And overnight, Tibbo goes from being invisible to being the Number Two man in Rome again!
* WHO DOES NUMBER TWO WORK FOR
* Oh he knows.
* Now all of Aug’s successors are either Livia’s sons or her grandsons.
* This would lead to rumours that she had organised the deaths of Caius and Lucius.
* Which is probably nonsense.
* How could she have organised the Caius getting a wound while in Armenia?
* Was she a witch?
* Other sources position it as a power struggle between the Claudian and Julian families.
* But that’s also probably nonsense.
* It was just bad luck.
* Augustus grant Tibbo tribunicia potestas again in 4 CE.
* For ten years.
* Aug also got another ten year extension of his provincial command and imperium.
* But this time Tibbo’s title comes with a kicker.
* The last time he had it, he was the scion of an old aristocratic family – the Claudians.
* But now he’s the junior member of the Julian clan.
* Augustus is now his father – not his father-in-law.
* Which, as we know, means Augustus OWNS him.
* Quite literally.
* All of Tibbo’s wealth now belongs to Augustus
* The same is true of Postumus.
* Which means the last of Agrippa’s estate also is now in Augustus’ control.
* The father can, if he wants, repudiate the son.
* But the son can’t repudiate the father.
* Of course, it doesn’t really matter that much, as Tibbo learned the last time.
* You can’t fuck with Augustus.
* Tibbo, having had a nice long rest, is now apparently ready to rock.
* Before the year is out, he’s sent to Germany on campaign.
* And he stays on active service for the next decade.
* Augustus now has a middle aged son, another teenage son and two grandsons.
* He’s got a Royal Flush.
* Even if a couple of them die, he’s got backups.
* And there might have been another reason for the adoption of Tibbo.
* Dio and Seneca both mention a conspiracy by Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna.
* But the sources a pretty confused about the timing.
* Seneca says it happened around 16 BCE.
* Dio puts it around 4 CE.
* Cinna was the grandson of Pompey.
* Cinna and Aemilia Lepida, the granddaughter of triumvir Marcus Aemilius Lepidus were involved in a conspiracy against the Emperor Augustus.
* Augustus apparently wanted to have Cinna executed but Livia talked him out of it.
* And this is a big deal, because it means taking advice from a woman.
* In Dio she gives a very long speech, in part, she says:
* I have some advice to give you, — that is, if you are willing to receive it, and will not censure me because I, though a woman, dare suggest to you something which no one else, even of your most intimate friends, would venture to suggest, — not because they are not aware of it, but because they are not bold enough to speak.
* The sword, surely, can not accomplish everything for you, — it would indeed be a great boon it if could bring men to their senses and persuade them or even compel them to love a ruler with genuine affection, — but instead, while it will destroy the body of one man, it will alienate the minds of the rest.º For people do not become more attached to any one because of the vengeance they see meted out to others, but they becomeº more hostile because of their fears.
* She convinces him that he’ll have a better result if he shows clemency.
* We all know where that got his adopted father!
* Cinna and Lepida were the first and last people pardoned by the emperor after having conspired against him.
* Indeed, this was famously the last documented conspiracy against Augustus.
* Cinna served as a consul in 5 AD and is said to have been a close friend and adviser to Augustus until his death.
* It seems a little weird that he’d be made consul a year after having conspired against Augustus.
* Which maybe means Seneca’s dating makes more sense.
* Dio also talks about more demonstrations around 4 CE to bring back Julia from exile.
* Augustus refused, saying fire and water would sooner mix than he would pardon his daughter.
* So the crowd carried burning torches to the Tiber and threw them into the river.
* And… They mixed?
* I doubt it.
* But anyway, Augustus allowed her to return to the mainland of Italy.
* And for the rest of her life she lived in Rhegium, still under confinement, but slightly less restrictive.
* His refusal to let her come back to Rome doesn’t seem to have reduced his popularity.
* Around 3 or 4 CE his residence on the Palatine was badly damaged by fire and people offered him money.
* He acceptd a token amount from all of them so they could take credit in the rebuilding.
