In September ad 1, on the occasion of his birthday, Augustus wrote to Gaius, his adopted son and grandson by Julia and Agrippa, complaining about his age, stating that he had
passed the climacteric common to all old men, the sixty-fourth year. And I pray the gods that whatever time is left to me I may pass with you safe and well, with our country in a flourishing condition, while you are playing the man and preparing to succeed to my position.
(Gell. NA 15.7)Footnote 1In this statement Augustus includes the year of his birth to his first birthday as year one of the sixty-four years. Thus, in modern terms, this was his sixty-third birthday.Footnote 2 The letter is recorded by Aulus Gellius (NA 15.7), who says that:
It has been observed, during a long period of human recollection, and found to be true, that for almost all old men the sixty-third year of their age is attended with danger, and with some disaster involving either serious bodily illness, or loss of life, or mental suffering. Therefore those who are engaged in the study of matters and terms of that kind call that period of life the ‘climacteric’.
Interestingly, in this letter, Augustus looks to the possibility of the younger man, Gaius, taking over from him. It is perhaps significant that in ad 1 Lucius held proconsular imperium and we may be looking at a power structure that involved both the emperor and the immediate members of his family, which was facilitated through a mixing of the older and the younger generations, and the experienced with the more physically able.Footnote 3
The letter anticipates the emperor's withdrawal from public life, a matter noted later in the century by Seneca in De brevitate vitae (3.5). Augustus was always thought to have cherished the idea of otium (leisure) and even made the matter known in a letter to the Senate. Yet, Seneca could marvel that:
So desirable a thing did leisure seem that he anticipated it in thought because he could not attain it in reality. He, who saw everything depending upon himself alone, who determined the fortune of individuals and of nations, thought most happily of that future day on which he should lay aside his greatness…And so he longed for leisure, in the hope and thought of which he found relief for his labours. This was the prayer of one who was able to answer the prayers of mankind.
This elucidates the situation of the old emperor denied the otium traditionally associated with old age, because he was seen by others as still all-powerful and in command of the Empire. There is no other evidence to suggest that Augustus really considered laying down power, and, although his behaviour in what turned out to be the last thirteen years of his life at times demonstrated physical weakening, even to the last his actions seemed calculated to preserve himself and his family, as well as what he had achieved, both for the state and for his clan.
The intersection of his age with his role as princeps in this final decade has been neglected, and we find the absence of Augustus as an old man in modern works. This omission marginalizes the centrality of the ageing of an emperor in the development of the Principate as an institution.Footnote 4 Instead, the last decade of Augustus’ Principate is often written with a focus on Tiberius’ succession, which has been found wanting in recent years.Footnote 5 This final period of Augustus’ life needs further attention, because it challenges the perception of a securely founded Augustan Principate.
Most works on Augustus or the Augustan age have focused attention on the formation of the Principate, its development, and the ultimate honour of being named Pater Patriae (‘Father of the Nation’) in 2 bc. After that year, Augustus as a person becomes marginal in most accounts, which focus rather on the deaths of Gaius and Lucius and the increasing centrality of Tiberius – or on the succession.Footnote 6 Yet Augustus would live as princeps for longer than the reigns of most of the Julio-Claudian emperors and their successors, including those of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. When closely examined, this final decade of Augustus’ life can be seen as more autocratic than the previous decades of the Principate.Footnote 7 Our article evaluates how the ageing of Augustus affected the running of the Principate, or the restored res publica, and considers more seriously the role of Augustus in the final decade of his long life.
