Philo and Augustus

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Alexandria and Rome
Presentation 6 of 14

Philo and Augustus
The Civilization at Its Apex
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, August 5, 1982

Transcript:

The trouble with this, there are human history that it's very difficult because of all of the major events and enormous cast of characters. It's very difficult to pick and choose and select and, and shape and say that this was the golden thread. Meaning because there never was a time in human history that has more meaningful acts going on than at this time period from it was almost like a countdown 100 B.C. to 0 B.C. And then on, up as the years went more and more, the strain of enormous events took hold upon the population until about the time of the death of Tiberius about 37 B.C. It just seemed that the entire Roman world fell apart for a few years and was unable to continue. And it was, it looked more and more like the tremendous strain of events narrowing down to the [inaudible] point of eternal manifestation around the turn of the millennium that absorbed all of the energy, all of the brilliance, that could be mustered to manifest at that time. And then as time passed the millennium point and went on into the new era, it was as if this enormous gravitational drag, at first psychologically on paper of people of lesser capacities. And finally, it caught up with those individuals in whose hands power and authority and learning were untrusted until finally it just seemed to [inaudible] the drive, the life forces, the sanity even of individuals.

And by 40 A.D. there is a sudden drop in the capacities of human beings to make sense of the world. And this not in a time of civil wars or international wars, but in a time of universal peace. And it looks like, to us in retrospect, that some colossal event, event had transpired, had manifested and had simply used up all of the imaginative and spiritual energy of the time. And for maybe a generation after 40 A.D., the known world, the Roman world, lay foul. And we have a succession of terrible people arriving on the scene to do what they can ineptly to just blunder through. And that it's not until towards the end of the 1st century A.D. that we find again the re-emergence of human beings of capacity.

And so, from the time of Augustus in his carefully prepared ways, which allowed Tiberius to go through his life, even though he fell apart at the end of his life in 37 B.C. And every succeeding Roman emperor after him had problems and troubles. And many of them were just plain crazy. It wasn't until the time of Trajan near the end of the 1st century, that there was any collecting and resemblance of order, which had been established by Augustus. So, it's a very odd situation indeed.

And I think maybe one of the telling [inaudible] on the age is to start in Alexandria and to start with the Jewish mind. Because this affords us a real insight into the Roman world. The doorway of the Jewish mind had prepared itself for many, many centuries to consider time, human history in terms of large cyclic events in which there was a sacred numbered numerological measurement possibility. And that this had been brought to its greatest focus in the city of Alexandria. And that focus began physically, if you recall or if you weren't here for these lectures, I'll just [inaudible] that fact. Under Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second Ptolemy, in his urging to have all of the major religions of the world represented in Alexandria, and to have the very books of those religions present physically in original additions as much as could be. And further to have all of these works translated into the Greek language pursuant to that Ptolemy's Philadelphus has had sent to the high priests in Jerusalem in around the year 270 B.C. The high priest at that time at the temple in Jerusalem was a priest named Eleazar. And Eleazar understanding the integrity of Philadelphus and his power, and his mind agreed to send a body of translators from Judea to Alexandria. The historical references always sum it up as 70 translators. 70. But the true fact is that there were 72 exactly. And there were 72 because there were 12 tribes to be represented. And each tribe had six translators, making 72.

And Mr. Hall informed me last night in a conversation that also 72 is a sacred number. It's one fifth of a circle. And it is one half of the 144, which is a sacred number, 12 times 12. So that again, this numerological cycle emphasis upon there being a secret order in nature. And further that the secret order penetrates it's like reverberation in the mysteries of history. And that in some realistic way history is a ritual of nature, which man performs, ceremoniously, for a purpose that is mysterious in time honored consideration which can be uttered in public. Always styles that this way, that man's purpose in history to undergo the ceremonies of this sacred cycle of rituals is to consecrate physical reality to divinity. That man is not to impose his egotistical order upon history or upon nature, but rather to divine the order in nature and working its way out through history so that in his comprehension of what is right, he may set in his life and the world right. Bring it together, tie in a bow and say, we have done it. Here it is. Let us know abide by this.

And the classic example of this kind of an individual is Moses. The law giver. The man who does not make up the laws, but who delivers them intact, in their order from one to 10. In the case of The Decalogue. And in case of Genesis. The various covenants in their orders. And pursuant to this the understanding of the Old Testament, especially The Pentateuch the books ascribed to Moses and most certainly I think written by him. Especially Genesis and the first section of Exodus, certainly his traditional authorship. These words, this understanding, this mentality and this aspiration for order were translated into the Greek language around 270 to 260 B.C. And that Bible is known as The Septuagint. Sept, seven. Tua, seventy. The Septuagint version of The Bible.

This was the first time that the ancient Hebrew scriptures were translated into another language. And it was Greek, and it was in Alexandria. And it was at a time when this was received in all due respect by all the Alexandrians but especially by a large and growing Jewish order of Alexandria. And after some two and a half centuries of this kind of sophisticated [inaudible] thought, it reached a summation in one of the most urbane individuals of all time. A man known as Philo or Philo Judaeus. Now Philo was born in about the same year, oddly enough that Cleopatra died, and Augustus claimed the known world, 30 B.C. So that Philo was born in that same year in the same city that all these events happened. Remember Cleopatra and Marc Anthony and Augustus had this showdown, this triumvirate of these three powerful individuals came to a crux in Alexandria in 30 B.C. And it was there at that point in time and space that Philo was born.

