Augustus on top and Tiberius underneath, to be followed by the consuls and their
suffects. [Palce Figures 1 0 and 11 near here.]
The effect is bizarre, following on from the consuls of the Republic. Every year
there appears the same name, with a power that is not consular, nor Republican;
this name is accompanied by a sequentially numbered office that has a dating
power independent of the consuls’ eponymity, so that the fastiof the Roman peo-
ple start to look like a king list. The addition first of Agrippa and then of Tiberius
creates the impression of a new collegial magistracy with a novel hierarchy built
into it, a magistracy to rival and supplant the consulship, for this is “a quasi-
magistracy reserved for the emperor and his chosen successor.”^66
The so-called Fasti Triumphales, right next to the consular lists in the original
site in the Forum, reinforce the impression that a new cycle has begun, with the
time of the city now regulated by different mechanisms from the eponymous
parade of consuls.^67 If the consular fastihave a numerical date from the foundation
of the city at regular ten-year intervals, then the list oftriumphatoresemphatically
begins in that very moment of origins: the first two lines of the inscription read
Romulus Martis f. rex ann. [I]/de Caeninensibus k. Mar[t.],“Romulus, son of Mars,
King, in Year One, over the Caeninenses, on the Kalends of March.”^68 In an un-
beatably primal moment, Romulus is celebrating the first Roman triumph on Day
One, Year One, of Rome, and from then on every one of the triumphs has the year
from the foundation of the city recorded, as well as the day of the year.^69 After
Romulus, there is not another son of a god on the list until the year 40 b.c.e., when
the name appears ofImperator Caesar Diui filius.^70 The Fasti Consulares by defini-
tion cannot list kings, so the list oftriumphatoreswas the only one that made it pos-
sible for Augustus to create for himself this loop back to the time of divine origins.
Having served its purpose of generating a time frame that begins with the city’s
foundation by the first king and provides a connection to the living son of a god,
the list of the triumphatoresmay now be closed, for “the rest was imperial ceremo-
nial.”^71 The last name on the list, that of Cornelius Balbus in 19 b.c.e., comes at the
very bottom of the slab: “there was no room for future triumphs, and the arch
closed a chapter in Roman triumphal history.”^72
Yet another system of charting time is in place in this extraordinary complex,
for following on from the names of the magistrates of the year 13 c.e.there is a
notice of the performance of the Ludi Saeculares in the year “17 b.c.e.,” marked as
the fifth performance of the games; the earlier performances were likewise com-
memorated in the inscription.^73 Augustus’s name stands prominently at the top of
the entry for the fifth games, so that he has sealed his authority as the teleological
Augustus’s Consular Years. 181