The ancient conception of the elderly
Augustus was one of a small percentage of the Roman population who lived into their seventies.Footnote 8 We might imagine a scenario in which, as Augustus became older, fewer and fewer companions of his own age were present in his life. His contemporaries from his youth were passing away: Agrippa, born like Augustus in 63 bc, died in 12 bc; Maecenas followed in 8 bc. Demographers have suggested that just six to eight per cent of the population were over the age of sixty.Footnote 9 In antiquity, this small minority of the elderly were seen as quite different from their younger peers. To understand Augustus as an old man, we need to review the topoi associated with the elderly – many of which are also present in our own society, which has a far greater percentage of survivors over the age of sixty.Footnote 10
There are a number of age systems which survive from antiquity, all of which divide the male life course into certain stages according to particular theoretical thought worlds. Each stage has associated duties, responsibilities (or lack of them) and behavioural characteristics.Footnote 11 For Horace:
Many ills encompass the old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then miserably holds aloof from his store and fears to use it, or because in all that he does he lacks fire and courage, is dilatory and slow to form hopes, is sluggish and greedy of a longer life, peevish and surly, given to praising the days he spent as a boy, and to reproving and condemning the young. Many blessings do the advancing years bring with them; many as they retire, they take away.
(Ars P. 173–8)Varro, who died in 27 bc, developed a system of five age stages, each of fifteen years, in which old age (senectus) started at sixty.Footnote 12 This might suggest some connection in the modern mind with retirement, but such an idea needs to be resisted. Antiquity produced debates over the involvement of the elderly in public life, such as that in Plutarch's Moralia (783b–797f) – On whether an old man should engage in public affairs – or as in Cicero's Cato Maior de Senectute.Footnote 13 Whether there was a consensus on this seems far from certain, yet there appears to have been an expectation that Augustus, in spite of his age, should remain a public figure. The problem was, as Ptolemy portrays it, that old age was regarded as a degenerative process, and defined by more than one stage of life. For instance, Ptolemy held that the period translated as elderly (presbuteros) lasted from fifty-six to sixty-eight years of age, during which the active life of manual labour, toil, turmoil and danger was meant to be replaced with retirement, deliberation and consolation.Footnote 14 After sixty-eight, the next stage was characterized by the body cooling and becoming worn down and weak, and the individual mentally dispirited, easy to offend and often hard to please. Augustus would have been seen within this mental prism that defined the elderly in ancient societies as the antithesis of the young.Footnote 15 At the age of sixty-two, Cicero could write to Atticus, ‘Old age makes me more cantankerous, everything irritates me. But I have had my time, let the young men worry’ (Att.14.21.3). These statements do not report the reality of ageing in ancient Rome, but they do give an insight into the discussion of how getting older was perceived in antiquity and provide us with a set of expectations with which to view Augustus as he became older.
The penultimate decade: the youths (Gaius and Lucius) create the ageing senex
In many ways, Augustus’ age defines the very chronology of his long period in power. It opens, at just nineteen, his own account of his life in the Res Gestae – written in his very last year according to Alison Cooley.Footnote 16 Cassius Dio creates a forty-year chronology for Augustan Rome beginning with 27 bc and divided into four ten-year periods. The logic of this structure works well with thinking through the periods from 27 bc to the Ludi Saeculares, then to 7 bc and the reorganization of the city of Rome, and then on to ad 4 and finally to ad 14. It is worth mentioning here that both Gaius and Lucius were adopted in 17 bc, at the transition point between the first and second decades of Augustan rule. Lucius was born in 17 bc, when Gaius was already four years old. Augustus, their grandfather, was in his mid-forties when he adopted the boys – a grandfather, but certainly not ‘ageing’.Footnote 17 This age structure creates a narrative that features the boys growing up while Augustus moves towards old age and his climacteric year, 1 bc–ad 1. Lucius dies in ad 2. The death of Gaius in ad 4 coincides with the ending of the third decade of the reign of Augustus and the beginning of the final ten-year period.