This was an enormous advantage for him. Because all through his life, he lived to be quite aged. The encyclopedias give various lengths of time for his life. 75 years, 80 years. Actually, he lived closer to 80, I think, 80 or 85 years. Very, very long life. All of that life was spent in Alexandria except for a minor visit to Palestine. And near the end of his life, he was sent by the Jewish community of Alexandria on behalf of Jews everywhere to Rome to protest specifically to the Emperor Caligula, who had gone completely crazy. The persecution of a people for their religious views, especially in view of the fact that Romans had become educated by this Hellenistic Greek culture of which a large part of it had been a Jewish for now 300 years. And this tremendous delegation that Philo headed of course, came to Rome about 40 A.D. About the time when Caligula was running literally mad in the streets. And he was finally murdered a few months later by Romans who could see that nothing good was going to come of this.

Philo’s writings exist from antiquity to the extent of about 12 volumes of work. Very sizeable volumes of work. So, we have a lot of Philo. And we can see in his words, the traditional learned Jew who will write great expositions on The Torah. Great, wonderful expositions on Moses. But also involved in here is a constant attention to the fact that he lives in a period and within a religious understanding, that is a culmination of sophistication. And in this culmination several characteristics have emerged. All [inaudible] have been toned down. All of the rituals or dietetic laws or ceremonies have been accompanied by large losses. And these losses all attempt to give an ethical rationalization to their purposes. And very often higher levels of these ethical rationalizations tend more and more to what we would call a mystical understanding of the whole. The meaning of the whole show. And along with this, of course, and increasing belief that because there were so many parallels between the Greek thought and Hebrew thought and still clinging to the idea of the Old Testament as revealed er go Greek thought must have some time in the past in some yet undistinguished way been derives. And therefore, the works of Moses should be studied in depth with mystical site, more and more to try and understand this brut force in the world.

And this concern began more and more to create a mystical overtone to the philosophy, especially the Jewish philosophy in Alexandria at the time. And the core of this increasing mystical philosophy, which became so influential that we, we would probably have to offer a course on it. The conception came up that God must be a transcendent being. And if God is a transcendent being, if the mystical occult meaning of it, is in fact the case, then there must be intermediaries between God and man. And that those intermediaries must have a symbolic hierarchical arrangement. And that the key communicative logic between them is what Philo called the logos. The logos.

So that when John, The Gospel of John is writing in the 1st century A.D and he uses the term logos, he is using a term which has been refined and put into motion by Philo of Alexandria, just a generation before he was writing. So that this doctrine of logos and of God as a transcendent being coming from Philo’s work, and as it came out very naturally, permeated the philosophy of the time to the extent that it literally held sway as one of the major religious and philosophic ideas of the age. And in fact, was not really formally rejected in the Jewish tradition until the Middle Ages. So that Philo is of enormous importance.

And one can pour through his works patiently and find many, many wondrous things. And of course, we have to realize that they just the century or so after Philo, after that level of consideration we began finding an Alexandria the kinds of incredible religious geniuses, like Clement of Alexandria. Like Origen. Like Plotinus. All of them come from the same area of the same city. All within a very short period of time.

I don't have time to go completely into Philo. So, I'll begin to leave off there. But I do want to leave off in this mode in this way. From his treaties on the account of the creation of the world as given by Moses. Philo offers in the very first part of the treatise a understanding of history in terms of occult numerology. And I want to give just the seed of that and then how it gets blown up in some meaningful ways, and then go into Augustus.

On the Creation of the World by Philo. And he writes, and I'm, I'm just excerpting out here two little paragraph. He’s writing about Moses and his understanding. And he's saying, “Accordingly, no one whether poet or historian could ever give expression in an adequate manner to the beauty of his ideas respecting the creation of the world.” In other words, language is paltry to express the exquisite meaningfulness. “Which we can somehow understand for they surpass all the power of language and amaze our hearing being too great and venerable to be adapted to the senses of any creative being. That however,” and this is typically Alexandria. “That fact, however, is not a reason for our yielding to indolence on the subject, but rather from our affection, for the deity we ought to endeavor to exert ourselves. Even beyond our powers and describing them.” In other words, we should not be discouraged from making an attempt, but by all means, we should make the attempt with an even superhuman effort. And we should therefore attempt to refine our language as much as possible. And therefore, we should take language which removes itself from a naive view of history and nature, and man, where a word stands for a single reference. And we should endeavor to go more and more into a symbolical language, which can in its innuendos, in its complex relationality. Yet it's inferential syntax can give us a more penetrating view expressively of what field of wisdom we are endeavoring to have. And of course, he says, “but instead of much, just a little such as it may be probable that human ends with like may attain to when wholly occupied with a love of, and a desire for wisdom.”

