You are not currently logged in. Please create an account or log in to view the full course.
What's in a Name?
- About
- Transcript
- Cite
Imperial Image
In this course, Dr Hannah Cornwell (University of Birmingham) explores Augustus' self-presentation and management of public opinion during his reign as Emperor. In the first module, we explore the evolution of Augustus' names, from his birth name of Gaius Octavius Thurinus to the title of Augustus itself, awarded to him by the Senate in 27 BC. In the second module, we think about the ways in which Augustus presented himself as a great military leader, before turning in the third module to his image from a the point of view of Roman religion. In the fourth module, we think about how Augustus promoted the view of a new Golden Age, focusing in particular on the revival of the Secular Games, before moving on in the fifth module to look at Augustus' self-presentation as Pater Patriae, 'Father of the State', and his reforms relating to marriage and adultery.
What's in a Name?
In this module, we think about how Augustus' names and titles evolved over the course of his life and career, from his birth name of Gaius Octavius Thurinus to the honorific title of Augustus.
Hello,
00:00:02my name is Hannah Cornwell and I'm
00:00:03a lecturer in ancient history at the University of Birmingham.
00:00:05In this series of lectures, we're
00:00:08going to look at Augustus' public image,
00:00:09his imperial image.
00:00:12And in this first lecture, we're going
00:00:13to examine that through looking at his names
00:00:15and how they evolve over the course of his reign.
00:00:18Now I think when we think about Augustus we perhaps initially
00:00:21have quite a static image of him in mind.
00:00:25If we think about his portraiture in the coinage,
00:00:28it doesn't change at all over the 44 years of his reign.
00:00:30He never ages.
00:00:34He looks exactly the same age 76 in his last year
00:00:35as he does in his mid-thirties.
00:00:38And this is quite striking if we compare it
00:00:40for example to modern British coinage
00:00:43where Queen Elizabeth actually has five different official
00:00:46portraits at different points during her reign.
00:00:49Now the reason that Augustus' portraiture is static
00:00:52is because it's presenting an image of stability.
00:00:56It's also however presenting a contrast
00:00:59to the portraiture of the Republic
00:01:02that came before it, which valued age
00:01:04and expressing authority and experience.
00:01:07If we look at Augustus' image as it emerges from the Civil Wars
00:01:10with Antony, it's not monolithic, it's not static,
00:01:13it's an evolution and almost a process of trial and error.
00:01:17And I think nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than if we
00:01:23look at how his name changes.
00:01:27So in order to do this, I want to first give
00:01:30a brief outline of Roman nomenclature, that
00:01:33is the Roman naming system.
00:01:36And for the purposes of this lecture
00:01:38we'll focus specifically on Roman citizen names.
00:01:40Now Roman historians often talk about Roman citizens having
00:01:43a tria nomina or three names.
00:01:47This is a standard format for Roman male citizens.
00:01:49So they have a praenomen, a forename,
00:01:52a nomen or gentilicium, which is the name of one's family
00:01:54or one's gens, and then a cognomen
00:01:58which is a sort of additional surname.
00:02:01Initially it was a nickname and then
00:02:03it becomes hereditary passed down between father and son.
00:02:05There are also other components of an official Roman
00:02:08name such as one of patronymic, that's
00:02:11who your father is, and in some cases also your grandfather.
00:02:14And then finally your tribal designation
00:02:17which is what Roman voting tribe you fall into.
00:02:19So when we look at Augustus' names,
00:02:23actually at birth his name was Gaius Octavius
00:02:25after his biological father, and his cognomen was Thurinus.
00:02:28And we have a passage from Suetonius, Life of Augustus
00:02:33that tells us why this was.
00:02:35"Thurinus in memory of the home of his ancestors, or because it
00:02:38was near Thurii that his father Octavius,
00:02:43shortly after the birth of his son,
00:02:46had gained his victory over runaway slaves."
00:02:48It wasn't until 44 BC when Augustus discovered
00:02:52that he had been adopted by his great uncle Gaius Julius Caesar
00:02:55in the dictator's will that he changed his name to become
00:03:00Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.
00:03:04And it's from this last part of the name Octavianus
00:03:08that historians often refer to him as Octavian
00:03:10in the early part of his career in order
00:03:13to prevent confusion between him and Julius
00:03:15Caesar, the dictator.
00:03:18However, this is perhaps a little bit misleading
00:03:20because actually in all official propaganda and coinage
00:03:22and inscriptions, he was Caesar.
00:03:26And so he's not just Julius Caesar's heir
00:03:30in terms of his estate, he actually is Caesar.
00:03:33And this is important because these people of Rome and Caesar
00:03:37soldiers and veterans know exactly who their benefactor
00:03:40is, it is Caesar, that is Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus.
00:03:44Cicero in fact writing to his friend Atticus
00:03:49in 44 BC in the month of April says
00:03:51of Octavian, "His people address him as Caesar,
00:03:55but Philippus, that's Octavian's stepfather, does not
00:03:59and so I do not either; I hold that it
00:04:04is impossible for a good citizen to do so."
00:04:06Octavian's adoption of Caesar's name
00:04:10was so problematic for Cicero because of the associations
00:04:12that it allowed him to have with the dictator which
00:04:16for Cicero was problematic in terms of what the Roman
00:04:19state should be.
00:04:22We also see shortly afterwards when
00:04:24Octavian is fighting the Battle of Perusia
00:04:27in 41 BC against Anthony's wife, Fulvia and Anthony's brother,
00:04:29Lucius that the name Caesar is not used by his opponent.
