8—
Tiberius and Drusus in Augustan Propaganda and the Prototype for the Boscoreale Cups
A Polemic for the Claudii Nerones
The position of Tiberius and Drusus in the years 12–9 has not always been properly estimated by scholars .
—Syme, History in Ovid
It is always pleasant to be backed by the magisterial authority of Ronald Syme in generalizing about scholarly trends. Indeed, the place of Tiberius and Drusus in Augustus' political projects and dynastic plans has seldom been properly estimated; the position of Drusus the Elder has hardly been considered at all. This has been a flaw in historical, literary, and art-historical scholarship, misdirection and omission in any one sphere tending to reinforce those faults in other spheres. Hence this chapter. For it is Drusus' and Tiberius' place in Augustus' plans and in Augustan propaganda that explains the decoration of the Boscoreale Cups on the one hand, while on the other hand the cups themselves are notable and illuminating documents of the historical phenomenon. I have reviewed already some portions of the brothers' careers, and the artistic forms and monuments implicated in their commemoration. I consider now some reasons for the neglect of Drusus and Tiberius, recount some of its side effects, and state my own position on the nature of Augustan "dynastic" policy.
Some of this presentation has a polemic character. If it provokes anyone to a more broadly founded analysis of the roles of Augustus' chosen assistants and relatives, and of the artistic evidence for this, I will be delighted. I am not trying to make out that Drusus and the younger Tiberius were the heirs of Augustus, at the expense of Agrippa or Gaius and Lucius, for instance; rather, in a given period they were preeminent, as others neces-
sarily were at other times. The mechanisms by which Augustus delegated power, and tried by its orderly transmission to assure the continuation of pax after his own death, cannot be understood if the Claudii Nerones are ignored. Most of all, I wish here to say of historical interpretation what I maintain throughout of iconographic interpretation: hindsight is a dangerous, usually illegitimate tool for analysis of motive and intention. Failed projects, cropped-off careers, cannot be treated by the serious historian as if they had never been; yet this has overwhelmingly been the case with the career of Drusus the Elder up to his death in 9 B.C. and with that of his brother Tiberius up to his self-imposed exile in 4 B.C. On Augustus' predilections in these years, let Plutarch speak: first place in Augustus' estimation was held by Agrippa, but next after Agrippa he esteemed the sons of Livia.[1]
Such historical misunderstanding has directly affected Roman art history in general, not just the interpretation of the BR cups. Much Roman art must be dated by means of historical interpretation; historical misdatings then seriously affect our understanding of stylistic evolutions. The next few pages review some apposite examples, not to throw darts at their authors but to indicate the sort of widely held interpretative position that this analysis of the BR cups opposes. Such art-historical works can mislead historians in turn, by conveying unbalanced notions about the strength of the visual evidence for the status of important individual Julio-Claudians.
The debate on the Bonn scabbard plaque is illustrative (fig. 114). That molded (mass-produced) plaque made for the Rhine legions shows two young cuirassed princes on either side of a woman portrayed with aspects of Venus Genetrix and with a nodus coiffure—in other words, an imperial female as Venus. The workmanship is crude enough that it is difficult to distinguish just what the coiffures of the two princes are, except that the one on the left has short, close bangs, the one on the right a longer, more loosely combed fringe.
The plaque has been variously identified as showing Gaius and Lucius with Julia, or Tiberius and Drusus with Livia. Those who nominate Gaius and Lucius seem to feel that there is no reasonable alternative, and do not consider historical context. Historical plausibility mandates that the plaque princes should be a brother pair in command of the legions who were issued this portrait image, whose officers might carry fine cameos like the Bourges triumphal double portrait of Tiberius and Drusus (ca. 14 or 7 B.C.).[2] Compare the Augustan and Tiberian glass phalerae issued exclusively for the Rhine legions, showing Drusus, Tiberius, and Drusus
the Younger or Germanicus with their infant children (fig. 111).[3] The Bonn princes ought to be Tiberius and Drusus, for neither Lucius nor Gaius ever commanded in northern Europe. It is unsound to maintain[4] that the Rhine legionaries were meant to look at two young generals and realize that these were not the actual generals they knew, Drusus and Tiberius, but instead the young children Gaius and Lucius, who had little or nothing to do with themselves. What is visible of the princes' coiffures supports their identification as Drusus and Tiberius—such short, close, straightly trimmed bangs do appear on some portrait types of Drusus.[5]
One should also look for suitable parallels to back a given identification. Are there any parallels for Gaius and/or Lucius as general(s) with their mother as Venus Genetrix? No; nor is this surprising; by the time they enjoyed such careers, their mother was in disgrace.[6] There are, however, suitable parallels for Livia-Venus Genetrix with Drusus and Tiberius. The Boston Marlborough turquoise (fig. 113), which must have been made at court in Rome, shows Livia as Venus Genetrix with one of her sons (Tiberius) as a young cuirassed general; this is the sort of sophisticated luxury work imitated by the makers of the Bonn plaque die, including the disproportion between mother and grown son (borrowed from Venus-Amor iconography) that makes these imperatores seem boys. The iconography of the Bonn plaque persists in the West into Tiberius' reign, when Livia is still honored as Venus Genetrix, mother of Tiberius and Drusus.[7]
The historical iconography of the Boston turquoise itself has suffered Procrustean treatment. It is now generally dated Tiberian, though Tiberius is depicted as a boy—an image of himself after A.D. 14 as some three decades younger. The only premise for this very odd hypothesis is the presumption that the "unpopular" Tiberius would never have been so "flattered" before his accession in A.D. 14.[8] Most explicit is W.-R. Megow's new (1987) survey of imperial cameo production for the authoritative AMUGS series, which can be expected to serve as a reference for years to come. Its stylistic critique of the Julio-Claudian production is distorted when all portraits of the young Tiberius are, without exception, shifted into Tiberius' later Augustan floruit or into his own reign, dragging many Drusus depictions with them.[9] Take Megow's "Germanicus" C 20 Vienna 13, Vienna IX.a.61, for example. This glass cameo is very important because it is from Rome and presents a superb portrait of the young general Tiberius, lightly bearded, laureled, in cuirass and paludamentum (fig. 112). Megow did not arrange these cameos by style or imputed age: rather, the Boston turquoise is Tiberian because "offizielle Kinderporträts
kann es von Tiberius nicht gegeben haben"; and so also a family group of Augustus, Livia, and Tiberius as a young boy has to be after A.D. 4 because Tiberius assumed "seine Funktion als zukünftiger Herrscher erst 4 n. Chr. im Alter von 46 Jahren."[10] Nothing in the historical, literary, or material record supports these views.