Sophia, we must love Sophia. Philosophy. Philo Sophia. We must also desire wisdom. Desire as having implanted in ourselves, the desire to know. We would like to know. We would like to find out and pursuant to that we're willing to dedicate ourselves. And how? Dedicate ourselves in love of wisdom so that they wisdom literature of the Old Testament, especially that great triad of The Book of Job, the book known as Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sirach in the Jewish tradition and The Wisdom of Solomon form of triadic wisdom tradition literature, which was current in Philo’s Alexandria.

All right, we should try. What about the language? How do we begin? Where do we develop it? We develop it by going to page one of the Old Testament. The very first book and the very first chapters of Genesis, because this is our ABCs of learning this symbolical language, which is not made up by a man, but is delivered to a lawgiver to give to the rest of mankind. [inaudible] God to Moses and in Genesis commentated on by Philo. So that at the very beginning of Genesis, and I’ll just gave you a paragraph here. Just so you see how this works.

“And he says that the world was made in six days. Not because the creator stood in need of a length of time. For it is natural that God should do everything at once. Not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it.” He didn't even need to utter. He needed no time, except that there was an occult purpose in six days. “But because the things created required arrangement.” Why [inaudible] to have arrangement? “And number is akin to arrangement.” This is a Pythagorean Hellenistic idea. [inaudible] of Philo’s [inaudible],
But because the things required arrangement, and number is akin to arrangement. And of all numbers, six is by the laws of nature, the most productive. For of all the numbers from the unit one upwards, it is the first perfect one. being made equal to its parts three, two, and one are six being made equal to its parts. And being made complete by them the number three, half of it, so that it is balanced. And the number two, a third of it, and the unit a sixth of it. And so, to say it is four so as to be both, both male and female. And it's made up of the power of both natures for an existing things, the odd number is the male and the even number is the female. And of course, the unit is divine.
So that sex is a mystical summation and statement.

We can go on obviously with the Philo. And there are many volumes here at P.R.S. on Philo. This, the career of these ideas through the next two millenniums of Western thought. It is literally a who’s who of Hermetic and [inaudible] understanding and wisdom.

One volume that I'll draw your attention to, which is here in the P.R.S. library, which is characteristic of this, hardly ever consulted. But I think most of you would find quite interesting. And interestingly enough, for my purposes, it takes Philo’s occult numerology of history and applies it to Augustus Caesar. The book is entitled The Worship of Augustus Caesar by a man named Del Mar and published in New York in 1900 at the turn of the century. And is it, it is derived from the study of coins, monuments, calendars, eras, astronomical, and astrological cycles. The whole establishing a new chronology and certainty.

And in the book, he has a tremendous time cycle going back many millenniums B.C. Here’s a notification 5206 B.C. in Mexico. 5342 B.C. in India and so forth. And the entire cycle comes down to a transition point, which is here at 15 B.C. in Rome. What is there? It is the apotheosis. The [inaudible]. The raising from man to God. The apotheosis of Augusta Caesar as Lord of the world and Prince of peace. And the official date of this era is 738 A.U. In other words, 738 years from the founding of Rome.

And as we would follow on in this cycle, we realize that the cycle began to be dated when Romulus the founder of Rome. If you remember, in the very first lecture in that Romulus, the founder of Rome was 33 years old when Rome was founded. So, if it's 738, plus the 33 of Romulus, one goes back and one has about 770 years. One is in the 771st year.

And that there is a, an old Etruscan astrological site, which was being followed all the way through of 110 years. There were various different days. The first two cycles were 105 years, and then the next cycles were 119 years. And there was one of 123 years. And it averaged out to 110 years so that Augustus Caesar upon his apotheosis was at the very close of the sixth cycle and at the beginning of the seventh cycle.

And how are these cycles determined? Well, one can go into this and find here, go through the book. The key idea you have the time cycle known in Latin as the [inaudible]. And just to give you this. It's on page 19 of The Worship of Augustus Caesar. It also occurs in many other places because it was a well-known idea in classical times. We think it's occult today because it's not taught in the universities.
On page 440 of the religious experience of the Roman people is also the [inaudible]. And I'll just give you a few sentences because I can't spend too much time on this.
The [inaudible] take their name from the word saeculum. And the old Italian idea of a saeculum seems to have been a period stretching from any different moment to the death of the oldest person born at the moment. A hundred years being the natural period. Thus, new saeculum might begin at any time and might be endowed with special religious significance by certain solemn ceremonies. In this way, the people might be persuaded that a new leaf, so to speak, had been turned over in their history. And not only in their history, but in their retrospective understanding of what had gone before and their projection of what was to take place from here on out. And as long as the ceremonies were efficacious and that the traditional age-old metaphysical idea was true and understood, then these acts would have reality. And that person who was administering those acts, even if it was in an unknown way unbeknownst to the world at large, it would still have its efficacy and carry through.
This was the understanding. This was the idea that was current in the time of Jesus. And this was the universal agreement in the world at that time from India to Spain.

The person who assumed that it was he who was doing this was Augustus Caesar. He had been born in 63 B.C. He was born in the same year that Cicero was a council in Rome. And if you remember in the lecture on Cicero was a year in which the Catiline conspiracy came to a head. And [inaudible] by torch light led the Roman senators in the street to the accuse them to their faces. And the state of the Republic dashing during midnight raid. Augustus was born as Octavian Caesar in that time.

