Augustus’ powers had been granted personally to him by the senate for life. There was no imperial constitution and theoretically the Republic could have been revived on his death. However, by the time that moment came in ad 14, forty-five years after Actium, the principate had become too firmly entrenched for the republic to be restored. In fact long before his death Augustus had been trying, in true monarchical fashion, to designate an heir. Yet his insistence that members of his own family take commands meant that their early deaths were common. His hopes rested on his only daughter Julia, whom he exploited shamelessly in the hope of producing male grandchildren. In 23 bc she was forced into a second marriage to Augustus’ closest colleague Agrippa who was old enough to be her father. In the short term the aim of the marriage seemed to have been met. Three sons were born. For years the hopes of the succession rested on the two eldest, Gaius and Lucius Caesar. However, by ad 4, both were dead. Another son, known as Agrippa Postumus (because he was born, in 12 bc, after Agrippa’s death), was passed over by Augustus as not being suitable for the throne and subsequently, it appears, murdered.
In 11 bc Julia was bullied into a third marriage to Tiberius, the son of Augustus’ wife Livia by her first husband. It was not a success, there were no surviving children, and Julia took refuge in a string of affairs that caused so much scandal she was eventually exiled by her father from Rome. On the death of his second grandson, Augustus was forced to adopt his stepson Tiberius as his own son and designate him as heir. As a mark of his special status Tiberius was granted the tribunician power (this became a normal way in which an emperor designated his successor). By the time of Augustus’ death in ad 14 his position as successor was undisputed. Tiberius, however, conscious that he was not Augustus’ first choice and now in his fifties, accepted only out of his sense of duty.
The procedures for the succession remained undefined. Most emperors tried to keep it within their own families, picking and choosing one of their relatives who had the right attributes. Alternatively a female member of the family could be married to a worthy candidate who was then adopted within the family or there could be a straightforward adoption of a favoured figure. When an emperor failed completely and was overthrown or assassinated then there was the chance of setting up a new dynasty altogether. All these options were taken in the following centuries but the idea of imperial rule, the concept that it was better to have one man at the top on whom all allegiances could be focused and who could coordinate the effective defence and administration of the empire, remained intact.
Augustus had been ailing for several years before his death. When the moment finally came, everything was in hand for the succession. Augustus died at Nola in August (the month named in his honour, as July had been named in honour of Caesar). After cremation his ashes were buried in his Mausoleum with great ceremony, and when a senator reported having seen his spirit ascending through the flames of the funeral pyre to heaven it was decreed by the senate that the Divine Augustus should be ranked among the gods of the state. His divinity, the decree ran, rested on ‘the magnitude of his benefactions to the whole world.
World History
