La insurgencia de Augusto: Terror y religión

Abstract

Describimos la insurgencia terrorista de Octavio en sus años de triunvirato guerra civil, llena de violencia mesiánica en venganza por la muerte de su tío, Julio César. Especialmente ejemplar de violencia religiosa es el episodio de Perusia. Nos apoyamos en los testimonios de Séneca, Tácito, Suetonio y Dión Casio

We intend to explain how Octavian gave his coup insurgency as a religious war in revenge of the murder of his uncle (facinus, asebêma, Res Gestae 2). Religious terrorism, though equally cruel and illegal, differs from ideological and independence terrorism; it gives a transcendent meaning and solution to a exceptional crisis: a new horizon for the corruption restoring a primordial golden age. That is the goal of the Octavian insurgency, according to Suetonius (Aug. 9-10: necem avunculi vindicare tuerique acta); Tacitus (Ann. 1,9,3-4: pietate erga parentem et necessitudine rei publicae... ad arma civilia actum); Cicero (Att. 16,15,3: iurat ita sibi parentis honores consequi liceat); Dio (56,35-41) and Seneca (Clem. 1,11,1-2). As Aeneas was pietate insignis et armis (Verg. Aen. 6,403). Revenge of the divine Caesar by Octavius divi filius gave the auctoritas that he lacked against M. Antonius. The legionaries who served Julius Caesar and the people who came to worship him were his two great moral capitals. About the money, we know that he appropriated the box of Apolonia, Brudisium and the tributes of Asia (Nic. Dam. 50). His paramilitary war, his two coups against Rome, the illegal assumption of the consulate, the triumvirate, Philippi and his vow to Mars Ultor, and the Perusian religious slaughter of the defeated troops on the altar of Julius Caesar are the main chapters of religious terror of Octavius.