* It’s unclear if he returned the rest of the money or used it for public works.
* But what a nice gesture.
* In 4 CE Augustus was given consular powers to hold a partial census.
* It was only for people with at least 200,000 sesterces worth of property.
* And it was only for people inside Italy.
* So sorry Gospel of Luke.
* He also reviewed the Senatorial roles again.
* It’s possible some of them were struggling to maintain the amount of property needed to qualify.
* A decade later we hear about the grandson of the orator Hortensius, who had four sons, but didn’t have enough wealth to spread amongst them so they could all enter the Senate.
* In 4 CE Augustus have money to 80 senators so they could meet the qualifications.
* Again – what a guy!
* The same year also saw new laws governing freed slaves.
* Some of the laws put restrictions on how many could be freed in a will.
* Other determined the obligations the freedmen owed to their former owner.
* Augustus may have had concerns over how many were becoming Roman citizens and therefore being eligible for the corn dole.
* Why would lots of slaves be getting freed?
* Other laws though protected the freedmen, making sure they got citizenship and those who raised large families got the same benefits as everyone else.
* Lots of the freed slaves went on to become successful, and it was important to make sure they all had loyalty to Augustus and to the state.
* So Tibbo heads to the Rhine.
* He returned to Rome during the winter months, as he would now do every year.
* He pushed his legions at least as far as the Elbe river.
* Which is pretty far north, up close to modern Berlin and the border of Poland.
* Some of the tribes were still causing trouble for the Romans.
* While others welcomed Roman dominance.
* There is archaeological evidence of one Roman style town from this period at Waldgrimes.
* On the south west of Germany.
* Probably established by Drusus.
* The site has the oldest known stone buildings in Magna Germania.
* But at this stage the Roman style of living probably didn’t have a lot of attraction to the indigenous tribes in the area.
* Of course, as listeners to our Renaissance show know, within a few hundred years, these Germans would sack Rome itself.
* Tibbo’s campaign in Germany was one of aggression.
* They had a new enemy in the region – King Maroboduus.
* The name “Maroboduus” can be broken down into two Celtic elements, māro- meaning “great”, and bodwos meaning “raven”.
* I’m just going to call him Bodacious.
* He was the leader of the Marcomanni, one of the sub tribes of the Suebi.
* They were famous for inventing the man bun.
* The would tie their hair in a knot and the top of their heads, sometimes on the side.
* Now, I’m sorry, but there’s no way some fucking hipster with a man bun is going to be MY king.
* And if I’m a Roman, there’s no way I’m letting man buns catch on.
* It’s bad enough they have to deal with the fucking Gauls trying to corrupt the Romans with PANTS.
* Imagine what will happen if they introduce pants AND man buns?
* This truly is the beginning of the fall of Rome.
* Next they’ll all be worshipping a dodgy story about a Jew being a human sacrifice.
* King Bodacious was apparently pretty good, despite his man bun.
* He’d pulled together several tribes into a coalition and had taken over most of modern Bohemia, from the Rhine to the Danube.
* Do you know what song he played when his troops marched into battle?
*
* Bodacious was born into a noble family of the Marcomanni.
* According to the Greek historian Strabo, who published the first edition of his masterpiece Georgraphica in 7 BCE, as a young man Bodacious lived in Italy and enjoyed the favour of the Emperor Augustus.
* The Marcomanni had been beaten utterly by the Romans in 10 BC.
* Bodacious would have been about 20 at the time, and was taken back to Rome as a hostage.
* About 9 BC he returned to Germania and became ruler of his people.
* The Romans probably though they’ve converted him.
* But he wasn’t taking that shit.
* One ancient source refers to him as ‘a barbarian by race, but not intelligence’.
* He doesn’t seem to have taken any aggressive action against the Romans but he didn’t pass the sniff test.
* I think the man bun was the giveaway.
* Apparently the biggest crime anyone could accuse them of what that Bodacious’s envoys, when they were dealing with the Romans, would treat them as if they were equals.
* I have the same policy with my slaves.
* If they ever get too familiar, it’s time for them to commit suicide by two to the back of the head.
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