborn. That leaves Drusus the Elder as the only plausible candidate. What can be seen of his features (especially in contrast to the Tiberius of BR II:2) fits in;^[9] compare the Capitoline Museum busts of Drusus (inv. 283) and Tiberius (inv. 355) from an Italian dynastic series (figs. 109–10).^[10]

Barbarian Babies

This scene misleads many. What discussion it has received explains that it shows the leaders of a newly conquered tribe handing over their children as hostages for continued good behavior; it has been likened to the few extant depictions of similar scenes, which date from the second century A.D. on:^[11] one of the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius (fig. 83)^[12] and a genre of late imperial sarcophagus depictions (fig. 93).^[13] On these, disheveled, cowering, anguished victims submit themselves with their offspring to a stern imperial general who is armored and victorious.^[14] The barbarians are surrounded by Roman soldiers and abase themselves,^[15] the armed emperor is aloof, and the barbarians' expressions when visible are anguished and dismayed. When the physical format permits, the emperor is put up on a very high tribunal so that the foreigners are physically distanced from him and humiliated.

To casually group the Boscoreale depiction with these submission scenes is wrong.^[16] The foreigners here are sponsored by a Roman officer who physically cherishes their children, a motif not seen in the submission scenes;^[17] the adults are composed and serene, not disheveled and an-

guished, and those who are not bending to hold their children stand at dignified ease; the posture of those who do have to bend is not proskynesis or a pure grovel but is explained by the fact that they assist their children; the young children themselves greet the emperor joyfully, for wide smiles are apparent on their faces, and when they reach out to Augustus they seem to wish to be taken up by him, not to be pleading with him in fright and terror; the emperor himself is in the toga of peaceful civil administration and not in the cuirass of a conquering general, and he greets them with an affable openhanded gesture of welcome.

These are not newly conquered, formerly hostile savages, Vergil's superbi debellati, but a friendly people, loyal to Rome. The infants depicted turn up elsewhere in Augustan art (see p. 101 below); they are being transferred to the authority of Rome and Augustus to be brought up in honor under the emperor's aegis, perhaps even at the imperial court, as future Romanized leaders of their people. I propose that this panel shows the primores Galliarum before Augustus in Gaul in 13 (or 10) B.C. at Lugdunum. Before covering the historical evidence, I review the visual comparanda, which, together with the cup and its prototype, show that this event was heavily, though briefly, publicized by Augustan state propaganda. This visual evidence is extremely important, for it documents an event to which we have no direct testimony in any surviving textual source. Both my parallels are from the corpus of state art—monumental commemorative relief in Rome and imperial coinage minted for Rome and Gaul.

The Ara Pacis

On the north procession frieze (fig. 76) a young foreigner (figs. 76–77) has been inserted into the Roman crowd at the head of the group belonging to the imperial domus ; he stands between the members of official priesthoods, who head the procession, and the matron (the emperor's daughter Julia), who leads the imperial household group. On the south wall (figs. 78–80), at the very same point, another young foreigner of a different type clutches the toga of Agrippa, immediately preceding the emperor's wife Livia, who heads the imperial household group. This manipulation of the altar's visual structure (fig. 71) makes plain that these two young foreigners have the same status and function, as is the case with groups (imperial family, priests) and individual figures (e.g., Livia and Julia) that are symmetrically placed elsewhere in the procession friezes. The expense of such care on their placement also indicates that they were

meant to be noticed; compare the so-called silentiarii, each a veiled woman facing the spectator with a finger to her lips, who on either side of the altar wall mark the point where the spectator passes the front of the holy altar hidden from view within.^[18]

First, the child on the north wall (figs. 76–77): this is one of the Boscoreale children. This is a fat-checked toddler in an armless tunic^[19] that leaves his lower buttocks bare, wearing a heavy torque with twisted ring and round finials, and a smooth bracelet above the right elbow; his wavy hair, braided along the parting at the back of the head,^[20] lies flat along the skull, curling loosely to his shoulders behind. Tripping forward on one foot, he dangles by the left hand from the right hand of the togate Roman behind him; with his right hand he tugs at the toga of the Roman in front of him, his head craned back, smiling up at the giant whose attention he wishes to attract.

One has only to look at the two representations side by side to see that the Ara Pacis child belongs to the group of infants from the cup scene and that his figure is a conflation of the two toddling children in the foreground on the cup panel. His head is that of the foremost BR infant—coiffure, features and expression, and tilted-back angle (pl. 20); his gestures combine those of the child holding onto Drusus' hand (pl. 21) and those of the foremost child who reaches up and out; he is the same size and age and, like them, cannot walk unsupported; his tunic has the same distinctive short cut, which covers only the top of the buttocks. His tunic is fastened at the shoulders instead of having sleeves, but this is paralleled by Gallia's gown at Lugdunum Convenarum.^[21] This sleeveless tunic (better suited to a hot climate?) is not Greco-Roman, and its length is still distinctive; the bare legs and feet appear on a Gallic toddler in a later Julio-Claudian grave relief at Nîmes for a Gallo-Roman patron.^[22] His foreignness and his high status are both marked by the heavy jewelry on so young a child, the torque of foreign (Celtic) type,^[23] the bracelet worn in Gallic fashion.^[24] The fact that he is not a Roman is signaled immediately by the absence of the bulla (protective amulet) worn by all the Roman children on the altar just as it was worn by all Roman children in real life.

E. Simon was the first to point out that this child and his pendant on the south wall are not Romans, identifying them as foreign princelings. Because she did so quite briefly (and did not note the clinching parallel with the Boscoreale cup panel),^[25] her views have often been ignored and even ridiculed.^[26] Yet even without the cup parallel it should have been evident that this child is no Roman, let alone a Julio-Claudian prince (he is often identified with Lucius Caesar).^[27] The Roman children on the altar

wear the bulla and are swaddled in adult-style drapery, the males with short hair; even the youngest, who clutch at their elders' hands and clothes, stand solidly on two feet with good Roman gravitas —no naked buttocks among these imperial offspring.^[28] The fine 1990 article by C. B. Rose, whose researches have run parallel to mine, has already started to drive home acceptance of the proper identifications in literature on the Ara Pacis;^[29] singing in chorus, perhaps such voices will finally prevail.

