THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER V

THE PRINCEPS

I.                 THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC

THE stage was now set for the culminating act of the drama, to which the measures described in the closing pages of the previous chapter had been designed to lead. The coins of the year 28 had as their legend libertatis p. r. vindex, and gestures such as the cancellation of the illegal acts of the Triumvirate, which were declared to have validity only until the close of the year, seemed to illustrate the motto. The Senate, purged of its less worthy elements by the lectio carried out by Augustus and Agrippa, had been made once more fit to play its proper part in the constitution; and it has been shown that circumstances made it necessary for Octavian to clarify and define his position without further delay. This he did in January, 27 b.c.

Dio tells us that before taking the decisive step he prepared his more intimate associates for what was to come. He goes further, and represents him as seeking the advice of Agrippa and Maecenas, into whose mouths he puts speeches which form a strange contrast. The rhetorical artifice by which two alternative policies are clothed in the forms of oratory was a familiar one, not unknown to Dio: but what is remarkable is that while Agrippa, taking the side of democracy, gives a rehash of the familiar commonplaces of Greek political writing, the speech attributed to Maecenas is a detailed study of the institutions of the Principate as they had developed by Dio’s own time, and embodying some ideas which had not even then found concrete form. As such it is well worthy of close study; but it need not concern us here. Nor can we regard as historical the speech which Dio puts into the mouth of Octavian himself when he presented himself before the Senate at the opening of his seventh consulship and declared his intention of laying down the supreme power. That he should have claimed—not once but twice—that while Caesar had refused the monarchy offered him, he himself had laid aside that which had been conferred on him and so ‘transcended the deeds of man’, is foreign to all that we know of his sober and dignified style. But we need not doubt the mixed feelings with which those of the senators who were not in the secret heard Octavian’s announcement, whether they believed it sincere or not, and that even while his speech was being read, cries of protest were heard begging him to retain his supreme power, so that thus the way was prepared for a settlement which had the appearance of being forced upon a reluctant ruler.

Octavian had placed at the free disposal of the Senate and people all the provinces which were being administered by his subordinates; and he now consented to undertake the administration of a certain definite group—an arrangement for which, of course, there were many precedents in the period following Sulla’s dictatorship. In 55 b.c. the greater part or the Roman dominions had been parcelled out into three great military commands—the Northern Command (the Gauls) under Caesar, the Western Command (Spain) under Pompey, and the Eastern Command (Syria) under Crassus; and the effect of the act of January 27 b.c. was to concentrate these (together with Egypt) in the hands of Octavian and therewith to confer upon him the command of almost the whole of the Roman army. This vast provincia he was to hold for a period of ten years, and the Senate’s allocation was no doubt confirmed by a lex, such as those to which Caesar and Pompey had owed their exceptional positions. It is true that he continued to hold the consulship in Rome, while governing the several provinciae committed to him by means of his subordinate legati, but this was not without precedent, for Pompey had been in the same position in 52 b.c.: and the personal inspections (and military operations) which he carried out in East and West showed that he regarded his special commission as one which entailed the duty of direct supervision when such seemed to be called for. And it was a Commission derived from the Senate and People of Rome.

In this sense he described the act of settlement in the following terms in the summary of his Res Gestae (34) completed just before his death and preserved to us in the ‘Monument of Ancyra’: “In my sixth and seventh consulships, when I had put an end to the civil wars, having acquired supreme power over the Empire by universal consent, I transferred the Republic from my own authority to the free disposal of the Senate and People of Rome”. In the entry in the Fasti Praenestini (which, as is known, were compiled by Verrius Flaccus, and are therefore specially authoritative) concerning the honours voted to Octavian by the Senate, the ground is given in the words ‘quod rem publicam populo Romano restituit’, and the phrase is echoed in the Laudatio Turiae in the words ‘pacato orbe terrarum, restituta republica’. Writing in the next reign, Velleius Paterculus waxes eloquent over the restoration of constitutional forms and closes with the words ‘prisca ilia et antiqua rei publicae forma revocata’. We may take it, therefore, that Octavian was determined that there should be nothing in the constitution as remodelled by him—by a process which we have still to trace—which should prevent a Roman of the Romans, such as he himself was, from continuing to describe it by the simple but pregnant designation hallowed by the tra­dition of centuries—res publica. In an Edict, which it is unfortunately impossible to date precisely, he wrote: ‘Ita mihi salvam ac sospitem rem publicam sistere in sua sede liceat atque eius rei fructum percipere quern peto, ut optimi status auctor dicar ut moriens ut feram mecum spem, mansura in vestigio suo fundamenta rei publicae quae iecero.’ The words might have been spoken by the most fervent upholder of the great Republican tradition; and it has been pointed out with justice that they contain echoes of the language of Cicero himself.

Nor did Octavian accept any title inconsistent with his position as the chief citizen of a free State. The evidence of the Calendars seems to show that while the ‘restoration of the Republic’ and the reassignment of the provinces took place on January 13, it was not until three days later that the Senate decreed that as a recompense for his self-denying act various honours should be granted to him. The door-posts of his house were decked with laurel; a wreath of oak-leaves—the corona civica bestowed on a soldier who saved his comrade’s life in battle—was placed above the door in token that he had preserved the lives of his fellow­citizens (ob cives servatos, as the coins have it), and a golden shield was set up in the Senate-house with an inscription commemorating his ‘valour, clemency, justice and piety’; and above all, he was given the name by which he was to be known in brief by succeeding generations—Augustus. Sulla had assumed the title of ‘the Fortunate’; Pompey was to all Romans ‘the Great’; it was left for Octavian to discover an epithet which raised him in some degree above ordinary human standards. Dio puts this in so many words—‘as being something more than human’; and it has been noted that in the early books of Livy, which were composed, as it would seem, in the years following the settlement, the adjective augustus is several times contrasted with humanus. But it had other connotations. Suetonius tells us that a suggestion was considered and rejected, that he should take the name of Romulus in token that he was the second founder of the city; but Romulus had been a king, and that Octavian was determined never to be—to the Romans. But the adjective augustus did in fact link him with the founder; for Romulus (optimus augur, as Cicero calls him) had established Rome augusto augurio, as Ennius put it in a line which must have been in many mouths; Octavian, on first taking the auspices in 43 b.c., had been vouchsafed the sign of the Twelve Vultures which had accompanied the first auspices of Romulus; he was himself an augur and learned in the disciplina auguralis, and had in 29 b.c. celebrated the Augurium Salutis, a ceremony which, like the closing of the temple of Janus, only took place in time of profound peace; and the surname which he chose was thus appropriate to one whose rule was consecrated by the expressed will of the Gods of Rome. The proposal was made in the Senate by L. Munatius Plancus, one of the senior ex-consuls, whose career earned for him the epithet ‘morbo traditor’, but who was now an unwavering adherent of the new regime. By a further resolution the name of the month Sextilis was changed to Augustus, just as Quintilis had given place to Julius.

