Plancus the Augustan

Plancus&s; participation in the restoration of the Roman state is attested in only three settings, and at first sight it is as though he was brought out of a closet or pulled off a shelf to play an assigned role. As before, his emergence is unexplained, but the censorship was intended to be another demonstration of the res publica restituta . A combination of factors, including an unspecified disagreement with his colleague, prevented fulfillment of the censorial duties. His third contribution was to the Augustan program of building and repairing temples to re-establish the pax deorum , as he completed the Temple of Saturn in the Forum, also commemorated in the epitaph on the mausoleum at Caieta. The Augustan religious reforms were not simply a matter of political propaganda, for there was a groundswell of conservatism at the time which most scholars feel Augustus shared.

Classical Antiquity Studies · Geology · Historical and Architectural Studies · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies