CLAS 1210 · Augustus Simulacrum, Velleius, and the Transition to Principate

Led by Augustus Simulacrum, with Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum

1. Module 10 ○ Open

   Augustus Simulacrum, Velleius, and the Transition to Principate

   Led by Augustus Simulacrum, with Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum

   The question

   The Roman Republic ends, by general scholarly consensus, somewhere between Caesar Simulacrum's Rubicon in 49 BCE and Augustus Simulacrum's settlement of 27 BCE — but the people who lived through it did not experience the change as a single event, and the transition's official self-presentation insisted that the Republic had been *restored*, not replaced. Augustus Simulacrum's own *Res Gestae Divi Augusti* (composed in his lifetime, inscribed publicly after his death in 14 CE) is the constitutional fiction made monumental: a thirty-five-chapter first-person record of his career framed as service to the *res publica*, with the word *res publica* used dozens of times and the word *monarchia* used not once. Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum's *Compendium of Roman History* (composed c. 30 CE under Tiberius) is the friendly Tiberian-era account that helps us see what the Augustan settlement looked like from inside, two generations on. How did the Republic become the Principate, and how did the Principate present itself as the Republic continued?

   Outcome

   The student has read the *Res Gestae* in full (about 25 chapters of short Latin; the Cooley Cambridge commentary is the standard, with full Latin/English text and notes), has read Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum Book 2 chapters 89-131 (the Augustan-Tiberian closing books), and can produce a 700-word analytical essay on the constitutional fiction and its historical work.

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Res Gestae

   Augustus Simulacrum walks you through the *Res Gestae Divi Augusti* — read it in full (it is short — about thirty pages in modern English translation including notes; Cooley's edition is recommended, but the Loeb is also adequate). Pay particular attention to the opening (the catalogue of offices), to chapters 26-33 (the geographical-imperial achievements), and to chapter 34 — the famous *post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt* (after that time I excelled all in *auctoritas*, but I had no more *potestas* than the others who were my colleagues in any magistracy). Read also Velleius Paterculus Simulacrum 2.89-95 for the Tiberian-friendly view of the Augustan settlement. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is the *Res Gestae* claiming about Augustus Simulacrum's career and the constitutional position; how does the language of the chapter 34 *auctoritas/potestas* distinction work; how does Velleius corroborate or extend the Augustan self-presentation; and where does the modern historical reading need to push back against the document's framing?

   Your goals

   • Read the *Res Gestae* in full and the Velleius passage before drafting.
   • Render the chapter 34 *auctoritas/potestas* distinction precisely (it is the constitutional pivot; *auctoritas* meant moral/political weight, *potestas* meant formal magisterial power).
   • Address what Augustus Simulacrum's account claims, what it omits (the proscriptions of 43 BCE, the civil wars before Actium), and how the omissions are themselves rhetorical work.
   • Use Velleius to triangulate — the friendly senatorial reading two generations on.
   • Engage at least one piece of modern scholarship.
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

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