But ‘Augustus’ was a name, not a title, and its bearer was careful to assume no official style indicating that he held any exceptional office. In the Res Gestae (34), after recording the ‘restoration of the Republic’, Augustus (as we must henceforth call him) writes as follows: ‘post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt.’ And in another passage (6) he lays stress on the fact that he refused to accept any office inconsistent with the mores maiorum. The significance of the term auctoritas was plain to a Roman reader. It meant that Augustus’ decisions in matters of policy carried greater weight than those of any other person or organ of State, although they might not take a legally binding form. Under the Republic a resolution of the Senate was termed auctoritas, until the legal step had been taken which made it a consultum, and if this step was barred by a tribunician veto, the resolution was entered on the minutes of the Senate and exerted such influence as the considered opinion of so eminent an assembly could command. This influence Augustus possessed in a supreme degree: and it mattered little that his magisterial power (potestas) was shared with others.

It is true that his statement hardly covers the facts. Who, it may be asked, were the ‘colleagues’ with whom, according to the fundamental principle of the Roman constitution, he was on equal terms? His fellow-consuls, no doubt, were formally his equals as the supreme magistrates of Rome; but, as we shall see, he soon relinquished that high office. He speaks in the Res Gestae (6) of ‘colleagues’ in the tribunicia potestas, but this can hardly be called a ‘magistracy’ in the historical sense of that term. As for the holders of the imperium, we shall see how he was in course of time granted powers which enabled him to override their decisions. We have here one of those disingenuous touches by which Augustus endeavoured to picture himself as no more than the first citizen of a free community. And so he chose for himself no title expressive of an exceptional office, but preferred to describe himself by the term princeps, which we find three times in the Res Gestae. The expression principes civitatis, ‘leading men in the State,’ was familiar to Roman ears; and in the closing decades of the Republican era the singular form had been applied to eminent statesmen. In 49 b.c. Balbus wrote to Cicero that Caesar wished for nothing more than to live without fear ‘principe Pompeio’; three years later Cicero uses princeps as a matter of course with reference to Caesar: “scito non modo me...sed ne ipsum quidem principem scire quid futurum sit”. It is therefore easy to see why Augustus chose this significant appellation; there is no need to suppose that he derived it from the political writings of Cicero (it is far from certain that it was used in the De Republica and the notion that it was an abbreviation of the title princeps senatus—which of course Augustus was, as he tells us himself, for forty years—has nothing to commend it.

Was there then a restoration of the Republic? Some modern writers have taken Augustus’ statements at their face value. Ferrero speaks of the ‘Republic of Augustus’. Eduard Meyer believed that there was a genuine restoration of senatorial rule: Mommsen, who coined the term ‘dyarchy’ to describe the new constitution, devoted a section of his work to ‘the sovereign Senate of the Principate’. Hirschfeld believed that Augustus was only gradually driven, against his will and after the failure of his earlier experiments, to take the burden of government upon his shoulders. Mitteis (with a closer approximation to fact) says that the principle of Augustus’ rule was ‘not so much to do away with the constitutional forms of the Republic as to supplement and support them by the addition thereto of an Imperial Administration.’ But one thing is certain: he was resolved never to let slip the reins of power: as Dessau says, ‘there never was a dyarchy and it was never intended that there should be.’

II. THE WORKING OF THE SYSTEM AND THE RE-SETTLEMENT

Augustus proceeded without delay to execute the commission entrusted to him by Senate and people, but before taking up his command in the provinces assigned to him he took a measure which showed his care for the well-being of Italy. The great trunk roads had fallen into disrepair during the civil wars, and Augustus took steps to recondition them. He himself assumed responsibility for the Via Flaminia, the Great North Road from Rome to Ariminum, and we possess in an incomplete form the inscription on the arch erected in his honour at the latter city. It records the dedication of the monument to Augustus by the Senate and People of Rome on the ground that the Via Flaminia and the other most frequented roads of Italy had been put into condition ‘by his initiative and at his charges’. Nor was Augustus alone active in the good work: the repair of the other roads was entrusted to those senators who had recently celebrated triumphs, and some milestones of the Via Latina bear the name of C. Calvisius Sabinus, who triumphed in 28 b.c. ‘ex Hispania’. The expense was defrayed from the spoils of war.

In the latter part of the year Augustus set out for Gaul, accompanied (in all probability) by his stepson Tiberius and his nephew M. Claudius Marcellus, the son of Octavia by her first marriage with the consul of 50 b.c. Tiberius reached the age of fifteen in November, Marcellus was probably slightly older, and both boys had ridden beside Octavian in the triumph of 29 b.c. The conduct of affairs in Rome was left in the hands of Agrippa, who was succeeded as consul on 1 Jan., 26 b.c. by T. Statilius Taurus, one of Augustus’ most loyal and efficient helpers, who had been rewarded for the construction of an amphitheatre in 30 b.c. by the conferment of the right to ‘commend,’ i.e. to designate for appointment, one member of the college of praetors.

We are not here concerned with the measures taken by Augustus in the frontier provinces of the West; it is not in fact certain which of the administrative arrangements made in Gaul belong to this date. We are told that Augustus contemplated an expedition to Britain, but this may be no more than an inference from the courtly phrases of Horace. In any case he was compelled by a serious rising in North-Western Spain to proceed thither in person, reaching Tarraco in time to celebrate his entry on his eighth consulship.

For the events of 26 b.c. our authorities are inadequate. To this year belongs the fall of Cornelius Gallus, the first to occupy the high post of the Prefect of Egypt. Both in his language and in his acts he had failed to observe the respect due to Augustus: he had set up statues of himself in all parts of Egypt and inscribed the record of his exploits on the pyramids, and we possess a trilingual inscription set up by him at Philae in which he speaks grandiloquently of his achievements in suppressing a revolt of the Thebaid in fifteen days, conquering five cities and carrying his arms to a point ‘never reached by the Roman People or the Kings of Egypt.’ Augustus revoked his appointment and forbade him to set foot in his house or in the provinces which he controlled; and informations (the nature of which is not stated) were laid against him by one Valerius Largus and others. What followed is not made clear by Dio’s statement that the Senate unanimously voted ‘that he should be condemned in the courts, deprived of his estate and exiled.’ Gallus was driven to suicide, and no trial took place: nor can we accept the view that the Senate acted as a High Court of Justice in virtue of the Settlement of 27 b.c. It showed its subservience to the new ruler by voting that Gallus’ estate should pass to the Emperor and that sacrifices of thanksgiving should be offered. Augustus, we are told by Suetonius, expressed his sorrow at the thought that ‘he was the only man in Rome to whom it was not permitted to set limits to his displeasure with his friends.’

Finally, the chronicle of Jerome notes under the same year the appointment of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus to the post of praefectus urbi, which he resigned, according to Tacitus, after a few days ‘quasi nescius exercendi’: the chronicler tells us that he held it for six days and laid it down as being an ‘unconstitutional’ office. Messalla, one of the foremost representatives of the old patriciate, who had fought for the Republic at Philippi, but had rallied to the Triumvirs, and had become one of Augustus’ most loyal adherents, may well have felt that the creation of this office marked a departure from the ancient Republican tradition, and recalled the eight praefecti whom Caesar had appointed to discharge the duties of the Republican magistrates in 45 b.c.. Not until he set out for his second expedition to the western provinces did Augustus repeat the experiment.

