Successors to Augustus
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· The Julio-Claudian Dynasty ·
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Much already exists, in print and on the Internet, about ancient Rome ; most of it deals with the conflicts fought and lands conquered by her leaders. A rehearsal of that material here is unnecessary ; a summary of the family tree of the dynasty founded by Augustus might, however, interest the reader and add to the colour of to-day’s* broadcast in the entertaining series A History of the World in 100 Objects on B.B.C. Radio-4, presented by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum. * Friday, 21st. May ~ · ~
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The lines of descent themselves within this family tree are reasonably simple, despite quite a lot of marriage amongst cousins ; what complicates it are the manifold adoptions, as one emperor after another attempts to secure his succession — either by a blood relative or by a perhaps unrelated individual considered suitable. The dynasty — known as the Julio-Claudian — really begins in the time of C. Julius Caesar. The ‘C.’ stands for his praenomen (plural praenomina) or forename, Gaius ; for a detailed description of Roman naming conventions see this excellent Wikipedia article ; and a list of the most common praenomina and their conventional abbreviations. (Links to Wikipedia articles have been given throughout : not only are they often well presented ; they themselves give extensive references for those wanting to pursue the subject.) Follow the story through the links on our simplified form of the Julio-Claudian family tree.
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Augustus is coming
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Although Rome’s empire grew throughout the late republic — from the middle of the third century to the death of Julius Caesar in 44 b.c. — the first emperor, appointed by the Senate, was Augustus.
On Friday, 21st. May, Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor — in his interesting and entertaining series A History of the World in 100 Objects (B.B.C. Radio-4, 0945, 1945 and the following morning at 0030) — will introduce Augustus in the form of a larger-than-life bronze head with inlaid eyes of glass, calcite and metal rings, staring in to the distance. ~ · ~
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The head — originally part of a statue in Egypt, which Augustus had annexed following the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII — had been severed and taken home by an invading Kushite army from Meroë (in to-day’s Sudan), there to be buried beneath the threshold of a temple. Any-one crossing the threshold would have deliberately trodden on the head of Augustus in the process, demonstrating contempt for him and the Roman Empire : ironically the Kushites ensured the head’s survival in to our age.
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With contributions from Dr. Susan Walker, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Ashmolean, and Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Neil will tell how Augustus significantly enlarged the Empire, his image projecting everywhere the power of Rome. Read more about Augustus at the B.B.C.’s History of the World site. The wives of the emperors were no less colourful : a recently published account of the life of Livia, third – and enduring – wife of Augustus, is reviewed in this week’s edition of The Spectator. ΠΞ |
Ancient Greece : Index
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Lessons of the PastBoris Johnson has spoken of the contribution a knowledge of the classics can make to understanding our own times. In the modern political world — as in the ancient — the same theme is played out again and again … with the same characters : political leaders that let power go to their heads and then pay the price (although that price is oft paid in larger measure by those they lead). It’s not all bad news, however, for Greek history is also full of inspirational stories. We have posted a series of articles on the ancient world — from a look at Athens in the Archaic Age (seventh and sixth centuries b.c.) to our own Age of Pericles — and hope they will prove interesting. |
If you’ve enjoyed an article — or even if not — please leave a comment on the relevant page. Visit Boris Johnson’s web-site for other interesting articles and discussions. |
Ancient Greece : Pericles (Part III)
| Boris Johnson has often spoken of his love of Greek history and of Pericles in particular. When asked who his historical pin-up was and why, he replied: “Pericles. Look at his Funeral Speech: democracy; freedom — champion stuff.” — Read the full interview. A few years ago he went to the British Museum and bought a bust of Pericles.  |
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Surely the greatest bequest of Pericles to our age was his incorruptibility |
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| In 431 b.c., Pericles was seeing the justification of his building programme in its sheer magnificence. As thirty years before, however, the Peloponnese was tense. |
The Great Peloponnesian War (431-404)