As a youngster, he was very sickly. And throughout his life, he was prone to illnesses that laid him up. In many, many times he assumed that he was near death and already had made out his will. Had taken off his signet ring several times in his life to hand it over and always survived. And he lived to be an old, old man.

His great uncle was Julius Caesar. So that his great uncle was the major moving force on the scene of history from the time that he was a little boy until the death of Julius Caesar. And Augustus because he wasn't extraordinary individual. Absolutely an incredible. He had the capacity for direct action, which we did see in our time sometimes as cruelty. Sometimes as overdoing it. Which was characteristic of the tone of the time. But he had also a tremendous driving belief that the old traditional patterns grounded in the soil of Italy, the old Roman Republican ways, the family ways of man were the best and that they needed to be reinstated. And that, as a matter of fact, as he was growing up, he recognized that it was his great uncle who was reinstating all these things. That it was Julius Caesar, [inaudible] as sort of a knight in shining armor image occupied Augustus mentality as a teenager.

And when he was about, about 12 years old, he already rode in a triumph with his uncle. And he could understand that this was the man, his own relative. And so, there was a hero worship. A sort of an idolization of him. But also, a pride that he was in the family.

when Julius Caesar went to Spain, went to quell the last remnants of rebel legions against him. He sent for Augustus. And Augustus went and arrived just about the time that Caesar was winning the Battle of Munda. And he accompanied Caesar back to Rome and then went on a trip to South Italy. And he was received word that his great uncle had been assassinated in the forum by his so-called friends.

And when Augustus landed at the port of Elysium and received the news, another messenger came very, very shortly after the same day and revealed that the will of Julius Caesar had been opened up and that he Augustus a young man, very, very young had been named successor. And it hit him like a ton of bricks. I guess it was the sort of thing that Harry Truman said that on the day that he heard that FDR was dead. That there just, there wasn't anybody he could go to because he was the one that you went to. So, Augustus found himself suddenly as a very young man thrust into the situation. How old was he? He was still a teenager.

He was overcome by remorse on the family of the death of this hero of his. But he was more shocked and horrified that the expectation of the millennium through his great uncle had been dashed and smashed. And so, he set himself by sacred vows that he would not only avenge Julius Caesar, but that he would bring the entire work to some combination, God helped him. And he endeavored and it took him 16 years. And he did every bit of it.

He managed as a teenager to align himself with various individuals, especially Mark Antony. He always had a series of great companions by him. A man, his own age, named Agrippa, Marcus Agrippa, who was one of the great Generals at the time. Perhaps the only General who really could have met Mark Antony on a field of battle with equal troops in the military way. He also had as a very close friend of his, perhaps the most literate man in Rome at the time. A man named Maecenas who was what we would call the literary agent of the best writers of the day. Virgil. Horace. His acquaintance read like a who's who. And through Maecenas then Augustus also knew these great individuals on a personable daily basis. So that the greatest Epic poet, since Homer, Virgil was a personal friend of Augusta throughout his entire life. The greatest lyrical poet of that whole age Horace was a personal friend of his.

So that when we look at the works of these literary giants, we find illusions to Augustus everywhere, in terms of him being the [inaudible] the true son of God who had brought history to its conclusion and fullness.

In The Aeneid by Virgil, he has a wonderful section here where in a vision Augustus is saying,
But look, now, look, here comes your family, your Roman children. Caesar and all the sons of Julius who come beneath the vault of heaven. Here is the man you've heard so often promise Augustus, son of Godhead. He'll rebuild a golden age in [inaudible] land where one Saturn was King. Past India. Past the Moor. He'll spread his rule to zones beyond the stars. Beyond the ecliptic where Atlas carries heaven bears on his back the spinning star track wheel.
That's, that's called having PR.

And that was in book six of The Aeneid. Lines around 790. In book seven of The Aeneid Virgil includes in here a wonderful description. I won't read it cause I don't have time, but it's around line 600 in book seven. And what it amounted to was Virgil describing an event which happened in his time by Augustus, but also putting it in a visionary foresight by Aeneas who was the founder of Rome, even before Romulus. So, he's linking up Augustus not only Romulus but going back to Aeneas. Going back to the Trojan war heroes. So that Augustus in some way is not just another Alexander the Great caring Homer's Iliad but he is in fact, akin to those giants who lived in that time and the true inheritor of them.

And the episode in the seventh book of The Aeneid that he refers to is the closing of the Janus gate. And in the Forum Romano was a temple of Janus, which consisted largely of two parallel, enormous doors and some space in between them. And over these two enormous portals was the double phase of Janus, the God who looks both ways. And it was through those gates and then this enormous courtyard setting that all armies going out from Rome to fight had to pass. And as long as those doors were open, Rome was officially at war. That is officially in the sense that it was a righteous declaration under the laws of Heaven. In the understanding of divine laws that Rome was at war in a justified way. And when Rome was at peace the doors were to be closed.