The child on the south wall (figs. 78–80) standing between Agrippa and Livia is somewhat older than his counterpart—seven or eight years old, perhaps. He presses close to Agrippa, clutching at the folds of Agrippa's tunic with one hand, looking back toward the figures in procession behind him. His dress is also distinctive: a knee-length tunic tied low on the hips (the two ends of the belt are visible beneath the overfold) and curious ankle-high shoes with a three-lobed flap falling from the top of the shoe, like the flap of a golf shoe. He too wears jewelry, and no bulla —rather a torque, different from that worn by the BR child, a smooth ring with bullet-shaped finials that meet and join. His long sausage curls, falling to the shoulder, are bound by what is either a thick headband or the thickened edge of a head cap (the latter would explain the smoothness of the hair over this band, which contrasts with the thick curls below it). His features are markedly different from those of any other child on the frieze, a pudgy and pear-shaped face with rather gross lips and a flat, bulgy nose; contrast the delicate face of the young camillus Gaius Caesar on the north wall (fig. 76). Behind this child is a woman marked as a non-Roman noble again by jewelry (earring) and also by the diadema (cloth band) that binds the hair pulled back under her laurel wreath.^[30] She will be the child's mother from his native land; she places a hand on the boy's head and looks down at him. The general dress and appearance of this boy and the woman's diadema place him as coming from the Hellenized East; as his hair and clothing are Oriental, and the woman's diadema is in origin a Macedonian royal token, one thinks of a Greco-Oriental monarchy.

Who exactly are these two young foreigners? The Ara Pacis was voted to Augustus on the occasion of his return to Rome after having reorganized Gaul and Spain, as he himself tells us in his Res gestae (12.2), and the BR child on the altar is to be connected with this. The presence of Drusus on the cup indicates that the children being handed over there are Gauls, for Drusus never exercised any imperium in Spain. This BR child then must have come to Augustus from Gaul. The Eastern child is shown closely linked to Agrippa. We know that Agrippa returned to Rome at the

same time or shortly after from a complementary tour of organization in the kingdoms of the East, having most notably worked in the client kingdoms of Pontos,^[31] Commagene, and the Bosphoros; the child with him must be a princeling of one of these Oriental dynasties.^[32]

Can this Eastern prince be further identified? The torque could be worn by Asian dynasts^[33] and hence figures in the contemporary iconography of Attis, as on the Hildesheim dish;^[34] his mane of sausage curls and his facial physiognomy recall numismatic portraits of the kings of Pontos and the Bosphoros.^[35] Key are this child's distinctive shoes, characterized by a three-lobed flap that falls over the floppy bowknot that secures the soft shoe. Shoes that have a floppy bow and some kind of flap over the top of the foot were recognizably Eastern, for they occur on Augustan images of Parthian captives.^[36] But in none of these does the flap cover the bow in this way or take this distinctive outline (flared, scalloped in three convex lobes). This otherwise unique footwear turns up on a pair of late Republican decorative bronze lamp holders (ca. 40-20 B.C.) (fig. 81), epicene boys who wear a fantastic version of the royal costume of Commagene; their figured tiara,^[37] sash, voluminous leggings and tunic, though draped in Roman Neo-Attic style (matching the dancing pose),^[38] resemble chiefly Commagenian royal sculpture at Arsameia (Nimrud Dagh).^[39] The distinctively draped mantle, pinned at the right shoulder and given an elegant flip over the left, also turns up at Arsameia; the best preserved royal likeness there, on the dexiosis relief of Antiochus and Hercules, has shoes tied with a similar bow; their upper flaps, though upright, are still decoratively marked, here by tooling.^[40] The Ara Pacis boy, then, like his Gallic counterpart, can be seen to wear a child's version of an adult ethnic costume, adapted for Rome and its heat (his tunic is still unusually voluminous, though belted now in Greco-Roman fashion).

The bronze pair in New York and Baltimore shows that the iconography of the Ara Pacis boy was recognizable around the Mediterranean in the later first century B.C. Though the costume of the bronzes has some parallels in Roman depictions of Asia and Armenia,^[41] it is closest to that of Commagene, and the diadem on the boy's princess-mother firmly locates the pair outside Armenia in such a Hellenized realm.^[42] If the bronzes are indeed from Alexandria,^[43] they should be connected with the court of Antony and Cleopatra, where royal children from around the East were (forcibly) assembled; the investiture ceremonies for Antony and Cleopatra's children (Plut. Ant. 54.7–9; Dio 49.41) document that court's knowledgeable interest in the historical range of Hellenistic royal panoplies.

Historical circumstances confirm what the visual evidence suggests,

that the Ara Pacis prince and his mother are from Commagene. There are but two queens with whom Agrippa involved himself on Augustus' behalf of northern Asia, Dynamis of Pontos^[44] and Iotape I of Commagene. Dynamis of the Bosphoros, granddaughter of Mithridates Eupator, was married off in 14 B.C. to Polemo of Pontos to unify their kingdoms, and her ties of amicitia with Livia and Augustus are documented epigraphically;^[45] however, she died shortly after 14 B.C.^[46] and had no attested male issue. Iotape, on the other hand, is a candidate with documented offspring who was also bound by ties of friendship to the imperial house.^[47]

Daughter of Artavasdes of Media Atropatene, Iotape as a very little girl (Plut. Ant. 53.6: eti mikran ousan ) was summoned to Antony's court in 34/33 B.C. to be betrothed to his son Alexander, then six years old; after Actium her father, who had taken refuge with Augustus, was given her back—she is one of the two Alexandrian hostages whom Dio singles out (54.9.3) by name, as an example of Augustus' benevolence. When she was married off to Mithridates III of Commagene, certainly at Augustus' and Agrippa's behest, she would have been perhaps fifteen to seventeen years old, as the marriage must have taken place at Mithridates' accession as a minor in 20 B.C.^[48] Their son Antiochos III of Commagene died in A.D. 17 (Tac. Ann. 2.42.5), leaving a son and a daughter, who in A.D. 38 had a young son of her own. Antiochos must have been born very soon after Iotape's marriage, for even if aged thirty-six (20 B.C.–A.D. 17) he will have married, propagated, and died at a relatively young age. This Antiochos received Roman citizenship at Augustus' hands, not Agrippa's (his sons were entitled to the nomen Iulius ). If indeed his father's death and his own accession fell in 12 B.C.,^[49] then we can see his inauguration as the culminating event of Agrippa's sojourn in the East. The historical and the visual evidence combined seem to prove that we see on the Ara Pacis Iotape I of Commagene (in the diadem that her granddaughter was represented as wearing)^[50] with her son Antiochus III at Rome, where this prince was taken under Augustus' wing and given Roman citizenship. If Antiochus at this point was indeed fatherless, then Augustus' role as substitute pater will have been even more meaningful; that this "willing" obses was presented by the princess who as a little girl had been restored to her own father by Augustus will have deepened the resonance of the occasion. Indeed, Iotape's very presence suggests that Antiochus' father is now dead; for the BR cup scene suggests that the sponsor parent, if present at all, should be male.

