Augustus’ funeral pompe – Emperors and Kings in procession (2024)

Nihil primo senatus die agi passus est nisi de supre- mis Augusti, cuius testamentum inlatum per virgines Vestae Tiberium et Liviam heredes habuit. Livia in familiam Iuliam nomenque Augustum adsumebatur; in spem secundam nepotes pronepotesque, tertio gradu primores civitatis scripserat, plerosque invisos sibi sed iactantia gloriaque ad posteros. legata non ultra civilem modum, nisi quod populo et plebi quadringenties tricies quinquies, praetoriarum cohortium militibus singula nummum milia, urbanis quingenos, legionariis aut cohortibus civium Romanorum trecenos nummos viritim dedit. tum consultatum de honoribus; ex quis qui maxime insignes visi, ut porta triumphali duceretur funus Gallus Asinius, ut legum latarum tituli, victarum ab eo gentium vocabula anteferrentur L. Arruntius censuere. addebat Messala Valerius renovandum per annos sacramentum in nomen Tiberii; interrogatusque a Tiberio num se mandante eam sententiam prompsisset, sponte dixisse respondit, neque in iis quae ad rem publicam pertinerent consilio nisi suo usurum vel cum periculo offensionis: ea sola species adulandi supererat. conclamant patres corpus ad rogum umeris senatorum ferendum. remisit Caesar adroganti moderatione, populumque edicto monuit ne, ut quondam nimiis studiis funus divi Iulii turbassent, ita Augustum in foro potius quam in campo Martis, sede destinata, cremari vellent. die funeris milites velut praesidio stetere, multum inridentibus qui ipsi viderant quique a parentibus acceperant diem illum crudi adhuc servitii et libertatis inprospere repetitae, cum occisus dictator Caesar aliis pessimum aliis pulcherrimum facinus videretur: nunc senem principem, longa potentia, provisis etiam heredum in rem publicam opibus, auxilio scilicet militari tuendum, ut sepultura eius quieta foret.


Rolfe 1979 (Suet. Aug. 100).

Obiit in cubiculo eodem, quo pater Octavius, duobus Sextis, Pompeio et Appuleio, cons. XIIII. Kal. Septemb. hora diei nona, septuagesimo et sexto aetatisanno, diebus V et XXX minus.
Corpus decuriones municipiorum et coloniarum a Nola Bovillas usque deportarunt noctibus propter anni tempus, cum interdiu in basilica cuiusque oppidi vel in aedium sacrarum maxima reponeretur. A Bovillis equester ordo suscepit urbique intulit atque in vestibulo domus conlocavit. Senatus et in funere ornando et in memoria honoranda eo studio certatim progressus est, ut inter alia complura censuerint quidam, funus triumphali porta ducendum, praecedente Victoria quae est in curia, canentibus neniam principum liberis utriusque sexus; alii, exsequiarum die ponendos anulos aureos ferreosque sumendos; nonnulli, ossa legenda per sacerdotes summorum collegiorum. Fuit et qui suaderet, appellationem mensis Augusti in Septembrem transferendam, quod hoc genitus Augustus, illo defunctus esset; alius, ut omne tempus a primo die natali ad exitum eius saeculum Augustum appellaretur et ita in fastos referretur. Verum adhibito honoribus modo bifariam laudatus est: pro aede Divi luli a Tiberio et pro rostris veteribus a Druso Tiberi filio, ac senatorum umeris delatus in Campum crematusque. Nec defuit vir praetorius, qui se effigiem cremati euntem in caelum vidisse iuraret. Reliquias legerunt primores equestris ordinis tunicati et discincti pedibusque nudis ac Mausoleo condiderunt. Id opus inter Flaminiam viam ripamque Tiberis sexto suo consulatu exstruxerat circumiectasque silvas et ambulationes in usum populi iam tum publicarat.

