THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER VII

THE IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION

I. THE PROBLEM OF ADMINISTRATION

IN the speech of advice to Augustus which Dio Cassius puts into the mouth of Maecenas, urging that a restoration of the Republic was neither desirable nor possible, it is pointed out that while Rome was a small State democratic institutions were efficient, but that with the growth of the Empire a strain was put upon them which they were unable to bear. ‘The cause of our troubles is the multitude of our population and the magnitude of the business of our government; for the population embraces men of every kind, in respect both of race and endowment, and both their tempers and their desires are manifold; and the business of the state has become so vast that it can be administered only with the greatest difficulty.’ ‘Our city, like a great merchantman manned with a crew of every race and lacking a pilot, has now for many generations been rolling and plunging, a ship as it were without ballast.’

In this passage the historian puts his finger on the chief cause of the collapse of the Roman Republic. With their well-known conservatism the Romans had retained, though not without modifications, some institutions characteristic of the city-state, such as the annual magistracy and the popular assembly, which were ill suited to an imperial city forced to deal with problems calling for knowledge and experience. Republican Rome was not lacking in men possessing a high standard of efficiency and very well qualified to reform and administer the government of the Empire. But political conditions made it difficult for a Pompey or even a Sulla to do constructive work, and it is doubtful whether, even if he had lived longer, Caesar possessed the patience to undertake the task which occupied the long life of his adopted son. Cicero was undoubtedly right in protesting against the dictator’s statement that his work was done, and in urging him to set his hand to the task of reconstruction. It seems certain that Tacitus considered Augustus rather than Caesar to be the creator of the system of government under which he lived. In a short sketch of the history of the later Republic which he inserts into his Annals he passes from the third consulship of Pompey (52 b.c.) to the sixth consulship of Augustus (28 b.c.) with the dry comment: ‘exim continua per viginti annos discordia non mos non ius,’ without even mentioning the administrative measures of the dictator.

In an earlier chapter of this work an account was given of the methods employed by the Republic in the government of the Empire. It was shown that the provinces were inadequately garrisoned, were governed by men who were, at the best, well-meaning amateurs and, at the worst, unscrupulous scoundrels, and were taxed on a system which irritated the provincials without enriching the treasury. Nearer home the road system of Italy was neglected, and in Rome itself there was urgent need of supervision of the public buildings, of an improved water-supply, and above all of an organized police force. Thus the whole military, administrative, and financial machinery of the Republic required to be thoroughly overhauled, and a professional spirit introduced into the work of government. If this meant the sacrifice of such traces of democracy as still survived in Rome the price was a small one, for the popular assemblies had long ceased to represent adequately the citizen-body. Inefficiency had always been the curse of the city-state, and the time had come for Roman statesmen to look for guidance not to Athens or Sparta but to the Persian Empire and the Hellenistic monarchies which succeeded it. Even the cynical Tacitus admits that the accession of Augustus to power was welcome to the provinces which had suffered so much under the old regime. If under the Principate there grew up an imperial patriotism and a genuine gratitude for the benefits conferred by Roman rule, the credit is mainly due to Augustus himself. He did much to secure that the representatives of Rome throughout the Empire should be competent and honest, and that the burden of taxation should not be excessive. Though the system which he founded was considerably developed and modified by his successors, the main features of the structure which he created remained unchanged for several centuries.

One of the greatest achievements of Augustus was that he attained to power without alienating, as Caesar had done, the sympathies of the senatorial class. The question of the place which he intended the Senate to occupy in the new constitution has been discussed elsewhere, and here we are only concerned with the part which he wished its members to play in the practical work of administration. Under the Republic the Senate owed its influence and prestige mainly to the fact that it contained practically all of those who possessed administrative experience and a first­hand acquaintance with the problems of government. Even Caesar, though he showed himself high-handed and contemptuous towards the Senate as a corporation, had drawn from its ranks most of those who represented him in the provinces, for there is no reason to think that he introduced any fundamental change in the method of appointing governors. It is therefore not surprising that Augustus, who treated the Senate with the greatest respect and genuinely desired that it should take an important part in the work of government, reserved for senators most of the important posts to which he directly or indirectly controlled the appoint­ment. Though the powers exercised by magistrates during their year of office were reduced and were often merely nominal, the tenure of the consulship or praetorship entitled a man to be reckoned among the consulares or praetorii, from whom the holders of the most responsible positions in administration and in the army were drawn. With few exceptions, which will be noted below, the Roman provinces were governed and Roman armies commanded by senators. It must, however, be noted that even under Augustus, and still more under his successors, senatorial rank ceased to be confined to a limited class of optimates. From the beginning of the principate novi homines were far commoner than in the age of Marius and Cicero. Two notable examples are P. Sulpicius Quirinius, consul in 12 b.c., who afterwards governed Asia and Syria, and C. Poppaeus Sabinus (consul in a.d. 9), whose career began under Augustus and who died in a.d. 35 after a very long tenure of the province of Moesia. Of the latter Tacitus tells us that his origin was humble, that he owed his consulship and triumphal honours to the friendship of Emperors, and that he governed important provinces for twenty-four years ‘nullam ob eximiam artem sed quod par negotiis neque supra erat.’ To men of this efficient and law-abiding type the change from republic to monarchy was an unmixed blessing, for it was now possible to hold responsible positions for a long period of years without being involved in political controversy and without being suspected of plotting the subversion of the state.