00:04:34So we have evidence of slingshot bullets thrown
00:04:39from the Antonin side against Octavian
00:04:43that actually hurl some rather very rude insults at him
00:04:46and call him Octavianus not Caesar,
00:04:51so deliberately belittling the fact
00:04:53that he has taken on Caesar's name
00:04:55by referring to his original name not the name of Caesar.
00:04:57In addition, in 42 BC he becomes Divi Filius, son of the divine,
00:05:01son of the god because Julius Caesar has become deified.
00:05:07And this adds an important religious aspect
00:05:10to Augustus' name rather than having
00:05:13a traditional patronymic which is son of Gaius,
00:05:16he is son of a god.
00:05:19And this is quite important because in his early career,
00:05:20Augustus relied quite heavily on his associations
00:05:24with Caesar particularly during his conflict
00:05:26with Mark Anthony both claimed to be sort
00:05:28of Caesar's political heirs.
00:05:31However, Caesar was also a problematic figure because
00:05:33of the dictatorship and the problematic issues
00:05:37of dictatorial power over the Roman state.
00:05:39And so now in 42, now that Caesar has become a god,
00:05:42Augustus can play on the divine associations
00:05:47and not worry about the issues of Caesar's dictatorship,
00:05:49and play with the idea of the gens Julia, the Julian family
00:05:52that he is a part of.
00:05:58And this is important because of the ancestry
00:06:00that gens Julia provides him to play with.
00:06:02The main ancestor of the gens Julia
00:06:06was the goddess Venus from whom comes Aeneas,
00:06:11who founds the city of Rome through his son Ascanius who
00:06:15takes on the name Iulus where we get the name Julius from.
00:06:19And we see sort of the importance of this Julian
00:06:23dynasty in Rome's foundation myths
00:06:26through for example Virgil's Aeneid
00:06:29where Aeneas comes to Rome to found a sort of proto Rome.
00:06:31But also in Augustus' forum that he builds,
00:06:35the Forum Augustum, an important part of that display
00:06:38are the two colonnades that run up the main sides of the forum
00:06:41space that display statues and inscriptions commemorating
00:06:45the past heroes of Rome including
00:06:49a whole section of the members of the Julian family.
00:06:52At the center of that is a statue of Aeneas carrying
00:06:55his father, Anchises on his shoulder
00:07:00with his son holding his hand.
00:07:01And that stands opposite an image
00:07:04of Romulus, the other great founder of Rome.
00:07:06Moving further on, in 38 BC Augustus makes another change
00:07:09to his name.
00:07:13He adds the name Imperator to his two tria nomina,
00:07:14to his three names.
00:07:18Now imperator was a traditional acclamation
00:07:19given to a Roman general after a victorious battle
00:07:23by his soldiers, and it was put at the end of his name
00:07:26like a sort of honorific title.
00:07:29However, what Augustus does is quite novel.
00:07:31He makes it part of his name by replacing his praenomen which
00:07:33was Gaius to Imperator.
00:07:37So it becomes the permanent part of his name,
00:07:39it's a permanent reminder of his military success.
00:07:41So from 38 BC onwards he is Imperator Caesar.
00:07:44Finally, the last change to Augustus' name
00:07:49comes in 2008 when he takes on the name Augustus.
00:07:52Now from Saetonius' account of this episode
00:07:55in his Life of the Divine Augustus,
00:07:58he tells us that the name Romulus was initially
00:08:00suggested because Romulus was the founder of Rome.
00:08:03And potentially the idea is that Augustus in 28 BC
00:08:06has restored the Roman state and thus re-founded
00:08:09Rome for a second time.
00:08:12But that name is rejected and instead the name Augustus
00:08:13is proposed.
00:08:17One, because it is unique, no one's
00:08:18had this name before, but also because of the connotations
00:08:20that it has with augury and the foundation of Rome,
00:08:23its religious connotations.
00:08:26It's also interesting to note that when his name is
00:08:28translated into Greek, Augustus is not
00:08:30transliterated into the Greek alphabet
00:08:33like so many other Roman names are.
00:08:36In fact, the name Augustus is translated into a Greek version
00:08:38of the name, which is Sebastos.
00:08:41And this tells us that the name itself carried important weight
00:08:43and value.
00:08:46The ideas of Augustus are being translated
00:08:47into Greek notions of religion.
00:08:50So by 28 BC, his full name was Imperator Caesar Divi Filius
00:08:53Augustus.
00:08:59And it's this image of a 35-year-old
00:09:00that was established and perpetuated
00:09:03throughout the Roman world.
00:09:05He later adds titles such as Pontifex Maximus, that's
00:09:07chief priest, head of Roman religion in 12
00:09:10BC and Pater Patriae, father of the fatherland in 2 BC.
00:09:12And we'll look at the importance and relevance of these titles
00:09:17in further lectures.
00:09:20So we can see how, looking at the evolution of Augustus'
00:09:22nomenclature, we can see how he adapted his imperial image
00:09:26over time and how this in turn affected ideas of Roman power
00:09:30in a broader sense.
00:09:35
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Cornwell, H. (2018, August 15). Imperial Image - What's in a Name? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/augustus-and-the-imperial-image/religion-4d55ac87-1b55-4f4a-ae1e-96c74bd36cdf
MLA style
Cornwell, H. "Imperial Image – What's in a Name?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Aug 2018, https://massolit.io/courses/augustus-and-the-imperial-image/religion-4d55ac87-1b55-4f4a-ae1e-96c74bd36cdf