In 25 b.c., after the campaign in Northern Spain had been—as Augustus believed—brought to a successful conclusion, and a rebellion of the Salassi in the Western Alps had been crushed by A. Terentius Varro Murena, the temple of Janus was closed, and. Augustus once more looked forward to an era of peace. He was, however, prevented from returning to Rome by illness. No doubt he contemplated the possibility that his life would not be prolonged, and it was now that he took the first step towards the establishment of a dynastic succession, though not a word was said to indicate that such thoughts were in his mind. He had no son, and the succession could therefore only be secured through the marriage of his daughter Julia, whose mother Scribonia he had divorced immediately after the child’s birth. She was now fourteen years of age, and was given in marriage to her cousin Marcellus, who had returned from Spain and assumed the toga virilis. Agrippa presided at the ceremony.

At the close of the year Augustus set out on his return to Rome; on January 1 the Senate confirmed his acta by oath; and a little later, on receiving the news that he proposed to distribute a largess of 400 sesterces per head to the Roman People, but would not publish the edict without the approval of the Senate, that body voted him, according to Dio, a general dispensation from the laws. It is impossible to believe that this is to be taken literally as placing the princeps above the law. The doctrine princeps legibus solutus est belongs to a much later date; Augustus himself obtained a special dispensation from the marriage laws; and it is implied in the lex de imperio Fespasiani that he was only exempted from certain specific enactments.

Honours were now voted to Marcellus which indicated the future for which Augustus destined him. The Senate gave him a seat inter praetorios and reckoned him as a quaestorius for the purpose of proceeding to higher magistracies, so that he could be elected aedile for 23 b.c. It was also resolved that he might become a candidate for the consulship ten years before the normal age. At the same time Tiberius received permission to stand for office five years before the legal date, and he was in consequence elected quaestor for the following year.

The year 23 b.c. was a critical one in the history of the Principate, and the absence of any reliable narrative makes it difficult for us to trace the course of events with certainty. Dio records under the following year a conspiracy against the life of Augustus, the ringleaders of which were A. Terentius Varro Murena and Fannius Caepio: we learn from Velleius and Suetonius that they were condemned by the quaestio maiestatis, Tiberius being the prosecutor. But, according to the Capitoline Fasti, Murena was consul with Augustus in 23 b.c. and died while holding this office, while other lists replace his name by that of his successor, Cn. Calpurnius Piso, a lifelong upholder of the Republican tradition, whom Augustus persuaded with difficulty to accept the consulship. In view of this evidence we must reject Dio’s chronology and place the conspiracy in 23 b.c. Of Caepio we know scarcely anything: Murena (who has been mentioned above as the conqueror of the Salassi) was the brother-in-law of Maecenas, who incurred the displeasure of Augustus by communicating state secrets to his wife. The conspirators did not stand their trial and were condemned in absence: and it was enacted that in such cases the votes of the jurors should be cast openly.

Augustus was now stricken down by a serious illness and looked death in the face. He summoned the magistrates and senators to his presence and, having addressed them on affairs of State, handed to his fellow-consul, Piso, a rationarium imperii giving details of the military and financial positions. At the same time he handed his signet-ring to Agrippa. It was generally thought that he would designate the young Marcellus as his heir and successor, but these expectations were disappointed, and the silence of the Res Gestae in which (21) he is only called gener (as in his epitaph in the Mausoleum) makes it certain that he did not adopt his son-in-law.

But the end was not yet. The cold-water treatment of the Greek physician Antonius Musa brought Augustus back to life and health, and in the course of the summer measures were taken which profoundly modified the Settlement of 27 b.c. On July 1, at the celebration of the Latin games, Augustus resigned the consulship which he had held since 31 b.c., and his place was filled by L. Sestius Quirinalis. The choice was remarkable, for Sestius (the son of the Sestius defended by Cicero in 56 b.c.) was (like Piso) a staunch Republican, proscribed in 43 b.c. but amnestied, who never ceased to honour the memory of Brutus, under whom he had served in the civil wars: and the fact that Horace (who had fought by his side) dedicated an Ode (1, 4) to him and placed it immediately after those of which Maecenas, Augustus and Virgil formed the subjects, confirms the significance of his appointment. With both consuls adherents of the old regime the Republic seemed indeed to be restored.

But matters could not rest here. Augustus retained, it is true, the great provincia which had been voted to him in 27 b.c.; but he held his imperium no longer as consul but pro consule. Steps were therefore at once taken which compensated him for his abdication of the chief magistracy by restoring to him all that was necessary for his purposes of the power which belonged to that office. He was now no more than a proconsul, though his provincia embraced the whole group of frontier provinces, and therefore only the equal of other governors of the same rank; and like all holders of the imperium other than the city magistrates, he could not exercise his authority in Rome, but was obliged to lay it down on crossing the pomerium. Both these disabilities were now removed by special enactment. Dio explicitly says that it was decreed that he should hold the proconsulare imperiumonce and for all (though this is incorrect), and should not lay it down on crossing the pomerium nor have it renewed on leaving the City, and that he should enjoy an authority superior to that of all provincial governors—i.e. a maius imperium such as had been proposed for Pompey in 57 b.c., and had been conferred (for certain provinces) on Brutus and Cassius in 43 b.c. There is no reason to dispute the truth of these last statements; it is evident from the edicts of Cyrene that Augustus did in fact intervene in the government of a senatorial province; nor can any argument be based on the fact that both he and his successor permitted the proconsul of Africa (so long as he had a legion under his command) to receive the imperatoria salutatio from his troops, for that simply meant that that commander fought under his own auspicia and not (like the legati of the Imperial provinces) under those of the Emperor.

Thus Augustus was invested with paramount authority throughout the Empire, and although Rome formed no part of his provincial and was nominally under the rule of the consuls, he retained the imperium within its walls. But he had lost certain privileges enjoyed by the chief magistrate, particularly in relation to the Senate, and these were likewise restored to him by special enactment. In summoning the Senate and bringing business before that body the consuls enjoyed precedence over all other magistrates. Dio tells us that Augustus was empowered to ‘bring forward one item of business at each meeting of the Senate’; and after recording under 22 b.c. the trial of M. Primus he says that in recognition of his attitude in court he was given the right ‘to convene the Senate whenever he pleased.’ These enactments can have but one meaning, namely, that Augustus recovered the precedence which he had lost by his resignation of the consulship, and obtained the prior right of summoning the Senate which belonged to the consuls and also what was later called the ius primae relations., i.e. the right to introduce the first relatio at any meeting, by whomsoever summoned. Not until 19 b.c., if Dio is to be trusted, was Augustus granted the right to sit between the consuls of the year and to be attended by twelve lictors.

It is not surprising that Augustus should have restored the chief magistracy of the Republic, the natural goal of the ambition of every Roman senator, to the place which it had occupied before the foundation of the Principate. It was the symbol of constitutional government; it satisfied the aspirations of those who were prepared to serve the new regime loyally; and it provided a succession of fit persons to occupy some of the leading positions in the new administration. But if the princeps ceased henceforth to hold the chief annual magistracy of the Republic, he adopted a new style which at once marked him out as the elect of the Roman People and at the same time gave to his rule the formal continuity associated with the reigns of legitimate kings.

