The Cambridge Ancient History, second ed., vol. 10: "The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. - A.D. 69." Ed. by A.K. BOWMAN, E. CHAMPLIN, and A. LINTOTT. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxii + 1138. $150; The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. By DIANE FAVRO. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xxi + 346, with 116 ills. $80; Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus. The Case of the Boscoreale Cups. By ANN L. KUTTNER. University of California Press, 1995. Pp. xiv + 387, with 125 ills. $75; Augustus and the Principate. The Evolution of the System. By W.K. LACEY. Francis Cairns: ARCA 35, Leeds, 1996. Pp. x + 245.
The mid-1980's ushered in another aetas Augusta in scholarship, beginning with the stimulating (and well illustrated) books by Erika Simon and Paul Zanker and many nuanced articles by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, and continuing with the superb catalog of the Berlin exhibit on "Kaiser Augustus" and the revisionist collection of essays edited by K. Raaflaub and M. Toher (1990). The latter, which was meant to mark the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Syme's The Roman Revolution, turned out to mark Syme's death which occurred a few days before that anniversary. Still, the "Emperor of Roman History" had ruled even longer than the first Roman emperor. If anything, his rule and auctoritas were even stronger, with nary a word of dissent from two generations of historians&emdash;in servitium ruere consules, patres, eques?
Significant new perspectives emerged mostly from the work of art historians like Zanker and Tonio Hölscher. Zanker demonstrated clearly that there was a great deal more autonomy to the development of Augustan art and its elaboration than its "political" or "propaganda" function might suggest; the emphasis on such aspects was part of the protracted reaction formation against the despots of the 1930's and 40's and of the identification of Augustus with their godfather. Hölscher's work, of which all too little is available in English, is exemplary for its sophistication and its differentiated approach to the complexity of Augustan art. Such qualities were sorely lacking in much of American scholarship on Vergil, for instance, which exhausted itself in reductive wonderment (if not not moralistic haranguing) at the lack of Aeneas' transformation into Mother Teresa, a metamorphosis that even Ovid would not have attempted. But even there change crept in, starting with the mid-80's, as indicated by the work of Conte, Barchiesi, Cairns, and Peter White, to mention only a few.
Except for Favro's, the present four books do not take into account, let alone represent, the state of Augustan scholarship beyond the late 1980's. The contributions to CAH 10 were written mostly in the years from 1983-1988 and more recent work, such as the Raaflaub and Toher collection or Murray's and Petsas' monograph on the archaeological evidence at Actium (Philadelphia, 1989) could not be incorporated. Similarly, I refereed Ann Kuttner's book for the University of California Press in the late 1980's, and its publication was delayed for several years (not because of my review, I hasten to add). One half of the chapters in Lacey's book consists of articles that appeared in the 1970's and 80's. This does not detract from the value of these works&emdash;after all, the first edition of CAH 10 appeared in 1934, so why worry about another five or ten years of delay&emdash;but their readers should be aware of the time lag. And yes, we know that passage of time is the true test for a book's worth, but that is still a poor excuse for tardy publication.
The CAH volume is, of course, the most compendious of the four and therefore I will treat it at greater length. It is organized into four major sections. Part I is entitled "Narrative", although it sensibly entails much interpretation and analysis too, and deals, in various subsections by different authors, with the triumviral period, the reign of Augustus, the expansion of the empire under Augustus, and the period from Tiberius to Vespasian. Part II is about the government and administration of the empire and takes up topics such as the imperial court and finances, the role of the Senate, provincial admimistration and taxation, the army and navy, and the administration of justice. Part III, on Italy and the provinces, is the bulkiest (some 370 pages), as there is a subsection on each province, under the general groupings "east" and "west"; clearly, these provide an informative and convenient starting point for any research on the provinces at the time of the early principate. Part IV brings together some remaining topics under the heading of "Roman Society and Culture under the Julio-Claudians": Rome (defined as the city), its people and development; religion; the origin of early Christianity; social status and legislation; literature; art; and private law. There is the requisite number of maps and extensive bibliographical appendices. Like sixty years ago, and as if technology had not progressed even at Cambridge, there is to be a separate volume of plates, thereby raising the threshold of affordability yet higher while forsaking close integration with the relevant chapters in the text volume.
There is neither room nor need here to devote equal time to the various chapters and subchapters. I will offer a few general perspectives and then turn to some of the sections that will be of relevant interest to the clientele of this journal, i.e. generalists and school teachers rather than experts on the taxation of Cyrene.