Well, the doors were closed once by one of the Etruscan Kings of Rome, Tarquinius. They were closed the second time by Scipio Aemilianus after the sack of Carthage. And those were the only two times in 750 years of Roman history they'd been closed. And so, Augustus closed them in 29 B.C. And when he closed them, as Virgil says, there were a hundred rods of steel, and bronze that had to go into place. It was a big thing of closing the Janus Gates. And he closed them in 29 B.C., and then there were uprisings, and they had to be opened. And they closed them again a few years later and there were uprisings. And finally in 15 B.C. through just enormous acumen and willpower Augustus closed them for the third time within just a space of a few years. And they remained closed for quite some time. And he felt that in this action, he was demonstrating to the world at large, that they world was at peace. That Rome had conquered [inaudible] and it was at peace.
As a compliment to the closing of the Janus gates, he constructed one of the great artistic and religious monuments of all time. A building, which ranks with the Parthenon in meaningfulness and in excellence. And oddly enough, it's almost unknown. It just because we, we live in darkness ages. We think we're in a sophisticated time, but most of us are really neolithic times.

The Ara Pacis Augustae. This monument was constructed to be like the Parthenon, a focus architecturally and symbolically of the great Pax Romano. It was to be the symbol of the Pax Romano. Just as the Parthenon a symbol of the Periclean bringing together of wisdom and power and rightfulness in the state in the Athens of its day. So, to this wonderful monument by Augustus.

And the friezes on the outside of this monument were to declare the wonderful achievement of world peace under the rightful ruler. And we have to understand that it wasn't in the sense of Augustus crowning himself with enormous crowns in Hollywood type splendor. No so in fact, because the friezes of the Ara Pacis Augustae oddly enough, have all survived intact. Not in the place. Not in the site. In various museums around the world. But I learned just recently that under one of the palazzo, the palazzo [inaudible] in Rome, one can still go under the palazzo and through a tunnel and see some of the original friezes still in their position and intact. And in fact, the altar of this great shrine of the Pax Romana is still in place. No one's ever told me that it was still there, but apparently it is.

What were these friezes? It was, and we know for certain exactly what it meant because Augustus wrote a wonderful short book, The ‘Res Gestae, ‘Res Gestae D.V. Augusti. It is in Latin. A book describing paragraph by paragraph, section by section, exactly what he was doing because he was no man of inuendo. When Augustus did something, it was all up front and completely exposed and definite. On the two sides, there were large friezes. On one, there was a representation of the Senate of Rome and taking about two thirds of the length of the wall. And the last third was taken up by the people of Rome, including a lot of children in among their parents. So that you had on one side of the frieze the expression of SPQR Senatus Populous Romano, the Senate and the people of Rome. And parallel to that on the other side, running alone was the great a family scene headed by Augustus himself. And then as, as it spread out one had the various priests of the Roman religion because Augustus was the head of the Roman religion, the Pontifex Maximus. And you had all of the priests of that. Then you had the Imperial family. And all the way through this grandeur interspersed among all these grand dignified, universally important images were children. And tugging on Augustus garment was a little cherub type figure, which then reappears again and again in Italian art ever afterwards. And rediscovered by the Renaissance. And so, these fact that chubby Cupids surface in the same period in which we have Michealangelo and Leonardo later on. This was all started, initiated in world art, the child, as the key for the family future history in this monument, the Ara Pacis Augustae. And it was dedicated in, in and around 15 B.C.

The building itself was in the shape of a tumultuous its floor plan was a large circle. And it had various target like constructs. And it had been a mandala-like shape. In fact, if you take the forefront of it and it looks just like mandala. And right in the center, of course, is where they sacred [inaudible]. But the outside was in the shape of an archaic tumulus, sod tumulus, with a statue of Augustus on the top of it. So that this tremendous gathering of the emblems of universal power was in the hand of a family man within an old archaic hut like tumulus of the agrarian background of the Roman people.

And Augustus all through his life, instanced it on this homey quality. On the fact that it was the family, which was the core of the structure of meaning in the state. In fact, he was obsessed at one time with the depopulation of Roman from a hundred years of civil war and passed an ordinance that everyone should be married. And of course, there are many people who didn't want to be married, and they had to revise this law a little later on. But that was the extent that he went to this. Everyone should be married. And everyone should stay married. No fooling around. This is the, this is the thing to do.

And of course, so one wonders about Augustus himself. Well, the fact is Augustus grew up in the age where people were trying to make the liaisons through marriages. As a youngster he was technically married to the young daughter of Mark Antony, but the marriage was never consummated. He argued with the mother, the wife of Mark Antony at the time and it was never come through. He married a woman named Scribonia, who had had two previous husbands who were councils and couldn't stand her. And within a year was divorced because of her nagging ways. And then fell in love with another man's wife. And finally married her when she was pregnant with the man's last son and lived with her the rest of his life and was devoted to her. Her name was Livia. And they were married for many, many, many, many years.

And he, at the end of his life, when he realized that he had no children by Livia, he never divorced her, never put her off, always honored her and loved her throughout her entire life. They were married for a very long time, 40-50 years. He adopted her children by her previous marriage as his successors. And one of those was Tiberius. Tiberius Julius Caesar was an adopted son of Augustus.

So, an extraordinary individual. But associated with the Ara Pacis Augustae, its placement in the center of Rome, the ritual center of Rome. And, and you have to understand that this [inaudible] obsession with doing things right, so that the ceremonies are efficacious. That they are solemn and truthful so that an era can be brought to bear the stamp of finality. Not that history ends there, but that all of the sense of the past is made manifest, and the future is guaranteed by the very efficacy of the time and the excellence and the exactness of the act then and there.

