transformed out of all likeness to its former self by the raising of its numbers to 900, and by the admission of old soldiers, sons of freedmen and even semi-barbarous Gauls."1 But, though Caesar's high-handed conduct in this respect was not imitated by his immediate successors, yet the main lines of their policy were laid down by him. These were-(1) the municipalization of the old republican constitution, and (2) its subordination to the paramount authority of the master of the legions and the provinces. In the first case he only carried further a change already in progress. Of late years the senate had been rapidly losing its hold over the Empire at large. Even the ordinary proconsuls were virtually independent potentates, ruling their provinces as they chose, and disposing absolutely of legions which recognized no authority but theirs. The consuls and praetors of each year had since 8r been 673. stationed in Rome, and immersed in purely municipal business; and, lastly, since the enfranchisement of Italy, the comitia, though still recognized as the ultimate source of all authority, had become little more than assemblies of the city populace, and their claim to represent the true Roman people was indignantly questioned, even by republicans like Cicero. The concentration in Caesar's hands of all authority outside Rome completely and finally severed all real connexion between the old institutions of the Republic of Rome and the government of the Roman Empire. But the institutions of the Republic not merely became, what they had originally been, the local institutions of the city of Rome; they were also subordinated even within these narrow limits to the paramount authority of the man who held in his hands the army and the provinces. Autocratic abroad, at home he was the chief magistrate of the commonwealth; and this position was marked, in his case as in that of those who followed him, by a combination in his person of various powers, and by a general right of precedence which left no limits to his authority but such as he chose to impose upon himself. During the greater part of his reign he was consul as well as dictator. In 706. 48, after his victory at Pharsalia, he was given the tribunicia potestas for life, and after his second success at Thapsus the praefectura morum for three years.3 As chief magistrate he convenes and presides in the senate, nominates candidates, conducts elections, carries laws in the assembly and administers justice in court. Finally, as a reminder that the chief magistrate of Rome was also the autocratic ruler of the Empire, he wore even in Rome the laurel wreath and triumphal dress, and carried the sceptre of the victorious imperator.5 2 8 Nor are we without some clue as to the policy which Caesar had sketched out for himself in the administration of the Empire, the government of which he had centralized in his own hands. The much-needed work of rectifying the frontiers 6 he was forced, by his premature death, to leave to other hands, but within the frontiers he anticipated Augustus in lightening the financial burdens of the provincials, and in establishing a stricter control over the provincial governors, while he went beyond him in his desire to consolidate the Empire by extending the Roman franchise and admitting provincials to a share in the government.10 He completed the Romanization of Italy by his enfranchisement of the Transpadane Gauls, and by establishing throughout the peninsula a uniform system of municipal government, which under his successors was gradually extended to the provinces.12 11 The 710. 723. 711. second triumvirate, 43-28= 711-26. 717. 714. For a moment, in spite of the menacing attitude of Caesar's self-constituted representative Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), it seemed to one man at least as if the restoration of republican government was possible. With indefatigable energy Cicero strove to enlist the senate, the people, and above all the provincial governors in support of the old constitution. But, though his eloquence now and again carried all before it in senate-house and forum, it was powerless to alter the course of events. By the beginning of 43 civil war had recommenced; in the autumn Antony was already threatening an invasion of Italy at the head of seventeen legions. Towards the end of October Antony and his ally M. Aemilius Lepidus coalesced with the young Octavian, who had been recently elected consul at the age of twenty, in spite of senatorial opposition; and the coalition was legalized by the creation of the extraordinary commission for the reorganization of the commonwealth" known as the "Second Triumvirate." 