First and foremost, CAH 10 is meant to be a reliable source of information, and not a work that breaks new ground. There are exceptions, such as Erich Gruen's chapter on the foreign policy of Augustus, which also appeared in Raaflaub and Toher; Gruen's thesis that there was more smoke than fire is stimulating and eminently arguable. As I just indicated, if you want to find out anything about a Roman province at the time, CAH 10 is the place to start. The summaries offered on other topics vary in utility and insightfulness as might be expected from a work written by committee. There is no cross-referencing, nor do I have a problem with some duplication; it is a plus to see different views expressed in the same volume and it is another plus that the authors include experts from various countries. Furthermore, this is not yet the time to burn the first edition. As the editors freely admit, some of the chapters from that volume retain their value; I would add to them A.D. Nock's chapter on religion and Hugh Last's on the social policy of Augustus.
I found the "narrative" on the triumviral and Augustan periods (by C. Pelling and J.A. Crook, respectively) extremely useful, if only as a possible alternative to Syme's whose stylistic peculiarities do not elicit the same adulatio from the X-Generation as from their reverential forebears. My suggestion to the Cambridge Press would be to bring out the various parts of the volume in separate paperbacks, analogous to the Cambridge History of Classical Literature, which would give us a much needed new narrative of the period. Crook is to be congratulated on his common sense and perceptiveness throughout. Inter multa alia, he rightly calls attention to the state of our sources, including the gaps in Dio that have contributed to the perception of sclerosis in the second part of Augustus' reign. He has reservations, which I share, about the role, both evidentiary and propagandistic, of the coinage and he adverts more than once to the experimental nature merely of Augustus' political arrangements. Regrettably, it is endemic to compendia like CAH 10 that themes of this importance, which inform Augustan culture in all its aspects, are submerged amid narrative and details. But his is a balanced assessment, similar in approach and sensibility to Karl Christ's Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit (2nd ed. Munich, 1992), which is easily the best history of the Roman Empire today and, as it is written for the general reader, deserves to be available in English before too long.
Gavin Townend's scant 25 pages on "Literature and Society" can safely be ignored. That is not entirely his fault, because the topic obviously was allocated minimum space in view of the existence of CHCL, but the result is awkward. I give him credit, however, for at least mentioning the pantomime, even if totally in passing. This kind of performance was a quntessential Augustan creation that packed 'em in by the thousands. One problem with works like CAH 10 is that they privilege traditional aspects of civilization and historical evidence over others. The pantomime was not "literary," ergo it does not exist. There are similar problems, e.g., with the generalizations about the turn to "classicism" in Augustan art when all we have is survivals, which are often haphazard, in stone while the canvases in the Forum Augustum, the Curia Julia, and those paraded in triumphal processions (to mention only a few) have perished.
Mario Torelli's 28 pages, therefore, on Augustan and Julio-Claudian art are instructive about the difficulties one encounters when trying to force Augustan art and architecture into one overrriding mold. While holding fast to the label of "Augustan classicism," Torelli candidly admits that "the new style was not in fact entirely new: behind it lay over 150 years of history" (pp. 931f.). Similarly, he does not try to conceal the obvious fact that the "transplantation of neo-Attic craftsmen into a Roman environment . . . dates back to the middle of the second century B.C." (p. 933) and he duly notes the persistence of "models of late Hellenism . . . in delicate balance with the classicizing tradition, even in sculpture in the round" (p. 939). In my opinion, then, we are better off with defining Augustan classicism in art and architecture.not in opposition to Hellenismus&emdash;a term that was coined not until the 19th century&emdash; but as an innovative and surpassing synthesis of all previous models and traditions, with ample counterparts in Augustan poetry, government, and religion. Again, Torelli recognizes the "novel and experimental aspect" (p. 937) of much Augustan work while emphasizing the "norms" to which the princeps and his family supposedly were beholden. There are, however, many non-normative aspects, too: witness the Corinthian splendor of the Mars Ultor Temple in contravention of Vitruvius' mandate that the Doric order was the most decorous for temples of Mars (1.2.5) or the same author's famous fulminations (7.5.3-4) against a style of painting that is found precisely in the villas of the imperial family. Unsurprisingly, there was a great deal of dynamism and experimentation in all aspects of Augustan culture. Due to the compartmentalized organization of scholarly compendia like CAH 10, such overriding characteristics of the Augustan age are not dealt with in a synoptic way, but tend to be subordinated even in the individual chapters to the perceived need for "factual" summaries.
