Roman Period Study: The Julio-Claudian Emperors, 31 BC-AD 68

How valuable is the Res Gestae Divi Augusti for understanding the nature of the principate?

1. 01Establish what it is

   A record of achievements composed by Augustus himself and inscribed publicly after his death in AD 14; the fullest surviving copy comes from a temple at Ankara. It is therefore a contemporary, official, first-person statement.

2. 02Identify the purpose

   It was written to present the reign as the reader should remember it: offices declined rather than seized, money spent on the people and the state, temples restored, peace achieved, honours voted by others. The organising principle is legitimacy through service and consent.

3. 03Note the silences

   The proscriptions of the triumviral period are passed over in the language of avenging his father's murderers; Antony is not named; the loss of Varus' legions is absent. What is omitted is as informative as what is included.

4. 04State what it establishes

   It is unrivalled evidence for the regime's own theory of itself - the vocabulary of auctoritas, restoration and consent - and for the specific benefactions and building it wished remembered. Many of its factual claims about buildings and payments can be checked against physical remains.

5. 05Judge

   Conclude that the Res Gestae is of the highest value as evidence of imperial self-presentation and of verifiable public acts, and of no value as an impartial narrative - which is exactly why it must be read alongside Tacitus rather than instead of him.

Result: An evaluation that locates the document's value in its official character rather than treating its partiality as a defect.

What does the Altar of Peace tell a historian about the Augustan regime?

1. 01Describe the object

   A marble altar enclosed by sculptured walls, voted by the Senate in 13 BC on Augustus' return from the provinces and dedicated in 9 BC, carrying processional reliefs of the imperial family, priests and magistrates, together with panels of mythological and allegorical subjects.

2. 02Read the imagery

   The procession presents the ruling family as participants in traditional public religion rather than as a court; the presence of children in the procession connects the regime to the future and to the marriage legislation; the fertility and peace imagery associates Augustus' rule with the prosperity of Italy.

3. 03Note the framing

   The altar was voted by the Senate, which allowed the honour to be presented as offered rather than taken - the same device the Res Gestae uses throughout. Form and message are consistent.

4. 04State its evidential value

   It is contemporary, official and physically preserved, so it documents precisely what the regime chose to display at a specific date. It cannot show how Romans received the message, and it should not be treated as evidence that peace and piety prevailed.

5. 05Integrate

   Set it beside the Res Gestae, which claims the same virtues in words, and beside Tacitus, who a century later reads the whole programme as the dressing of autocracy - three kinds of evidence about one regime, each answering a different question.

Result: A reading that treats the monument as datable, official evidence of ideology and integrates it with the textual sources rather than illustrating them.

Compare the value of Tacitus and Velleius Paterculus as sources for the reign of Tiberius.

1. 01Place each writer

   Velleius Paterculus wrote a short history published in Tiberius' reign, having served under him; Tacitus wrote the Annals roughly a century after the accession, as a senator of consular rank under later emperors.

2. 02Identify the purposes

   Velleius' account is warmly favourable to Tiberius and to Sejanus, whom he praises - written while both were alive and powerful. Tacitus writes to expose how autocracy corrupted the senatorial order, and his Tiberius is a study in dissimulation.

3. 03State what each is good for

   Velleius is contemporary and shows what could be publicly said in praise of the regime, which makes him valuable evidence of official ideology and of the language of loyalty. Tacitus had access to senatorial records and to earlier histories, and his account of procedure and of the mechanics of the trials is detailed and, where testable, careful.

4. 04State the limits of each

   Velleius cannot be trusted where praise is expected, and his estimate of Sejanus was overtaken by events within a year or two. Tacitus writes with the outcome known, arranges material for effect, and reports rumour explicitly as rumour but in a way that shapes the reader's judgement.

5. 05Judge

   Conclude that neither is dispensable: Velleius supplies the contemporary official voice that Tacitus' hostility would otherwise leave invisible, while Tacitus supplies the detailed political narrative - and that the sharpest evidence comes from setting the two against each other.

Result: A comparative judgement that uses each source's partiality as evidence and shows why using both is stronger than choosing between them.