The penultimate decade, 7 bc to ad 4, has as a central feature the relationship between an ageing princeps and the younger members of his family. The lifestyle of his daughter, Julia, is, of course, very much part of the events of this decade, which also sees the death of Gaius and Lucius in their early twenties (Dio Cass. 55.11).Footnote 18 It is possible to track the prominence of the two boys as teenagers through coinage, beginning in c.5 bc, and from portraiture. It appears that their statues were produced from as early as the age of seven.Footnote 19 As their adopted father, Augustus had actively been involved in their education from infancy (Suet. Aug. 64). The list of skills he taught them – including reading, writing (specifically copying his own handwriting), and swimming – suggest that they were being trained for public roles over a long period of time. It is interesting that some commentators note that ‘it is difficult to imagine the ageing princeps in the role of swimming instructor’, but it was a traditional role for a paterfamilias and a sign of Augustus’ virtue.Footnote 20 The point might be that this is very different from the actions of Tiberius in old age, or of Domitian, whose relationships with swimming involved sex.Footnote 21 In contrast, Augustus’ behaviour reflected the notion that, as Plato suggests (Leg. 689D), not knowing writing or swimming was a sign of ignorance.
Whatever Augustus’ age, he was well able to ensure that his adopted sons gained a suitable knowledge of both (in contrast to Caligula, who could not swim: Suet. Gaius 54).Footnote 22 It is worth mentioning that Augustus’ own adopted father, Julius Caesar, had been a swimmer of some prowess.Footnote 23 The ability to cross rivers would seem to have been the key skill, perhaps even learnt by swimming the Tiber from the exercise fields of the Campus Martius.Footnote 24 This martial training, alongside Augustus’ austere lifestyle, contrasted with the boys’ own love of luxury – a characteristic of youths (see, for example, Cicero, Pro Caelio) that was the subject of rebuke by Augustus (Suet. Aug. 56.2; Dio Cass. 54.27, 55.9).Footnote 25 The rebuke also shapes him as a stereotypical old man, happy to criticize the young.
The penultimate decade, of course, ended with the loss of both his grandsons and with Augustus at the age of sixty-seven (Dio Cass. 55.11).Footnote 26 He recalled Tiberius and adopted him as a son and did the same for his surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus. Tiberius, at the age of forty-two, was in the very prime of life; Agrippa Postumus was just sixteen years of age. Thus, we have the old man, Augustus; the youth, Agrippa Postumus; and a man in mid-life, Tiberius, as the key members of the imperial family for the final ten years down to ad 14. In all, three generations were involved, from which there was an expectation that the best rather than the worst characteristics of each stage of life would be present for the benefit of the res publica.
The power of images in late Augustan Rome
The shift in terms of agency from the ageing Augustus to other members of his family can be seen with reference to the building of monuments from 7 bc. In 2 bc Augustus provided GaiusFootnote 27 and Lucius with consular power permitting them to consecrate temples, but it is uncertain whether these powers were ever used. The pattern of the evidence is made more complicated both by the deaths of Gaius and Lucius and by Tiberius’ withdrawal from Rome, which can lead to the erroneous conclusion that Augustus was unwilling to choose him as an heir.Footnote 28 Yet the process of renewal of temples in the Forum Romanum, begun in 7 bc and only completed in ad 10, provides evidence of Augustus’ withdrawal from this activity and allows us to view the relationship of Augustus and Tiberius in sharper focus.Footnote 29 In 7 bc, Tiberius held the consulship and assigned to himself the task of restoring the Temple of Concordia with money derived from his campaigns in Germany, Pannonia, and Dalmatia. His reasoning, as set out by Dio, is given as an opportunity to have his name and that of his brother, Drusus, on the temple (Dio Cass. 55.8.2; Suet. Tib. 20). The choice of the Temple of Concordia linked Tiberius to the past and a need to ensure harmony in the state (Ov. Fast. 1.637–50) and it was dedicated on the day that the princeps had received his famous cognomen (Augustus) in 27 bc.Footnote 30 Owing to Tiberius’ absences from Rome – because of his withdrawal to Greece, and being on campaign after his recall – the temple was only dedicated by him on 16 January ad 10 (Fasti Praenestini).
