Res gestae Divi Augusti

Svetonius and Dio Cassius in a very similar manner say that Augustus, one year before dying, delivered the Vestals some testamentary documents which were brought to the Senate and publicly read after his death, the 19th of August 14 A. D. Along with Augustus real will, in which he appointed his patrimony's heirs, there were other bequests: in one of them the Prince gave precise dispositions for his burial; in another the list of his deeds was contained; and in a third one a sort of up-to-date national budget was presented. Of all these legacies only what Svetonius and Dio Cassius call Index rerum a se gestarum or simply Erga (Dio 56, 33) survives.

How did this text reach us?

The Prince explicitly ordered to engrave the report of his deeds on bronze tables (pillars?), and to collocate them after his death at the entrance of the impressive Mausoleum he had started building up since the immediate Actiacum post-war period (29 B. C.), in the Camp of Mars in Rome. Bronze inscriptions got lost but, possibly already under Tiberius, copies to send to the provinces were prepared. We ignore how many copies were made and for which imperial provinces were meant. We know that some exemplars of this text are localized in today's Turkey. They are copies of the Roman original, as one can read in the heading of the best preserved record, namely the one in Ankara. Until one has proof of the contrary, Anatolian area seems to be the only deposit of this monumental Augustan document's remains.

Proposals to explain this coincidence could be idle if put forward, nonetheless the geographic area, where the so-called Res gestae Divi Augusti were sent and publicly exhibited, corresponds to the region Augustus appointed provincia, i. e. Galatia, and represents the only new oriental annexation he made. Urban places, where even today one can see copies of the text, or parts of it, became, in 25 B. C., Roman-Galatian cities: Ankara, the ancient Ancyra, Galatia's capital; Apollonia of Pisidia, identified with the site of the modern village of Uluborlu and Pisidian Antioch (like Apollonia joint to the newly established Galatian province) whose remains rise not far away from today's Yalvaç.

As we have already stated, the original text of the so-called Res gestae Divi Augusti that the Prince ordered to put at the entrance of the monumental Funus Iuliorum, disappeared. It was centuries of robberies to cause this lost and in which moment the bronze was melted and reused is needless to fix. After all, already in the XIII century, the Mausoleum was transformed into fortress and then turned to furnace (Lanciani R., Storia degli scavi di Roma, e notizie intorno alla collezioni romane di antichità, I (a. 1000 - 1533), Roma, 1902; Hesberg H. von - Panciera S., Das Mausoleum des Augustus. Der Bau und seine Inschriften, München, 1994)

Up-to-date evidences

Monumentum Ancyranum.

This conventional name defines the text engraved on the Dea Roma and Augustus temple's walls. The building is in Ankara and was put up almost certainly when the Prince was still alive on a precedent monument of worship. As centuries ran by, the temple was damaged both by nature (the place is highly seismic) and by man, who intervened architecturally, removed and reused the materials. Today only the Augustan monument's pronaos, the walls of the cella and of the opistodomos survive, though tottering. The rear wall of the cella was destroyed, but the apse of the Byzantine church (built after the 5th century, during one of the temple's transformations) remained in situ. M. Schede and D. Krencker's research (Der Tempel in Ankara, Berlin - Leipzig, 1936) is still fundamental as far as the story of the building is concerned, nonetheless, especially after the 1956 and then 1991 last radical urbanistic interventions, it needs to be updated. The bilingual text preserved in Ankara is the most complete evidence among the survivals. On the pronaos inside walls a Latin version is engraved, mirror-like divided into three columns on one side (beginning with the left wall if looking to the cella 's entrance) and three on the other. The epigraphical surfaces are 2,70 metres high and 4 metres wide each. The epigraph's title is written in letters bigger than the rest of the text; it says that it was a precisely copy of the exemplar Augustus made engrave in the bronze in Rome. On the outside-wall of the cella, visible to the public, the Greek translation of the Augustan prise enfolds: the epigraphical surface, divided into 19 columns, is 1, 25 metres high and 20 metres wide. Today's state of the whole epigraphic surface is deeply damaged: there are huge holes corresponding to the bronze cramps taken away during the centuries; the stone is entirely blackened by pollution and became crumbly because of the violent thermic ranges and acid rains. Soon, Greek writing will not be readable anymore.

 

Monumentum Antiochenum.

In 1914 W. M. Ramsay found in a place not far from today's Yalvaç, epigraphic fragments identified as remains of the monumental Latin copy of the Res gestae Divi Augusti. According to some hypothetical theories, the text was engraved on the impressive propileus which admitted to the so-called platea tiberiana. Since then, other fragments of the text have been found, but some of them have not been made known to the public yet. A part of the fragments, after a long stay in the deposit of Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilisation, is now visible on the outside-wall of the Yalvaç Museum (Ramsay W.M., Colonia Caesarea (Pisidian Antioch) in the Augustan Age, JRS, 1916, n° 6, p. 108-129; Hänlein-Schäfer H., Veneratio Augusti. Eine Studie zu den Tempeln des ersten römishen Kaisers, Roma, 1985, p. 191, sq.).

Monumantum Apolloniense.

Ancient Apollonia's ruins gave precious remains of the Greek copy of our Roman model back. They probably come from a huge base which should carry a statuary group of the Divine Augustus surrounded by Livia, Drusus, Tiberius and Germanicus (Buckler W.H., Calder W.M., Guthrie W.K.C., Monuments and Documents from Eastern Asia and Western Galatia, MAMA, 1933, n° 4, p. 49-56). The inscription, according to hypothetical calculations, enfolds on seven writing columns. The engraved blocks, partially reused to put modern buildings up, allow to fill important lacunae in the Greek version of the Ancyranum.

 

The text.

The inscription's content, divided for greater convenience into brief chapters and paragraphs by modern editors, remembers, along with the real Res gestae (25-33), Augustus' numerous acts of evergetism in favour of the Romans, the impensae, namely donations of goods, both money and estates, and the monumental settlement of Rome (15-24). In the first chapters, the Prince draws up a list of the honores he was conferred upon at different title, specifying the accepted and the refused ones. The last two (34 and 35) bear witness of the key-moments in Augustus' career, concentrated in the expression of the auctoritas, focus of his power. In fact he proudly affirms: "auctoritate omnibus, potestatis autem nihilo amplius quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistatu conlegae fuerunt" (34, 3). The willing to determine exactly when the Res gestae were written is hard and in a certain way vain to accomplish. In many places in the text Augustus gives precise chronological indications: once he affirms that he wrote his memories under his 13rd consulate (4, 4); then he concludes "cum scripsi haec agebam septuagesimum sextum" (35, 2). The first date brings us to 2 b. C.; the second between 13 and 14 A. D. Truly speaking, the structure and complexity of the huge Augustan document let us interpret it as a product of long and mature intellectual elaboration. It is almost certain that the Prince wrote again and again his political will, an inimitable example of self-praise and legitimacy of an extraordinary power. In this way, we could seemingly conclude that the Res gestae Divi Augusti, after slow and pondered gestation, sprang in their ultimate form when the author was about to die.

Selected Bibliography

Main critical editions:

Mommsen Th., Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Berlin, 1865, 1883; Gagé J., Res gestae divi Augusti ex monumentis Ancyrano et Antiocheno latinis. Ancyrano et Apolloniensi Graecis, Paris, 1935; Barini C., Res Gestae Divi Augusti ex Monumentis Ancyrano, Antiocheno, Apolloniensi, Roma, 1937; Volkmann H., Res gestae Divi Augusti. Das Monumentum Ancyranum, Leipzig, 1942.

Recent studies:

Kornemann E., s.v. Monumentum Ancyranum, R.E., 1933, 16, 1, coll. 211-231; Ramage E.S., Historia, 1987, Heft 54, The Nature and Purpose of Augustus' "Res Gestae"; Zanker P., Augustus und die Macht der Bilder, München, 1987; AA. VV., Res Publica e Princeps, Atti del Convegno internazionale di diritto romano, Copanello 25-27 maggio 1994; Eck W., Augustus und seine Zeit, München, 1998; Guizzi F., Augusto e la politica della memoria, Roma, 1999.

Paula Botteri