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During the period between the wars Athens continued her expansion, particularly in the Greek West, which much alarmed Spartan important ally Corinth, metropolis (mother city) of the dominant polis in Sicily, Syracuse (which would feature later in the naval fortunes of Athens). There ensued a chain of events, apparently disconnected, that — rather as those leading to the First World War — would precipitate conflict and end, after only fifteen, the thirty-year peace agreed in 446. Corinth, in response to the Athenian expansion to the West, especially in connexion with a dispute over Corcyra (modern Corfu), threatened to leave the Peloponnesian League, unless Sparta went to war with Athens. A break-up of the League would imperil Sparta’s hold on the Peloponnese for she relied heavily upon the maintenance of a string of oligarchic governments that denied their populations any political power. Athens, meanwhile, hoping to destabilize Megara’s oligarchy — a democratic Megara might become an ally and, by virtue of her location on the Isthmus of Corinth, be able to block any assault upon Attica from Thessaly or the Peloponnese — imposed economic sanctions upon her, banning her merchants and vessels from Athens and the ports of the allied and dependent states. This was the final straw : in 431 the conflict began. |
Ancient Greece : Pericles (Part II)
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Boris Johnson has often spoken of his love of Greek history and of Pericles in particular. When asked who his historical pin-up was and why, he replied: “Pericles. Look at his Funeral Speech: democracy; freedom — champion stuff.” Read the full interview. A few years ago he went to the British Museum and bought a bust of Pericles. |
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The First Peloponnesian War : political developments
| In 461 B.C., as Pericles became the most prominent Athenian politician, the diplomatic situation in Greece was deteriorating rapidly, owing in no small part to the ever expanding imperial ambition of Athens overseas ; within a year the occasional skirmish had become a war with Sparta. |
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It should not be imagined that Pericles ran a government and could issue decrees, as does a British prime minister. One of ten elected generals, he influenced political life in Athens with persuasive oratory ; in theory the Assembly held the power (‘would like to be sovereign’ — Aristotle), so, where this article says that Pericles did something, it should be taken that he persuaded the Assembly to order him to do it. Despite the war, political development continued a-pace. Many democratic reforms were instituted : Ephialtes had started the system of payment for members of the boule (Council), responsible for preparing the business on which the ecclesia (Assembly) would vote ; Pericles introduced pay for jurymen, which meant that eligible citizens could sit in judgment in the dicasteria (court) without loss of income. He also extended the classes of citizen eligible to archonship, reducing and then abolishing the property qualification. |
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In 454 Pericles moved the treasury of tribute of the Athenian alliance (the Delian League), which, since the formation of the league at the end of the Persian wars in 478, had been held at the temple of Apollo on Delos, to Athens.In 451 he promoted a law that restricted Athenian citizenship to those both of whose parents themselves were citizens, a law much more restrictive than a similar one introduced by Solon a century-and-a-half earlier. (To-day we hear much of ‘unintended consequences’ of legislation ; this was a law whose unintended consequences would eventually prove fatal to Athens. Whereas, many years later, Rome would confer citizenship on all that completed service in her legions, securing the loyalty of volunteers from amongst the conquered, Athens, with her restrictive law of citizenship, would not be able to rely on this automatic growth of internal military support.)
The citizenship law did, however, help to ensure that, as the most eligible young men of Athens colonized the far reaches of empire, Athenian girls would not be left behind unwed : something that itself became more important just by virtue of this law ! In 449 the settlement of the perpetual conflict with Persia, under which the Ionian Greek settlements in Asia Minor were freed from Persian suzerainty and known as the Peace of Callias (although his involvement is disputed), motivated the Athenians — at the behest of Pericles — to rebuild the temples on their acropolis, left in ruins since 479. In 446 Sparta and Athens hopefully concluded a Thirty-Year Peace Treaty ; the peace would last just half that time. |
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The Building Programme of Pericles
| As visible inheritance of Pericles we have the relics of his building programme.Following the destruction by the Persians of the temples atop the acropolis the Athenians had resolved to leave the ruins as a memorial ; the conclusion of the peace of Callias (secured largely by Cimon, incidentally) was Pericles’s cue to propose the rebuilding of the temples, the centrepiece of which would be a magnificent temple to the virgin (parthenos) Athena, the Parthenon.