Interestingly, the final form and content of the temple drew on Tiberius’ period in Greece: the temple was repurposed from one in which the Senate had met (for example, to hear Cicero's fourth speech against CatilineFootnote 31 ) to a museum of prestigious pieces of sculpture acquired by Tiberius from communities in Greece while he was resident in Rhodes (see Dio Cass. 55.9.6 on the use of tribunician power to compel the Parians to sell him the statue of Vesta placed in the temple of Concordia; pieces were noted by Pliny HN 34.19.77, 89, 90; 35.36.66; 35.40.131).Footnote 32 Thus, this temple made direct reference to Tiberius and his engagement with Greek culture during his period of absence from Rome, while also identifying him with its restoration and the acquisition of some of the most prestigious pieces of ancient sculpture.Footnote 33 The temple and its contents recast him as more than just the successful general: he had provided the people of Rome with a cultural resource of Greek sculpture between 300 and 400 years old in a well-lit redesigned temple.Footnote 34 It was, in short, a symbol of his liberalitas, recognizing and adding value to the period of time he had spent away from Rome in Rhodes.Footnote 35 A final point is worth considering: Concordia was the goddess whom Livia associated with her long marriage to Augustus, which may suggest that Tiberius’ selection of the Temple of Concordia aligned himself with this marriage between his mother and his father by adoption.Footnote 36
Tiberius’ relationship with Augustus was also alluded to following his restoration of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum Romanum on 27 January ad 6.Footnote 37 This was a temple associated with some of the most costly sacrifices presented on 15 July (Dion. Hal. 6.13), and it allowed for the comparison of Tiberius and his deceased brother, Drusus, with the Dioscuri.Footnote 38 Dio (55.27.4) points out that Tiberius’ name was adjusted to the form ‘Claudianus’ because of his adoption by Augustus;Footnote 39 he sees this as emblematic of their relationship. Suetonius (Tib. 20), in discussing the rebuilding of both the Temple of Castor and that of Concordia, stresses the homage paid to Augustus by his adopted son. Dio does not identify unity embodied in this action, because he points to a tension for Tiberius: the possibility of Augustus finding another heir to replace him – an idea which caused Tiberius, even when campaigning, to return frequently to Rome (Dio 55.27.5), a phenomenon to be discussed in the next section of the article.
Thus, the relationship between Tiberius and Augustus influenced the nature of restoration in the Forum Romanum: Tiberius funded the projects from the spoils of his campaigns in Germany to create a presence for his name and a presence as the adopted heir of Augustus in the very heart of Rome.Footnote 40 Augustus’ presence was visible not in the inscriptions on the buildings but via the knowledge of his adoption of Tiberius as his son – made explicit with the use of the name Claudianus on a temple that would have dwarfed its neighbours.Footnote 41 It is worth also considering that Tiberius’ name appears on late Augustan coinage in a format that stresses his father (TI CAESAR AUGUST F IMPERAT V, ‘Tiberius Caesar, son of Augustus, acclaimed general for the fifth time’) and parallels the format of Augustus’ name on coins (IMP CAESAR DIVI F AUGUSTUS IMP XX, ‘General Caesar Augustus, son of the divine, general for the twentieth time’).Footnote 42
Augustus senex
In antiquity, there was a degree of debate about the role of old men in politics. Augustus, by his very age, became defined by the discourse, while at the same time his actions contributed to it. Plutarch (Moralia 207E) recalls an instance when Augustus could not make himself heard above the uproar of young elite males, who paid him no attention, and quotes the princeps’ wise dictum: “Do you young men not listen to an old man, to whom old men listened when he was a young man?” This creates a dichotomy between Augustus as elderly, in contrast to the young. The norm was for old men to educate and instruct the young, for example Sulla and Pompey, or Fabius Maximus and Cato (Plut. Mor. 790E–F). Augustus had done exactly this with his adopted grandsons Gaius and Lucius, but both had died. Similarly, when looking at the relationship between Augustus, his daughter, and her younger lovers, Augustus, the old man, set upon a young man rumoured to have had sex with Julia (Plut. Mor. 207D; Macrob. Sat. 2.5). As Pater Patriae, Augustus is set up to advise the young, but his temper disrupts the process, as does his occupation of power into his late seventies: he is not simply advising but also taking decisions and leading the state.