How does the bronze tablet from Lyon, recording Claudius' speech on admitting Gallic notables to the Senate, affect our assessment of him?

1. 01Establish the document

   The tablet preserves a version of a speech Claudius delivered to the Senate; Tacitus also gives a version of the same speech in the Annals. It is a rare case in which a literary account of an emperor's words can be checked against a contemporary inscribed record.

2. 02Note what the tablet shows

   The inscribed speech is discursive and heavily historical, arguing from precedents in Rome's own past that the city had always absorbed outsiders, and dealing directly with objections. It shows an emperor arguing a policy at length before the Senate, on his own historical learning.

3. 03Compare the literary version

   Tacitus gives a tighter, more rhetorically effective speech making the same essential argument. The comparison is instructive about ancient historiographical practice: Tacitus has reworked a real speech into the form his genre required, preserving the substance while improving the delivery.

4. 04Draw the conclusion about Claudius

   The tablet is direct evidence of a ruler engaged in policy argument and antiquarian scholarship - which is difficult to reconcile with the tradition of a foolish emperor manipulated by others, and which supports taking the administrative record of the reign seriously.

5. 05Draw the conclusion about method

   It also supplies a general lesson: where a literary source can be checked against a document, the check tends to confirm the substance of speeches while showing that their form is the historian's. That should calibrate how you treat speeches elsewhere in Tacitus.

Result: An integration of documentary and literary evidence that revises a portrait and, in passing, tests the historian's method.

Assess the value of Suetonius as a source for the reign of Nero.

1. 01Place the author

   Suetonius was an equestrian who held posts in the imperial administration under Trajan and Hadrian, writing biographies of the Caesars roughly half a century after Nero's death. He had access to imperial and public records, and his Lives quote documents unusually often.

2. 02Identify the genre's rules

   He organises each Life by rubric rather than chronology - ancestry, early career, public acts, then private conduct and vices - so material is grouped thematically. This produces an accumulation of anecdote under 'vices' that reads as a catalogue rather than a narrative of development.

3. 03State what he is good for

   He preserves administrative detail, documents, and specifics about buildings, games and measures that Tacitus omits; his access to archives gives some material an authority independent of the hostile tradition.

4. 04State the limits

   The rubric structure strips context and chronology from damning material, so it cannot show whether a reported act was typical or isolated. Anecdotes about private conduct are unverifiable, and the moral organisation of the Life invites the reader to see a character rather than a reign.

5. 05Judge

   Conclude that Suetonius is of solid value for administrative measures and for documents, and of low value for the interpretation of character or the sequence of political change - and that using him well means extracting the specific and resisting the shape.

Result: An evaluation that separates a source's documentary strengths from the distortions its genre imposes.

Assess how far the principate depended on the support of the army between 31 BC and AD 68.

1. 01Set the terms

   Distinguish two claims: that military force underpinned the emperor's position in principle, and that armies actively determined who ruled in practice. The evidence for each is different.

2. 02Establish the structural point

   The Augustan settlement gave the princeps the provinces where the legions were stationed; the military treasury tied soldiers' retirement to the state under the emperor's patronage; the praetorian guard was stationed in Italy. The system was built on control of armed force from the start.

3. 03Test with the accessions

   Tiberius succeeded with powers already held, and the army was not the deciding factor; in AD 41 the praetorians made Claudius when the Senate was debating alternatives; in AD 68 provincial armies proclaimed Galba and the guard abandoned Nero. The trend across the century is towards active military decision.

4. 04Weigh the other supports

   Yet the army alone did not sustain a reign: Nero commanded the same armies for years and fell when several constituencies had been lost; senatorial cooperation was needed to govern; the plebs of Rome required corn and games; the provinces required stable administration.

5. 05Judge with the evidence

   Conclude that military control was the necessary foundation throughout and became the decisive mechanism of succession by AD 68 - a conclusion supported by the Res Gestae's own account of provincial command, by the accession narratives, and by Tacitus' explicit statement that the events of 68 revealed an emperor could be made away from Rome.

Result: A judgement that distinguishes structural dependence from active kingmaking, tracks change across the century, and cites both documentary and narrative evidence.