Several other recent specialist studies, all admirable in their main thrust, are marred by certain historical statements. A 1984 study of the dedication of the Porticus Liviae in 7 B.C. dismisses those sources that include Tiberius as joint dedicator with his mother Livia as unlikely to be true because, "after the death of Drusus, Tiberius' position may well have been an awkward one" in comparison with that of Gaius and Lucius. But this is the very period when Augustus awarded Tiberius his triumph and was planning to give him tribunician potestas![11] Such inattention to the real historical sequence affects study of the Boscoreale Cups themselves: in 1984 a sophisticated survey of depictions of the exercise of military and political authority said that the BR cups could not have been made in connection with the 8/7 B.C. triumph of Tiberius because "unmittelbar nach den Ereignissen in Germanien 8 v. Chr. war Tiberius noch gar nicht zum Nachfolger ausersehen. In dieser Zeit wäre es viel wahrscheinlicher gewesen, dab Gaius oder Lucius auf dem Gegenstücke zum Augustusbecher gefeiert worden wären."[12] In 1985 a fine discussion of the coinage of 13-12 B.C. described Gaius' and Lucius' appearance there as a reference to the fact that Gaius and Lucius were going to grow up to inherit the throne because their father had been Augustus' heir until his death in 12—no mention of the mere existence of Tiberius or Drusus, fully grown adults currently commanding their stepfather's legions and coheirs with Gaius and Lucius.[13] The newest study of the artistic commemoration of Gaius and Lucius, published in 1987, manifests the same tunnel vision—Gaius, the principal focus of the book, exists living and dead as a historical hapax legomenon; real innovation cannot be appreciated because there is no discussion of actual derivation from modes of honoring any other "Julio-Claudian."[14] Also in 1987 the first iconographic sourcebook on imperial numismatics—along the lines of the classic epigraphic handbooks—not only omits the IMP. X coinage (figs. 115–16) but does not even mention Drusus' name once.[15]
Equally problematic are generalist studies. It is difficult to shake off the imprint of one's first handbooks; and those new to Roman art in general (and to Augustan art in particular), whether undergraduates, graduate students, or specialists in other Classical disciplines, will turn naturally first to general reference works to get their bearings. No general work at this
handbook or survey level has, until recently, even attempted the topic of "dynastic" works of art. It is therefore disappointing to find that in the two otherwise spectacular new handbooks on the art of the Augustan Age, brought out by two of the best Roman art historians of our day, mistaken notions about the Augustan succession continue to flourish. Both books make a sustained effort to organize the works reviewed in a meaningful way by means of thematically structured chapters (which should do much to enhance the level of conceptual analysis of Roman art); it is good to see that both authors consider as a distinct topic art affected by and documenting Augustus' succession policy. Both, however, convey the notion that "the succession" had a kind of institutional reality, that Augustus could will his power to his chosen successors, and that such succession was based on blood kinship to Augustus. Tiberius is not considered an "heir" until adopted by Augustus; Agrippa is not considered ever to have been in the running; the actual mechanisms of Augustan power sharing, especially the grant of tribunicia potestas, are not discussed or mentioned. In her handbook Simon considers the "Portraits of Designated Successors": these are Augustus' nephew Marcellus, then Gaius and Lucius; after Gaius dies Tiberius is adopted, and now he and Germanicus are designated successors.[16] There is no Agrippa, no Drusus the Elder, no preexile Tiberius, no Drusus the Younger, or Agrippa Postumus. P. Zanker has a more sophisticated, and so more troubling, text. He considers how Augustus' Nachfolger were presented in art in a section called "Shoots from Venus' Stem"—these turn out to be, from infancy, Gaius and Lucius. At least Tiberius and Drusus are discussed immediately following, but only as "Reichsfeldherrn," and the only images cited are the Lugdunum issues (figs. 115–16).[17] The section "Tiberius as Successor" is confined to the period when Tiberius returned from exile and, because Gaius and Lucius were dead, was considered a successor and so adopted, adopting in his turn Germanicus and Agrippa Postumus (there is no mention of Tiberius' son Drusus). Zanker holds that while Gaius and Lucius were presented as Nachfolger from boyhood, adducing the (post-Tiberian exile!) principes iuventutis coinage, Drusus and Tiberius were presented as successful generals with their glory properly subordinated to Augustus', but never as heirs.[18] The contradiction here is not realized—by now all forms of ultimate power in Rome were grounded upon demonstrated military capability, and no one knew this better than Augustus himself. The portraits of the children Gaius and Lucius on the Ara Pacis are mentioned (though misidentified with the foreign princelings) to show how they were being touted; there is no mention of the even more prominent
portraits of Tiberius and Drusus, nor of Agrippa, Augustus' near mirror image. Other images are squeezed into this preset structure: the Bonn plaque (fig. 114) must be Gaius and Lucius, the Boscoreale Cups must be associated with the postexile standing of Tiberius.
At this point it is incumbent on me to expose to criticism my own view of the nature of Augustan succession policy and to highlight the institutions and events that I feel are crucial to the interpretation of political art. I address some of these circumstances at length with regard to particular scenes on the cups, discussing in regard to BR I:2 Drusus' role in the Western provinces, more generally the status of such Augustan legati, and the iconography of "succession" narratives"; in regard to BR II:2 I discuss Tiberius' triumph and Augustus' manipulation of the traditional Republican forms of high military award to bolster his own power and single out his chosen assistants; relevant also are discussions of the program of the cup pair. What follows is my own assessment of the status of Tiberius and Drusus in the ancient sources and in modern scholarship, and my own views on the nature of the Augustan "succession." I end with a case demonstration of what I mean by a typological study of the role of Julio-Claudian princes in fact and in art, by analyzing the compositional skeleton of BR I:2, where Drusus appears before Augustus.
The frequent neglect of the brothers' role in the first part of Augustus' reign seems due to the nature of the extant historical sources, and to fashions in modern scholarship. These factors in turn seem conditioned by two historical catastrophes, the untimely death of Drusus in 9 B.C. while campaigning in Germany and Tiberius' self-exile to Rhodes in 4 B.C., an action for which modern and ancient observers alike have no unambiguous explanation, only the record of its primary effects. The result has often been to leave Drusus out of any comprehensive analysis of Augustan dynastic policy, as if his death canceled any prior significance, and to regard Tiberius' ultimate elevation to the throne as an unwelcome act forced on Augustus by the lack of any alternative due to the deaths of his grandsons and adopted sons Gaius and Lucius. This gap in scholarship is just beginning to be filled by a series of recent German investigations interested primarily in Drusus but also in the linked roles of the brothers as a pair; it has yet to be redressed in the English scholarly literature.[19]
First, the ancient sources. For substantial accounts of the Augustan period one generally depends on Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio. Dio's is an admirable running survey of military and political events that tends to report rather than to explain; for the stated history of policy, modern writers turn rather to Suetonius and Tacitus. Suetonius' Life of Augustus,
written in the second century A.D., covers unevenly the significant events and participants in Augustus' rule; the relative importance of persons or events (e.g., that of Gaius and Lucius vis-à-vis other members of the imperial house) cannot be estimated by the weight assigned them by Suetonius. None of the significant actions and roles of any of Augustus' agents prior to the period that begins with Gaius' Eastern mission in 2 B.C. are well covered; for instance, from Suetonius alone we would drastically underestimate Agrippa's career. Suetonius' information on Drusus is mostly presented not for its own sake in Suetonius' direct account of the period in which Drusus lived but instead as a genealogical introduction to the Life of his son Claudius. Tacitus has left no direct coverage of the Angustan period at all. Interpretative "flashbacks" about Tiberius concern only his putative place in the affections of Augustus (for Tacitus, nil) and the stages in Tiberius' gradual degeneration into the pathological paradigmatic despot Tacitus makes him out to be; Drusus figures only as a one-time beneficial restraining influence on the incipient monster. When Tacitus notes that Augustus celebrated Tiberius and Drusus as imperatores upon assuming Agrippa as coheir, it puzzles him because he "knows" Augustus really meant to have the infant Gaius and Lucius as heirs (Ann. 1.3: "privignos imperatoriis nominibus auxit integra etiam rum domo sua"). Then there are the potentially informative accounts left by contemporaries, Augustus' Res gestae, the History of Velleius Paterculus, and the anecdotes from contemporary events woven into the divagations of Valerius Maximus. The factual content of Velleius' attentions to Tiberius' achievements as diplomatic and military agent is often dismissed as due to the partisan exaggeration of a naive, spellbound sycophant, though such an attitude has not prevented great reliance on the poetic hyperbole of Ovid for Gaius; Velleius cannot help on Drusus, though, for whom he gives only a one-page panegyric to his sterling character (2.97.2–3). The Res gestae do mention Tiberius as an heir; Augustus says little, however, about personages dead at the time of the release of the Res gestae, except where he himself did something in which their names were involved, and so Drusus is largely neglected.[20] Valerius Maximus tends to be ignored outright, even the splendid set piece (5.6.3) on the last hours of Drusus' life;[21] the same is true of Plutarch's interesting comments at the end of his Life of Antony (see p. 173 above). Similarly, modern response to ancient panegyric poetry tends to exaggerate the novelty of brief tributes to Gaius, for example, inserted into Ovid's longer works, and to overlook Horace's odes for Drusus and Tiberius, the relevant Greek panegyric epigrams, and the Consolatio ad Liviam . Yet at the end of the first cen-
tury A.D. Juvenal still held Drusus up as an exemplum virtutis (8.21) and called the last three Julio-Claudians "Drusi" (8.40)![22] If only one had Augustus' prose memoir of Drusus (Suet. Claud. 1.3), or Pliny the Elder's history of his German wars.
Next as a historical source, there is the material record of numismatic honorific portrait images.[23] Contemporary portraits of the younger Tiberius or of Drusus are relatively few, compared to the number made for Gaius and Lucius. Then again, there are relatively few extant portraits of any important member of the domus Augusta before Agrippa's Eastern tour that ended in 13 B.C., during which the Greek cities responded to the presence of Augustus' acknowledged colleague with a rash of honorific dedications to Agrippa, his wife Julia, and his sons Gaius and Lucius. Still, Tiberius and Drusus were honored in the East in the period I speak of. Herod's family was especially devoted to Antonia and to Drusus, who was honored in Herod's new port at Caesarea with a Druseum in its walls (the biggest of its towers); there was a substantial cult of Tiberius established at Nysa before his exile,[24] and he had had portraits decreed elsewhere that were removed by their fickle donors during the period of his disgrace; Drusus was honored by a portrait at Priene.[25] The two brothers, though, were politically and militarily active mainly or (Drusus) exclusively in the West, and so we do not find the Eastern cities decreeing statues to them connected with sojourns there, as we do for Gaius or, later, for Germanicus; portraits were put up in the West, but in this period not with anything like the frequency observable in the East, because of differences in culture and cultural development.
As for numismatic portrayals, much has been made of the fact that Gaius and Lucius figure with their mother in 13 B.C. and then together as young adolescents in 2 B.C. on the Augustan coinage.[26] Tiberius and Drusus, however, figure on the Augustan coinage already in 14 (figs. 115–16, IMP. X types); the numismatic commemoration of Gaius and Lucius as principes iuventutis, like their political elevation in itself, occurs in the years after Drusus' death and Tiberius' exile. Together the coins of 14 and 13 B.C. seem to mark a turning point in Augustus' numismatic display of the younger males of his house—hence no childhood portraits of Tiberius or Drusus or portraits of Marcellus in coinage. Gaius does appear as a potential leader on coinage already in 8 B.C., but this is as a boy of twelve years of age being groomed by Tiberius as well as by Augustus, presented to the troops of the Rhine under their joint auspices and therefore given one of the reverses in Tiberius' Lugdunum series.[27] Why Gaius, instead of Tiberius' own son Drusus? Because Gaius was twelve years old, while
Drusus would have been only eight or nine, which is why Gaius' younger brother Lucius was not paraded at the same occasion either. Gaius was obviously being groomed for power by Augustus, but in a position subordinate to his stepfather's, much like Germanicus in regard to Tiberius in the latter part of Augustus' reign.
Like the textual record, then, the material record is especially weak for the period relevant to the BR cups, for reasons unconnected with Tiberius' or Drusus' actual standing. These ancient historical sources are thus unsatisfactory documents for the period of Tiberius' and Drusus' joint predominance. Modern scholarship in its turn seems to have been often distracted from the topic by a fashion for reconstructing the factions that "must" have raged about the potential heirs to Augustus' (and then to Tiberius') power. The impetus to this fashion was given, I think, by Tacitus' own fascination with the subject and was furthered by a desire to explain Tiberius' exile in Rhodes. Suetonius and Tacitus interpreted this exile as a reprise of Agrippa's one-time retreat to Mytilene, both being ascribed to fear and jealousy of "more closely related" imperial males, Marcellus for Agrippa, Gaius and Lucius for Tiberius. The only certain facts about Tiberius' exile are that it occurred at a moment when Tiberius enjoyed all the outward signs of Augustus' full confidence and favor and that it provoked Augustus' black rage and resentment at what he evidently perceived as a betrayal of this confidence. The political tensions that erupted in 2 B.C. in the banishment of Julia and the death and exile of her "lovers" after Tiberius retreated to Rhodes should probably be weighed here: if Tiberius had any suspicions at all, how could he act against a daughter who was the apple of her father's eye? Enough—we neither know nor can know the reasons any more than the extant ancient authors did, and they are irrelevant to the discussion of Augustus' own intentions in any case. Because they obviously have nothing to do with Drusus, in fact, this kind of "factional" history neglects him altogether.[28]
Whatever the factions that may have grown up at court or elsewhere, whatever the sentiments that motivated the retreat of Agrippa or Tiberius, those phenomena should not be confused with Augustus' own intentions, expressed in policy and action. What role did Augustus give, and wish to be seen giving, to the stepsons to whom he granted imperium over his legions and provinces? No one, least of all Augustus, knew that Drusus was going to die when he did or that Tiberius would retreat to Rhodes: events prior to these catastrophes cannot be interpreted in the light of future and unforeseen events.
There has been to my knowledge no thorough study of Augustus'
agents as such, carefully comparing their cursus, spheres of activity, and honorific treatment—that is, of Marcellus, Agrippa, Tiberius, Drusus, Germanicus, Agrippa Postumus, Gaius, Lucius, Drusus the Younger; this means that there is no proper background for Germanicus' status under Tiberius nor for that of his sons Nero, Drusus Caesar, and Caligula, nor for that of Drusus the Younger and his children and Seianus. (I have touched on the subject where it intersects with the content and forms of the cups, regarding the compositional structure and historical references of BR I:2, showing Drusus the Elder and the Gauls before Augustus, and regarding the calibrations in panegyric commemoration of Tiberius' triumph on BR II.) In particular, the roles of Gaius and Lucius can be explained only with reference to previous agents of Augustus, not the other way around. It is they who at a dangerously young age (Gaius was originally not meant to hold even an extraordinary consulship until A.D. 1) are slotted into the roles defined by Agrippa, Tiberius, and Drusus, not the postexile Tiberius who is slotted into theirs.