In Dio, the final ten years of Augustus’ Principate increasingly feature the age of the princeps to explain actions taken in this last period of power.Footnote 43 He is seen as a milder version of the Augustus who established government as a young princeps in 27 bc, a man in old age who did not wish to incur the hatred of others. Dio explains Augustus’ adoption of Tiberius in terms of age and the actions of an old man (he was now sixty-six), suggesting that the princeps did this because he was worn out in body by reason of old age and illness, indicating that he would not have made this choice had others been available or he, himself, in a better condition (Dio Cass. 55.13.1a). The choice to adopt Tiberius, a man in the prime of life, is driven by age and failing health, together with a degree of persuasion, attributed by Dio to Livia and to Julia (Dio places Julia on the Italian mainland, rather than isolated on an island).
This arrangement might have appeared beneficial to Augustus in mitigating the process of ageing by inserting an active younger man into the power structure. However, we can identify age-related behaviour developing in the form of pessimism and fear. Tiberius was to be feared: he might march on Rome (Dio Cass. 55.31) and, as he developed successes in command, his potential power and influence were causes of concern for Augustus. Fear was also an explanation for other Augustan behaviours: Augustus could reform the Senate himself and take a census, but through fear of rebellion of the people he only took a census of those with more than 200,000 sesterces. How such a census could have been undertaken is unclear: how would he have known who possessed more or less than this sum?
Such fears may have been real given the plots of ad 4 which led Dio to present a long discussion between Augustus and Livia over the need for clemency and consensus, rather than the destruction of enemies (Dio Cass. 55.13, 14–21, on Livia giving the arguments on how to control enemies, and not to kill the conspirators). With Tiberius holding tribunician power, Augustus and Tiberius ruled the empire as paterfamilias and filius familias, while Augustus held his final five-year period of maius imperium (‘supreme command’).Footnote 44 It looks like an arrangement similar to that of Augustus and Agrippa in 12 bc, but that is to see things in purely constitutional terms.Footnote 45 Instead, when considered in terms of age, we can see Agrippa and Augustus in 12 bc as two equals at the prime of life (in their early forties) – whereas, from ad 4 onwards, Augustus and Tiberius can be seen as an old man, admittedly with maius imperium, and a man in the prime of life taking direct action in military matters.Footnote 46 In terms of age, Tiberius is in the stronger position, even if Augustus is the princeps. Dio writes this fear of the power of a man in his prime into the final phase of the Principate of Augustus. It is also very different from the relationship that might have existed between Augustus in old age and his grandsons in their twenties; that situation might be seen to mirror the ideal that Cicero had sought in influencing the young Octavian in 44 bc, or the relationships between people of different ages embedded in Cicero's treatises on the Republic, on friendship, and so on, in which an older man explains the world to much younger men, who accept his advice.Footnote 47
The physical effects of old age had an effect on the mechanics of decision-making and on the role of the Senate and the constitution, and can be seen at the end of the final decade of Augustus’ life. Some view this period as one of autocracy, created by the fact that Augustus could not attend the Senate.Footnote 48 In contrast, we see adjustments made to ensure that the princeps continued to be involved in decision-making. Suetonius considers him to have been constantly at work, revising lists of jurors even when elderly (it is unclear at what age, Aug. 29), and administering justice from a litter or even lying down at home if indisposed (Aug. 33). To facilitate Augustus’ role in government, the decision of the consilium established in ad 13 became the equivalent of a decision by the Senate. His physical decline was also marked by a gradual withdrawal from certain responsibilities.