14 It was appointed for a period of five years, and was continued in 37 for five years more. 15 The rule of the triumvirs was inaugurated in the Sullan fashion by a proscription, foremost among the victims of which was Cicero himself.16 In the next year the defeat of M. Junius Brutus and C. Cassius Longinus at Philippi, by the combined forces of Octavian and Antony, destroyed the last hopes of the republican party.17 In 40 a threatened rupture between the two victors was avoided by the treaty concluded at Brundusium. Antony married Octavian's sister Octavia, and took command of the eastern half of the empire; Octavian appropriated Italy and the West; while Lepidus was forced to content himself with Africa.18 For the next twelve years, while Antony was indulging in dreams of founding for himself and Cleopatra an empire in the East, and shocking Roman feeling by his wild excesses and his affectation of oriental magnificence,19 Octavian was patiently consolidating his power. Lepidus his fellow-triumvir was in 36 ejected from Africa and banished to Circeii, while Sextus Pompeius, who had since his defeat at Munda maintained a semi-piratical ascendancy in the western Mediterranean, was decisively defeated in the same year, and his death in 35 left Octavian sole master of the West. The inevitable trial of strength between himself and Antony was not long delayed. In 32 Antony openly challenged the hostility of Octavian by divorcing Octavia in favour of the beautiful and daring Egyptian princess, with whom, as the heiress of the Ptolemies, he aspired to share the empire of the Eastern world. By a decree of the senate Antony was declared deposed from his command, and war was declared against Queen Cleopatra.20 On the 2nd of September 31 was fought the battle of Actium.21 Octavian's victory was complete. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide (30), and the Eastern provinces submitted in 29. Octavian returned to Rome to celebrate his triumph and mark the end of the long-continued anarchy 718. 719. 722. 723. 724. 725. 13 For this period see Merivale, Romans under the Empire, vol. iii.; Lange, Röm. Alterth. iii. 506 seq.; Gardthausen, Augustus, bk. i. 14 The triumvirate was formally constituted in Rome (Nov. 27th) by a plebiscitum; App. iv. 7; Dio'xlvi. 56, xlvii. 2; Livy, Epit. cxx., ut IIIviri reipublicae constituendae per quinquennium essent." 15 Dio xlviii. 54; App. v. 95. For the date, cf. Mommsen, Staatrs. ii. 718. 16 Livy, Epit. cxx.; App. iv. 7; and article CICERO. 17 Dio xlvii. 35-49; App. iv. 87-138. 18 Vell. ii. 76; Dio xlviii. 28; App. v. 65. 19 For Antony's policy and schemes in the East, see Ranke, Weltgeschichte, ii. 381-85; Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire, ii. p. 24 sqq.; Lange, Röm. Alterth. iii. 573 sqq. 20 Suet. Aug. 17; Dio l. 1-8; Plutarch, Anton. 53. 21 Dio li. I; Zonaras x. 30. PERIOD I. THE PRINCIPATE, 27 B.C.-A.D. 284-(a) The Constitution of the Principate.-The conqueror of Antonius at Actium, the great-nephew and heir of the dictator Caesar, was now summoned, by the general consent of a world wearied out with twenty years of war and anarchy,2 to the task of establishing a government which should as far as possible respect the forms and traditions of the Republic, without sacrificing that centralization of authority which experience had shown to be necessary for the integrity and stability of the Empire. It was a task for which Octavian was admirably fitted. To great administrative capacity and a quiet tenacity of purpose he united deliberate caution and unfailing fact; while his bourgeois birth and genuinely Italian sympathies enabled him to win the confidence of the Roman community to an extent impossible for Caesar, with his dazzling pre-eminence of patrician descent, his daring disregard of forms and his cosmopolitan tastes. The system, 726-27. The new system which was formally inaugurated by Octavian in 28-27 B.C.4 assumed the shape of a restoration of the republic under the leadership of a princeps.5 Octavian volunAugustan tarily resigned the extraordinary powers which he had held since 43, and, to quote his own words, "handed 28-27= over the republic to the control of the senate and people of Rome. The old constitutional machinery was once more set in motion; the senate, assembly and magistrates resumed their functions; and Octavian himself was hailed as the " restorer of the commonwealth and the champion of freedom." 