We have seen that as early as 36 B.c. he had had conferred upon him the inviolability of a tribune, and that in 30 b.c. a potestas tribunicia wider than that of the members of the existing college, coupled apparently with an appellate jurisdiction based thereon, had been voted to him for life. As he puts it in the Res Gestae (10), ‘sacrosanctus in perpetuum ut essem et quoad viverem tribunicia potestas mihi tribueretur statutum est.’ To this act he assigns no date, but in chapter four he tells us that at the time of writing he was ‘in the thirty-seventh year of his tribunician power,’ that is to say, that it went back to 23 b.c.: and in fact all public documents are from that year onwards dated by the annual renewals of the tribunicia potestas, which normally appears after the titles of pontifex maximus (from 12 b.c.), consul, and imperator. Dio says that the Senate voted that he should be ‘tribune for life,’ but this is of course inaccurate; Augustus, as a patrician, could not be a tribune, but by one of those legal fictions which enabled the Romans to transform their constitution without doing violence to the principles on which it was nominally based, the prerogatives of the office were separated from its tenure and conferred on the princeps. Tacitus speaks of the tribunicia potestas as ‘summi fastigii vocabulum’, devised by Augustus because he would have none of such names as rex or dictator, yet desired a title which should be paramount over other imperia, and as such we shall find it conferred upon a colleague whom Augustus desired to designate as his prospective successor. In the Res Gestae, as restored from the Antioch text, Augustus tells us that on five occasions he ‘asked for and received a colleague in this power from the Senate’, but we read of its conferment by a legislative act of the popular assembly, described by the term comitia tribuniciae potestatis, in the records of the Arvai brotherhood, which refer to it in relation to the accession of Otho and Vitellius.

It thus appears that in 23 b.c. the position of Augustus was defined by a law duly passed by the comitia, doubtless on the proposal of the consuls of the year: and Dio concludes his account of the prerogatives conferred upon Augustus with the words— ‘As a result of this both he and the emperors after him by virtue of a certain law enjoyed the tribunicia potestas as well as their other powers; for the name itself of tribune was taken neither by Augustus or by any other emperor’. Now the classical lawyers, from Gaius onwards, trace the legislative powers of the emperor to the fact that he has received his imperium from the people by a lex. And we possess a document which evidently forms the conclusion of a comprehensive enactment of this kind. This is the so-called lex de imperio Vespasiani, a bronze tablet discovered in the middle ages and set up by Cola di Rienzi in St John Lateran. We possess only the concluding clauses of the enactment and the sanctio which indemnifies all who act under it from prosecution for the contravention of other laws. In this sanctio, which was in the usual imperative form, the measure is called a lex, but the extant clauses are introduced by uti (depending on censueruni) as in a senatus consultum, and no doubt reproduce the actual decree by which the Senate voted to Vespasian the various powers which went to make up the Principate, incidentally ratifying retrospectively all the acts done by him ‘before this law was enacted’. We further note that in each clause the precedents of the grants made to Augustus, Tiberius and Claudius (Gaius and Nero being omitted) are cited where applicable. It is natural to infer that such an act of legislation was passed for Augustus in 23 b.c. (as Dio seems to indicate) and that the powers conferred by it were enlarged or varied on the accession of subsequent principes.

It is unfortunate that the earlier portions of the law have not been preserved: the first of the extant clauses traces back to Augustus the right to make treaties with whomsoever he will and no doubt the preceding words gave him the power of making war and peace. In this connection we may note the striking passage with which Strabo concludes his Geography. He observes that Augustus, when the nation had conferred upon him ‘the primacy in rule’, i.e. the Principate, and he had been given for life authority to make war and peace, shared the provinces of the Empire with the People; and after explaining the distinction between the provinces he closes his work with the words ‘and kings and dynasts and tetrarchies belong and always have belonged to his share’. We should naturally infer that the right to make peace and war and the conduct of foreign relations in general date back to the restoration of the Republic in 27 B.C., but it would appear from the lex de imperio that provisions confirming this were embodied in the consolidating statute of 23 b.c. That statute further contains a clause—citing the precedent of Augustus—giving the princeps ‘the right and power to do all such things as he may deem to serve the interest of the Republic and the dignity of all things divine and human, public and private’. The significance of this will appear later.

We have seen that when threatened with the prospect of death, Augustus had given no clear indication of his view with regard to the situation which would arise if that prospect were realized. Having ‘restored the Republic,’ he would take no step implying the foundation of a dynasty; and on his recovery he proposed to read his last will and testament before the assembled Senate, in order to shew that he had designated no successor; but this the senators would not permit. Still, the marriage of Marcellus with Augustus’ only daughter and the exceptional honours conferred upon him, the only less conspicuous privileges bestowed on his stepson Tiberius, and above all the fact that he had handed his signet-ring to Agrippa—the one outstanding figure in his entourage—could not fail to implant in men’s minds the idea that when the princeps died, the principate would live. ‘Men thought,’ says Velleius, ‘that should aught befall Augustus, Marcellus would succeed to his power, but that his security would be threatened by Agrippa’; and when Augustus dispatched the latter on a special mission to the East, it was assumed that he had taken this step in order to ease the strained relations between his potential successors. Our authorities can do no more than give us the rumours of the time: Suetonius tells us that Agrippa withdrew to Mytilene ‘because Marcellus was preferred to him’, while he makes Tiberius (speaking of his own retirement to Rhodes) quote the precedent of Agrippa’s withdrawal in order to avoid the appearance of standing in the way of Marcellus’ career. Later writers looked upon Agrippa’s mission as exile—‘pudenda Agrippae ablegatio’, as Pliny the Elder calls it.

The case is not so simple. Dio’s version is that Agrippa was sent as governor to Syria, but that ‘with more than usual moderation’ he remained in Lesbos and sent his lieutenants to the province. Josephus, however, says explicitly that Agrippa was sent out as ‘deputy for Caesar to the provinces beyond the Ionian Sea’—i.e. the trans marinae provinciae, as they were called, embracing the Eastern half of the Empire; and when recording his return to Rome from the East in 13 b.c. he speaks of his ‘ten years’ administration of the Asiatic provinces.’ As we shall find, the words just quoted cannot here be taken in their strict sense, for Agrippa returned to Rome in 21 b.c., and his work lay in the West until his resumption of the Eastern command in 17 b.c. But that his position in 23 b.c. is correctly described by Josephus there is no reason to doubt. He was invested with an imperium which made him the vice-gerent of the East under the princeps, and although direct proof is lacking that this was an imperium maius in relation to the governors of senatorial provinces (as was certainly the case after 17 b.c., when there is ample evidence that he intervened in the affairs of Asia and Achaia), it seems very probable that the institution of a ‘secondary proconsular imperium’ (as Mommsen called it)—the first of those experiments in co-regency which Augustus made in connection with the modification or renewal of his own powers—included the powers necessary to make the vice-gerent’s power effective. On the other hand, if we bear in mind the tentative methods of Augustus, we shall hesitate to adopt the view that the Senate now voted to Agrippa a general proconsulare imperium such as the princeps himself enjoyed and that ‘from this time to the end of his life Agrippa shared with Augustus the military and administrative control of the Imperial provinces of the Empire.’

III. FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS: THE NEW SAECULUM

Restored to health, and secured by the new settlement in the enjoyment of full control of the machinery of government, Augustus might well feel that he had guided the ship of State into smooth waters. But trouble was in store for him. In the autumn of 23 b.c. Marcellus fell sick of a disease which defied the treatment so successfully applied by Antonius Musa in Augustus’ own case. His death was made immortal by Virgil in lines too familiar to quote and his name was kept in memory by the theatre dedicated by Augustus, the remains of which still stand, and by the portico and library built by his mother Octavia.

The next blow was struck by the hand of Nature. In the winter of 23—22 b.c. the Tiber overflowed its banks, and the inundations were followed by an epidemic which caused lands to go untilled and brought scarcity in its train. We are told that these calamities were connected in the popular imagination with Augustus’ resignation of the chief magistracy, and that the mob besieged the Curia and threatened to burn it over the heads of the senators unless the princess were appointed dictator. They then approached Augustus directly and begged him to assume the dictatorship and also the cura annonae in the form in which it had been conferred on Pompey in 57 b.c. In the Res Gestae (5) he tells us that he refused the dictatorship when it was offered to him both in his absence and when he was present ‘by the Senate and people’, but that he did not decline the control of the corn-supply in time of extreme scarcity and administered it with such effect that within a few days he relieved the whole people from panic and risk ‘at his own expense’. Nevertheless the popular agitation continued. Augustus was offered, but declined, an ‘annual and perpetual cnsorship’, amd on being pressed to become censor for life, he caused Paullus Aemilius Lepidus (a nephew of the triumvir, who had, together with his father, been on the list of the proscribed in 43 B.C.) and L. Munatius Plancus to be appointed censors. They were the last to hold that magistracy under the Republican forms, but they did not celebrate the lustrum, and their disputes served to bring the office into discredit, while Augustus himself performed most of their functions.

In the autumn Augustus left Rome and went first to Sicily— possibly in order to take measures for the regulation of the corn­supply of Rome—and thence to Samos, where we find him in the following year. But Rome was not content with the new settlement, and the year 21 b.c. opened with only one consul in office—M. Lollius, one of Augustus’ most faithful henchmen—the other seat having been left open in the hope that the princeps himself would consent to be elected. This, however, he refused to accept, and serious disturbances followed. The rival candidates for the vacant consulship, Q. Aemilius Lepidus, a son of the triumvir, and L. Junius Silanus, visited Augustus, who ordered that the elections should take place in their absence: in the end Lepidus secured a place in the Fasti. But Augustus felt that a strong hand was needed in Rome, and summoned Agrippa to return from the East and take control. Nor was this all. Agrippa was married to Augustus’ niece Marcella, whom he was now bidden to divorce in order to become the husband of the widowed Julia, with the prospect of securing the succession for the direct descendants of the princeps : a son, Gaius, was in fact born in the following year, and a second, Lucius, in 17 b.c. Augustus could now undertake the settlement of outstanding questions in the East, more especially the negotiations with the Parthian king for the recovery of the standards of Crassus, which were handed over to Tiberius in 20 b.c.

Agrippa’s task did not, however, prove an easy one. In 21 M. Egnatius Rufus, whom Velleius describes as ‘per omnia gladiatori quam senatori propior’, was aedile, and formed a fire-brigade from his own slaves, which gained him such popularity that he was elected praetor for the following year. On laying down his aedileship, he issued an edict in which he boasted that he had handed over the city ‘unimpaired and intact’ to his successor. Augustus thereupon transferred the duties of the fire-brigade to a corps of 600 public slaves, and imposed upon the praetors the charge of celebrating the games which had hitherto been held under the auspices of the aediles; he himself defrayed the expense incurred. Egnatius, however, was not lightly to be rebuffed; and in 19 b.c. he presented himself as a candidate for the consulship. As in 21, only one consul was in office, for again the second place had been left unfilled in the hope that Augustus would consent to be elected. The sole consul was C. Sentius Saturninus; and since Agrippa had been obliged to leave Rome towards the close of 20 b.c. in order to quell disturbances in Gaul and on the Rhine and had thence gone to Spain in 19, where the rebellion of the Cantabri called for his presence, Saturninus was left in a position of grave responsibility, to which he proved fully equal. His father had been among the proscribed, and he himself had followed the fortunes of Sextus Pompeius, and had been of those whom the Pact of Misenum ‘restored to the republic,’ in the words of Velleius, who was his wholehearted admirer. He now refused to accept the candidature of Egnatius for the consulship, and went so far as to announce that even were he to secure a majority of the votes cast, he would decline to declare him elected. Again there were riots and bloodshed, and the Senate voted an armed guard for the protection of the consul, which he refused; and it was resolved to send envoys to Augustus, who was now on his return from the East; so he nominated one of these—Q. Lucretius Vespillo, who had been on the list of the proscribed,—to fill the vacant consulship. Meanwhile, as it would seem, a plot to kill Augustus was discovered, in which Egnatius played the principal part, and the ringleaders were executed in prison.

Preparations were now made to welcome Augustus on his return to Rome, and he was met in Campania by a deputation from the Senate, headed by the newly-appointed consul, and comprising representatives of the colleges of praetors and tribunes and other leading citizens (principes viri, as they are called in the Res Gestae), “an honour which up to this time (he adds) had been decreed to no one but myself”. But Augustus would have no triumphal entry into the city. On the night of October 12 he slipped through the Porta Capena, and the Romans awoke to find the princeps in their midst. He would accept no honour save the erection of an altar to Fortuna the Homebringer (Fortuna Redux) without the gate and the institution of an annual holiday, the Augustalia, on the date of his return.

The year 18 b.c. marks a further stage in the development of the Principate. The time was drawing near when the commission granted to Augustus on the ‘restoration of the Republic’ would expire; and its renewal (which of course was a foregone conclusion) was made the occasion for certain significant measures. We have already mentioned the restoration to the princeps of the outward symbols of consular authority, which Dio inaccurately calls ‘the consular authority for life’ and dates in 19 b.c. More important for the future of the regime was the co-regency conferred upon Agrippa for the same period—five years—for which Augustus’ tenure of the frontier provinces was extended. Dio tells us that Augustus granted to Agrippa ‘other privileges almost equal to his own and therewith the tribunicta potestas’. It was the first time that he had clearly indicated the means by which in the event of his own death—and he feared assassination—the gap might be bridged and the continuance of the principate assured. The tribunicia potestas of Agrippa, like that of Augustus, was annually numbered, so that we find him entitled trib. pot. IIi in the inscriptions on the Maison Carrée at Nimes and the theatre at Merida (Emerita) in Spain. As for his imperium we can only say that on his return to the East in 17 b.c. he exercised control, not only over the Imperial provinces, but also over those—such as Asia—which had senatorial governors: for example, he restored to Cyzicus in 15 b.c. the libertas of which Augustus had deprived it in 20 b.c. and in a letter to the Ephesians he informs them that he has notified Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, that no Jew shall be constrained to furnish bail on the Sabbath day.

