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.