Athens received tribute from around her empire (the Delian League), funds supposedly for the defence of the realm ; however she appropriated a goodly portion of them (the cost of the Parthenon alone would be expressed in to-day’s money in billions) to the new building programme. The sheer extravagance of the project impelled Athens to expand her empire and to demand ever more in tribute, a fact that cannot be overlooked in assessing the causes of the Great Peloponnesian War (below). |
| Most of the Parthenon’s construction involved Pentelic marble, the work starting in 447 and taking fifteen years ; the famous frieze — the greater part of which constitutes the Elgin marbles on display now in the British Museum — took another four years. That and the chryselephantine statue of Athena were the work of the sculptor Pheidias, a friend of Pericles. |  |
(Without entering in to the long running debate of where the marbles ought to be, we ought to mention that Lord Elgin himself bought them from the Ottoman governor of Athens — at such a cost that he fell in to penury — and, whether it were part of his intention or not, his doing so ensured their preservation to the present day.) |
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During the seventeenth-century conflict with Venice, the occupying Ottoman forces in Athens took refuge on the acropolis, using the Parthenon to house both their ammunition and their women and children. A mortar bomb launched by the besieging Venetians ignited the ammunition ; most of the temple itself and of the northern periptery (the colonnade) — which had withstood two millennia of intermittent earthquakes — was destroyed. (In the photograph above the northern periptery has been largely restored.) |
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| The building programme extended to much else within metropolitan Attica, including completion of the Long Walls and fortification of the Piraeus and Phalerum ; even the temple of Poseidon at Sounium. |
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Read the continuing story of Pericles in Part III.
Ancient Greece : Pericles (Part I)
Boris Johnson has often spoken of his love of Greek history and of Pericles in particular.
When asked who his historical pin-up was and why, he replied: “Pericles. Look at his Funeral Speech: democracy; freedom — champion stuff.” See here for the full interview.
A few years ago he went to the British Museum and bought a bust of Pericles and here is his story.
The Age of Pericles
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The words `fifth-century Athens’ conjure up many things : fine art ; the birth of the western world’s theatre ; war (rarely was there not conflict in the ancient world, particularly in Greece) ; literature. In the field of politics, however, Pericles is the name that comes to mind : he dominated political life for three decades and his influence continued to be felt for a quarter-century after his death ; his legacy to politics survives to this day. He is the third of our contenders for the title `Father of Democracy’.
Pericles — whose name may be loosely translated as ‘all glorious’ — was born around 495 in the Attic deme of Cholargos (about 4 miles NW of the Athenian acropolis), the son of gentle folk : Xanthippus (who had distinguished himself at Mycale, one of the battles that in 479 brought Persian domination of the eastern Mediterranean to and end) and Agariste of the ever controversial Alcmaeonid line. * * * |
Sparta and the helot uprising |
| Even a brief description of the life of Pericles cannot begin without reference to his political rival Cimon — aristocratic son of the victor at Marathon, Miltiades — whose successful military ventures in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and across the northern Aegean between 478 and 463 B.C. laid the foundations of the Athenian naval empire that would later help to fund the democratic reforms introduced by Ephialtes and Pericles, not to mention the latter’s building programme. |
| The great rival of Athens was the polis (city-state) of Sparta, which led the Peloponnese League ; Sparta — whose political system, in contrast to the new democracy in Athens, was an oligarchy — had a particular problem with the major part of her population, the helots. (Helots were akin mediaeval serfs.)Unlike the slaves of Athens (and later of Rome), who had been brought from all parts of the world and had no common language, Sparta’s helots were largely from the conquered neighbouring land of Messenia : they were Greeks, with much — including language — in common ; there was ever present the threat of rebellion. |  |
| Sparta’s peculiar form of government — which puzzled many even in ancient times — set her apart from most of Greece, including many of the poleis within the League : the adoption by many cities, including Athens, of forms of democracy and even tyranny left conflict simmering just below the surface.In around 464, Sparta’s helots, encouraged by the chaos resulting from a severe earthquake, rebelled and within months she called upon her allies for assistance. Cimon, prominent in Athenian politics but sympathetic to the Spartan cause, led an Athenian hoplite force to her aid. The Athenian soldiers, however, cannot have failed to remark that the rebel helots were fellow Greeks under oppression : the Spartans, realizing that here was a potential ally of their own rebels, sent Cimon back to Athens.The Athenians responded to this Spartan insult by forming alliances with Sparta’s enemies and allies alike. Athens and Corinth had hitherto had in common animosity toward Megara, which lay between them ; Athens’ forming an alliance with Megara now propelled Corinth in to the Spartan camp. By 460 the situation had turned to war. |
- Click on map to enlarge