In the Res Gestae (6) Augustus tells us that both in 19 and 18 b.c. the Senate and People of Rome concurred in electing him to the cura legum morumque with supreme authority, but that he refused to assume this or any office inconsistent with the mores maiorum, and carried out the measures which the Senate desired to see put into effect by him in virtue of his tribunicia potestas. Dio goes farther and states that in 19 b.c. Augustus received the praefectura morum and potestas censoria for five years; but in the face of Augustus’ explicit statement we cannot accept this account as historical. He goes on to say that after voting these measures the people begged Augustus to ‘set everything in order’ and enact whatever laws he pleased, which laws should be called leges Augustae and be made binding by oath. There is here a clear reference to the leges Juliae, which belong to 18 b.c., and it is legitimate to interpret the words quoted above from the Res Gestae as meaning that these were proposed by Augustus to the popular assembly in virtue of his tribunicia potestas. In the eighth chapter of the Res Gestae he writes: ‘legibus novis me auctore latis multa exempla maiorum exolescentia iam ex nostro saeculoreduxi,’ thus stressing the moral reforms by which he hoped to earn the gratitude of posterity. It is to these that we must refer such expressions as thosfc of Horace (Ep. n, 1, 1) ‘cum...res Italas...moribus ornes, legibus emendes,’ and Ovid’s reference (Trist. n, 233) to ‘legum... tutela tuarum et morum’ means no more, and must not be taken to confirm Dio’s version of the powers conferred upon Augustus.

The code of 18 b.c., so far as it relates to public morals, is fully discussed elsewhere; we shall confine ourselves here to mentioning its most important provisions in other fields. It is not of course possible in every case to say whether a lex Julia was enacted by the dictator or by the princeps, but it can at least be said that considerable reforms were effected in the Criminal Law and in Legal Procedure. The Roman criminal code was made up of the laws establishing the quaestiones perpetuae, most of which were enacted by Sulla and hence called leges Corneliae. In the forty-eighth title of the Digest we have a series of chapters on these statutes; and most of them are now no longer leges Corneliae, but leges Juliae, the presumption being that they were passed by Augustus. Thus the statutes concerning ambitus, males tas, repetundae, and peculatus were remodelled: and above all, two laws on vis—the Lex Julia de vi publica and de vi privata—were passed, which were of the first importance. This was especially true of the former: for Paulus tells us that it rendered liable to the penalty of the law any person exercising authority who should execute, torture, scourge or condemn a Roman citizen ‘antea ad populum, nunc imperatorem appellantem,’ thus placing on a secure basis the appellate jurisdiction of the princeps in criminal matters.

Another important group of laws dealt with the reform of judicial procedure. These were the leges Juliae [iudiciorum] publicorum and privatorum. The number and nature of these enactments have been disputed: it has been held for example that there were two leges Juliae privatorum, one relating to procedure in Rome and the other to that in the municipia. It has also been suggested that these laws are not to be distinguished from the Lex Julia de vi publica and Lex Julia de vi privata mentioned above; but the passage cited from Ulpian in support of this view does not prove the point; and the quotations from the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh chapters respectively of the lex publicorum and lex privatorum in the Vatican fragments (sections 197, 198), taken in conjunction with other citations in the Digest, seem to make it clear that general forms of procedure were laid down.

In 18 b.c. Augustus also proceeded to hold a lectio senatus. It will be remembered that such a revision of the senatorial roll had been carried out (according to custom) in connection with the census of 29—28 b.c. In the Res Gestae (8) Augustus says quite baldly (perhaps because he did not wish to revive painful memories) ‘senatum ter legi’, and then goes on to enumerate the three census at which the lustrum was celebrated, these being dated to 28 b.c., 8 B.C. and a.d. 14. It is clear that he did not regard the two functions—lectio senatus and celebration of the lustrum—as inseparable, and we are not in any way bound to suppose that (except in 28 b.c.) they coincided in time. Now Dio mentions four occasions (excluding a.d. 14, where the text is mutilated) on which a census and a revision of the senatorial roll or both took place— in 29—28 b.c., in 19—18 b.c., in 13 b.c., and in a.d. 4. Combining the statements of Dio and the Res Gestae, Hardy attempted to construct a symmetrical scheme under which census and lustrum were held at intervals of approximately twenty years and lectiones senatus halfway through each period, i.e. in 18 b.c. and a.d. 4. But in any case the census of a.d. 4 must be rejected, since the Res Gestae ignore it, nor can we count the lectio of a.d. 4 among the three carried out by Augustus himself, since (as we shall see) it was entrusted to Commissioners. Thus the words ‘senatum ter legi’ must be taken as referring to 28, 18 and 13 b.c. It remains true that both census and lectio, as also the conferment or renewal of powers on the co-regents of the princess, coincided significantly with the successive renewals of Augustus’ own imperium.

In recording the lectio of 18 b.c., Dio describes an elaborate scheme devised by Augustus in order to avoid the odium of exercising compulsion on unworthy senators to resign their seats. He first selected thirty senators, testifying on oath that they were the fittest, and ordered each of them (also on oath) to write down a list of five names. From each of these groups one was selected by lot who was to draw up a further list of five. But this scheme broke down in practice, and Augustus was finally compelled to make his own selection, and to raise the number of senators to six hundred instead of limiting it, as he would have wished, to three hundred.

The time had now come to celebrate the coming of that golden age of peace and prosperity the dawn of which had been awaited with such fervent longing by a world weary of strife. More than once the cup had been dashed from Roman lips—in 49 B.C., when (according to the prevailing theory that the saeculum was precisely 100 years in duration) the celebration of the Tenth Age should have taken place, in 44 when, after the murder of Caesar, the sidus Julium blazed in the heavens and (as Augustus related in his memoirs) was interpreted by a haruspex named Vulcatius as signifying the beginning of the new saeculum—the seer paid the penalty for revealing the secret of the gods by instant death!— and again in 40 b.c., when the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil gave expression to the unvoiced thought of millions. Augustus, who had an eye for dramatic fitness, felt that the time was ripe for an imposing ceremony which should make as vivid an impression on Rome as the ‘restoration of the Republic’ ten years before, but should be religious rather than political. Virgil no doubt had been taken into his confidence, for before his death in 19 b.c. he had written the lines

Augustus Caesar divi genus aurea condet

Saecula.

In the following year the promulgation of the new code betokened—as it might be supposed—a return to the purer morals of man’s first estate; and due preparations were made for the staging of the celebrations. The Sibylline books were recopied by the hands of their guardians, the xvuiri sacris faciundis; the interpretation of their oracles (and of the records of the Republic) in order that the Tenth Age might find its dawning in 17 b.c. was entrusted to Ateius Capito, the head of one of the great law schools, and a staunch supporter of the regime; and Horace, who, since the death of Virgil, was unquestionably the first poet of Rome, was commissioned to write the hymn to be sung by a choir of boys and maidens at the culmination of the ceremony; and in 17 B.c., on the third of June, prayers were duly offered for the ‘seed of Anchises and Venus’, ‘bellante prior, iacentem lenis in hostem’. It was not as fine a phrase as Virgil’s ‘parcere subiectis et debellare superbos’, but it served to mark the fact that the spirit of Rome (as Virgil had conceived it) was incarnate in the princeps.