What has confused our thinking is a mix of privileged hindsight (e.g., Tiberius did end up exercising supreme power upon Augustus' death) and semantics. We speak of dynasty, of succession, and of heirs—some even imply a kind of regency (Agrippa, or Tiberius and Drusus, for Agrippa's children);[29] I cannot help but use these terms myself, but I do not imply by them any of the institutional exactitude of medieval or modern private or royal inheritance, divine right of kings, absolute political fealty to biological bloodlines, et cetera.[30] Under Augustus it was not clear to anyone in Rome that there was an imperial office as such—the "office of emperor" was in fact never formally defined as a unitary institution in the entire imperial period. Augustus' position was that of a proven general and administrator claiming supremacy on the grounds of unequaled competence and divine favor, the latter manifested in his successes and connected to his claim of sonship (by adoption) to another charismatic leader who claimed divine descent. Augustus certainly intended to pass on his power to keep his family supreme and ensure the continuation of civil peace. Any successor would have to be able to command loyalty by a record of as much military and administrative achievement as possible conducted under mandate from Augustus, and ultimately to claim the same kind of kinship to Caesar with its implications of divine descent—though this could be left to posthumous adoption, from which Augustus himself had benefited. The emperor was, in addition, extremely thrilled when his only acknowledged child, his beloved daughter, Julia, had sons; like aristocrats throughout the Republic (cf. Julius Caesar) with no male
issue to carry on the family name, the gens, he remedied this lack by adoption, in his case of grandchildren.[31] His wishes for them did not (at least in his eyes) exclude affection for and political reliance on other males in the family circle.
Moreover, no Roman aristocrat ever counted on any single member of his family surviving to carry on the family's prestige; rates of successful reproduction were too low and mortality into the prime of life too frequent to base policy on any such supposition. In particular, Augustus himself and the Roman people at large knew that Augustus was especially vulnerable to sudden sickness and death: he had always to keep in mind the contingency that the near-fatal illnesses of his youth and early middle age might recur. The principle in any Roman clan, and quite evidently in Augustus', was to have as many arrows in the quiver as possible at any one time. Sons, stepsons, nephews, sons-in-law, were to be trained to ensure family dominance against the death of any one individual. Augustus did mark out single individuals to share the institutional bases of his power, especially the tribunicia potestas, and the holder of this at any one time can be regarded as the current "heir"; he must equally have expected that should he die, this "heir" would soon himself find a colleague. For Augustus, Agrippa was that colleague until his sudden death in 12 B.C.; once Tiberius had won a triumph, he was selected to be that colleague. I think it is certain also that any one potential successor or successors designated as a property inheritor in Augustus' will as formulated at any one point in time would have been granted posthumous adoption. In fact it is known that Augustus made sure that the Senate knew that Drusus and certainly his older brother Tiberius with him were designated coheirs with Gaius and Lucius in his will; see Suetonius' account of Drusus' death in the Life of Claudius (1.3). Gaius and Lucius, however, the children of Augustus' only child, Julia, by his friend and colleague Agrippa, were adopted by their loving grandfather. Why then were Marcellus, Drusus, Agrippa, and the preexile Tiberius never adopted?
Augustus' nephew Marcellus and his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus bore some of the most eminent Roman aristocratic names: Augustus would have lost much, and gained nothing, by an adoption in his own lifetime. Agrippa was too much his peer to be adopted, save in a will. There is only one known case of a Roman aristocrat in the period up to Augustus making in his lifetime an adoption of an age-mate or elder from among amici: the notorious case of P. Clodius, who in 59 B.C. had himself adopted by a younger plebeian friend so that he could run for the plebeian tribunate, an adoption that provoked great outrage, inter alia because of the age dif-
ference between the two (Cic. Att. 8.33, Dom. 37; Plut. Caes. 14, Cato min. 33; App. BCiv. 2.14; Dio 38.12, 39.11). Agrippa's personal charisma would have stood him in stead of the aristocratic ancestry of Marcellus and the Claudii Nerones; if Augustus was ready to have his own wife turned into his daughter by posthumous adoption, expecting this to be accepted without ridicule, he can have felt no qualms about a posthumous adoption for Agrippa. Gaius and Lucius, however, could only benefit by an adoption, being themselves the sons of a man with no stemma to speak of, and Augustus lost no accreted aristocratic prestige by removing them from their natural father's gens .
Augustus' one child of his own was female, and his grant of her in marriage would, in Republican terms, imply the closest political alliance to her husband; the bond between socer and gener was often as significant as that between parent and child. Thus she was married off in turn to Marcellus, then to Agrippa, then to Tiberius, in order to keep such a stepping-stone to power within Augustus' most intimate circle and to mark out potential successors; thus also the most serious threat to Augustus' reign came from a conspiracy led from within his family circle (Iullus Antonius, related as son of Antony to the Julii, was raised by Octavia and married to her daughter) by a man who not only planned to marry Julia but whom she was thought to have supported in this endeavor. No husband of Julia would have been adopted to cement such elevation, for that would have made the marriage, technically, incestuous. Not until over half a century had passed was such an adoption and marriage carried out, when Claudius adopted Nero, who then married Claudius' daughter Octavia.
The situation after Tiberius returned from his catastrophic exile was different. In Tiberius' absence Gaius and Lucius, young and untried though they were, were evidently seen as the only remaining prospective bearers of the family standard and so had to be entrusted with the position of legati with general military and diplomatic responsibilities that Agrippa, Tiberius, and Drusus had previously filled. Also in this interim, Julia had been disgraced, divorced, and banished, and so removed permanently from the marriage market. Tiberius on his return was now the oldest and most proven potential heir. As a condition of his return to power he was adopted, along with the remaining adolescent son of Agrippa and Julia (Agrippa Postumus), and was made in his turn to adopt his dead brother's son Germanicus to be a brother to his own son Drusus. As he aged Augustus had evidently decided that for a number of reasons it was better to organize the available male inheritors of his power into a "family" group. The reasons for this new policy of establishing by adoptions a hierarchy
of direct parental-filial lines, instead of using socer-gener lines, for instance,[32] are worth discussion; however, this is a new policy belonging to a period later than that relevant to the BR cups. The cups belong before Tiberius' exile, in the period including his marriage to Julia.
That Tiberius and Drusus remained Augustus' stepsons in this period says nothing about their position in his dynastic plans. Not adopting them made them, in fact, more useful agents; acting for their stepfather while remaining Claudii, they added the prestige of the patrician Claudii to the supremacy of the Julian house.[33] The panegyrics of Augustus' court poet Horace show that they were meant to be understood as inheriting, like sons, Augustus' abilities and claim to divine favor (see p. xx); popular feeling and court panegyric[34] were similarly to "adlect" Drusus' son Claudius into the house of Caesar.[35] As stepsons,[36] and for Tiberius as son-in-law, the brothers were certainly among those who, as Pliny the Elder would put it, were entitled to claim Augustus as father (cf. HN 7.13 [60], on Quintus Metellus Macedonicus). If the measure of Augustus' confidence in Tiberius can be estimated by the actual positions of trust he conferred on the older of his stepsons,[37] so can the measure of his confidence in Drusus;[38] I have described at length (especially in chapter 4) the responsibilities conferred on Drusus by his stepfather. Plutarch (Ant. 87) was quoted above on Augustus' reliance on Tiberius and Drusus next after Agrippa: in 13-9 B.C. the Ara Pacis is structured in such a way as to delineate this hierarchy visually, for on the south frieze Augustus capite velato is echoed by Agrippa similarly posed, after whom the next male portraits are the consul Tiberius and the imperator Drusus; Gaius (and probably his little brother) is on the other side of the altar (fig. 71).
Augustus' deep feeling for Drusus can best be measured by the surviving documentation on his overwhelming grief at Drusus' death, which was as marked as that recognized in Tiberius, Livia, and Drusus' wife Antonia; the testimonies to its gravity certainly match those to his grief at the deaths of Gaius and Lucius.[39] As this information is often ignored, it is worth outlining. The program of the BR cups cannot be understood except in the light of these observances.
