Monumentum Ancyranum: The Deeds of AugustusAugustus, Emperor of Rome
History
Monumentum Ancyranum: The Deeds of Augustus
Augustus, Emperor of Rome
Augustus, Emperor of Rome, 63 B.C.-14 A.D.; Rome -- History -- Augustus, 30 B.C.-14 A.D. -- Sources
[54] These games were first held in 726, and every fourth year
thereafter. The expression “every fifth year” counts the year of the
games as the fifth of the old series and also the first of the new.
The consuls, or rather the consul Agrippa, Augustus not holding games
in his own honor, celebrated the games of 726, the pontifices those of
730, the augurs those of 734, the quindecemvirs those of 738, and the
septemvirs those of 742. Cf. c. 7, N. 6. These games are mentioned by
Dio, LIII, 1, 2; LIV, 19; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ VII, 48, 158; Suet.
_Aug._ 44. They came to a close with the life of Augustus. We do
not hear of them in connection with any subsequent emperor. Vows for
his good health had a special fitness, for according to Suetonius,
_Aug._ LXXXI, he was almost an invalid. “During his whole course
of life he suffered at times dangerous fits of sickness. He was subject
to fits of sickness at stated times every year, for about his birthday
he was commonly indisposed. In the beginning of spring he was attacked
with an inflammation of the midriff; and when the wind was southerly,
with a cold in his head. By all these complaints his constitution was
so shattered that he could not readily bear heat or cold.”
[55] Cf. Suet. _Aug._ 59 and 98; Hor. _Carm._ IV, 5, 33; Dio,
LI, 19.
[56] Dio writes of the year 725, LI, 20: “When letters were brought
about Parthian affairs it was decreed that he should be named in the
hymns exactly as were the gods.” Tiridates, a Parthian pretender,
sought the aid of Augustus. Cf. Chap. 32, and Dio, LI, 18. Augustus
balanced Tiridates against Phraates, the legitimate monarch, who sent
an embassy, and gave his son to Rome as a hostage.
[57] In 718, when Lepidus had been overthrown, the tribunitial
power had been given to Octavian, as formerly to Julius, for life.
Inviolability of person was one of the privileges of the tribunate.
Cf. Oros. VI, 18, 34; Dio, XLIX, 15; LI, 18; LIII, 32. These two later
statements relating to the years 724 and 731, Mommsen thinks have to
do, the former with the extension of the tribunitial power beyond the
city, and the latter to the making it annual, as well as perpetual, so
that the years of the principate could be reckoned by it. Cf. Chap.
4, note 31. Cf. also App. _B. C._ V, 132, and for a discussion of
the tribunitial power as an expression of the principate, cf. Mommsen,
_Röm. St._ II, 833, ff.
Wölfflin, cf. textual note, suggests, to fill the gap confessedly left
by Mommsen’s emendation, a reading which would be translated “that my
person should be sacrosanct.”
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