It was, however, as Augustus saw, undesirable and almost impossible to put the whole burden of administration upon the shoulders of the comparatively small senatorial class. In order to secure elasticity he decided to make use of sections of the population less hampered by Republican traditions and free from the requirements of a somewhat rigid cursus honorum. Although later on, when a regular bureaucracy had been developed, the career of a public servant of the non-senatorial classes was nearly as well-defined as that of a senator, this was not so at the time with which we are concerned. On the death of Augustus there existed only the rudiments of a Civil Service, but even in his reign posts had been created second to none in importance which were invariably held by non-senators, and a beginning had been made with the employment of equites and freedmen as subordinates to and colleagues of senators. Though later observers saw in Caesar’s secretaries Oppius and Balbus predecessors of the civil servants of the Principate, the dictator did little to create a Civil Service and Augustus rather than he must be regarded as its founder.

It was noted above that a provincial governor of the age of Cicero had at his disposal no body of experienced assistants such as exists today under British rule in India and tropical Africa. The staff which he brought with him from Rome was no better informed than he was himself about the problems which confronted him. For local information he was dependent on the magistrates of the provincial towns and on the publicani, who were doubtless only too willing to offer their advice. But the latter were the servants not of the State but of profit-making companies, with whose services the government could not dispense, but whose interests often ran counter to those of the authorities and the provincials. These companies were very closely identified with the equestrian order, whose relations with the Senate had from the days of C. Gracchus rarely been cordial. It was only when life and property were seriously threatened, as at the time of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, that the senators and knights had closed their ranks. Cicero’s ideal of a coalition government based on a concordia ordinum was thwarted by politicians who for the sake of personal advantage widened a breach which was largely artificial and need never have existed.

One of the most successful achievements of Augustus was to put an end to this disastrous conflict between the orders. He conceived the brilliant idea of so reorganizing the Ordo Equester that he would have at his disposal a body of men from whom he could draw officials to fill such of the new posts which he wished to create as for any reason it was undesirable to give to senators. The order which was traditionally associated with tax-collecting was now to provide financial officials paid by the state who would either collect the taxes themselves or supervise their collection by others.

The history of the Equestrian Order under the Republic is a difficult subject which need not be fully discussed here. Its nucleus consisted of the 18 Centuries of equites equo publico who were a survival of the time when the cavalry forces of the State were drawn from the younger members of the upper classes. These Centuries even in the later Republic consisted of men of military age, but the term eques was freely applied to many who were not and probably had never been enrolled in them. Membership of the order carried with it the right of wearing certain insignia, the gold ring and a narrow purple stripe on the tunic, and the privilege of serving in the equestrian decuriae in the jury-courts and of occupying the fourteen equestrian benches in the theatre. From 67 b.c., if not earlier, the property qualification for membership of the order was fixed at 400,000 sesterces. With the decline of the Censorship after the time of Sulla it is probable that the organization of the Order was neglected, and that the term eques was loosely used to include all who possessed the necessary property qualification. The privileges of the Order were usurped by men whom no censor would ever have admitted, like the freedman upstart attacked by Horace:

Sedilibusque magnus in primis eques

Othone contempto sedet        

                              (Epod. iv, 15-16.)

Though the cavalry of the Roman army was now drawn from other sources, the junior officers were taken from the Ordo Equester, which included sons of senators who had not yet held a magistracy. The tribuni militum and praefecti of Caesar’s army were to a large extent men of this type. They had ‘followed Caesar from the city for reasons of friendship and had little experience of warfare.’