Decades later, Seneca recalled in the Consolatio ad Marciam that Augustus had been unable to offer Livia reasoned consolation because he was as devastated as she; Livia had to turn to a philosopher rather than to Augustus "qui subducto altero adminiculo titubabat" (4.2). From Dio, Suetonius, and Tacitus we know that Augustus, as well as Tiberius, gave a funeral eulogy; Tiberius' took place in the Forum and Augustus' in the Circus Flaminius; that in the eulogy Augustus, weeping, prayed that
Gaius and Lucius might grow up to resemble their dead stepbrother and that he himself might be granted as honorable a death; that when he had Drusus buried in his own mausoleum he composed verses for the tomb epitaph himself and had them inscribed; and that he wrote a prose memoir of Drusus.[40] More testimony to Augustus' state of mind is given by the anonymous Consolatio ad Liviam, which I date with O. Skutsch (RE 4.1 [1970] 933–47, s.v.) and others as contemporary with Drusus' death.[41] In the Consolatio Tiberius and Drusus are described as a single opus of Augustus, who has now lost half that opus (39) (cf. p. 295 n. 38) and weeps giving Drusus' eulogy, praying for himself a like death (209–12); in Hades Drusus will be claimed by the shades of the Julii as well as the Claudii (331), for through Livia Drusus proclaims himself of the house of the Caesars as well as of the Nerones (451). These lines accord with the dynastic implications of Augustus' choice of burial site for his stepson, which implicitly adopted him in death into the Julii; the emphasis on his mother's heritage fits Tacitus' account of Drusus' bier, surrounded by ancestral images of Livii as well as of Claudii.
What Augustus did further to solace himself and to preserve Drusus' memory was to decree him all the paraphernalia of a real triumphator, the crown of military achievement that had so far been denied him. The Consolatio implies that while not announced such a triumph had in fact been in preparation, though this may be ex post facto reaction to Augustus' actions; the feeling of lost opportunity is what may have impelled Augustus to grant a full triumph to Tiberius in the following year. Augustus himself must have been the one to direct that Drusus' statue be placed in the Forum Augustum with the inscribed record that he had been proclaimed imperator, an acclamation that in fact Augustus had not allowed him to recognize officially;[42] he pointedly delivered Drusus' eulogy in the Circus Flaminius, mustering point for the triumphal procession, surrounded by the triumphal monuments of 200 years; the Senate at Augustus' direction gave Drusus a triumphator's heritable cognomen (Germanicus), a triumphal arch,[43] and statues, including one with a biographical elogium on the Rostra.[44] The extraordinary honors instituted for the anniversary of his death by the Rhine legions and the provincial council of Gaul and the cenotaph erected for him on the frontier[45] are thoroughly documented in recent German scholarship. With the cenotaph identified, Drusus' honors from the Roman army and "client" provinces explicated, and his cult worship described, it is plain that these observances were the model for the funeral honors of Gaius and Germanicus.[46]
Tiberius solaced his own grief, which was recognized by all the ancient
sources including Tacitus, with a similar attempt to memorialize Drusus' campaigns: he announced that the manubiae of his own triumph would be used to restore the temples of Concordia and of Castor and Pollux, symbolic of fraternal concord and devotion, in Drusus' name as well as in his own. These are the projects that, as involving major temples in the city of Rome, are mentioned in the sources; there will have been other such joint commissions outside Rome, like that still extant at Saepinum (2/1 B.C.).[47] By such acts Tiberius not only memorialized their fraternal bond; he also made plain that his own triumph was to be understood as won for completing Drusus' work, itself thus proclaimed to be worth a triumph.[48] Although this is not the place to review it, much evidence exists for Tiberius' continued attention to his brother's memory after his return from exile and into his own reign.
In his lifetime, Drusus had been one of Augustus' most trusted and brilliant generals; he had been commemorated on Augustus' coinage and portrayed with his mother and brother on armor decoration produced for the Rhine legions. On the Ara Pacis Drusus and his brother had been shown in apposition, immediately following their mother Livia: Tiberius as consul and Drusus as paludatus general, symbolizing Augustan achievement in peace and war as carried out by Augustus' stepsons acting as his agents (fig. 78). Drusus' specific achievements as a maker of peace as well as of war were also indirectly commemorated on the altar by the inclusion of the "BR" child on the north frieze (fig. 76). The BR cup panels themselves are to be understood in the context of the funeral honors outlined above, as well as in the light of lifetime achievement and recognition outlined in the discussion of the individual panels. Tiberius had been in Drusus' lifetime as brilliant a general as his brother and after his death had celebrated a real triumph, with the spoils of which he was allowed to dedicate major temples in his own name. Agrippa's death left Julia unmarried and Augustus without a colleague: Tiberius was made to marry Julia and made Augustus' colleague in the tribunicia potestas as well. There could be no clearer indication of his standing in the Empire—Tiberius was as much an "heir" at this point as in A.D. 14.
The Young General: Images of Agency and Inheritance
The primary reasons why the young officer on BR I:2 must be identified as the young general Drusus were outlined in chapter 4 (pp. 98–99). His features are carefully delineated to give the key details of Drusus' portrait
type; the viewer of the cup is keyed to look for these details by the metaphorical analogy made between Drusus on this panel and the figures of Mars and the Genius of the Roman People on the other, allegorical, panel of the cup. It is also the case that even if the features of this young general were destroyed and/or the allegorical panel had been obliterated, we would be able to tell that this is a young general of the Julio-Claudian house. Any scholar familiar with the canons of Julio-Claudian art should have been primed to make such an identification by the fact that the BR panel is composed to conform to a genre composition whose outlines are quite clear.
There are three other monuments that, in addition to the BR panel, exemplify this genre composition. It appears most plainly on a very well-known piece, the imitation-silver "Sheath of Tiberius" (fig. 117).[49] The figured rectangular panel at its top shows Tiberius with Germanicus and Mars Ultor:[50] Tiberius is enthroned at right, upper torso bare, stretching out his right hand with a globe in it, his left hand bracing against the throne a large, round shield inscribed FELICITAS TIBERII;[51] Germanicus, fully armed, wearing a smooth cuirass and paludamentum, advances from the left, holding out a little Victory that he is about to set on Tiberius' globe; Mars Ultor, bearded and armed, stands in the center of the scene behind Tiberius, looking at him and gesturing toward Germanicus; behind Tiberius a full-sized Victory floats to earth, crowning the emperor with laurel as she alights. The locus of victory is defined at the sheath tip (fig. 118) by the personified Germania, an Amazon with a double axe; similar German weaponry[52] appears on the Tiberian legionary signum from Niederbieber (fig. 120).[53]
The similarity of the sheath composition to the Venus-Augustus group on BR I:1 was discussed in chapter 1. Here I am interested in the group Tiberius-Germanicus: an emperor is enthroned at right, togate or else seminude and draped like a Jupiter statue, receiving some tangible emblem of victory and rule from a young general of his house, who stands/advances at left in full dress armor including always a smooth, fitted body cuirass and usually the paludamentum . The sheath was made in the early years of Tiberius' reign; for the next example we move back in time some thirty or forty years to the victory coinage issued for Tiberius' and Drusus' conquests in the Alps, 15-12 B.C., inscribed IMP. X for Augustus.
These aurei from the Lugdunum mint[54] consist of two linked types (figs. 115–16). On one, a young general at left presents a palm to a togate Augustus enthroned on a sella castrensis on a dais at right, holding out his hand to receive the palm; the other type shows two young generals hold-
ing up palms. The first must refer to Drusus, who initiated the Alpine campaigns, the second to Tiberius and Drusus and their joint fighting in the latter part of the Alpine campaign. These victory types show our genre composition in even more abbreviated form than the "Sheath of Tiberius" panel (fig. 117), with no allegorical figures or inscribed comment, in a mode that pretends to "realism"—all three individual figures are portrayed as they could have appeared in real life.
The third example is a cameo that comes in time somewhere between the Rhaetia/Vindelicia victory coinage and the "Sheath of Tiberius"—the Gemma Augustea (fig. 16). In its upper register, Augustus is enthroned next to Roma at right center, half-naked in Jupiter drapery like the Tiberius of the sheath, holding a lituus and a scepter; on the left, Tiberius descends from a triumphator's quadriga, and between him and the emperor the figure of the young general Germanicus stands with hand on hip. Germanicus' place is that really held by a favored subordinate and/or son in an actual triumphal procession, allowed to form part of the immediate chariot party; we are to imagine the chariot already wheeled up by the Victory driving it so that Tiberius can dismount, Germanicus waiting for him to finish getting out to move up with him to do homage to Augustus. In Germanicus' position vis-à-vis Augustus we have the core composition of the examples above; this would be even more obvious if Tiberius were armed, not in a triumphing general's toga picta . What Tiberius, and Germanicus with him, are going to do is salute the enthroned Augustus and give to him Tiberius' victory laurels, won over the barbarians in the lower exergue, who are being formed into a display group of captives around a trophy. The action of the upper register is a visual panegyric tied to an actual episode at Tiberius' triumph of A.D. 12, a stage-managed ceremonial in which Tiberius, before ascending to the Capitolium to salute Jupiter, stopped halfway and descended from his chariot to lay his laurels in the lap of Augustus, togate and seated. The message of this performance is what we see expressed in the composition of the coins just described (figs. 115–16). Compare these three examples to the BR cup panel: it too is built on a basic armature of emperor enthroned at right, holding out his hand to welcome the fruits of achievement of the young general Drusus, who stands at left in body cuirass and paludamentum to usher in the Gallic party whose gestures of loyalty are the result of Drusus' work on Angustus' behalf.
This core composition, which we have seen expressed in documentary and allegorical modes, both abbreviated and expanded, is then a composition in which sons and stepsons of the emperor, or to be more exact his
potential heirs, have achieved some notable deed, acting with imperium granted by Augustus. This feat is celebrated to the credit of the prince(s) portrayed, who, however, brings (bring) his (their) accomplishments to his (their) imperial father, shown as the ultimate source of the success that has been achieved by his agents, and to whom the prince(s) piously awards (award) credit in the sight of all.[55] The abbreviations of the coins and the sheath show that this genre composition was promulgated officially. The coins are obvious state images. The sheath panel as well was impressed from a matrix made for multiple production, to adorn the armament of the higher ranks of the Rhine legions who fought under the emperor and general portrayed. This armament was surely produced with official over-sight as well as sanction; such pieces were probably given in award to officers like the Aurelius of the Rhine legions who owned the sheath.
The naissance of this genre composition must be no later than the issue of the coins; it was undoubtedly used as the organizing structure for other large-scale depictions in addition to the prototype of the BR cup panel, which in any case testifies to its rapid assimilation. The cup qua domestic silver shows how such iconography could circulate in the population outside the channels of mass production. The cameo was undoubtedly made at court, commissioned by one of the two principals portrayed as a gift within the inner circle of the imperial family. In this sense one might call it a private piece, which shows artists working to imperial commission availing themselves of our genre composition; it should be remembered, however, that pieces like this cameo were shown off to the ruling elites of Rome, in the display of one's treasures to one's peers that constituted a fixed aspect of the domestic, private world of otium . To sum up, we have state numismatics produced for the SPQR of Rome and the armies and natives of the West (the coins), a large-scale monument in Rome displayed to the SPQR (cup prototype), and luxury art produced for the imperial family that ran the state designed for ostentatious "private" display (the cameo). All date to the Augustan period and are paralleled shortly after Augustus' death by armament produced semiofficially for the armies (the sheath); and all together delineate the same definite compositional genre. There can be no doubt that we should speak of this as a compositional genre belonging to official imperial art, devised and promulgated under imperial sponsorship.
This genre scene, constituting a political ideogram, is also noteworthy as being a creation of the Principate, having no real Republican precedent (compare the Venus/mother-and-prince motif; see pp. 173f. above). It is a good example of the response of the visual arts to new demands made by
a new political reality different from anything in the Republic. That new reality was the Principate itself, new in its aspects of unquestioned one-man rule of the state and of expected dynastic succession to that rule, however those aspects were glossed over or styled to make them palatable and to fit Augustus' tactful public representation of his position. These two realities were left always implicit but nonetheless obvious to the political classes of the day. Augustus' control was based on two foundations: the allegiance of the armies (steadily victorious under his leadership) to him personally and the allegiance of the magisterial classes of the state to his restoration of orderly civil governance with its panoply of familiar Republican forms.
The exercise of military virtus and its crown, the triumph, had always been essential to the personal and political auctoritas of Rome's governing classes; by the late Republic they were also inextricably bound in the popular consciousness to the kind of extraordinary individual genius that merited and validated positions of the highest leadership. This is the background to the sequence of late Republican dynastoi (including Octavian), to use Dio's terminology; this is the background that explains Augustus' practice in assuming firm and far-reaching control of the award of military commands, the background to his division of the Empire into senatorial and imperial provinces and to his control of the award of all forms of military commendation, including the triumph. Augustus himself led armies in the field for the last time in the Cantabrian campaigns of 29 B.C.; thereafter, Rome's armies were led by other generals. But from 19 B.C. onward no full triumph was permitted to any other general: Agrippa opened this new phase when in 19 B.C. he ostentatiously refused the triumph voted him by the Senate in favor of Augustus, whom he acknowledged as supreme commander.
Augustus also banned other generals from formally taking up the title of imperator; even if their troops so acclaimed them in the field, when the Senate took any notice of the acclamation at all it did so by awarding that acclamation directly to Augustus, thus building up his long series of numbered imperatorial acclamations.[56] Even when Augustus' younger relatives (i.e., Drusus and Tiberius) first led armies for him this policy was firmly applied—the IMP. X coinage (figs. 115–16)[57] illustrates this exactly.[58] Finally, as far as we can tell, Augustus tried whenever possible to use only members of his family as high-ranking generals who would lead armies in major campaigns and conduct major diplomatic settlements. When he did not use close relatives—Agrippa, Tiberius, Drusus, Gaius, Lucius, Germanicus—he used other men bound by marriage to his family.
This seems to have been the case especially on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, whose legions were closest to Rome in direct line of march; generals here from other aristocratic families are known to have been made imperial relatives by marriage (e.g., L. Domitius Ahenobarbus to Antonia Major, Varus to a daughter of Agrippa).
By means of all this Augustus enforced the reality and expressed the political platform that he as princeps stood to all in the state as commander in chief, in the same way that consuls and proconsuls in the Republic had held the auspices under which their subordinates were victorious. In doing this he kept firm hold on the allegiance of the armies (Tacitus' arcanum imperii ) and—to put it simply—laid claim to an exclusive position as the sole conduit for felicitas in war granted by the gods.