8 It was not so easy to determine what relation he himself, the actual master of the Roman world, should occupy towards this revived republic. His abdication, in any real sense of the word, would have simply thrown everything back into confusion. The interests of peace and order required that he should retain at least the substantial part of his authority;" and this object was in fact accomplished, and the rule of the emperors founded, in a manner which has no parallel in history. Any revival of the kingly title was out of the question, and Octavian himself expressly refused the dictatorship.10 Nor was any new office created or any new official title invented for his benefit. But by senate and people he was invested according to the old constitutional forms with certain powers, as many citizens had been before him, and so took his place by the side of the lawfully appointed magistrates of the republic;-only, to mark his pre-eminent dignity, as the first of them all, the senate decreed that he should take as an additional cognomen that of "Augustus," ,"11 while in common parlance he was henceforth styled princeps, a simple title of courtesy, familiar to republican usage, and conveying no other idea than that of a 1 He celebrated his triumph on the 13th, 14th and 15th of August; Dio li. 21; Livy, Epit. cxxxiii. For the closing of the temple of Janus, see Livy i. 19; Vell. ii. 38; Suet. Aug. 22. 2 Tac. Ann. i. 2, cunctos dulcedine otii pellexit." 3 Suet. Aug. i. His grandfather was a citizen of Velitrae; 'municipalibus magisteriis contentus." 4 Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. 745 ff.; Mon. Ancyranum (ed. Mommsen, Berlin, 1883), vi. 13–23, PP. 144–53; Herzog, Gesch. u. System d. röm. Verfassung, ii. p. 126 sqq. quae IIIviratu Tac. Ann. iii. 28, sexto demum consulatu . jusserat abolevit, deditque jura quis pace et principe uteremur "; Ibid. i. 9. non regno neque dictatura sed principis nomine constitutam rempublicam.” 6 Mon. Anc. vi. 13. 7 Vell. ii. 89," prisca et antiqua reipublicae forma revocata." Ovid, Fasti, i. 589. On a coin of Asia Minor Augustus is styled "libertatis P. R. vindex." The 13th of January, 27 B.C., was marked in the calendar as the day on which the republic was restored (C.I.L. i. p. 384). • Dio Cassius describes Augustus as seriously contemplating abdicacation (lii. 1; liii. 1-11); cf. Suet. Aug. 28. 10 Suet. Aug. 52; Mon. Anc. i. 31. 11 Mon. Anc. vi. 16, 21-23. recognized primacy and precedence over his fellow-citizens.12 The ideal sketched by Cicero in his De Republica, of a constitutional president of a free republic, was apparently realized; but it was only in appearance. For in fact the special prerogatives conferred upon Octavian gave him back in substance the autocratic authority he had resigned, and as between the restored republic and its new princeps the balance of power was overwhelmingly on the side of the latter. settle. 727. Octavian had held the imperium since 43; in 33, it 711, 721. is true, the powers of the triumvirate had legally The expired, but he had continued to wield his authority, >ment of as he himself puts it,13 "by universal consent." In 27 27-727. he received a formal grant of the imperium from the senate and people for the term of ten years, and his provincia was defined as including all the provinces in which military authority was required and legions were stationed.14 He was declared commander-in-chief of the Roman army, and granted the exclusive right of levying troops, of making war and peace, and of concluding treaties.1 As consul, moreover, he not only continued to be the chief magistrate of the state at home, but took precedence, in virtue of his majus imperium, over the governors of the "unarmed provinces," which were still nominally under the control of the senate. Thus the so-called "restoration of the republic" was in essence the recognition by law of the personal supremacy of Octavian, or Augustus, as he must henceforth be called. 15 The 23 731. 723. In 23 an important change was made in the formal basis of Augustus's authority. In that year he laid down the consulship which he had held each year since 31, and could therefore only exert his imperium pro consule, like re-settlethe ordinary governor of a province. He lost his ment of authority as chief magistrate in Rome and his precedence over the governors of senatorial provinces. To remedy these defects a series of extraordinary offices were pressed upon his acceptance; but he refused them all,16 and caused a number of enactments to be passed which determined the character of the principate for the next three centuries.17 Firstly, he was exempted from the disability attaching to the tenure of the imperium by one who was not an actual magistrate, and permitted to retain and exercise it in Rome. Secondly, his imperium was declared to be equal with that of the consuls, and therefore superior to that of all other holders of that power. Thirdly, he was granted equal rights with the consuls of convening the senate and introducing business, of nominating candidates at elections,18 and of issuing edicts.19 Lastly, he was placed on