When in virtue of the censorial powers which he de facto possessed Augustus undertook the reorganization of the equites he introduced no very fundamental change. As in his dealings with the Senate he merely attempted to secure that the members of the class from which he intended to draw his subordinates should be worthy of the honour. That he wished still to lay stress on the military character of the order is shown by his revival of a ceremony which had long fallen into disuse. Every year on July 15 was held the travectio equitum, at which the knights paraded before the Emperor on horseback. About 5000 men are said to have taken part in the parade, divided into six turmae each of which was commanded by a sevir equitum Romanorum, who was generally a man of senatorial birth destined like many of those under his command to hold magistracies and enter the Senate after completing the requirements of the militia equestris. These turmae of the Principate must be regarded as the successors of the Republican centuriae equitum, which with the decay of the comitia centuriata were seldom if ever required to assemble for the purpose of voting, and they were under Augustus occasionally referred to as centuriae. On reaching the age of thirty-five a man was entitled to resign his equus publicu: so that the travectio equitum definitely represented Roman youth of the upper classes. It was the young members of the order who elected Gaius and Lucius and later other members of the imperial house to be principes iuventutis. The annual travectio was associated with an inspection which enabled Augustus and his board of three assistants to reprimand or expel any eques who seemed unworthy. At longer intervals there was held a recognition which probably concerned the order as a whole and not merely its junior members. The question has been raised whether all who called themselves Roman Knights had in their earlier days paraded in the Roman turmae. It is indeed almost certain that under the principate all equites were said to possess the equus publicus, but the large number of the equites who are known to have resided in the municipal towns of Italy and the provinces supports the suggestion that in these towns there was some organization of the younger members similar to that which existed in the capital. There were 500 equites in Gades and more in Patavium, and an inscription from Narbonne shows that in a.d. 11 equites could be numbered among the plebs of a city. It seems improbable that such men formed part of the comparatively small body which paraded before the Emperor, but they may have received in their native cities some physical and military training similar to that which was given to die members of the turmae in Rome.

As was said above, the senatorial class under the Principate was 410 narrow oligarchy but was constantly being recruited from below. The same is true of the Equestrian Order. Just as the gift of the latus clavus enabled a man possessing the necessary personal and financial qualifications to stand for magistracies, so the gift of the equus publicus and the gold ring opened the equestrian career to those who did not belong to it by birth. Of the sources from which equites were recruited perhaps the most important was the legionary centuriate. It was a fundamental principle of army­organization that while the legatus of a legion was a senator and the trtbuni militum equites, the soldiers must belong to neither order. If an eques wished to serve in the ranks he must resign his membership. But soldiers who became centurions, certainly all who reached the primipilate, received on discharge the rank of eques and proceeded to hold posts in the equestris militia, such as tribunates in the city-troops, extraordinary prefectures in the provinces, and in the early days of the Principate the praefectura cohortis and the tribunatus militum. The prospect of such promotion must have been a powerful incentive to military service. Other sources from which members of the Equestrian Order were drawn were the wealthier inhabitants of country towns and the class of freedmen, of which more will be said below.

Even under Augustus considerable use was made of equites in civil administration as well as in the army. The greatest prizes were the prefectures of Egypt, the Annona, and the Vigiles, but much responsible work was done by equites who held the title of Procurator, a term which had under the Republic been applied to the agents of companies and wealthy individuals. In the early Principate it means little more than private servant of the emperor, and the sphere in which the duties were performed is less frequently mentioned in inscriptions than was afterwards customary. Many of these early procurators were destined to have distinguished descendants. The grandfather of the future Emperor Vitellius was an eques Romanus et rerum Augusti procurator. Agricola was the grandson of two natives of Gallia Narbonensis who held the same rank, and Q. Octavius Sagitta who was procurator under Augustus in three different provinces was the ancestor of a senator of Nero’s reign. To rise in the world was easier under the Principate than it had been under the Republic and many sons of successful equites aspired to senatorial rank, though this was not always the case, and we read that Augustus had sometimes to compel men to enter the Senate.