IV. DYNASTIC POLICY AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE PRINCIPATE

In 17 b.c. Julia bore to Agrippa a second son, who was given the name Lucius, and, together with his elder brother Gaius, was almost at once adopted by Augustus, who thus gave a clear indication that it was reserved for his lineal descendants to carry on the family tradition and—presumably—to succeed in due time to the principate. In the meantime, however, there was work to be done for which he needed the help of his stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus, who had already received exceptional privileges. In 16 b.c. the elder brother was praetor, while the younger held the quaestorship; they were respectively in their twenty-sixth and twenty-third years of age. Agrippa had returned to the East for a second term, and Augustus had dedicated the restored temple of Quirinus when he was once more needed in the West; M. Lollius, the legatus on the Rhine, had sustained a reverse at the hands of German tribes, and there was work to be done in Gaul. The princeps set out thither, accompanied by Tiberius, and was absent from Rome for the next three years. He appointed T. Statilius Taurus to the post of praefectus urbi which he filled with distinction (egregie toleravit, says Tacitus). We are not here concerned with the regulation of the Northern frontiers which is treated elsewhere; suffice it to say that Tiberius and Drusus gained undying fame by their campaigns, duly celebrated by Horace in the fourth book of the Odes. In 15 b.c. Drusus received the ornamenta praetoria as Tiberius had done four years before, and in 13 b.c. became legatus of the Three Gauls.

In this year Agrippa returned from the East, having for the third time refused a triumph—in this instance voted to him for his settlement of the affairs of the Kingdom of Bosporus. Tiberius was now consul, and presided in the Senate when the honours to be conferred upon Augustus on his return from the West were voted. The only one accepted by the princeps was the election in the Campus Martius of an Ara Pacis Augustae. The ‘Augustan peace’ was indeed far from being established on a secure footing: but the monument represents the highest achievement of Imperial art.

The second term of Augustus’ imperium was now drawing to its close, and it was duly renewed, again for five years. At the same time Agrippa received an extension of his tribunicia potestas for the same period, and an imperium maius such as that which Augustus himself enjoyed, over all provincial governors. Trouble was now brewing in the North-East, and Agrippa was dispatched to Pannonia. Augustus also carried out a third lectio senates, and the qualifications of the senatorial order were strictly examined: we shall deal with these later.

Dio records that in the same year Lepidus the ex-triumvir died and that Augustus was elected to the vacant chief pontificate; but in the Res Gestae (10) we read: ‘I refused to be created Pontifex Maximus in the place of my colleague during his lifetime, though the people offered me that priesthood, which my father had held. A few years later, when the man who, taking advantage of civil strife, had seized that priesthood was dead, I accepted it; and so great was the multitude that flocked to my election from all Italy that no such gathering at Rome had heretofore been recorded. This was in the consulship of P. Sulpicius [Quirinius] and C. Valgius [Rufus],’ i.e. in 12 b.c. Augustus thus became at long last the head of the State religion, having with nicely calculated self-effacement refrained from doing violence to those institutions into which he laboured so tirelessly to breathe new life. The form of popular election to the chief pontificate was observed by succeeding Emperors, and we read, for example, of the comitia pontificates maximi of Otho in the Acts of the Arvai Brotherhood.

In the early spring Agrippa, having restored order in Pannonia, returned to Italy, and went to Campania, presumably for reasons of health. Soon, however, his condition grew worse, and in the third week of March tidings reached Augustus, who was exhibiting games in the name of his adopted sons, that he was critically ill. The princeps hastened to Campania, but found his colleague no longer alive. The body was brought to Rome, where Augustus delivered the funeral laudatio in the Forum and laid his friend to rest in his own Mausoleum. He had made the Emperor his principal heir, bequeathing to him his great estates—including the Thracian Chersonese—and the familia of slaves which he hacl formed to keep his buildings in Rome in condition: his baths and gardens he left to the Roman People.

Thus Augustus was deprived by an untimely death of his most loyal friend, the prop and stay of the Principate, just as he had given signal proofs of his confidence that in case of his own death the reins of power would remain in safe hands until the younger members of the Imperial house were able to take them up. For the time being the position on the Northern frontiers needed consolidation. This problem and the solution attempted is discussed elsewhere; here we must note that, although the work was of necessity entrusted to the stepsons of Augustus, he moved (as was his custom) cautiously in regard to the conferment of distinctions upon them as a reward for their military successes. The elder, Tiberius, was betrothed to Julia, now for the second time a widow, and shortly to become the mother of a child who was named Agrippa Postumus. We need not perhaps give credence to the story that she had endeavoured to engage Tiberius’ affections during Agrippa’s lifetime; there is less reason to doubt that her third marriage was at first happy, but that an estrangement took place after the death of the only child in infancy. But it was said that Tiberius never lost his deep affection for the wife whom he had been obliged to divorce for reasons of state—Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa and granddaughter of Cicero’s friend Atticus—and that on the only occasion when he was permitted to see her after his marriage with Julia it was noticed that his eyes filled with tears. In 12 b.c. he took command in Pannonia, and the Senate voted him a triumph for his successes, but Augustus would not permit him to celebrate it, nor did he recognize the salutatio imperatoria accorded to him by the troops. An important precedent, however, was created when the triumphalia ornamenta—the right to retain certain of the insignia of the triumphator for life—were granted to Tiberius; and in the following year (11 B.c.), when Drusus (who was now praetor) gained conspicuous successes against the Germans, the triumph voted to him by the Senate was again refused, and the ornamenta conferred upon him instead. Tiberius earned them a second time in this year and both the brothers were now permitted to celebrate an ovatio, though neither was granted the use of the title imperator. Their campaigns were not, however, at an end, and the culmination was reached when Drusus, as consul in 9 b.c., carried the Roman arms to the Elbe. Now at last, as it would seem, both the brothers were allowed the coveted style of imperator. Such is the meaning of Suetonius’ words, and in an inscription set up by Tiberius after 1 b.c., Drusus bears the title. He did not hold it for long, for on September 14 he died as the result of an accident.

It was a shrewd blow to Augustus, who was thrown back on the sole support of Tiberius until such time as his grandsons could take up the position which he designed them to hold. He was accordingly dispatched to Germany to complete the work begun by Drusus, where he received a second salutatio imperatoria and was at length permitted to enjoy a triumph; he was also elected to the consulship for 7 b.c.

The imperium of Augustus was renewed in 8 b.c., this time for ten years, and a census was held, which, as he tells us, he carried out solus consulari cum imperial but it was not until 6 B.C. that he once more sought a colleague in the tribunicia potestas, which was conferred upon Tiberius for a period of five years. He was not, however, minded to play the part which Agrippa had so loyally sustained. It was evident that the Emperor’s grandsons were marked out for the succession to the Principate; and in fact the first steps were now taken to give them an exceptional position. Dio tells us that in 6 B.C. it was proposed that Gaius should be elected consul, but that Augustus expressed his disapproval and at the same time his hope that no circumstances such as had arisen in his own case would compel the election of any one below the age of twenty. Tacitus represents Augustus’ refusal to accept the proposal as insincere, and in fact there can be little doubt that the demonstration was prearranged and was intended to lead to the conferment of exceptional privileges upon the brothers. In 5 b.c. Augustus assumed the consulship for the twelfth time, and introduced Gaius to public life by the time-honoured procedure of deductio in forum on his assuming the toga virilis, he was then designated as consul, to hold office after an interval of five years (i.e. in a.d. 1); the Senate gave him the right to attend its meetings, and the Roman knights saluted him as princeps iuventutis. These precedents were precisely followed three years later, when Augustus held his thirteenth and last consulship, Lucius receiving the same privileges as his elder brother. The only distinction made between the two princes was that while Gaius became pontifex Lucius received the augurate. The title princeps iuventutis wascarefully chosen. It had Republican associations, for Cicero had used it, for example, in a letter writen in 50 b.c. to Appius Claudius Pulcher, in which, speaking of Pompey and Brutus, he describes the former as ‘omnium saeculorum et gentium princeps’ and the latter as ‘iam pridem iuventutis, celeriter, ut spero, civitatis.’ This phrase is paralleled by Ovid’s apostrophe to Gaius Caesar, written in 2 b.c.