This is not to say that the contributions to CAH 10 do not meet the superior scholarly standard that one expects in such a volume. Among the best chapters is Susan Treggiari's on "Social status and social legislation"; her epigrammatic dictum that "the Roman world was opened up both physically and mentally" (p. 902) under Augustus speaks volumes. Simon Price's chapter on religion needs to be complemented by Nock's in the earlier volume. Nicholas Purcell's thoughtful discussion on "Rome and its development" offers a welcome synthesis of social history, architecture, religion, and literature. He reminds us that "a city is people, not architecture" (p. 797); just as it is difficult, in reference works like CAH, to see the forest for the trees at times, so the soul of historical periods&emdash;people's motivations, and their material and spiritual needs&emdash;tends to be lost in the welter of information about institutions, structures, and events of various kinds. Yet it is also a positive challenge for readers to come up with a synthesis for themselves. CAH 10 certainly provides the serious student of Augustan history with many means to do so.
I enjoyed Diana Favro's The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. I know this will probably put me in a minority among classicists as Favro is an urban historian and the many misspellings of Latin words (and Latin-based words, such as "proscribed" for "prescribed" on p. 152) alone in this book are as irritating as they could have been avoidable. In addition, there are the sort of conventions that are accepted in the culture of one profession and perceived as quirky in another; in this case, diagrams of urbanistic concepts, such as codependency, may strike one as otiose and reminiscent of the definition of sociology as "a big insight into the obvious" (not a view I share, especially as my current Dean and Graduate Dean are sociologists). These faults, however, are outweighed by the useful and different perspective this book has to offer; analogous to Theodore Ziolkowski's dictum that "Virgil is too important to be left to the classicists," it attests the vitality of res Augustae that scholars from other disciplines find them sufficiently important to devote time to their study.
In brief, Favro has a three-dimensional view of buildings, building complexes, and architectural groupings. This dimension as as important, if not more so, as is visualizing the use of color in Greco-Roman antiquity. The neglect of such aspects had led to an impoverished, plastercast-hued, and two-dimensional image of the remains of classical antiquity. It is easy to look at a map of the Roman Forum, as rebuilt by Augustus, and claim that Republican structures were suppressed and replaced. When we lift our eyes, however, and pay attention to sight lines, we see the Capitoline and especially the Tabularium, that massive archival reminder of the history of the Republic, forming an imposing backdrop. We also see that many of the buildings rose on Republican foundations. It was one thing for Augustus to change Rome from brick to marble. More important, as is clear from Favro's vivid documentation, was his reshaping of a heterogeneous jumble of diverse materials and edifices from diverse periods into a consolidated whole with meaning, identity, and legibility&emdash;cuncta inter se conexa, to borrow Tacitus' phrase (Ann. 1.9). Instead of the fractionalized and disjointed configuration of late Republican Rome, a unified cityscape was created, through the involvement of existing elements and the creation of new structures and ensembles, which was far from monolithic&emdash;a process that is analogous, mutatis mutandis, to the Augustan remolding of the res publica in general.
Favro's experiment of creating an experiential "reading" of the old and the new city will raise some eyebrows. In two narrative chapters at the beginning and the end, we see the city through the eyes of "a staunch Roman father" and his young son in 52 B.C., and revisit it in A.D. 14 with a young girl and her "elderly [senatorial] grandfather." Of course some questions need to go begging here. Would different peeople experience the city differently analogous to the many different receptions of Augustan art and poetry among different viewers and readers? Still, if intelligently used, I can see these two chapters, which are based on the detailed documentation and perceptive observations provided in the others, as a useful didactic supplement to many a class in Latin and in Roman history and civilization. In the dedication of his De Architectura to Augustus, Vitruvius expressed the sentiment ut maiestas imperii publicorum aedificiorum egregias haberet auctoritates. It is important to see that the resulting city of Rome was not a cold concept in stone, but, as we would say today, was user-friendly to and animated by real people; after all, to cite Nicholas Purcell again, "a city is people, not [just] architecture." Favro deserves credit for trying to bring the two together.
Ann Kuttner's study of the Boscoreale Cups is of a different stripe: it is written for a very scholarly audience and is closely argued. Her subject is an important one: the two cups are exquisite artifacts in their own right and, if one accepts the argument that they are based state monuments in stone, provide the only extensive example, other than the Ara Pacis, of historical/allegorical relief that is extant from Augustan times. Habent sua fata libri (for a libellus this one surely is not): at the time of Kuttner's initial manuscript, the two cups had been reported as missing in action since World War II and were accessible mostly through the splendid reproductions in the first publication by Héron de Villefosse in 1899. Quite unexpectedly, they turned up at the Louvre in late 1990 and Kuttner could study them first-hand&emdash;delays by publishers are a godsend, right? A different compensation for that delay is that this book has the Mother of All Indexes: 58 pages for 211 pages of text (and 92 of footnotes); one needs an index to the index. Another impediment is that, with the exception of the splendid reproductions of the cups, the plates are bunched together at the back of the book, and often not very attractively at that. Furthermore, it is to be regretted that their number had to be minimized.
But these are mere quibbles. The outstanding feature of Dynasty and Empire is the author's range of knowledge, expertise, and interests. This is a commendable work by a young art historian who is also well trained in Roman history and has a sure grasp of the cultural context and of different methodologies. The issue, in this case and others in Augustan representation, is that of individual specificity versus a more general typology. A well known comparandum is the "processions" on the Ara Pacis reliefs: do they commemorate a specific event or, while inspired by the typology of such events, are they intended as a more general, exemplary representation? Kuttner consistently argues the case for specificity. While the iconography of Augustus and Tiberius on the cups is undisputed, Kuttner pushes hard for the identification of one of the accompanying figures with Drusus the Elder. She tries to back it up not only with iconographic arguments, but with an entire and, in her words, "polemical" chapter on the significance of the role of the brothers Drusus and Tiberius in Augustan "propaganda" (a term that needs definition, as usual).
Here opinions diverge. I still find the arguments of Zanker and Hölscher more persuasive, stressing as they do the more exemplary dimension of the reliefs in terms of illustrating certain values, such as clementia and iustitia, and dating the composition to the late years of Augustus, i.e. after Tiberius' second triumph in A.D. 12. The interplay between exemplary and specific was, like so much else in Augustan culture, an ongoing dynamic&emdash;a good example is the simile of the statesman in Aeneid 1&emdash;and it is inherently impossible to establish a rigid boundary between the two notions in the relevant artistic and literary manifestations. Furthermore, for lack of evidence one can only speculate about the modifications, if any, that were made, in terms of both representation and concept, in the process of transference from public monument to domestic collector's item or utensil. The fragility of the survival of the Boscoreale cups is a salutary reminder of the often incomplete remains of the artifacts and monuments from a major period that we consider to be relatively abundant for its evidence.
With Lacey's book, we return to the segment of Augustan scholarship that prizes constitutional matters. Lacey's overall theme, based on Tacitus' insurgere (Ann. 1.2), is what he calls Augustus' "encroachment" on the function and powers held formerly by the Senate and Republican officials. In ten chapters, which include topics such as provincial administration, the tribunician power, and the handling of the plebs, he systematically shows, with as much chronological precision as possible, the incremental accumulation of power in Augustus' hands.
Such studies have documentary value, but they fall short of explaining the many dimensions of Augustus' leadership or, just as basic, the relationship between leader and led. It is simply sloppy of Augustan scholars to plod on with stereotypal, ad hoc uses of concepts like leadership, power, ideology, and propaganda without looking at the plentiful recent work on these subjects in scholarly disciplines that are not catalogued in L'Année Philologique. The problems here start with a narrow, legalistic view of the Roman constitution and the even narrower definition of res publica as "the restoration of the authority of the Senate over the armed forces" (p. 63). No doubt, Augustus was a Machtmensch, but the century-long default of leadership by the senatorial oligarchy had set an ample stage for the takeover, as Lacey occasionally admits: "The old oligarchy had ruled badly, almost exclusivley in its own interests; a new one might do better; at least the promise of peace could be made to sound more convincing" (p. 63). For the most part, however, Lacey's scope does not go beyond a limited documentary schematism on which more recent work on Augustus has not left an imprint; the purpose of the Julian Laws, for instance, is still simply given as the stimulation of the birthrate (p. 75). Within the larger panorama of Augustan civilization, "encroachment" is part of a wider spectrum of evolution and experimentation, but such a perspective would mean forsaking the tone of grumpy censoriousness and thereby the link to the aura of Syme and Tacitus. For an excellent treatment, which has the requisite breadth, of the "constitutional" issues the reader should turn to W. Eder's chapter in Raaflaub and Toher.
Lacey's book is a reminder that haste is being made slowly in Augustan studies. In the years ahead, let us hope not for increased haste or more retardation, but for yet more thorough explorations of one of the richest, most complex, and multifaceted periods in the ancient world.
KARL GALINSKY
University of Texas at Austin