Weinstock once questioned the identification of the remains we know as the Ara Pacis with the historical altar, asking rather acerbically where

one could see any reference to pax in the sculptured decoration.^[51] With the identifications made immediately above, his question can now be fully answered—the foreign children on it are the pacati . Pax to Romans of the late Republic and early Empire had two distinct and complementary meanings. With reference to one's fellow Romans, it implied the absence of civil war, a wholly desirable antithesis to a wholly detestable exercise of arms, akin to the modern moral exaltation of peace. Indeed, this civil concord is implicit in the procession friezes as a whole, which show the harmonious rejoicing of the Roman aristocracy and priesthoods, together with and linked to the united imperial domus . Pax with reference to non-Romans meant undisputed acceptance of Roman authority with respect to subject and client peoples, as well as formal treaty-bound relations with total foreigners; in Roman terms, what Augustus and Agrippa had each been up to was pacification in its fullest sense (see the discussion of pax at pp. 105–6 in chapter 4 in reference to the Ara Pacis personification frieze). The two elite children on the altar are the visible emblems of the flourishing of pax due to Augustus and his agents at work in the Empire beyond the SPQR.^[52]

The pair of children express the worldwide range of that pax, summing up in their persons the Eastern and Western poles of the oikoumene —all four cardinal points are there, in fact, in the apt setting of the Western child on the north wall and the Eastern child on the south wall (fig. 71). The artist's desire to set up this metaphor by means of antithetical placement was evidently strong enough to override other iconographic considerations: that is, with Agrippa and Drusus placed on the south wall for other reasons, the BR infant, whose presence would be more easily understood by the spectator if he accompanied Drusus, as the Eastern child accompanies Agrippa, is removed from his own sponsor as we know him from the BR cup and put on the other side of the complex.^[53]

Pax in the imperialistic sense, it should be noted, did not imply as its antithesis armed violence as an absolute evil, in the same way as inter-Roman pax . Military virtus exercised by the Roman armies was what made pax possible for Rome's subjects, threatened by the regrettable but inevitable treacheries of barbarians outside the frontiers.^[54] So it is that we see Drusus on the altar paludatus, as he is on the BR cup, itself a scene expressive of pax in a military setting; a Roman would find no discrepancy in such a collocation of peace and arms.

The altar and cup princelings, then, are emblems of imperial pax spread through the oikoumene . There are further parallels between the structuring of the Ara Pacis complex and the Boscoreale cup: both couple abstract and

particular references to peaceful imperium . In the altar complex, the children in the friezes are the particular examples that locate in real historical event the abstract reality of the lower frieze on the inner altar (figs. 71–72). This showed an assemblage of numerous provincial/ethnic personifications representing the peoples of empire, located on a frieze below the sacrificial relief frieze now visible on the altar block. The cup BR I is similar: the allegory also has a group of ethnic personifications, doing homage to a benevolent Augustus, in a timeless abstract statement of Roman world rule under Augustus' leadership, while the audience scene locates the operation of that rule in a particular historical context.

Also, both monuments emphasize the fruitfulness of imposed pax for the subject peoples themselves and tend to link the representation of children to the representation of Amor. The grouping of Amor and the Genius of the Roman People on BR I:1 is echoed in the group Drusus-alien child on BR I:2; this is brought out by the physical resemblance between the Gallic children and Amor, a chubby infant of the same age who also proceeds toward the emperor with an arm held up. In the altar complex, the foreign children are treated with the same inclusive affection as the Roman children in the frieze, and their very presence symbolizes present and future sharing by the peoples of the oikoumene in the blessings of pax symbolized by the burgeoning garden carpet encircling the walls of the complex; further, the BR child, like the very little Roman children in the frieze, is visually analogous to the baby Amores on the lap of Venus/Terra Mater on one of the four great entrance panels of the complex wall (fig. 74). Infants in a paradise garden including land and sea, nursed by the mother of all and the mother of the gens Julia, these twin Amores are a comment on the hopes and faith placed in the children who are such a key part of the Ara Pacis procession, themselves including the children of the gens Julia and the children "of all."^[55]

This thematic emphasis on children, the younger the better, links the cup and altar programs, and in each case the theme is deliberately set. On the carefully planned altar this would seem obvious. On the cup, note that the BR group includes an adolescent youth (who may stand for more such youths); the artist has put his main emphasis on the foreign infants when he could have concentrated on a different age grouping (compare the grouping father/adolescent, though in a sadder vein, on the Antonine panel relief). Altar and cup obviously depend on a shared prototype for their depictions of the BR children; both partake in an observable and uniquely Augustan tendency toward the portrayal of babies and very little children.^[56]

All these sophisticated and distinctive thematic links between the cup and the altar complex are too close to be entirely coincidental, and indicate a close temporal connection between the altar and the pairing of scenes on BR I. One last feature links BR I:2 to the Ara Pacis: the representation of Drusus on the altar. He is shown as a young general, the only armed figure in the entire procession, dressed in tunic, paludamentum, and caligae, instead of the toga and patrician sandals (fig. 78).^[57] This not only enhances the theme of peace guarded by arms delineated above; it is also means that Drusus here is an agent for Augustus' military virtus at large in the world, complementing Tiberius' position as consul and Augustus' adoptive son Gaius' position as priest (camillus on the north wall with his mother Julia).^[58] The combination of Drusus unexpectedly appearing as a young general alongside one of the BR children in the same procession strongly recalls the cup panel. In fact, the parallel extends beyond these two single figures. The compositional unit within the south altar frieze in which Drusus is framed is a mirror-image version of the sophisticated framing group seen on the cup, much as the niche wall of figures enclosing Angustus on the cup is paralleled by the group heading the south altar frieze. Drusus stands "between" a back wall of standing figures and a kind of front "parapet" of foreground figures of descending height, that is, made up largely of children; once recognized on the cup panel (see p. 161 in chapter 7), the more subdued (and reversed) version of this spatial construct on the Ara Pacis emerges to the attentive eye. This compositional unit is then indisputably a device of Augustan historical relief, firmly bound to the iconography of Drusus imperator as the patron of the Boscoreale children in connection with Augustus' projects for the pacification of Gaul.

Lugdunum Aurei

a. Aureus: obverse, bust of Augustus; reverse, bearded barbarian left, in a cloak fastened on the right shoulder, holding up a very small child stretching out its arms to Augustus at right, togate, seated on a sella castrensis on a high tribunal (CNR IV, cat. 129)

b. Aureus: obverse, laureate head of Augustus, inscribed AUGUSTUS DIVI F.; reverse, bearded barbarian left, in tunic and cloak, holding up a child, as before, to Augustus, as before, except on a low tribunal/dais, inscribed IMP. XIIII (fig. 87; BMCRE I, pl. 12.13–14)

Augustus' fourteenth acclamation as imperator dates these issues to 8/7 B.C. but the reference can only be to the event on the BR cup, which

predates these coin issues from the Lugdunum mint (Drusus died at the beginning of 9 B.C.). The date of issue means that they are part of a larger series that came out for Tiberius' triumph of 8/7 B.C., directly referred to on other types of the series. (Compare the apposition of the panel BR I:2 and the triumph of Tiberius on the companion cup BR II:2.)