So associated with the Ara Pacis Augustae it’s his placement vis-a-vis to the temple of the Vestal virgins. Which if you recall, also was a round building. Not the only other building in Rome. There was a building built later on called the Pantheon. Enormous construct, which was circular too. But at this time, the Vestal temple, and I guess, I guess, you know, the vest is the Roman hearth, Goddess. She's the, she's the very pinnacle of the home spirits. You know in, in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Eve at the end where this great fireplace is burning and all the little Woodland fairies are, are righting the world. And all the marriages have taken place, and everything is at home. This is Shakespeare’s understanding that all of this action is brought before the hearth with its dying embers. Because that was the time-honored symbol of rightness in the world. How so? That the world is in order if a person's hearth is secure enough that the embers can burn down quietly, and one can sleep through the night. That was the symbol of peace and rightness.

So that Vesta was the Roman hearth Goddess. And there were traditionally six Vestal virgins who were chosen between the ages of six and 10. There were about 20 that were offered up. And then the Pontifex Maximus chose from those 20, six young girls who would serve for about 30 years. And they could not marry. If they even had sexual relations in that time, they were interred alive. That was the punishment. They were there for 30 years. And usually afterwards, they didn't marry. There were occasional incidents where they were free to marry, but they did not. They were to tend the sacred fire in the temple of the Vesta because there were no images. There were no idols. There were no statutes in the temple of Vesta. There was only the sacred fire. So that it was understood that this was the most mundane of all shrines, the home hearth, the shrines hearth. And the most transcendental and mystical and magical understanding of the world at the same time. So that the mundane, the everyday, and the most transcendent and sophisticated imaginable are one in the same.

So, at the Ara Pacis Augustae with set vis-a-vis this. And that in fact, its rituals were associated with the [inaudible]. And the [inaudible] were the cult of the household Gods that were attached to Vesta’s temple. And it's interesting that the temple of Vesta was the outward symbol of the Royal households, [inaudible]. And every Roman household had this little shrine, the [inaudible] and associated with the [inaudible] eventually came in. The Lars familiari. And originally the Lars familiari had been the ghost of the dead. And it was in the old Roman world [inaudible] would come together at that crossroad and there would be a shrine built. And that shrine would placate, if you will, the ghosts of the dead. And any food that would fall in those households would be collected and it would be offered there at that shrine. The slaves who had no household of their own began to adopt the system of having their Lars, [inaudible] brought into their households. They have no shrine outside. And eventually that became the norm in the Roman Empire. So that every Roman household would have a little shrine, which included the Lars, the ghost of the dead and the [inaudible], the household Gods together. And it was the temple of the Vestal Virgin that held and sinched all that symbolism together. And that building was in the same locale as the Ara Pacis Augustae.

That means coffee break. [inaudible] We’re going to after this go down to the library. After we take our coffee break. And we'll have the second half of the class down there. And so, when you finished with your tea and cookies, it's time for us to go down [inaudible].

Because of my training and temperament, I keep trying to transfer the focus from someone speaking at a podium to you being companions in the library. And if I can make that image meaningful, then I feel that I'm really doing my job. You can listen to people at podiums all your life, but you have to be companions together in the library to really have learning and pursue it.

We've been meaning to come down here now for some time. Always saying there are too many people that we'll just do it. We'll take a key from Augustus that sometimes it's meaningful. We just do it even if you have to do it by the hundreds of millions, rather than the five or six.

Jacob Bronowski said in The Ascent of Man in one place, he said that unless the focus of all of our learning is in our living rooms in the next 20 years, we won't have those living rooms. So, we have to have our own household Gods. And I guess those are the, the books and concerns and the companions that we have. Those are the elements that we trust in our time. And they're good. They'll hold. So, we're down here in this circumstance because of that characteristic of mine. And also, I like hearing from other individuals and you hearing from other individuals.

I used to in the years when I was doing university teaching, I would go to great trouble to have student work reprinted verbatim with no editorial changes whatsoever in great, huge pamphlets of material. Just so the individual participating in thumb educational experience could see in a survey what everybody else was doing in fact. Because oftentimes if you try and conceive of yourself visa-vie somebody who has been doing this for 20 or 25 years, you tend to take a silent position of queuing up before the so-called quote expert. But if one begins to temper that by exposure to an array of individuals, much like yourself, you begin to get the confidence that in fact you're doing all right and are very capable. And the encouragement of intelligence in our time has to be to shy away from the categorical filing of information retrievable only by experts to the belief that the individual with a few companions can start from scratch and discover it all on their own. We just simply have to have that courage of character and that exactness of consciousness. There’s no real mysticism that we need. We've got plenty of that built in by now. We are the inheritors too a lot of sophistication in those ways, but we do need to have just that basic encouragement. And of the kind really that Augustus would have and did give in his time that we have to believe that we ourselves can find out individually and together. And don't have to wait for the experts to dole it out. Or to master arcane categorizing techniques in order to understand it. We can begin from scratch and work into the unknown and come up with meaning all by ourselves.

