Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [163]
At last he was allowed the distinction of celebrating a full triumph. However, the land between the Rhine and the Elbe remained contested territory. Rome could march about, win battles, and build forts, but it failed to extinguish resistance. Its armies continued to winter on the western bank of the Rhine.
The most notable and far-reaching development at this time was a process rather than a single happening: the boys were growing up. Their adoptive father devoted time and energy to their education. He gave them reading, swimming, and other simple lessons, and behaved as if he were their professional tutor. Whenever they dined in his company, he had them sit at his feet, and when they accompanied him on his travels they rode either in front of his carriage or on each side of it.
During their childhood, Augustus took care to keep Gaius and Lucius in the public eye, and they became darlings of the people. This was politically important, for Augustus could recall that when he entered public life in his late teens, he inherited Julius Caesar’s popular support and from it drew much-needed auctoritas. The same protection would be invaluable if he, Augustus, were to die before the boys were old enough to have established themselves in power.
One result of this policy was that Gaius and Lucius began to behave badly—something the princeps had hoped to prevent. They showed little inclination to model themselves on Augustus. It is easy to imagine that his omnipresence in their lives became stifling and unbearable. A loving father is not necessarily a good teacher of his own children. Dio reports:
They not only lived in an excessively luxurious style, but also offended against decorum; for example, Lucius on one occasion entered the theatre unattended. Virtually the whole population of Rome joined in flattering the two…and in consequence the boys were becoming more and more spoiled.
The Roman tradition was to keep the young on a tight leash, so, on the face of it, it is hardly credible that the princeps was unable to discipline two small boys, if he really wanted to. He may have feigned irritation to allow Gaius and Lucius to acquire public identities independent of his own in the popular mind.
Unfortunately, the people went one step too far. At the elections for 5 B.C., Augustus stood for consul so that he could preside over the fifteen-year-old Gaius’ coming-of-age ceremony. He was of course voted in without trouble, but the people unexpectedly elected Gaius as his colleague in office. The princeps never nominated the boys for offices of state without adding the qualification “provided they deserve this honor.” On this occasion, Gaius was obviously too young to be deserving, but while vetoing the election Augustus conceded that he could hold the consulship in A.D. 1, when he would be twenty. For now, he awarded Gaius a priesthood, and allowed him to attend Senate meetings and sit in the seats reserved for senators at public spectacles and banquets. A year later he appointed Gaius princeps iuventutis (literally “leader of youth”), or honorary president of the equites.
The publicity surrounding the boys unsettled Tiberius. He had come to detest Julia and his labors were only too clearly designed to benefit a couple of inexperienced and annoying teenagers.
Augustus chose this moment at last to promote him to Agrippa’s position as collega imperii by awarding him tribunician status and imperium maius. Perhaps he recognized and wished to appease his stepson’s discontents, perhaps he wanted to deliver a warning to the unruly Gaius and Lucius that they were not, after all, indispensable. More probably, being a supreme realist, the princeps saw it was time to recognize