The coin type represented in these two variants is unique in Roman coinage:^[59] no other coin type from the Republic or the Empire shows a barbarian offering a child, or even shows the emperor togate receiving the submission of a non-Roman in a military setting. Given the closeness in time to the Ara Pacis (13–9 B.C.), a definite quotation of the BR scene in official art, I think that there is no doubt that this unique type is a deliberate abbreviation of the cup panel. This abbreviation boils down the composition to a confrontation between the emperor and the foreigner, keeping all the cup's essential elements: the emperor is togate on a sella castrensis and uses the same openhanded gesture of greeting and acceptance; the barbarian has a dignified posture (standing) and presents a child to the emperor; the child is extremely small and holds out its hands to the emperor. The better type is certainly (b ), which has the key inscriptions and gives Augustus his laurel; it is also more like the BR panel in showing the emperor on a very low dais, and so more approachable to the foreigner, who is thus allowed closer and given higher status. The foreigner's costume is also given in more detail (tunic and cloak) than on (a ) (cloak only).

For the less-perfect rendering of (a ) the artist turned without thought to earlier representational canons for victory images that put the Roman victor on a very high dais or tribunal, distanced from the suppliant, and to conventional images of beaten barbarians shown as half-naked. The basic composition of such canonical submissio scenes, where the suppliant generally kneels, accords with textual descriptions of the real-life stage management of such formal submissions, such as the surrender of the Cauchi to Tiberius in A.D. 4, narrated by Tiberius' officer Velleius Paterculus (2.104–3.106); the canonical submission type, available at least since the time of Sulla (fig. 50),^[60] has been modified on this Lugdunum coinage in the same way and to the same thematic end as rex datus types, which give the foreigner being honored by Rome greater dignity, depicting him standing erect.^[61]

This issue has been rightly compared to earlier triumphal issues commemorating Drusus' and Tiberius' victories for Augustus, issued from Lugdunum 15-12 B.C. (IMP. X) (figs. 115–16); for it is clear that the compositional structure or template of these earlier types in the Lug-

dunum IMP. (#) series was the direct inspiration for the structure of the later "baby" issues. In the coinage of 15-13 B.C., the standing figure(s) at left is (are) cloaked general(s), Drusus alone or with his brother, and he (they) offer not babies but laurel branches. While this parallel has been used to show that the type of 8/7 B.C. has something to do with victory and is therefore a submission,^[62] it illustrates instead my interpretation. The non-Roman offering his baby is cognate with Augustus' honored stepsons offering their gifts of victory to an appreciative emperor; if one places any interpretive weight at all on the compositional borrowing, one must see the non-Roman also as a valued subject offering a gift to an appreciative emperor. This image certainly is connected to victory, but in the sense explored above in relation to the Ara Pacis, and with historical reference to Gaul's role in Drusus' and Tiberius' German campaigns, discussed below.

The Lugdunum coinage of 8/7 B.C., then, shows the BR event being advertised by means of the most wide-reaching organ of propaganda available to the state. The Ara Pacis is a parallel reference to this event, designed for an audience of the Senate and People of Rome; the coinage of the Lugdunum mint served Rome's money needs, but it also served the Roman armies and native inhabitants of Gaul and the Rhine frontier. The coin image, in other words, was made to be seen by the very armies who served with Drusus and Tiberius, in one of whose camps the cup shows this event to have taken place, and it was also designed for the Gauls, whose elite are depicted handing their children over to Augustus' protection.^[63] A very good parallel is provided by the Augustan triumphal arch (ca. 20–10 B.C.) at the entrance to Glanum in southern Gaul: as P. Gros has shown,^[64] on one main panel (fig. 85) a "good" Gaul in Romanized dress (his fringed sagum draped as a toga)^[65] leads by a chain a "bad" savage Celt (German); on the facing panel Gallia Triumphans^[66] supervises another captive. Here is the same association of Gallic support with Roman imperialism, designed for a Gallic audience as much as for a Roman one. An early imperial cuirass statue (Swiss priv. coll.)^[67] uses similar imagery in what is obviously a Roman triumphal context: a "good" Celt in a sagum decorates a trophy, beside which stands a bound savage barbarian. All these images are meant to honor the real historical circumstance that Roman expansion into Germany depended in fact on the loyalty and active support of the Gauls, as dutiful taxpayers and fighting men; thus a Gallic officer walks in Tiberius' German triumph on BR I:2. This "good" and "bad" Celt imagery helps to document a broader Augustan context in which foreign contributions to Roman power were now honored by

Rome, and is the visual analogue to Claudius' famous paean to the Gauls in the Lugdunum bronze tablet; the Glanum arch must commemorate these very campaigns of the Claudii Nerones.

The visual comparanda for BR I:2 (cup, Ara Pacis, coinage) together form a complex describing a unique event by means of unique imagery. The complex offers us something like a perfectly controlled experimental group in which to observe how a given political event was singled out, on account of its contemporary political significance, to be commemorated and broadcast in a variety of artistic media, public (altar and coinage) and private (the silver cups themselves). In examining how Augustan propaganda is constructed here we can see two different phenomena or processes in operation. One is the invisible (to us) hand of some guiding organ of state (emperor and/or minister) directing and synchronizing the artistic propagation and dissemination of official imperial policy over a vast geographic expanse, aimed at every level of imperial society. The other is an artistic phenomenon, the process by which an image that narrates history can be established, expanded, abbreviated, quoted, according to the demands and limits of a given visual context. Abbreviation, as on the coins, and quotation, as on the Ara Pacis, indicate in their turn that the artists responsible thought that such allusions would work . That is, they depended on such symbols, in themselves containing incomplete information, to evoke, without recourse to verbal explanation, some pre-existing knowledge of image or event from an audience. The BR cup scene reproduces the original detailed and largely self-explanatory artistic narrative, produced to commemorate some event of major political significance. It was the knowledge both of this event and of its iconography that permitted figures isolated from the larger context to function as carriers of meaning on Augustus' altar; and where the altar invests most heavily in the figures of the children in themselves, the coins celebrate the transaction between the childrens' fathers and their ruler, appropriately enough for an image disseminated not least in the native territory of those represented.

Now, it is obvious that the imperial die cutters and sculptors did not borrow from a little silver cup. The kind of abbreviation we see on the altar in particular is evidence that the cup itself was not based directly on the altar depiction, for in borrowing, figure types tend to be conflated (as two BR children are into one Ara Pacis child) or moved out of direct informational context (as Drusus the general is separated on the altar from the child he sponsored), rather than the other way around. Rather, the cup panel, altar, and coin type all derive separately from a common source,

which they all use to different effect. This source can only have been a large-scale imperial monument with a relief (or possibly a painting) narrating the BR event, a monument that I think we can assume the BR panel reproduces faithfully. It is possible (see p. 51) that the Lugdunum coin image itself does not directly abbreviate a two-dimensional prototype but rather records a freestanding statue group related in context and chronology to the Ara Pacis and cup depictions. Like other public commemorative monuments in Rome, the prototype would have had an accompanying inscription giving further information. To hypothesize the occasion of its commission, we need to know more about the occasion it depicted.