There is no life of Augustus in Plutarch. The standard surviving life is in Suetonius. And I have, I have about six paragraphs of Suetonius just to give you an insight into the character of Augustus. He was an odd character and a real major world figure. And so, I would like to give you about six paragraphs from Suetonius. And I'll give you the number. Each paragraph from Suetonius is numbered, so you can go back for yourself and work it in. You can get this [inaudible] and with your own reading and piecing together, you can see that I've just skimmed the surface shape. Just traced the barest shadow outline. As I said, perhaps the most major time period in, in at least Western history. He says,
Next to the immortals Augustus most honored the memory of those citizens who had raised the Roman people from small beginnings to their present glory. Which was why he restored many public buildings arrested by men of this caliber complete with their original dedicatory inscriptions. Raised statues to them wearing triumphal dress in the twin colonnades of his forum,
the forum Augustae.

“Then he proclaimed, this has been done to make my fellow citizens insist that both I, while I live, and my successors shall not fall below the standards that by those men alone”. In other words, the achievement of individuals through the Republic, not from great triumphant Generals, but from the good men of those times where the standard of behavior in that Augustus expected that he would not fall below that standard and hoped his successors would not.

He also transferred Pompey’s statue from the hall in which Julius Caesar had been assassinated to a marble arch facing the main entrance of the city. The great theater. So that everywhere we find Augustus making images of Concorde, perpetrating acts of unity. And he pursued this assiduously and exactly from the time that he arrived in Rome 29 B.C. after the great civil Wars were over until his death in 14 B.C.

So that we have an enormous time span of about 33 years, that Augustus made sure that he didn’t, he never styled himself as Emperor. His style was to call himself Princeps. And if you remember, there was the old Roman tradition of Princeps and [inaudible], the first in the Senate. And so, Augustus, styled himself as Princeps or Prince. Meaning that he was first in the state. That for sure. But that he was its first in the sense of looking back to help, not have of going on for his own personal aggrandizement. Or from some expectation that his glory should evaporate like a cloud above the common ordinary individuals. He was the first among many.

He was also incidentally, a gambler. He loved to gamble. At dinner time usually, it was an occupation. You have to have [inaudible]. He was great about giving games.

And this is interesting, the first seal that Augustus used, the Royal seal, the first seal that he used for safe conducts, dispatches and private letters was a Sphinx. The second seal that he adopted was a head of Alexander the Great. And only later did he adopt his own head cut by a man named [inaudible]. The seal which his successors continue to employ. So, they used the seal of the head of Augustus. In fact, the Cambridge [inaudible] history is the impress of that seal, which you can see later on the seal of Augustus. That is to say that this is not done by a committee. This is done by a man. And here he is. Or done in the name of that man. Or by the authority of the achievement of that individual. That's what it meant.

And he, and this is interesting, a little sideline, a paragraph in Suetonius. He not only dated every letter, but he entered the exact hour of the day or night when it was composed. Exacting mind. Once he got it going and set up, he was like a waterfall. His dedication was just torrential. Every little aspect was attended to.

He would, he would come late and leave early to official functions. But when he went to come, he would really be there and be joyous. And especially on Republican holidays in Rome, he was always careful to be lighthearted and gay and really a fine fellow. And showing that this was a time of great enjoyment.

He says, Suetonius writes here that,
In a universal movement to confer on Augustus the title father of the country, the first approach was made by the commons who sent a deputation to him at Antium. When he declined this honor, a huge crowd met him outside the theater with Laurel wreaths and repeated the request. Finally, the senate in total followed suit. But instead of issuing a decree or claiming him was [inaudible] to speak for them all when Augustus entered the house. [inaudible] words were,
And Suetonius makes up the speech, but it's close.
Caesar Augustus I am instructed to wish you and your family good fortune and divine blessings, which amounts to wishing that our entire city will be fortunate. And our country prosperous. The Senate agreed with the people of Rome in saluting you as father of your country. With tears in his eyes, Augustus answered again, I quote his exact words.
says Suetonius. “Fathers of the senate, I have at last achieved my highest ambition. What more can I ask of the immortal Gods then that they may permit to [inaudible] your approval to my dying day”. Characteristic of Augustus.

The month, this month, August is named after him. July is named after Julius Caesar. So that we still preserve in the very names of our calendar the Royal succession that made a change in the world. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar. July and August. They follow as every school child knows one after the other. It’s in the nature of time itself in which in the way that we describe it. So, you can see the enormity of the achievement.

I don't go into Roman law. The achievement there at that time was just as momentous. We live under the same law structure derivative from that. We live under the same kind of political understanding that was reached at that time. And our major religions bare still the same structure of that time.

“At the age of 20,” And this is Suetonius looking back now on characteristics of Augustus that occurred to people.
At the age of 20 when council for the first time Augustus lost his mother. And at the age of 54, his sister Octavia. He had been a devoted son and brother while they lived and conferred the highest [inaudible] of honors on them at their deaths.
And then he goes into his various marriages. And then he talks about how Livia remained the one woman whom he truly loved until his death. And of course, the only child they had died at birth. So there, there were no children from them.