It seems that meetings of the senate and the courts were held in Augustus’ house on the Palatine (Suet. Aug. 29). But, despite ‘old age and the feebleness of his body, he continued personally, with his assistants, to investigate judicial cases and to pass judgment, seated on the tribunal in the palace’. This appears to have been a major change to the nature of government: the palace was where power rested in the hands of an elderly princeps, whose immobility caused power to be exercised in and from his house rather than in one of the fora.Footnote 49 However, looking back to embassies reported in Josephus and dated to 4 bc, it is possible to see the consilium meeting in private, before meeting delegates at the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine (that is, in public), next to Augustus’ residence, but then holding their discussion in private to develop the edict.Footnote 50
As Crook points out, there was a political and legal role for the consilium and the roles could not have been neatly divided but, as with many things dealt with by Augustus, involved a complicated mixture of both.Footnote 51 Yet, it is Augustus’ frailty and inability to go to the Senate that is maintained as a reason to create the consilium as a legislative body. There is some logic behind this. In the previous year, Augustus was unable to make himself heard in the Senate House and employed Germanicus (in his first consulship) to read his words for him, even when those words commended the reader to the senators. Germanicus was a suitable substitute: he was twenty-seven, he had been married to Augustus’ granddaughter Agrippina for over twelve years, and he had at least three children (Gaius, to be Caligula, was born in this year). The relationship of the elderly princeps to this young man was quite different from his relations with Tiberius, a man now approaching old age in his fifty-fourth year. However, Tiberius was seen as a substitute for Augustus and was created as a joint ruler of the provinces with him, thus perhaps recognizing that they were equals (Suet. Tib. 20; Vell. Pat. 2.121), but also suggesting that Tiberius might be a substitute for Augustus in attending the Senate.
Earlier, in ad 8, Augustus had used the German war as an excuse to ask senators not to be offended if he requested that they not greet him at his home, or if he no longer attended public banquets with them, but he continued to visit his peers for birthdays and events such as betrothal parties, until he was ‘well on in years’ (grandior). Even while he was withdrawing from some of the duties of office, his age did not prevent him from travelling to Ariminum to hear the news from Pannonia sooner (Dio Cass. 55.34). In ad 9, at the age of seventy-one or seventy-two, he addressed the equites in the Forum with regard to their complaints about the marriage laws, talking about ensuring future generations. While there is some irony in this speech, given Augustus’ own position with regard to surviving descendants at this stage, it was perhaps given with some self-awareness that his audience must also have understood. The point about the necessity of a younger wife is also telling in relation to the healthcare of elderly men and to temper the ‘unreasonable harshness of old age’ (Dio Cass. 56.3). In many way, the speech is a prelude to the enactment of the Lex Papia Poppaea (Dio Cass. 56.10), which Tacitus associated with Augustus in later life (Ann. 3.25–8).Footnote 52 The law, strongly criticized by Tacitus, might be argued as a poor ruling because it was passed towards the end of the princeps’ life. Tacitus presents Augustus, as a senex, ruled over by Livia in connection with the decision to exile Agrippa Postumus (Ann. 1.3). Tacitus also suggests that there was a fundamental difference in the perception of Augustus in his prime and in his old age and in poor health (Ann. 1.4). This may reflect a distinction between the historian's experience of Nerva as an old emperor, and that of the rule of Trajan in his prime. The perception of the old emperor – whether Nerva or Augustus – was that they were not fully capable of being a princeps.
The degree of infirmity, as seen by others, may have influenced Suetonius’ discussion of Augustus’ health. He was a man who felt the cold, wore a chest protector, several layers of tunics and leg wraps to keep himself warm (Suet. Aug. 82). Augustus had a weak constitution throughout his life, often suffering from what appear to have been digestive complaints, bladder stones, rheumatism, limping from weakness in his left leg, and numbness of extremities (Aug. 80, 82).