Lost Episodes in Augustan History

I started above to explore the symbolic value of the complex of images made up by the BR cup, the Ara Pacis, the Lugdunum coinage, and the cup's prototype. To get at the full panegyric value of this propaganda, one needs to be as precise as possible about why the barbarians are handing over their children and what the event has to do both with Drusus' actual activities and with their acknowledgment by the emperor. The study of Augustan history will be well served if we can answer these questions, for we will supply historical information not available from any textual source. This event, so thoroughly proclaimed by Augustan propaganda in the years immediately before and after Drusus' death, has left none but artistic traces—a phenomenon that is itself worthy of note.

Why are the BR children being handed over? The easy solution, always taken before, has been to describe these children as hostages (obsides ), in the primary modern definition of the term. Their people have just been beaten in war by Drusus acting for Augustus, and so, lest this people offer any future military threat, their leaders have been coerced into handing over their children. The Roman state receives them as a cold and suspicious warden, to hold them prisoner against future misbehavior by their parents, and their presence in Rome or in Roman hands is simply an emblem of Roman military victory. This interpretation describes the opposite of what the BR cup in fact depicts. The alien adults are not shown as savage, disheveled, or humiliated, as they ought to be according to Greco-Roman standards for the depiction of beaten barbarians. Their young children are unafraid and joyful. Neither Drusus nor Augustus appears minatory. Drusus, the general who would have faced these people in battle had that in fact been the prelude to this scene, stands in their midst with

no other soldier near him, appearing as one of their party acting as its sponsor, physically assisting these children just as their fathers do. Angustus meets them affably, with a gesture of welcome in response to the eager outreach of the children, It is very important that this emperor, whose demeanor must set the tone of the event, is in the toga of a magistrate carrying out diplomatic and administrative duties, not in the armor of a commander in chief viewing the submission of just-humbled adversaries: of all the many true submissio scenes in Roman art, not one shows the Roman leader receiving foreigners in a toga instead of paludatus . The same general tone of benevolent patronage is maintained on the Ara Pacis (discussed above) and is manifest even on the coin types, which on their limited scale manage to keep the gestures that establish this tone, the reaching out of the trusting infant and the welcoming response of the emperor in his toga; I have just shown how, in terms of numismatic inconography, this coin image was meant to be read as one of free gift-giving by a valued donor.

These children are being welcomed to Rome's authority, then, rather than dragged there. Not only that, but they are being welcomed into the imperial domus . The visual language of the cup, and the coins, makes it quite clear that the fathers involved are handing their children out of their own patria potestas into Augustus' fatherly authority. This is not something distinct from the children's reception by the wider authority of the Roman state, for Augustus' unique position at the head of the state (in a few years he was to be formally saluted as pater patriae ) means that he receives them into his own tutela/clientela and into Rome's patronage at one and the same time. The Ara Pacis makes it quite clear that the infant shown there is to be understood as equal in status to the patently regal Oriental child behind Agrippa.^[68]

Brought to Rome and reared at court, such children did still have the value of hostages, and naturally so. However, though Latin tends to use the same word, obses, to describe both a "real" hostage and a guest at court, that distinction was, and is, still meaningful. The BR children are not to be reckoned among the "ôtages barbares" catalogued by A. Aymard;^[69] rather, like the children of Phraates of Parthia, like Cleopatra's daughter Cleopatra Selene, like the sons of Herod of Judea,^[70] they are meant to be raised under direct imperial supervision until grown, then returned to take their parents' places of leadership to instill in their native people filial allegiance to Rome and to the imperial house.^[71]

Suetonius attests that this was a notable and typical practice of Augustus, stating it as plain fact without bothering to enumerate the individuals

involved: "plurimorum [sc. regum] liberos et educavit simul cum suis et instituit ("he reared and educated the children of very many kings along with his own," Aug. 48). Suetonius describes the practice as an integral part of Augustus' general policy toward client-rulers, of simultaneously sanctioning and exploiting their authority for the governance of the empire. The emperor made it plain that such ruling elites were to be cherished (when loyal) by their Roman masters as vital to the maintenance of empire, making as necessary a contribution to that empire as the limbs make to the body: "nec aliter universos quam membra partesque imperii curae habuit" (Aug. 48).

Of course, on occasion such "hostages" could also be displayed as emblems of Roman triumph and superiority, and this could be done simultaneously with an effort to give them open honor. Augustus first displayed the children of Phraates in the arena, and then seated them in the row of seats immediately behind himself (Suet. Aug. 43.4); Gaius was to drive across the bay at Baiae in a triumphal chariot with the Parthian prince Darius at his side (Suet. Calig. 19.2), at once a trophy and an esteemed companion in a traditional place of honor (traditional, note, for the triumphator's children). There is no question that the same linked themes of imperium and cura are illustrated on the BR cup, celebrating Augustus' rule over foreigners, in his own right and exercised through his agents. Still, the attempt to give visual form to a benevolent image of Roman rule is worth noting, as a development of Roman imperialism in general and as part of Augustan ideology in particular. The phenomenon has recently been illuminated as a historical practice in D. Braund's study, Rome and the Friendly King . I will review his arguments and expand, where possible, on his observations.

From the second century B. C. , kings are known to have sent their sons to Rome for education; the first known to have done so is Ariarathes IV of Cappadocia (Braund 1984, 9), just before the Third Macedonian War. However, "only with Augustus did the phenomenon become anything like a custom" (Braund, 10); this distinctive phenomenon is the background for Augustan practice.

Before the Principate, such royal offspring were commanded to the paternal authority of the Senate, to receive a crucial portion of their paideia under the tutelage of the Roman state. This reflects Rome's growing dominance in the Hellenistic world: princes might now come to Rome, as well as to Athens or any other Hellenic center of culture, to receive their paideia, which was seen by their fathers in such cases as an education primarily political in nature (Braund, 11). As Livy says of Ariarathes, "re-

gem educandum filium Roman misisse ut iam inde a puero adsuesceret moribus Romanis hominibusque, petere ut eum non sub hospitum modo privatorum custodia sed publice etiam curae ac velut tutelae vellent esse" (43. 19). Later, one such royal scion (Demetrius I of Syria) himself declared in the Senate that Rome was his homeland and nurse, the sons of senators his brothers, and the senators—patres —themselves his fathers (patres ) (Polyb. 31.2.6f.). Under the Republic, these guests were in the care of the SPQR and housed in a dwelling of their own at public expense under the direction of the praetor urbanus (Braund, 9f.); Augustus took them under his own tutela and incorporated them into the imperial family (Suet. Aug. 48). The practice was of course but "one part of the increased integration of kings into the Roman sphere at just this time" (Braund, 11); when individual Romans began in the late Republic to enjoy extraordinary power in the state, this was a practice that they could turn to their own aggrandizement, a further refinement of the webs of patronage such aristocrats typically built up with individual foreigners and foreign political entities. This development culminated with Augustus, whom allied kings were wont to attend exactly like clients, removing their royal garb and donning the toga to appear in attendance at his morning audiences (Suet. Aug. 60).