He adopted finally after many other deaths around him, with young people coming up, Tiberius Julius Caesar as his successor. And Tiberius had all but given up the fact that he was going to even be included in the Royal succession. And Tiberius who had been a tremendous General. Very, very talented. Finally left Rome at the age of 36 and went to Rhoades to study philosophy. Stayed there for eight years and decided that it was just, he was never going to amount to anything in terms of the hierarchy of the Empire, so that he would go and devote himself to a quiet life. And this of course was a characteristic, which he got growing up in the house of the Augustus.

Augustus’ house was one of the simplest houses in Rome. It was not a huge palatial estate. And for himself Augustus had a little work room set aside above his bedroom. And it was to this little work room as he called it in, in Latin that he retired to do his work, his thinking and so forth. He lived in the same place for 40 years. Went through his rituals. Went through his little pattern of life. His banquets and meals were usually very simple three course meals, which for Romans was very, very scanty. He was always seen in clothing that was same, but as they say, the purple stripe was never too broad or too [inaudible]. His sandals were beefed up a little bit. He was about my size and probably wanted to be six feet and he couldn't. So, he wore a beefed-up sandals. We can point to that. But generally, his clothing was all in order. He carried a change of clothing, fresh clothing, all the time, because he was frequently called upon as the number one man in the world to officiate at something or other. He was a head of the religion, the state, and so forth. So that all of these duties would come up from time to time. And he would just dispatch them as a working man doing his daily job. If you can imagine that.

So that Horace in his Odes, famous Odes, has several odes dedicated to Augustus. And Ode 12 Horace begins,
What man or hero [inaudible] views of history will you undertake to celebrate on the harp or [inaudible] pipe? What God, whose name shall the sport of echo resound? Either in the shady borders of [inaudible] or on cold [inaudible] whence the woods promiscuously followed vocal Orpheus by his maternal art, stopping the rapid falls of the rivers and the swift winds. And so [inaudible] as to lead the listening [inaudible] with his warbling lutes.

The [inaudible] where the Oracle of Zeus at [inaudible]. The priest didn't use tarot cards or anything else, they listened to the pattern of the wind in the [inaudible]. And by the pattern of the sound of the wind they did their augury. These were the days when people were quite sophisticated and aux naturale as the French would say to Nth degree.

And so sweet as to lead the listening [inaudible] with his warbling notes. What shall I saw [inaudible] than the wanted praises of the parent of all. Augustus the father of all. The parent of all. Who governs the affairs of men and Gods who rules the sea and lands and world in the various seasons whence nothing is generated greater than himself. Nor does anything live like him or in his second degree, yet palace possessed the next honors to him.
And he goes on.

And [inaudible] finally just to skip over the rest of it to the end. “And he contented [inaudible] govern the spacious globe. Thou shall shake Olympus with thy tremendous chariot. And thou shalt throw thy vengeful thunderbolts that are polluted throws.” So, this great Ode by Horace to Augustus. And you could see from the quotations from Virgil’s Aeneid. And I think we have Virgil next time.

And it's interesting that Virgil who was born about seven years before Augustus in Northern Italy, near [inaudible], Virgil, who was a tremendous individual interested in farming and poetry. And after the great division of the prescriptions in 43 A.D. when the second [inaudible] sort of divvied up Italy to their troops and made the prescriptions of who were supposed to die. And all the opposition leaders numbering several thousand prominent people in Italy were to die. And Virgil's home property was confiscated. He moved South to Naples, Italy and lived the rest of his life and is buried in Naples, Italy.

But it was when Augustus came back from the Alexandrian Wars in Egypt, having finished the whole civil war complication in 29 B.C., instead of going on to Rome right away to have his triumph, he rested on the coast, near the [inaudible] there around Sorento. And Virgil came down and recited for him his [inaudible], which had just been polished and written at the time. And Augustus got stuck listening to Virgil for several weeks, chatting with him, finally commissioned him to do an impossible task. He said, I want you to write for people an epic because every civilization worth its salt has had an epic at its core. And the Greeks were great because they had Homer. And I want from the Roman people, something qualitatively equal to Homer. So, he wanted Homer on demand. And so, he said to Virgil, you're the man that can do it. And so, he ordered The Aeneid.
And Virgil of course, absolutely astounded by the enormous task handed to him, but having the good sense not to in the face of the emperor of the world said no labored mightily. And we'll see next week about his achievements.

But it's interesting that when I got this had the Ara Paca Augusti built on the corner where Augustus was placed at his statue in the frieze was in a three quarter. If it had been full out, it would have been facing out of the frieze. And if it was profile, it would have been just part of the frieze. But at three quarter, he was first among many parts and yet looking out somewhat to the future. And just around the corner of that was an area of the frieze that showed [inaudible] landing at Rome. And [inaudible] coming down like bent on one knee to offer his good graces to this new land. And up on this hillside in the background was a temple that looks very, very much like the old vessel Virgin [inaudible] temple. And one could just see that this was in his mind all the time.

Well, we'll see, next week, what Virgil did with this impossible demand. And incidentally he wanted to burn it on his death bed because he didn't want to anger Augustus. But Augustus by Royal decree saved it, literally saved it from the fire. And we have The Aeneid due to Augustus and both [inaudible] he's the one that commissioned it and the one that literally snatched it from the flames. So, we'll see about the world's greatest made to order poets next week.

Thank you.

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