Vivian Laughlin, Wake Forest University
Augustus used his living quarters that stood on top of Palatine Hill as a statement of his political vision. As Cassius Dio indicates, Augustus chose the Palatine Hill because of its association with Romulus (53.16.5). The historical location coupled with Augustus’ position as Rome’s first princeps emphasized his role as a founder. Over time, the architectural layout of Augustus’ domus expanded to incorporate multiple structures: the house of Augustus, the Temple of Apollo, the house of Livia, and the hall of Isis (Carettoni 1967; Iacopi and Tedone 2005; Tomei and Carettoni 2014; Zink 2015). Scholars have established that Augustus’ domus and his building and iconographic programs more broadly brought about “social stability to a (civil) war-torn Rome,” a new era that reactivated ancient cults, and an empire founded upon auspiciousness and augury (Takács 1995: 13).
These programs generated a recursive contractual relationship with the gods for the pax deorum, “peace of all the gods.” For Rome, such a contract was activated and cultivated by the pax deorum because it guaranteed fruitfulness to the Roman state (Beard and North 1990). Roman culture did not separate political and religious authority from the state (Champion 2017). Therefore, Augustus initiated and undertook the pax deorum with the understanding that impiety would bring about the anger of the gods—a possibility that could have been a high risk to the Roman Empire. Like the Romans, ancient Egyptians also practiced a contract between humans and Gods. They believed their success and the fruitfulness of their land ultimately came from their relationships with their deities (Van Blerk 2018). This paper will explore how Augustus appropriated ancient Egyptian iconography in his domus and crafted hybrid material culture characterized by secrecy.
The hybrid material culture provided an ambiguous aesthetic of concealment from its original Egyptian source while it simultaneously used aspects of secrecy within its framework. This framework benefited the Roman Empire to maintain a binary, reciprocal, and contractual relationship with deities that resulted in the Roman elite obtaining divineness while simultaneously providing pax deorum. Ultimately Augustus successfully incorporated Egyptian iconography into Roman Imperial material culture. And, more importantly, Augustus created a framework for his successors to emulate and further build upon. This was the sociogenesis of a new Roman cultural community.