Braund (12) notes as Augustus' Republican predecessors in this respect Sertorius and Antony in their respective spheres of influence outside Rome. Sertorius in Spain gathered together the children of the Spanish nobles to be educated in Roman fashion, in manners, language, and culture; Antony in Alexandria assembled a great number of the offspring of the Eastern dynasts to adorn his court and as hostages—for a direct transmission of example, note that when Augustus took Alexandria he did not return all of these children, who had been ordered to court, but kept a number of them (Plut. Sert. 14.2; Dio 51. 16.2). Certainly, it is the case that neither of these men operated from the city of Rome itself, and thus could not be said actually to usurp the functions of the Senate and the praetor urbanus as they operated with regard to hostages in Rome. However, Antony did hold his court as a consul and in other ways acted as if "Rome" was where he was—notably in his transfer of his triumph celebration to Alexandria, the first time a triumph had been staged in a foreign city and not in the capital. I think that Antony here simply assumed the role of the SPQR in demanding and hosting hostages, without paying any heed at all to traditional practice. Antony's behavior was the steppingstone, as it were, by which Augustus passed over to incorporating "hostages" into his own domus at the very capital; the first step will have been

his taking of the remnants of Antony's group of foreign princes under his own personal protection in "delivering" them from the hands of Antony and Cleopatra.

In regard to Sertorius, Braund notes the "central ambiguity" (12) explored above: that is, the children of the Spanish nobles, though sent ostensibly as students, were also seen as potential hostages for their people's good behavior. Ancient observers were well aware of this (Plut. Sert. 14.2; App. BCiv. 1.114; Dio 51.16).^[72] Sertorius and Antony also demanded the presence of these children, breaking with the established ritual that royal parents sent their children into Roman hands on their own initiative; for Braund, Augustus rejected their example and returned to Republican convention: "Unlike Sertorius and Antony, Augustus is not known to have actively encouraged kings to send their sons to him at Rome."

The evidence seems to show that, originally, Hellenistic rulers set up this practice, themselves suggesting to their powerful neighbor the role of benevolent patron. The Romans quickly took to the practice and assimilated this role fully, to the point where the Roman plebs could be at least temporarily swayed by appeal to its role of patronage in this respect: Sallust in the Jugurthine Wars shows both the political capital to be made by foreign royals from the institution and the place it held in late Republican morality, in his partisan depiction of the urging of Adherbal's cause. Antony and Sertorius show Roman leaders indisputably self-conscious of the political and propagandistic gains to be made, in the same late Republican time frame.^[73]

The institution of royal fosterage, then, was a recognized, if limited, facet of that ideology of benevolent and morally justifiable imperialism that begins to be openly formulated in the first century B.C.; the space given by Livy to the cases noted above is itself part of this phenomenon. That ideology achieves a special climax in the Augustan period, when love is injected into the relationship between Romans and non-Romans in Ovid's prayer to Pax that those lands that do not fear Rome should come to love her (Fast. 1.718). The ideology of benevolent imperialism had developed two distinct models by the Augustan period. One was the "organic" model, the empire as a body with its members governed by the head—namely, Rome. Augustus' own trumpeting of this model (documented by Suetonius) is immediately reminiscent of the use of the same model by his contemporary Livy to describe the interior structure of Rome as a city-state.^[74] The other model is that of a familia or domus in which foreign leaders stand to Rome's leaders as children to their parents, or favored clients to their patrons. This is the model of imperialism whose

expression in the province group of the allegory BR I:1 I explored above; while the emphasis there was on a kind of clientship, on this side of the cup we see the model of child-parent, in very literal form. We can view the emphasis placed by both the cup and the Ara Pacis on the depiction of very young foreigners as expressing Augustus' attitude to the exploitation of the institution of fosterage; the linking of these children to amor /Amor on the monuments illuminates the climate of thought in which a prayer like Ovid's could be formulated.

Another historical phenomenon is to be noted when we place Braund's evidence next to the cup event: the deliberate imposition of this institution of fosterage on parts of the Empire that would not have generated it spontaneously. The practice developed as a "spontaneous" act in the Hellenized parts of the Mediterranean; Sertorius and then Augustus can now be seen to be imposing this practice on the Celtic peoples of the Western part of the Empire. It is moot whether Sertorius was a Romanizer for anything but his own advantages;^[75] it is certainly the case, however, that he saw perfectly promising raw material for such Romanization in the Spanish elites.^[76] In this he should remind us of Caesar, who saw equally promising material for Romanization in the elites of many of his Gallic allies. Augustus certainly can be said to have deliberately imposed this institution of "son-giving" on the peoples of Gaul, given the act itself and its documentation in the visual material assembled here; it fits a distinct new strain in triumphal art in his reign, which honors the contribution of non-Roman auxiliaries to Rome's empire, especially with regard to Gaul. Unfortunately, in his Res gestae Augustus drew attention only to the children sent him by elites totally outside the boundaries of Roman rule (does this show reticence to acknowledge his alteration of Republican custom?); he omitted thus not only instances for which we have alternative evidence, such as Herod's children, but also instances like that illustrated by the BR cup, for which there are no alternative texts. Even in this section (RG 32.1), however, he is careful to report sendings from the West as well as the East and to group his citations from these two halves of the Empire to underscore the point of a worldwide practice: Parthorum, Medorum, Adiabenorum [East], Britannorum, Sugambrorum, Marcomanorum, Sueborum [West].

The BR cup should be understood as showing Augustus at a stage-managed occasion, where a whole group of Gallic chieftains have been organized to present their children at the same time; in actual fact this is reminiscent of Sertorius' actions, but in presentation (as on the Ara Pacis) it is made out to be an exact replication of "spontaneous" Hellenistic mo-

narchical practice. Its organization then corresponds to the state-managed inauguration of organized imperial cults in the West, where corporate ruler-cults like that at Lugdunum were caused to be founded to replicate institutions of the Greek East,^[77] like the cult of the Koinon of Asia. Roman statesmen had learned that such mechanisms could be useful, and so imported them into the West. It is also legitimate to see in such importations. the desire to standardize in and of itself, to replicate the mechanisms of Roman control throughout the oikoumene .^[78]

This analysis contradicts Braund's statement (12) that "Augustus is not known to have actively encouraged kings to send their sons to him at Rome."^[79] The BR children are not the children of kings, as such—they come from a tribal society, not a monarchic society on the Eastern model—but their position was felt at the time to be analogous. Not only is their coming to Rome to be seen as the result of imperial direction; the intensification of the custom in the East must also reflect a strong degree of imperial encouragement. When a practice consisting of an exchange between two parties solidifies into custom, both parties must somehow be involved. In the case of "son-giving," as in the analogous case of the granting of religious honors and cult to Roman leaders, the appearance of a free gift is itself part of the gift. Because of this, all that contemporary testimonia can be expected to show on the surface is an offer from low to high. Almost never are we privileged to look directly at the eliciting of honors by high from low. A process can continue in the same way that it originates, as a series of apparently free and spontaneous acts; in its continuation, however, it comes to be taken for granted, and its flourishing is as much a product of unwritten law imposed from above as it is a product of real emotions directed upward from below. Testimonia such as the BR cup and the ancient accounts of Sertorius, like the evidence on the organization of the Lugdunum imperial cult, are interesting not least because they give direct hints about the kinds of official direction that were usually hidden behind a veil of "spontaneous" gift.