Nothing did he allow to be discussed on the first day of the senate except the last rites of Augustus, whose will, brought in by Vesta’s Virgins, had Tiberius and Livia as his heirs; Livia was enlisted in the Julian family and the Augustan name. For secondary bequests he had written down his grandsons and great-grandsons, and in the third rank leaders of the community—most of them the objects of his resentment, but for vaunting and glory among posterity. His legacies did not go beyond the limits of an ordinary citizen, except that he gave 43,500,000 sesterces to the people and plebs, individual donations of a thousand to the soldiers of the praetorian cohorts, and three hundred a man to the legionaries and the cohorts consisting of Roman citizens.

Next there was a debate about his honors, of which Gallus Asinius and L. Arruntius proposed those seen as particularly distinctive, respectively that the funeral should be led through the triumphal gate and that at its head should be carried the titles of his legislation and the designations of the races conquered by him. Messala Valerius added that the oath in Tiberius’ name should be renewed annually; and, when asked by Tiberius whether it was on his instruction that he had produced such a suggestion, he responded that he had spoken spontaneously and that in matters which pertained to the state he would resort to no one’s counsel but his own, even at the risk of offense. (That was the only display of sycophancy left to be tried.) The fathers shouted unanimously that the body should be carried to the pyre on the shoulders of senators; but Caesar relieved them with arrogant restraint and warned the people by edict that, whereas they had once disrupted the funeral of Divine Julius by their excessive enthusiasm, they should not prefer Augustus to be cremated in the forum rather than the Plain of Mars, his appointed resting-place.

On the day of the funeral soldiers stood as if forming a garrison, much to the derision of those who had seen personally or who had heard from their parents about that day of still undigested servitude and of freedom served up again unsuccessfully, when the slaughter of the dictator Caesar seemed to some the worst of acts, to others the finest. Now, they said, an elderly princeps, despite the longevity of his power, and having even provided the state with resources in the form of heirs, would evidently require protecting by military assistance to ensure that his burial was peaceful!


Rolfe 1979 (Suet. Aug. 100).

He died in the same room as his father Octavius, in the consulship of two Sextuses, Pompeius and Appuleius on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September at the ninth hour just thirty-five days before his seventy-sixth birthday.

His body was carried by the senators of the municipalities and colonies from Nola all the way to Bovillae in the night time because of the season of the year, being placed by day in the basilica of the town at which they arrived or in its principal temple. At Bovillae the members of the equestrian order met it and bore it to the city, where they placed it in the vestibule of his house. In their desire to give him a splendid funeral and honour his memory the senators so vied with one another that among many other suggestions some proposed that his cortege pass through the triumphal gate, preceded by the statue of Victory which stands in the House, while a dirge was sung by children of both sexes belonging to the leading families; others, that on the day of the obsequies golden rings be laid aside and iron ones worn; and some, that his ashes be collected by the priests of the highest colleges. One man proposed that the name of the month of August be transferred to September, because Augustus was born in the latter, but died in the former; another, that all the period from the day of his birth until his demise be called the Augustan Age, and so entered in the Calendar. But though a limit was set to the honours paid him, his eulogy was twice delivered: before the temple of the Deified Julius by Tiberius, and from the old rostra by Drusus, son of Tiberius; and he was carried on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martins and there cremated. There was even an ex-praetor who took oath that he had seen the form of the Emperor, after he had been reduced to ashes on its way to heaven. His remains were gathered up by the leading men of the equestrian order, bare-footed and in ungirt tunics, and placed in the Mausoleum. This structure he had built in his sixth consulship between the Via Flaminia and the bank of the Tiber, and at the same time opened to the public the groves and walks by which it was surrounded.

Davies, P. J. E. (2000). Death and the emperor: Roman imperial funerary monuments, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fisher, C. D., ed., (1906). Cornelii Taciti. Annalivm Ab Excessv Divi Avgvsti Libri. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hurlet, F. (2014). “Devenir un dieu. La mort d’Auguste et la naissance de la monarchie impériale”. Studia historica. Historia antigua 32: 61-75.

Rolfe, J. C., trans., (1979). Suetonius. Volume I. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Rowell, H. T. (1940). “The Forum and Funeral ‘Imagines’ of Augustus”. Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 17: 131–143.

Woodman, A. J., trans., (2004). Tacitus. The Annals. Indianapolis –Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.