a level with the consuls in outward rank. Twelve lictors were assigned to him and an official seat between those of the consuls themselves (Dio liv. 10). Thus the proconsular authority 20 was for the first time admitted within the walls of Rome; but Augustus was too cautious a statesman to proclaim openly the fact that Tribunthe power which he wielded in the city was the same icia as that exercised in camps and provinces by a Roman potestas. military commander. Hence he sought for a title which should disguise the nature of his authority, and found it in the 12 The explanation of princeps as an abbreviated form of princeps senatus is quite untenable. For its real significance, see Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. 774; Pelham, Journ. of Phil. vol. viii. It is not an official title. 13 Mon. Anc. 6, 14, " per consensum universorum." 718. 731. 731. 742. 732. "1 "tribunician power," which had been conferred upon him for life in 36, and was well suited, from its urban and democratic traditions, to serve in Rome as "a term to express his supreme position." From 23 onwards the tribunicia potestas appears after his name in official inscriptions, together with the number indicating the period during which it had been held (also reckoned from 23); it was in virtue 731. of this power that Augustus introduced the social reforms which the times demanded;2 and, though far inferior to the imperium in actual importance, it ranked with or even above it as a distinctive prerogative of the emperor or his chosen colleague.3 The imperium and the tribunicia potestas were the two pillars upon which the authority of Augustus rested, and the other offices and privileges conferred upon him were of secondary importance. After 23 he never held the 749, 752. consulship save in 5 and 2 B.C., when he became the colleague of his grandsons on their introduction to public life. He permitted the triumvir Lepidus to retain the chief pontificate until his death, when Augustus naturally became pontifex maximus (12 B.C.). He proceeded with the like caution in reorganizing the chief departments of the public service in Rome and Italy. The cura annonae, i.e. the supervision of the corn supply of Rome, was entrusted to him in 5 22 B.C., and this important branch of administration thus came under his personal control; but the other boards (curae), created during his reign to take charge of the roads, the water-supply, the regulation of the Tiber and the public buildings, were composed of senators of high rank, and regarded in theory as deriving their authority from the senate." Such was the ingenious compromise by which room was found for the master of the legions within the narrow limits of the old Roman constitution. Augustus could say with truth that he had accepted no office which was contrary to the usage of our ancestors," and that it was only in dignity that he took precedence of his colleagues. Nevertheless, as every thinking man must have realized, the compromise was unreal, and its significance was ambiguous. It was an arrangement avowedly of an exceptional and temporary character, yet no one could suppose that it would in effect be otherwise than permanent. The powers voted to Augustus were (like those conferred upon Pompey in 67 B.C.) voted only to him, and (save the tribunicia potestas) voted only for a limited time; in 27 he received the imperium for ten years, and it was afterwards renewed for successive periods of five, five, ten and ten years.? In this way the powers of the principate were made coextensive in time with the life of Augustus, but there was absolutely no provision for hereditary or any other form of succession, and various expedients were devised in order to indicate the destined successor of the princeps and to bridge the gap created by his death. Ultimately Augustus associated his stepson Tiberius with himself as co-regent. The imperium and the tribunicia potestas were conferred upon him, and he was thus marked out as the person upon whom the remaining powers of the principate would naturally be bestowed after the death of his stepfather. But succeeding emperors did not always indicate their successors so clearly, and, in direct contrast to the maxim that "the king never dies," it has been well said that the Roman principate died with the death of the princeps.8 687. 727. in the 66 In theory, at least, the Roman world was governed according to the "maxims of Augustus" (Suet. Ner. 10), down to the Changes time of Diocletian. Even in the 3rd century there is still in name at least, a republic, of which the emperor constitu- is in strictness only the chief magistrate, deriving princi- his authority from the senate and people, and with pate. prerogatives limited and defined by law. The case is quite different when we turn from theory to practice. The 1 Tac. Ann. iii. 56; summi fastigii vocabulum." tion of the 2 Mon. Anc. Graec. 