Drusus and the Primores Galliarum, 13-10 B.C.

Having established what role the BR children play and "what" they are, we can now look more specifically for who they are. The evidence presented above makes it plain that they are Gauls. Their dress is generically Gallic; the identification is settled by the connection of the Ara Pacis (which mandates Gaul and Spain) with Drusus' activities (some of which

took place in Gaul, none in Spain). Compare the ethnic personifications on the other side of the cup: the most prominent figure is quite clearly meant to stand for the people of BR I:2 and on the other hand is paired with Spain, traditionally coupled with Gaul in Augustan art and rhetoric. We need now an occasion on which Drusus and Augustus were concerned with refining Roman administration of friendly Gallic peoples. The historical background is as follows.

In 13 B.C. Augustus returned to Rome from Spain and Gaul, more specifically, from Gaul as his last stop (RG 12: "ex Hispania Galliaque"); this is when he was voted the Ara Pacis, on which one of the BR children is depicted, which links the child(ren) with Augustus' encouragement of Gallic prosperity. He had gone to Gaul in the first place in 16 B.C. to deal with foreign incursion and native unrest (see below): the solving of both problems constituted the imposition or gift of pax in both its primary senses, the abolition of foreign threat and of civil discord, eminently suitable for commemoration by a monument to Augustan Pax. (The same was true of Agrippa's mission to Asia Minor, commemorated on the Ara Pacis by the Oriental child with Agrippa; see figs. 78–80.) Augustus' plans for re-forming Gaul did not terminate with his return to Rome in 13 B.C.; he left behind him in Gaul as legate of the tres Galliae his stepson Drusus.

Drusus' mandate was an important one, with three major parts. First, he was charged to initiate in 13 a full census of Gaul (Livy Per. 138); Augustus had carried out one in 27, but Drusus' census was to include for the first time property and class evaluation. This task was not only formidable in purely bureaucratic terms, it also required firm, but sensitive, political handling: the first-time imposition of such a census in the new German province by Varus some twenty years later was to provoke unrest so severe as to destroy Roman rule altogether, and the Gauls did not take kindly to the new ways either.^[80] Second, he was charged to handle the preliminary organization of a new cult of Rome and Augustus at Lugdunum, a project brought to completion in 10 B.C. with the inauguration of the cult. It was to serve as a focus for Gallic loyalties to the Empire and to enhance a sense of solidarity among the tribes of three provinces:^[81] in it the primores Galliarum gathered together headed by priests chosen on a rotating basis from their number, and with it was to be associated the administratively empowered assembly of these primores,^[82] whose first recorded actions were connected, ironically, with funeral honors decreed for Drusus in 9.^[83] Finally, the best-known portion of Drusus' mandate was

to organize for a campaign across the Rhine into Germany, to implement a plan of conquest designed to bring Germany into the empire as a province.^[84]

The first two parts of Drusus' mandate are to be seen as intimately connected with this third, aggressive plan regarding Germany. Gaul had to be secured and organized as a solid base of support for the difficult program of the conquest of Germany, both for the logistical support of Drusus' own armies once they left Gaul and so that the province should not fall into unrest while the campaign was on;^[85] the conquest of Germany in turn served to protect Rome's Gallic subjects (a justification for German wars already used by Caesar).^[86] Census and cult were ready by 10, when Drusus launched his last campaigns after the inauguration of the altar; and, for this significant occasion, Augustus returned to Gaul and went up to Lugdunum to be present with Drusus^[87] at the grand ceremonies in his own honor.^[88]

Consequently, either 13 or 10 B.C. is the possible date for the BR event, when Drusus and Augustus were together—undoubtedly in Lugdunum—at an ingathering of the Gallic chieftains, at a native city at which was located a Roman military encampment and which was a major seat of Roman administration (cf. its mint). The cult itself was an affirmation of loyalty by the chiefs of Gaul to the emperor, just like the "son-giving" we see on the cup. In 10 B.C., the moment of celebration immediately prior to the German campaigns would have been appropriate for the BR event—useful, also, in putting into Augustus' hands children of the primores Galliarum before his legions crossed the Rhine.^[89] Alternatively, one could set it in 13, just before Augustus' return to Rome, when he transferred power to Drusus; one can imagine an ingathering of the Gallic leaders for this occasion, as they would have to be given crucial instructions for the upcoming census, and the hostage value of their children would operate in this context as well. I discuss below the chronological problems posed by the visual evidence; the strong linkage between the cup and the Ara Pacis makes 13 B.C. more likely. In this scenario, Angustus returned from Gaul with one or more of the BR children, leaving Drusus behind; this would help explain why the BR child on the altar is separated from Drusus, as opposed to the Eastern prince clutching at Agrippa, who would have been taken to Rome by Agrippa personally in 12 B.C.

Further, the Gauls shown here seem to be from Gallia Comata, the particular region to which Augustus hastened in 16 B.C. when he went to

Gaul, from which the German campaigns were launched, and in which the altar cult was set up. Indeed, the BR adults have a very distinctive physiognomy, which seems meant to refer specifically to "long-haired" Gauls.^[90]

The primary features of this physical type are smoothly waving hair trimmed halfway down the neck; a beard cut close to the line of the jaw almost to the chin, where it lengthens and is trimmed to a long, sharp point; a long, bony face with deep-set eyes and a noticeably high, domed forehead. This profile does not at all fit the generic Gaul types assumed into Roman art from Hellenistic (especially Pergamene) canons, particularly in regard to the shape of the beard and the brow.^[91] No comparable depictions occur until the end of the second century A.D. (Sarmatians on the Column of Marcus Aurelius have similar beards). Unquestionably, the BR artist made an effort to render a particular ethnic type without much reference to preexisting stereotypes, Greek ones at least. Comparable efforts toward exact ethnic reference to Germans are known for the late Republic: a German head from a Marian victory monument is singled out also by its hair, having a very long braid twisted in a chignon beside the head, and a very short, fine mustache and beard. (In texts of the first century A.D. this coiffure marks various German tribes, including the Suebi and Sugambri.)^[92] This sculptor in the early first century B.C. tried to execute for a Roman patron a German type based on observable reality, rather than the usual shaggy Greek Celt type.

A similar effort was made by Caesar's die cutter for a very fine obverse (fig. 86) for his Gallic victory serial of 48 B.C.,^[93] which shows an emblematic Gaul of Gallia Comata. This superb bust had the same key features as the BR type: pointed beard cut close until the chin and high, domed forehead (also, neck-length hair, mantle, torque, deep-set eyes, etc.). This victory image seeks to portray a formidable, but beaten, adversary, to honor Caesar's achievement; so it is typical of victory iconography in portraying the foe as an uncontrolled savage, with lime-stiffened hair brushed back like a mane, open mouth, and especially craggy features. Under the deliberate veneer of barbarism, however, the correspondence to the BR Gaul is clear.

