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."