!"#$%&'(&)$*)+(),-$!"#$%&!'"&%!(&%)"
A.G.G. Gibson, ed., The Julio-Claudian Succession: Reality and Perception of the
‘Augustan Model.’ Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. Pp. 179. $125.00. ISBN 978-90-04-
23191-7.
This collection of eight articles and an introduction focuses on questions of
succession and more broadly on Augustus’ legacy to the four rulers who immediately
followed him. It includes several pieces by prominent scholars (primarily British)
and, while it covers well mapped territory and takes mostly traditional approaches,
several interesting new theses are proposed, and the volume as a whole provides a
sound introduction to the current state of scholarship on the most important political-
historical questions of the early principate.
The editor’s introduction serves mainly to set out the ideological and practical
motifs that recur throughout the Julio-Claudian period: traditional Roman dislike of
kingship; the availability nonetheless of Hellenistic models; the tendency of uncertain
succession to promote intrigue; and the rulers’ subtle use of nomenclature and
titulature. Gibson also signals the tendency, visible in most of the contributions, to
avoid overly reifying the “Augustan model” into a unified normative construct, and
to emphasize instead the role of improvisation in a given context. The first
contribution, Josiah Osgood’s “Suetonius and the Succession to Augustus,”
examines the notion of Augustus’ “succession planning” in the years from 6 BC to
AD 4 and the surprisingly sparse evidence for it in Suetonius’ Lives of Augustus and
Tiberius. Osgood steers between Syme and Gruen as contrary scholarly poles (the
former stressing Augustus’ desire for a biological successor through Germanicus, the
latter seeing a genuine ambivalence). The conclusion is closer to the former, and
Osgood cogently argues for seeing Gaius’ and Lucius’ promotion as introducing an
emphasis on biological heredity that was the basis for later dynastic problems
surrounding Germanicus, Postumus, Agrippina the Elder and even Nero.
The second and third articles, Robin Seager’s “Perceptions of the Domus Augusta,
AD 4-24” and Caroline Vout’s “Tiberius and the Invention of Succession,” make a
remarkable paired diptych, demonstrating how the same historical phenomenon can
be presented in almost completely opposite ways depending on one’s choice of
viewpoint and what source material one emphasizes. Both essays address the
progression of Tiberius’ public image from AD 4, when he assumed the role of
designated successor on Gaius’ death, to the early years of his sole principate. For
Seager, who surveys the principal inscriptional and artistic sources from the Ticinum
Arch to the Tabula Siarensis, the story is that of a virtuoso propaganda campaign that
sustained the dynasty’s role as a symbol of continued internal peace. From Seager’s
external viewpoint, imperial image-makers smooth over the vicissitudes of premature
death and adoption to present an orderly progression from Augustus to an abundant
and harmonious line of successors, with Tiberius moving smoothly from a junior to
senior role and Germanicus stepping equally smoothly into Tiberius’ former
position. For Vout, working mainly with literary sources and trying to reconstruct