Our Gauls are Gauls of Gallia Comata, then; this keys in with what we know of Drusus' work before his campaign proper, when we are told that those Gauls gave him especial help. The emperor Claudius gave a speech in the Senate in A.D.48, asking for the right of Gauls of Gallia Comata to enter the Senate; a bronze copy was found in Lugdunum (CIL XIII.1668).^[94] Claudius, to emphasize these Gauls' merits, discoursed on

the assistance they gave his father Drusus through their cooperation and loyalty in his taking the census, construing this cooperation (rightly) as essential to the success of Drusus' difficult forays into Germany: "patri meo Druso Germaniam subigenti tutam quiete sua securamque a tergo praestiterunt et quidem cum a(d) census novo rum opere, et inadsueto Gallis ad bellum advocatus esset" (CIL XIII. 1668, sec. 2, lines 35f.). This information, incidentally, is omitted in Tacitus' paraphrase of the same speech (Ann. 11.24–25)—it meant more to the local owner of the bronze transcript. Tacitus does give us context and outcome; the Aedui won the right to enter the Senate because they alone among the Gauls had enjoyed since the Republic the official title of brothers to the Roman people (11.25).

Augustus' own mission to Gaul, which terminated in I3 B.C., was especially linked to Gallia Comata. When he went to Gaul in 16 it was to respond to an invasion of German tribes led by the Sugambri across the Rhine, an invading force that routed the local commander Lollius (Dio 54.19.1, 20.5–6; Suet. Aug. 23).^[95] This Sugambrian invasion of Gallia Comata was recalled in Horace Odes 4.2.2 in a poem written for Angustus' return in 13 B.C. (lines 51–52, "we will offer for your return tura benignis, " refer to the supplicatio on the Ara Pacis friezes). Augustus originally took with him Tiberius, then praetor, to act as his military agent (his functions transferred to Drusus; Dio 54.19.6). The serious military emergency was averted by Augustus' arrival, which frightened the invaders, who made peace and went home. Gallia Comata seems to have been the main focus of this invasion; Tiberius was put in charge of that region for just under a year to remedy the disturbances caused, says Suetonius (Tib. 9), by these German forays coupled with dissensions among the local principes ("Tiberius rexit Gallia Comata"). This record of dissension provides background for the institution of the Lugdunum altar cult, and for the special thanks given to the local chiefs for backing up Drusus. Finally, an inscription honoring a member of Augustus' official comitatus in Gaul during his trip of 16-13 B.C. cites not the "Hispania Galliaque" of Res gestae 12 but more specifically Gallia Comata and Aquitania as loci where Augustus held court.^[96]

The tie between Augustus' visit to Gaul from 16 to 13 B.C. and Gallia Comata could have conditioned a spectator of the Ara Pacis to connect the BR child with Gallia Comata. It was to Gallia Comata that Augustus had given the gift of pax, protection of Rome's subjects from invasion and civil concord. (See p. 76 and p. 267 n. 54 for a monument to Augustus from Spanish regions grateful for having been so pacified.) This

sequence of events also helps explain the tie to Gallia Comata on Tiberius' 8/7 victory coinage, now that we see that he had been involved in a rehearsal of his brother's fuller mandate there.^[97]

The BR Gauls may even be from the particular tribe benefited by Claudius' Senate, the Aedui.^[98] They were especially honored by Drusus and Augustus at this time; as a contemporary Roman found worthy of note (Livy Per. 139), the first priest of the Lugdunum cult was the Aeduan C. Julius Vercundaridubnus, even though Lugdunum itself was the capital of a different tribe (the Segusiani, according to Strabo 4.3.2).^[99] The Aedui named their new tribal capital Augustodunum sometime in Augustus' reign; probably under Augustus, Rome set up here a general school for young Gallic nobles, which existed to be seized by (the Aeduan!) Sacrovir in A.D. 21 (taking its noble students as hostages to enforce his Gallic rebellion; Tac. Ann. 3.43). It is Just possible that a Roman audience would see in children like those on the cup and altar offspring of the one tribe that they accounted uniquely close to Rome (the Augustan Strabo 4.3.2: sungeneis of the Roman people).

To sum up, the BR cup panel and the images associated with it show a party of Gauls, the primores of Gallia Comata (perhaps Aedui, perhaps from various tribes), who petition to have their young children educated under Augustus' authority, at his court. It might be interjected here that perhaps the BR depiction and its comparanda do not refer to any one specific event but symbolize a policy or series of actions. It can be answered that from the Republic through the late Empire Roman reliefs that purport to narrate the specific performance of a given ritual or the occurrence of a given political event seem uniformly to refer to an actual, historical fact, even when (as on the Ara Pacis) the visual forms of narration deliberately broaden the significance of this given event so that its political resonance will endure. I know no exceptions to this rule, which is a logical consequence of the fact that Roman political monuments were not commissioned in a vacuum but rather commemorated specific actions; it is because of this that the works of art engendered by political and military actions were to ancient authors part of the historical record, and so are recorded in biographical narratives. This is why BR I:2, and the more selective references on the Ara Pacis and the state coinage, can be taken to refer to a specific occurrence. This event or occasion must, on the evidence of the visual and historical record, have transpired either in 13 or (less likely) in 10 B.C. (Though the Ara Pacis was commissioned in 13, we do not know when before 9 B.C. amendments to its design ceased.)^[100]

This event was orchestrated by Drusus and Augustus as part of the

strengthening of Gaul necessary both to its own development as a Roman province and to Augustus' plans for expansion beyond Gaul's eastern frontiers.^[101] The BR depiction and the event behind it thus tie in to various significant historical phenomena: the fostering of elite children by the Empire's ruler, the Romanization of Gaul, and the career of Drusus. While Drusus was alive and shortly beyond his death this event seems to have been chosen to sum up Augustus' achievements in the West,^[102] in a way similar to the use of the return of Crassus' standards to sum up Augustan sway in the East; compare the way in which the settlement of Armenia was attached first to Tiberius and then to Gaius under Augustus, and the grooming of Germanicus for power by Tiberius with a similar mandate in the East. The young Tiberius had already been put in a position by his stepfather to display his civil and military virtus as the special legate responsible for bestowing the kingship of Armenia on Rome's candidate for rule there; just so, we see Drusus being given, in fact and in propaganda, a chance to build his reputation as administrator, as well as general, acting as Augustus' legate in the West. The BR event was celebrated on his behalf to proclaim his virtues as a pacator and administrator; his military reputation, already well founded on his Rhaetian conquests, was to be further enhanced by his conquests in Germany. Chapter 8 returns to Drusus and the Augustan imagery of dynastic succession and to the problem of the prototype reliefs from which this and the other panels were copied.