What made this palatable to his fellow aristocrats, we may reasonably guess, was not just Augustus' invention of a new kind of lesser triumph (the award of the triumphal regalia) to replace the full triumphs to which they could no longer aspire.[59] First of all, even the closest members of his own family were treated at first in the same way—hence the importance of Agrippa's ceremony of refusal, to start the new era. Second, one should note that in practice and in presentation this style of rule outwardly subordinated military command and military virtus to the civilian exercise of power by the princeps functioning as head of the Senate and chief magistrate of the SPQR with the maius imperium of a consul and the potestas of a tribune. The dignity of civil magistracy and its primacy were thus reaffirmed, after decades of power struggles among Roman aristocrats who presented themselves strongly or primarily as generals in their fight for leadership—Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Antony, the young Octavian himself. (Cf. Ovid Met. 15.832–33: "pace data terris animum ad civilia/vertet iura suum.") The princeps could leave the physical exercise of military power—once he had shown himself capable of it—to his agents, and instead keep a watchful control on the overall stable administration of Rome and the Empire. At least now the aristocracy, when it was thronging Forum and Senate in the toga, no longer had to feel that it was supposed to touch a respectful forelock to a grinning thug with a sword never far from his fist—if a man like Cicero could have stomached a secondary position to the princeps in the first place, he would have been quite gratified by the new tone in itself.
This new tone was promulgated by Octavian/Augustus at the very beginning of his accession to unquestioned rule, immediately after Actium—witness the one type of the Actium victory coinage that openly proclaims his world rule, showing him in a toga (fig. 21). This is also how he appears
on the Ara Pacis, a monument of which he was so proud as a definition of his ruling position that it was carefully noted in his Res gestae, when so many of the other commemorative monuments voted to him never made it into that "autobiography"; here it is Augustus' stepsons who appear as general and consul. The same tone is maintained in the genre of prince-and-emperor scenes discussed here, even when the emperor appears in Jupiter garb rather than in consul's toga. In the latter, panegyric formulation, the supreme lawgiver of the universe, who commands Mars, who oversees the actual exercise of warfare, is the metaphorical analogue to the emperor commanding his military agents—thus the iconography of the Gemma Augustea and "Sheath of Tiberius" (figs. 16, 117), and the pairing of the allegory BR I:1 and the Augustus-Drusus panel of I:2. This kind of iconography is replicated to form the structure also of the Grande Camée de France, where Tiberius/Jupiter is surrounded by a wild profusion of the armed princes of the Julio-Claudian house, living and in apotheosis.
To return to points made above, the emperor not only attributed all ultimate felicitas in war to his own auspices; he also tried to keep the exercise of high command (general or legate) within the family. The new Augustan theology of triumph, then, is very closely tied to the firm establishment of his dynasty. The sons, stepsons, and sons-in-law of his house may be only his agents, but they form the group singled out to serve as such agents. As long as he rules, celebration of their capability is carefully subordinated to the proclamation of his own preeminence, but care is also taken to give them scope to build the talents and reputation that enable them to act convincingly for him in his lifetime and to perpetuate his system after his inevitable death. This is a succession policy, in other words, formulated by a shrewd ruler who planned as if he could live indefinitely and at the same time as if he could die tomorrow—the latter event being one that, with Augustus' early propensity to serious illness, was always a real threat.
This partial summary of Augustan political practice has been brief and oversimplified, but it is necessary to lay out such political workings in simplified form to understand the significance and function of the genre composition with which I began. In that genre scene we should recognize the creative response of the visual imagination of Rome's artists to the expression of a new political reality, resulting in a beautifully simple ideogram whose resonances could be grasped instantly, conveying information that (poor reader!) takes pages to dissect in prose.
The Boscoreale panel I:2, then, belongs to this genre type; it is a pane-
gyric to both Augustus and Drusus and draws on the iconography of dynastic succession. This is also true of the cups as a pair: Tiberius as general and triumphator and Drusus as general are agents of their stepfather, who rules the world, as he is seen in the allegory of BR I:1 with Mars as his subordinate. (For the pairing of Augustus' potential heirs in court art, compare the Gemma Augustea's commemoration of Tiberius and Germanicus; see fig. 16.) The compositional skeleton of BR I:2 is based, as we have seen, in a genre of related compositions. This genre is an invention of Augustus' artists, answering to the new political structure invented by Augustus. Its precise genesis is unclear; perhaps it should be tied to Tiberius' and Drusus' initiation into military command, whose success demanded panegyric celebration. The first extant example of the motif, the Alpine campaign victory coinage (figs. 115–16), also happens to be contemporary with the first explication of that genre's message in extant poetic panegyric, in the odes of Horace for the Claudii Nerones (not, please note—at least in the extant record—with odes to Agrippa). Horace's work stands presently at the head of a long line of similar panegyric expressions, whether freestanding (including examples from the Greek Anthology ) or incorporated into longer works (e.g., Ovid on Gaius and Germanicus).[60] We could find no better summation of this section and this chapter than Horace's words in Odes 4.4.27–28, 37: "quid Augusti paternus / in pueros animus Nerones. . . . Quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus."
The Prototype Monument
When?
The BR cups and their monumental prototype are key to understanding Augustan propaganda about Augustus' own rule and about the status of his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus in upholding that rule. The monumental prototype for the cups, in turn, can be properly discussed only in the light of the historical events and artistic programs outlined above. Plainly, a monument in Rome carrying the four BR panels would be entirely appropriate to the period encompassing Drusus' campaigns and the triumph of Tiberius, when the brothers enjoyed a status high enough to earn the authorization of such commemorative from Augustus. The period immediately after Tiberius' triumph, when Drusus' death was still being mourned and his achievements celebrated by Tiberius, is the only appropriate time for the formulation of a program that celebrates Drusus and the triumph
of Tiberius, subordinate to Augustus' rule yet also given meaning by Augustus' imperium; the description of Augustus' and Tiberius' observances has made that plain.[61]
The cups copy two pairs of relief panels. As two of these (BR II) celebrate the triumph of Tiberius in 8/7 B.C., they were drafted and executed in late 8 B.C. at the earliest. BR I:2, though, refers to events in Drusus' lifetime, before 9 B.C.; this event is best placed in 13 B.C., as a send-off in Gaul for Augustus' return to Rome. If he took (at least one of) the BR children with him, this could explain why that child appears on the Ara Pacis separately from Drusus, whom the BR panel proves to have been the child's immediate sponsor; on the other hand, perhaps their physical separation on the altar is meant—as so often—to strengthen Augustus' credit for the pax the Ara Pacis celebrated. It has become plain that the same atelier was responsible for drafting the Ara Pacis reliefs (13-9 B.C.) and the BR panels—parallels keep cropping up, but the clearest sign is the way that elements of BR I:2 turn up: on the north frieze, a BR child; on the south frieze, Drusus imperator framed in the "flap" composition (figs. 71, 76, 78). Normally, one would say that the fully worked-out relief scene on BR I:2 had been excerpted and abbreviated for the Ara Pacis, just as it seems to have been abbreviated for Tiberius' triumph coinage; indeed, one would think that spectators could have understood the Ara Pacis references only if they had had something like BR I:2 available to tell the whole story.
This, however, leads to problems of date. The four panels do seem to go together; both cups, for instance, stress the friendly support of Gaul for the endeavors of Drusus (BR I:1, Gallia doing homage; and BR I:2, entire composition) and Tiberius (BR II:2, Gaul by quadriga). In its final shape, the prototype relief assemblage should be assigned to the celebrations for Tiberius' triumph. Yet the evidence of the Ara Pacis hints that before 9 B.C. Augustus' sculptors had at least drafted the scheme for BR I:2. There are two alternatives. One is that the panels seen on BR I went up before Drusus' death in 9 B.C. and that the Tiberius panels were added to them afterward; this kind of accretion is typical for imperial portrait groups. The other is that a monument was being planned for Drusus' projected return to Rome in 9 B.C.; he certainly would have been expecting an ovatio, if not a full triumph. These plans naturally were shelved; they came to fruition only for a joint monument put up by Tiberius, who had taken over his brother's campaigns and was to complete the votive disbursal of his manubiae .