3. 19. 3 Tac. Ann. i. 3 (of Tiberius), “collega imperii, consors tribuniciae potestatis"; cf. Mommsen, Straatsr. ii. 1160. Suet. Aug. 31. Mon. Anc. 1, 32; Dio liv. 1. See Hirschfeld, Verwaltungsgesch. i. 173. 7 Dio liii. 13, 16. Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 1143. division of authority between the republic and its chief magistrate became increasingly unequal. Over the provinces the princeps from the first ruled autocratically; and this autocracy reacted upon his position in Rome, so that it became every year more difficult for a ruler so absolute abroad to maintain even the fiction of republican government at home. The republican institutions, with the partial exception of the senate, lose all semblance of authority outside Rome, and even as the municipal institutions of the chief city of the empire they retain but little actual power. The real government even of Rome passes gradually into the hands of imperial prefects and commissioners, and the old magistracies become merely decorations which the emperor bestows at his pleasure. At the same time the rule of the princeps assumes an increasingly personal character, and the whole work of government is silently concentrated in his hands and in those of his own subordinates. Closely connected with this change is the different aspect presented by the history of the empire in Rome and Italy on the one hand and in the provinces on the other. Rome and Italy share in the decline of the republic. Political independence and activity die out; their old pre-eminence and exclusive privileges gradually disappear; and at the same time the weight of the overwhelming power of the princeps, and the abuses of their power by individual principes, press most heavily upon them. On the other hand, in the provinces and on the frontiers, where the imperial system was most needed, and where from the first it had full play, it is seen at its best as developing or protecting an orderly civilization and maintaining the peace of the world. publican The decay of the republican institutions had commenced before the revolutionary crisis of 49. It was accelerated by the virtual suspension of regular government between Decay 49 and 28; and not even the diplomatic deference of retowards ancient forms which Augustus displayed instituavailed to conceal the unreality of his work of tions. restoration. The comitia received back from him 705, 726. "their ancient rights" (Suet. Aug. 40), and during his lifetime they continued to pass laws and to elect The magistrates. But after the end of the reign of Tiberius comitia. we have only two instances of legislation by the assembly in the ordinary way, and the law-making of the empire is performed either by decrees of the senate or by imperial edicts and constitutions. Their prerogative of electing magistrates was, even under Augustus, robbed of most of its importance by the control which the princeps exercised over their choice by means of his rights of nomination and commendation, which effectually secured the election of his own nominees.10 By Tiberius this restricted prerogative was still further curtailed. The candidates for all magistracies except the consulship were thenceforward nominated and voted for in the senate-house and by the senators,11 and only the formal return of the result (renuntiatio) took place in the assembly (Dio lviii. 20). And, though the election of consuls was never thus transferred to the senate, the process of voting seems to have been silently abandoned. In the time of the younger Pliny we hear only of the nomination of the candidates and of their formal renuntiatio in the Campus Martius.12 The princeps himself as long as the Principate lasted, continued to receive the tribunicia potestas by a vote of the assembly, and was thus held to derive his authority from the people.13 11 The plebiscita of Claudius, Tac. Ann. xi. 13, 14, and the lex agraria of Nerva; Digest, xlvii. 21, 3; Dio lxviii. 2; Plin. Epp. vii. 31. 10 On these rights, the latter of which was not exercised in the case of the consulship until the close of Nero's reign, see Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 916-28; Tac. Ann. i. 14, 15, 81; Suet. Aug. 56; Dio lviii. 20. 11 Tac. Ann. i. 15, "comitia e campo ad patres translata sunt"; compare Ann. xiv. 28. The magistracy directly referred to is the praetorship, but that the change affected the lower magistracies also is certain; see, e.g., Pliny's Letters, passim, especially iii. 20, 12 Plin. Paneg. 92. 13 Gaius i. 5, vi. 19. " cum ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat.” |