Appropriation and Adaptation: Republican Idiom in Res Gestae 1.1
By Louise Hodgson
Abstract: Augustus opens the Res Gestae with his age: ‘nineteen years old’ (annos undeviginti natus). This places the reader firmly in the autumn of 44, rather than the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination on the Ides when Octavian had been eighteen, presumably because the credibility of Octavian’s claim to have liberated the res publica rested on his military intervention against Antony and the senate’s commendation of it. Velleius Paterculus’ summation (which echoes Augustus’ formulation in the RG) is clear enough: although the domination of Antony was universally resented, no one was willing to take action against him ‘until Gaius Caesar, shortly after his nineteenth birthday, with marvellous daring and supreme success, on his private initiative (privatum consilium) showed a courage on behalf of the res publica which exceeded that of the senate. He summoned his father’s veterans first from Calatia then from Casilinum; other veterans followed their example, and in a short time they united to form a regular army’. By raising an army, Octavian made himself politically relevant, but his move was strikingly illegal in two respects: he was too young (the entrance of politicians into public life had been subject to regulation since the formalization of the cursus honorum in 180 b.c.; Octavian, entering public life at the age of nineteen, was too young to have set foot on the lowest rung of the ladder, the quaestorship, for which the minimum age was thirty) and he was a private citizen with no authorization whatsoever to do anything of the sort. None the less, he advertises both aspects in the opening sentence: why?
Published in The Classical Quarterly, vol. 64, pp.254-269, (2014).