The second scenario seems more plausible. One should then envision a set of reliefs put up in 8/7 B.C. Tiberius' "exile" in 4 B.C. is a terminus ante quem; there is no reason, political or art-historical, to move this monument to the period after his return. Certainly, the cups were made before his own accession in A.D. 14 (see chapter 5, pp. 150f.) and in fact are probably from the same era as the original monument. Their manufacture is best understood as a fervent (if esthetically dubious) response to the crises and triumphs of Drusus and Tiberius in these years.
What Kind?
I have classified the BR depictions as examples of documentary panel relief. (I cannot believe that their sculptural character, in format and in handling of relief, was the silversmith's transmutation of paintings.)[62] Such panel reliefs do not seem to have been employed on altar enclosures, and the Ara Pacis's reference preempts such commemoration on another altar enclosure. It has been suggested that they decorated an arch, specifically, the Arch of Tiberius of A.D. 16. That arch is out of the question, however, as it commemorated the deeds of Germanicus for Tiberius, not of Tiberius and/or Drusus for Augustus in 12–7 B.C. The only appropriate arch would be the triumphal arch on the Via Appia decreed posthumously to Drusus—but that arch should have been devoted to Drusus alone, not to Tiberius' triumph as well; Tiberius did not have a triumphal arch put up for himself until A.D. 16, and that celebrated his and Germanicus victories. Perhaps any arch should be ruled out; architectural literature assumes that narrative reliefs were not employed on arches in the capital until well after the early Julio-Claudian period. This is especially true for passage reliefs, the only arch format suitable to our long panels.[63] However, the heavily decorated early Julio-Claudian arches of Gaul show that panel compositions of some kind were being formulated in the capital, even if one cannot think where to place them. This is now proved by the base of the cenotaph of Gaius at Limyra of ca. A.D. 4,[64] decorated on all four faces with documentary panel reliefs planned and carried out by a team from the capital.[65] These were similar in proportion, in the use of documentary mode, and in style (crowded panel, Neo-Attic figure style "Romanized") to the BR documentary panels and show that the court workshops were adept at such scenes in addition to the processions and mythological tableaux of the Ara Pacis.[66]
One might think that the reliefs decorated a building, such as a temple
or imperial forum . Although the idea of a temple is appealing, I know no evidence for temple cellae in Rome decorated with narrative panel reliefs. Also, the only suitable temples would be the Tiberian reconstructions of the temples of Concord and of the Dioscuri in the Forum, which were carried out after Tiberius returned from exile, a bit late for the link to the Ara Pacis. The Fora of Trajan and Domitian were decorated or were meant to be decorated with narrative reliefs (the Cancelleria relief friezes, the Great Trajanic frieze, the Louvre extispicium, and others); perhaps the Fora of Augustus and Caesar were decorated also with documentary reliefs.
The best solution, to my mind, is the quadratic base of a monument, such as an honorific column bearing a portrait of Augustus, who takes prime "theological" place in the BR assemblage. Honorific column portraits were a common type by Augustus' day and remained so for the emperors. The earliest surviving example, the Monument of Aemilius Paullus at Delphi, had a subsidiary base supporting the statue proper ornamented by a documentary battle frieze; after this there is a hiatus in the record[67] until the columns of Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, all of whose bases were decorated with relief. We do not know what the base of such an Augustan monumental column would have looked like, but it is perfectly reasonable to suspect that it would have been large enough to take four panel reliefs and that it would have been decorated with documentary and allegorical panels, just like the columns of Antoninus Pius[68] and Marcus Aurelius (fig. 121).[69] For the Augustan period one can adduce the structure of Gaius' cenotaph, whose massive quadratic base was decorated with documentary panel reliefs and carried a tower to display (undoubtedly) a statue of the dead general;[70] this example of the authentic "court art" tradition now validates the romanitas of the early Julio-Claudian Monument of the Julii at Glanum/St. Remy with its great base covered with narrative reliefs.[71] It is also the case that remains of Republican art show a distinct predilection for monument bases decorated with relief on all four sides, though we do not know whether statues or columns supporting statues stood on any given base; at least one, the so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, had, like the BR set, three reliefs of one kind (here mythical) framing a commemorative panel (fig. 27) in another genre (documentary).[72] A column monument would provide good Augustan precedent for the column bases of the second century A.D.; a quadratic base for any large commemorative sculpture is not only historically plausible but also the best thing I can think of for a monument
needing four reliefs of equal dimensions. The only other option, the heightened attic of a quadrifrons arch (e.g., the attic panels of Severus' Arch at Leptis Magna), does not seem possible for the Augustan period.[73]
If this theory of a monumental basis were to be taken farther, I would suggest as a possible location the Forum of Caesar (plan 122), which was still being built and decorated in Augustus' reign. It is the case that the next two emperors had comparable monuments erected in the Forum Julium—here Tiberius had his seated portrait dedication with the personified cities of Asia Minor (figs. 47, 62), and Caligula put the posthumous cult statue of his beloved sister Drusilla (see Platner-Ashby, s.v. "Forum Iulium"). The Forum of Caesar, conqueror of Gaul and victor against the Germans, would be appropriate for historical as well as dynastic reasons for a monument honoring Tiberius' triumph of 8/7 B.C. Tiberius must certainly have received a statue-bearing monument of some kind for this triumph; as he does not seem to have been awarded an arch (which was still conceptually a magnificent statue base), then an honorific column portrait is extremely plausible. I think here especially of that decreed Octavian in 36 B.C.[74] This monument was supposed to show him as he was when he entered the city, that is, standing or (like the monument of Aemilius Paullus) riding in "real" costume, in contrast to the naked, heroized type of his later columna rostrata; a monument to Tiberius on the same lines would fit well the curious mode of his triumph and its depiction on BR II:2, which simultaneously compares him to Augustus and "depresses" him by excessive verisimilitude (the servus publicus ). Another possibility is to imagine the BR reliefs decorating the base of a quadriga or trophy group of some kind, but I find the column-monument hypothesis more appealing.
A triumphal monument base for Tiberius would not only suit the number and dimensions of the BR panels; it would also fit the inclusion of Drusus and exaltation of Augustus in the cycle of panels, given the circumstances of Tiberius' triumph and the posthumous triumphal honors awarded Drusus by Augustus and executed by Tiberius. It would be prominent enough to inspire the later reproduction and imitation traced in chapters 5 and 7. Would Augustus or Tiberius have been the main focus of the statuary on such a base? Augustus is perhaps more likely, given the way in which he took center stage in the commemoration of his sons' and stepsons' exploits in other recorded contexts,[75] as indeed he does in the BR program. This would also suit the fact that these reliefs were so much imitated, far better than a monument that would seem in later years
primarily Tiberian. In the context of the Augustan "succession," though, the BR prototype documents, as no other surviving work of art, Augustus' affection for and confidence in the Claudii Nerones, Tiberius and Drusus. The cups themselves, reproducing in the lifetime of Augustus this monumental relief assemblage, illustrate the strength of Augustan propaganda centered on his stepsons and testify to the real success that the grieving Augustus and Tiberius had in keeping alive the memory of Drusus' exploits.