                                    nunc iuvenum princeps, deinde future senum.

If further evidence were needed that the princeps iuventutis was marked out as the future bearer of the title by which Augustus desired to be designated, it might be found in the words of what are known as the cenotaphia Pisana. These are inscriptions set up by order of the municipal council of the colony of Pisa after the death of both the princes; and in the second, after Augustus has been termed ‘maxsumus custos imperi Romani totiusque orbis terrarum praeses’, Gaius is referred to as ‘iam designatus iustissimus ac simillumus parentis sui virtutibus princeps.’

To Tiberius the manifest intention of Augustus to base his dynastic policy on the line of direct descent was intolerable; he declined to carry out the mission which Augustus pressed upon him to settle the ‘still vexed’ question of the Armenian succession, begged to be released from the burden of public life, and, in spite of the protests of Augustus and the entreaties of Livia, retired to Rhodes, where he remained for seven years, mainly engaged in literary pursuits and especially in the study of the fashionable pseudo-science of astrology. Of the true reasons for his retirement he said nothing at the time, and Roman gossip invented explanations which need not be repeated. Later, he defended his action by the precedent of Agrippa’s withdrawal from Rome in 23 b.c., when the young Marcellus embarked on the career so soon to be cut short by death, and no doubt there was a certain resemblance between the circumstances, but it may well be believed that his unhappy marriage with Julia, who did not accompany him to Rhodes, influenced his decision.

In his absence the grandsons of Augustus filled the parts assigned to them in the dynastic system: in 4 b.c. Gaius took his seat at the Crown Council at which the future government of Judaea was debated; and in 2 b.c. (when Lucius, as we saw, was introduced to public life) the office of duoviri aedis dedicandae was revived in order that the brothers might take part in the consecration of the temple of Mars Ultor, vowed by Octavian on the field of Philippi.

The year 2 b.c. was memorable for two events. The first was the conferment upon Augustus by Senate, Knights and People of the title of pater patriae—already in unofficial use, as the inscriptions show and Dio expressly notes. The titulature of the princeps was now complete. The other outstanding event of the year was the domestic catastrophe which befell Augustus when it came to his knowledge that his daughter had been guilty of flagrant offences against morality. It was impossible for the author of the Lex de adulteriis either to attempt the concealment of facts which were common knowledge or to fail to enforce his own law; Julia herself was banished to the island of Pandateria and her lovers were exiled—all except Iullus Antonius, the son of the Triumvir, who was driven to suicide.

In 1 b.c. the term of five years for which the tribunicia potestas had been conferred upon Tiberius expired, and so far from renewing the grant, Augustus refused permission to his stepson to return to Rome, so that he became a virtual exile, and only the entreaties of his mother induced the princeps to bestow upon him the honorary title of legatus. Gaius Caesar was now in his twentieth year, and Augustus caused him to be invested with a special proconsular imperium in the Eastern provinces. He was naturally provided with an efficient staff, at the head of which was M. Lollius, who has been mentioned above. We have already spoken of the interview between Gaius and his stepfather; it was said (probably with truth) that Lollius did his best to sow seeds of discord between Tiberius and the young crown prince. He did not, however, long enjoy his position of confidence. Gaius soon discovered the real character of his adviser, and Lollius died in disgrace. He was succeeded as Chief of the Staff by P. Sulpicius Quirinius (the Cyrenius of St Luke), a fine soldier and a man of proved integrity. Quirinius was a loyal friend of Tiberius, and an immediate result of his influence with Gaius was seen when Augustus—who was unwilling to recall Tiberius against the wishes of his grandson—now gave him permission to return to Rome, though for the time being he gave him no part to play in public affairs; when the powers of the princeps were renewed for ten years in a.d. 3, no co-regency was instituted.

Once more the Emperor’s dearest hopes were disappointed. Lucius Caesar, to whom a commission in the West had been entrusted, died at Marseilles in a.d. 2 when on his way to Spain, and two years later, on Feb. 21, a.d. 4, his brother, as the result of a wound received in Armenia, met his end at Limyra in Lycia. Augustus had now no choice but to designate Tiberius as his chosen successor, and four months after the death of Gaius he adopted him by the solemn ceremony of a lex curiata as his son. But this was not enough, for at the same time he adopted his only surviving grandson, the posthumous child of Agrippa and Julia, a boy deficient in every quality desirable in a possible heir, and insisted that Tiberius should adopt his nephew Germanicus, the son of Drusus by Agrippina, in whose children’s veins ran the blood of the princeps. Tiberius was, however, again invested with the tribunicia potestas, this time for ten years, and was dispatched (no doubt with a special imperium) to the Rhine frontier.

In the same year Augustus made a constitutional experiment which was not repeated. He felt that the time had come for a lectio senates, but instead of carrying out the revision of the roll himself he set up a commission of tresviri legendi senates, selected by lot from a list of ten proposed by himself. It was doubtless at the same time that a second commission was called into being to revise the roll of the equites. Although these commissioners were invested with the censoria potestas, there is no evidence that they celebrated the lustrum. This function was performed for the third and last time by Augustus at the close of his reign. His own words are (Res Gestae 8) ‘tertium consulari cum imperio lustrum conlega Tib. Caesare filio meo feci’, the year being a.d. 14.

By this time Tiberius, whose services on the Northern frontiers had gained him a triumph, had been placed in a position of co-regency with the princeps which went beyond previous precedent. In the year a.d. 13 Augustus received a fifth and final extension of his imperium for ten years ‘against his will,’ if Dio is to be believed. Dio adds that the tribunicia potestas of Tiberius was renewed: but this was not all, for a law was passed in due form on the proposal of the consuls granting to him equal rights with his adoptive father in the administration of the provinces and command of the armies, and empowering him to conduct the census together with Augustus. The duties of the censors closed with the celebration of the lustrum in May, a.d. 14, and Tiberius received a commission to proceed with the settlement of affairs in Illyricum. He parted from Augustus early in August at Beneventum, and went on his way northward; but he had no sooner reached his province than he was summoned to return to the deathbed of the princeps. Velleius and Suetonius agree that he found him living, and for one whole day he remained in secret conclave with the dying Emperor.

At long last Augustus had made provision for the continuance of the system which he had perfected with infinite tact and patience. It was embodied in no written document, but had grown from precedent to precedent; and although the co-regency conferred on Tiberius had left no room for doubt where a princeps was to be found, it is going too far to say that the Principate was conceived by Augustus as a dyarchy, not in the sense in which Mommsen used that word, i.e. a joint-rule of Senate and princeps, but as the ‘dual sovereignty’ of two rulers. What is of greater importance to consider is the part which the Senate and People of Rome were designed to play in the new system. This will be the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER VI

SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS