4.3 Augustus’ autobiography
In the previous section you saw how Augustus used special portrait types to portray himself in different roles to appeal to as many people as possible. He seems to have been very keen to have full control of how people saw him. In fact, he was so keen to control his public image that he even wrote his own biography! The latter takes the form of a long list of achievements that were inscribed into stone or bronze tablets and set up in different places across the empire, including outside his tomb (the Mausoleum of Augustus) in Rome. This text is called the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (the ‘Great Deeds of the Divine Augustus’) or Res Gestae for short, and it records for posterity what he considered to be his most important achievements. The version we have today was found in Ankara in Türkiye and a section of it is shown in Figure 23.
The Res Gestae is really valuable to us, because it means we do not just have the images of Augustus to show us how he wanted to be seen, but also his own words on what he considered to be important. In fact, there is a good deal of consistency across Augustus’ autobiography, his titles, and his visual propaganda.
Activity 8
Read the passages below from the Res Gestae carefully, thinking about what kind of image of himself Augustus is trying to convey in each passage. (Maps 3 and 4 will help you if you are keen to locate the places mentioned in the texts, but don’t worry if you don’t understand all the words in the passages: just try to get the gist of what Augustus is saying.) Then, fill in the final column of the table below by putting in which passage(s) you think best match the image and honorific title you’ve already put in. (NB: The same passage may apply to several of the images, and one image may match up to several passages!) The numbers given for the passages are the section numbers of the original document. Please use these numbers when you are filling in the table. Again, the first one has been done for you. You may come up with slightly different answers, depending on how you interpret the intended message in each passage.
| Image | Corresponding title | Corresponding passages of the Res Gestae |
| Louvre bust (Figure 18) | Perhaps both imperator (because military man) or pater patriae (because protecting citizens) | 26, 34 |
| Prima Porta statue (Figure 19) | Imperator (‘military commander’ or ‘commander in chief’) | |
| Via Labicana statue (Figure 20) | Augustus (‘sacred, solemn, dignified’) | |
| Ara Pacis frieze (Figure 21) | Pater patriae (‘father of the fatherland’) | |
| Julius Caesar coin (Figure 22) | Divi filius (‘son of a god’) |
Res Gestae 2: ‘I drove the men who slaughtered my father into exile with a legal order, punishing their crime, and afterwards, when they waged war on the state, I conquered them in two battles.’
Res Gestae 6: ‘[W]hen the Senate and the Roman people unanimously agreed that I should be elected overseer of laws and morals, without a colleague and with the fullest power, I refused to accept any power offered me which was contrary to the traditions of our ancestors.’
Res Gestae7: ‘I have been pontifex maximus, augur, a member of the fifteen commissioners for performing sacred rites, one of the seven for sacred feasts, an arval brother, a sodalis Titius, a fetial priest’ (all of these are specific Roman priesthoods).
Res Gestae8: ‘By the passage of new laws I restored many traditions of our ancestors which were then falling into disuse, and I myself set precedents in many things for posterity to imitate.’
Res Gestae15: ‘To the Roman plebs I paid out three hundred sesterces per man in accordance with the will of my father, and in my own name … I gave four hundred sesterces apiece from the spoils of war.’
Res Gestae17: ‘Four times I aided the public treasury with my own money, paying out in this manner to those in charge of the treasury one hundred and fifty million sesterces.’
Res Gestae20a: ‘The Capitolium and the theatre of Pompey, both works involving great expense, I rebuilt without any inscription of my own name.”
Res Gestae20b: ‘I rebuilt in the city eighty-two temples of the gods, omitting none which at that time stood in need of repair.’
Res Gestae26: ‘I extended the boundaries of all the provinces which were bordered by races not yet subject to our empire. The provinces of the Gauls, the Spains, and Germany… I reduced to a state of peace. The Alps, from the region which lies nearest to the Adriatic as far as the Tuscan Sea, I brought to a state of peace without waging on any tribe an unjust war.’
Res Gestae34: ‘[W]hen I had extinguished the flames of civil war, after receiving by universal consent the absolute control of affairs, I transferred the republic from my own control to the will of the senate and the Roman people. For this service on my part I was given the title of Augustus by decree of the senate, and … a civic crown [corona civica] was fixed above my door … . After that time I took precedence of all in rank, but of power I possessed no more than those who were my colleagues in any magistracy.’
Res Gestae35: ‘[T]he senate and the equestrian order and the entire Roman people gave me the title of Father of my Country (Pater Patriae), and decreed that this title should be inscribed upon the vestibule of my house … .’
Comment
This is what an example table looks like. Don’t worry if yours is a bit different: the main thing is that you have thought about the different types of person Augustus wanted to be presented as to the Roman people, and how he went about doing this.
| Image | Corresponding title | Corresponding passages of the Res Gestae |
| Louvre bust | Perhaps both imperator (because military man) or pater patriae (because protecting citizens) | 26, 34 |
| Prima Porta statue | Imperator | 2, 26 |
| Via Labicana statue | Augustus | 6, 7, 8, 20b, 34 |
| Ara Pacis frieze | Pater patriae | 6, 8, 15, 17, 20a, 35 |
| Julius Caesar coin | Divi filius | 2, 15 |