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The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 02: Augustus

Suetonius Tranquillus · early 2nd century CE (composition of the Augustus life within *De vita Caesarum*)

passage 49 of 95 · (49/95)

↪ you wandered here via “Roman sesterces currency system” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief
It gives Augustus’s death date details, the funeral procession from Nola to Bovillae and into Rome, senate debates on honor, cremation in the Campus Martius, and the interpretation of his spirit rising to heaven.

consulship between the Flaminian Way and the bank of the Tiber [262]; at which time likewise he gave the groves and walks about it for the use of the people.

CI. He had made a will a year and four months before his death, upon the third of the nones of April [the 11th of April], in the consulship of Lucius Plancus, and Caius Silius. It consisted of two skins of parchment, written partly in his own hand, and partly by his freedmen Polybius and Hilarian; and had been committed to the custody of the Vestal Virgins, by whom it was now produced, with three codicils under seal, as well as the will: all these were opened and read in the senate. He appointed as his direct heirs, Tiberius for two (147) thirds of his estate, and Livia for the other third, both of whom he desired to assume his name. The heirs in remainder were Drusus, Tiberius's son, for one third, and Germanicus with his three sons for the residue. In the third place, failing them, were his relations, and several of his friends. He left in legacies to the Roman people forty millions of sesterces; to the tribes [263] three millions five hundred thousand; to the pretorian troops a thousand each man; to the city cohorts five hundred; and to the legions and soldiers three hundred each; which several sums he ordered to be paid immediately after his death, having taken due care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs: notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in legacies from his friends, the sum of fourteen hundred millions; almost the whole of which, with his two paternal estates [264], and others which had been left him, he had spent in the service of the state. He left orders that the two Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, if anything happened to them, should not be buried in his tomb [265]. With regard to the three codicils before-mentioned, in one of them he gave orders about his funeral; another contained a summary of his acts, which he intended should be inscribed on brazen plates, and placed in front of his mausoleum; in the third he had drawn up a concise account of the state of the empire; the number of troops enrolled, what money there was in the treasury, the revenue, and arrears of taxes; to which were added the names of the freedmen and slaves from whom the several accounts might be taken.


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topics: forms of government · funeral rites and burial · judges and legal authority

The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 02: Augustus · Suetonius Tranquillus · 100–130