Did ageing change Augustus and the Principate?
When compared to his successors, Augustus appears to have acted as an archetypal princeps senex. Tiberius lived to the age of seventy-seven, but spent most of his later years indulging himself in Capri and generally earning the poor reputation which completely overrode any successes of his earlier life. He did not become emperor until the age of fifty-four, and was therefore already, in the eyes of many Romans, well into late middle age or approaching old age. Claudius, another long lived emperor, died aged sixty-three; he is an interesting case as his physical disabilities had meant that Augustus and Tiberius had planned him a life out of the public eye, and, in terms of imagery, he is often portrayed as looking old.Footnote 53 Finally in the first century ad was Nerva, who became emperor at the age of sixty-five, and of whom Dio (68.3.4) says that he was so old and feeble in health that he used to vomit up his food and was rather weak, and further ‘finding himself in such contempt for reasons of his age said in a loud voice “I adopt Trajan”’, a general aged forty-one – that is, in Roman eyes, in the prime of his life.
How should we see Augustus as the old princeps?
The Augustus of earlier decades, involved in building monuments across Rome, was to some degree replaced by Tiberius, restorer of key temples in the Forum Romanum. The disjuncture between the ageing emperor found in Suetonius (Aug. 79–80) and his statues or images on coins may be a puzzle for some.Footnote 54 However, seen in the context of Roman old age, it was Augustus’ achievements as a young man that created his identity as an old man.Footnote 55 Thus, references to a young Augustus simply enhanced the status of the elderly emperor through recall of all that he had achieved.Footnote 56 This also fits the ancient convention that old men lived in, or at least focused their conversation on, their past. There is another logic at work here: Augustus’ life was full of exempla to be emulated by others, and in most cases these were exempla provided to younger men – after all, relatively few men lived into the old age that Augustus experienced.Footnote 57 As a result, it was the actions of his younger self that were to be recalled and were symbolized both by exempla and by the representation of his younger self on coins, statues, and monuments. Interestingly, Vespasian – a man who attained greatness in later life – was to provide exempla from old age to epitomize the rule of the Flavians as quite distinct from that of Nero and the Julio-Claudians.Footnote 58 The disjuncture between representation of a younger self and any actual knowledge of Augustus’ appearance was a function of the process of ageing, in which the imagery (as also the emperor's memory) recalled the past and the emperor's earlier achievements. It was not the body of the aged emperor who had pursued war, but that of his younger self. The disjunction makes sense, therefore, if we view it in the context of Roman thought about old age.Footnote 59
The old Augustus was fearful of others, milder than his younger self, and too weak to attend the Senate, but capable of working and legislating. In many ways, he was not the same person as his younger self. Over the last decade of his life, the emperor had become less visible and decision-making had shifted to the palace. Not surprisingly, Tiberius’ attempt to put the clock back, abolishing the Augustan consilium as a decision-making body, was fraught with difficulties. The compensation for an emperor being unable, owing to age, to attend the Senate shifted the political process away from the Curia to the palace. The fact of the emperor's old age thus restructured the nature of what used to be called the Roman ‘constitution’. After Augustus’ death, however, much as Tiberius may or may not have wanted the Senate to speak freely with an emperor present, the shift back was neither simple nor easy.Footnote 60 The experience of an old Augustus had made a change and the ramifications of that change were to be felt in the following reign of an already ageing emperor who would retire from Rome while power resided in the palace – just as it had done in the final years of Augustus’ reign.
To a degree, the very fact of Augustus’ longevity reshaped the Roman Empire in the final decade of his life, but the imagery that has inspired so much recent scholarship was not reshaped to incorporate an aged emperor. Instead, Tiberius was simply incorporated within an existing set of Augustan places within the city of Rome, in which Augustus, the old man, was to be remembered as a younger man achieving so much. Perhaps this is why, in books on Augustan Rome, in old age the emperor disappears once he becomes Augustus senex.
