Augustus

The ninth hour at Nola, 19 August 14

Augustus died at Nola on 19 August 14 CE, in the same room in which his father had died. Suetonius dates it to the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius, at the ninth hour of the Roman day.

The end was not sudden. Suetonius says an intermittent bowel illness worsened after Augustus attended games at Naples; he took to bed at Nola, recalled Tiberius, and died in Livia's presence.

The deathbed scene comes from the same literary biography, not from an eyewitness record: the mirror, the arranged hair, the question to his friends about whether he had played the comedy of life well. Suetonius gives his last private words as a farewell to Livia, spoken while he kissed her.

Guarded roads and one announcement

Tacitus reports that it was uncertain whether Tiberius reached Nola before Augustus died or after. The house and the roads to it were under guard.

Favorable bulletins went out while the succession was settled, Tacitus alleges. One announcement eventually carried both pieces of news at once — that Augustus was dead, and that Tiberius held the state.

Deification came a month later

Augustus was not made a god on 19 August. The Senate awarded divine honors on 17 September, after the funeral, and only then did he become Divus Augustus.

First the body had to reach Rome. Municipal senators carried it from Nola in relays, moving at night because of the August heat and resting in local basilicas or temples during the day.

At the ceremony a former praetor, Numerius Atticus, reportedly swore that he had seen Augustus's form rising from the pyre toward heaven.