This paper engages with the anonymous verses quoted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Caesars. By analyzing several poems concerning Julius Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius, it shows how these powerful men had had to deal with an anonymous (and pseudonymous) anti-propaganda which involves different social backgrounds cooperating together from the stage of composition to that of circulation. The presence of these voices offers a means of testing the authoritarian climate and the different reactions between the three figures of power considered above.

The chapter analyses Tiberius’ funeral oration in honour of the deceased emperor Augustus, as composed and inserted by Cassius Dio at the end of his Augustan narrative (56.35-41). The chapter reveals that Dio devised this speech with a keen interest in exploring the perspective of the imperial domus and its relationship to his own assessment of Rome’s first emperor as presented in the main narrative in Books 45–56. By examining the content, structure and rhetoric of the oration and comparing it with the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the chapter argues that Dio may have drawn on this important epigraphic document as a key source for the composition of the speech. The chapter furthermore examines the authenticity of Dio’s reconstruction of the imperial perspective and assesses to what extent he left his own imprint on the speech to make it relevant for his third-century audience. In addition, it investigates Dio’s motivation for composing the oration: it shows that the historian not only employed the speech to present the imperial perspective at a key moment of Roman history but also to discuss the principles of good imperial governance and imperial virtues. By inserting the oration at this particular point of his Roman History, Dio invites his readers to compare all the later emperors to the Augustan model.

Dio’s portrayal of Tiberius has traditionally suffered by comparison with that of Tacitus. Whereas some have attempted to look beyond such comparisons and to interpret Dio’s Tiberius as a component in a broader narrative discourse about the nature of Roman imperial power, questions still remain as to how we should read Dio’s portrayal of this most cryptic of emperors. In this chapter, Mallan looks for the unifying themes of Dio’s pre- and post-accession portrayal of Tiberius, before discussing how this portrayal of Tiberius fits into Dio’s overarching conception of the ciuilis princeps and his ideal of imperial behaviour.

Some Roman economic historians are skeptical of an economic rationality which explicitly imposes capitalism-centric value judgements on antiquity. Should Roman historians study rationality as a phenomenon exclusively ‘locked’ inside the minds of individuals, or is it possible to study rationality as something at least influenced or even determined by collectivized social and cultural structures (or embedding contexts)? In this chapter, I argue that Collingwood’s observation that observers and subjects share the same cognitive process opens up new opportunities for understanding the thinking of ancient peoples. First, I define this cognitive process, after Weber and especially Mises, as ‘purposefulness’ and defend its a priori epistemological status. Then, using Weber’s insights on ideal types, I discuss how embedding contexts bounded purposefulness. Finally, I combine these arguments into an experimental heuristic model for understanding the purposeful actions of historical individuals by comparing these choices to both ideal-typical economic theory and unchosen counterfactual actions.

Representation of the kosmos is one of the leading themes of Roman decoration. If the evidence for public interest in cosmic representation is generally well known – for instance, at the Pantheon at Rome – it is worth noting that this phenomenon has not been sufficiently studied in the realm of private life. This piece investigates several examples of cosmic architecture and images known through written texts or archaeological monuments, all of them belonging either to aristocratic houses or to imperial palaces: the aviary that M. Terentius Varro built around 80 BCE inside his villa at Casinum; the Teatro Marittimo that the emperor Hadrian erected at his villa in Tivoli (early or mid-second century CE); the the cave of Sperlonga, which formed part of Tiberius’s Praetorium; and the Cenatio Rotunda, which belonged to Nero’s Domus Aurea. Kosmos-representations in the private sphere at Rome are arranged according to the particular point of view of the persons who frequent the place where they are located. Chief inspiration for these decorations would appear to have been the philosophers, especially Plato, but also the Greek astronomers, who fascinated the Roman elite, as demonstrated by the Latin translations of the Phaenomena of Aratus by Cicero and Germanicus.