Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [125]
XVII
WHOM THE GODS LOVE
27–23 B.C.
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In the meantime, the huge provincia called for his attention. Augustus’ first stop was Gaul, where rumor had it that he intended to complete the task Julius Caesar had left unfinished in 54 B.C.—an invasion of the remote island of Britannia, perched on the edge of the known world. But Augustus was too busy to waste his time on such a diversion.
During the civil wars, Gaul had fallen into turmoil; Augustus’ presence reasserted Roman authority. After establishing order and conducting a census, he moved on to Spain, where a thornier problem awaited. The native tribes in the northern of the two Spanish provinces, especially the Astures (whence the modern Asturias) and the Cantabri (in the area of today’s Santander and Bilbao), had never been fully subdued. Augustus led a campaign against them, but this time he was without Agrippa to help him. The tribes used guerrilla tactics, hiding in their mountain fastnesses and cleverly avoiding the full-scale battle for which the legion was designed and for which they themselves were poorly adapted. Whenever the Romans marched in a given direction, they found themselves facing enemy fighters on high ground in front of them. In valleys and woods they stumbled into ambushes.
The princeps was superstitious, and devoutly believed in premonitory signs. He always carried a piece of sealskin as an amulet against thunder and lightning, which he feared. During the Spanish campaign, the amulet worked its magic for him. On a night march during a thunderstorm, a flash of lightning scorched his litter and killed a slave who was walking ahead with a torch. In thanks for this narrow escape, he built the Temple of Jupiter Tonans (the Thunderer) on the edge of the Capitol overlooking the Forum. It was known for its magnificence and contained famous works of art. Augustus often visited it.
As so often when he faced a crisis (particularly a military one), Augustus fell ill—according to Dio, “from the fatigue and anxiety caused by these conditions.” He took the waters in the Pyrenees and convalesced in Tarraco (today’s Tarragona). His deputy swiftly brought the fighting to a successful conclusion, which was attributed (of course) to the genius of the princeps. The illness seems to have lasted at least for a year, although our sources tell us nothing of its nature. To pass the time Augustus wrote an autobiography, which he dedicated to Agrippa and Maecenas. Sadly, the book has not survived.
During the late Republic, the wives of senior Roman officials did not often travel abroad with their husbands. Augustus himself ruled that the legates he appointed to the provinces at his disposal should not spend time with their wives or, if they insisted on doing so, then only outside the campaigning season (generally March to October).
However, we have it on good authority that Livia accompanied her husband on his travels to west and east. She was probably with him in Gaul and Spain, although she will have stayed safely in the rear when Augustus was with the army, and tended him when he was ill.
Livia was an able businesswoman and over the years accumulated numerous properties and estates across the empire. Her tours around the Mediterranean as Rome’s first lady allowed her to inspect her acquisitions and check that they were being well managed. In Gaul she owned land with a copper mine. Her property portfolio also included palm groves in Judea and estates in Egypt, including papyrus marshes, arable farms, vineyards, commercial vegetable gardens, granaries, and olive and wine presses.
It may have been Augustus’ poor health that prompted him in 25 B.C. to take the first concrete step to arranging a dynastic succession: he married off his daughter and only child, Julia (by his second wife,