To complete the account of the classes from which Augustus drew his officials a word must be said about the freedmen, though it was not till the reign of Claudius that important posts in administration were opened to them. It has been shown elsewhere that Augustus interested himself in the question of manumission and imposed restrictions on the right of masters to give freedom to their slaves. To individual freedmen however he showed himself generous, and often conferred on them equestrian rank, e.g. on the wealthy P. Vedius Pollio, on T. Vinius Philopoemen and on his own physician Antonius Musa. There was a reaction after his death, and in a.d. 23 the Senate passed a decree (which did not however remain long in force) confining the gold ring to those who could show free birth for two generations. Even under the Republic freedmen had served the State as assistants to the magistrates and priests, and they continued to do so in the Principate. Augustus allowed them to serve in the fleets (which were usually commanded by freedmen) and in the cohorts of Vigiles, the fire-brigade and police of the city. A freedman could almost rank as a minor magistrate by becoming one of the vicorum magistri  and in the municipal towns, though excluded from the magistracies, he was compensated by membership of the Augustales, who helped to celebrate the worship of the emperor. It was not till later that higher posts than these were conferred on freedmen. Early in his reign Augustus entrusted the financial administration of Gaul to the freedman Licinus with the title of procurator, but this man so grossly misused his position that the Emperor was probably discouraged from repeating the experiment. Yet even at this time much of the routine work of administration was in the hands of freedmen, and the importance of the class steadily increased in spite of the prejudice which existed against it in senatorial circles. In a speech delivered in the Senate in a.d. 56 it was stated that a large proportion of the senators and knights were ultimately of servile origin, and, though restrictions were imposed from time to time, it was fairly easy for descendants of freedmen, if not for freedmen themselves, to rise into the higher orders.

II. THE FINANCIAL REFORMS OF AUGUSTUS

Though there is no aspect of the work of Augustus about which so little accurate information is available as the details of his financial reforms, an attempt must be made to deal with the subject, for there is no doubt that his achievements in this depart­ment were far-reaching and of lasting value.

Under the Republic the management of the finances of the State had been regarded as one of the most important functions of the Senate, which was thus enabled, as Polybius points out, to exercise considerable control over the magistrates. When, for instance, a magistrate went to his province it was for the Senate to decide what sum was to be paid to him for the expenses of administration. Of the city magistrates those whose duties were primarily financial were the quaestors and the censors. The former were in charge of the old State Treasury, the aerarium Saturni, and supervised the public slaves attached to it, but they were young and inexperienced, and their duties cannot have involved much responsibility. The work of the censors was more important. By holding a census they determined the taxable resources of the citizen-body. They let out the contracts for the carrying out of the work for which the State was required to pay, and arranged the terms under which publicani would collect the provincial revenues. But it was difficult for them to exercise much influence on policy. Their period of office was by convention limited to eighteen months. A reforming censor was apt to be hampered by his colleague or by a tribune representing the interests threatened by the measures of economy which he wished to carry. Opposition to reform might come not merely from the publicani but from the Senate itself, as when the elder Cato tried to raise the assessments for property-tax. Any act of a censor might be cancelled by his successor, so that continuity of financial policy was difficult to secure, and during their short period of office the censors had duties other than financial to perform, e.g. revision of the list of the Senate and of the citizen-body. The Republican system of government thus provided small scope for a man of financial genius. Even the censorship fell into decay at the end of the Republic; Sulla’s legislation struck it a blow, and though it was revived after his death, the spirit of the age was unfavourable to any vigorous measures of financial reform.

If the financial system of the Republic was unsatisfactory the explanation is not to be found in the cost of government. Much of the expenditure which must be incurred by a modern State was unknown to the Romans. There was no national debt and the ‘social services’ cost little. Even the army and navy were only expensive in time of war, and many wars paid for themselves out of booty. Little had to be spent on salaries, for the State was generally represented by wealthy men, who were expected to spend their own money during their period of office. If they enriched themselves it was in irregular ways, and at the expense of the provincials rather than of the government.

The measures taken by Augustus to improve the government of the Roman world must have added a good deal to the cost of administration. By the end of his reign the army was a professional long-service force; the soldiers were well paid and received a liberal gratuity on discharge. The principle of payment for public service had been accepted, and probably all the representatives of the State except the actual magistrates received salaries. A beginning had been made with the creation of a Civil Service which, though an instrument of economy, increased the financial obliga­tions of the treasury. Large sums were spent on providing the city of Rome with corn, water and police, and on erecting and repairing public buildings.

The extravagant system by which the provinces of the Republic were taxed has been explained in a previous volume. The system aroused deep resentment among the provincials, and the treasury was not compensated by the amount of its gains, for too large a part of the yield of taxation went to the publicani and unscrupulous governors. It is probable, too, that the burden of taxation was unevenly distributed and fell too often on the wreng shoulders. What was wanted was that the publicani should be dispensed with or rigidly supervised, that the governors should be prevented from enriching themselves at the cost of the provincials, and that taxation should be imposed as equitably as possible. In all these respects excellent work was done in the reign of Augustus.

The great companies of publicany which must have been almost ruined by the exactions made on them by Pompey during the Civil War, received a further blow when Caesar deprived them of the profitable privilege of collecting the decumae of Asia. In what way he arranged for the collection of the forty million sesterces which he raised by taxation in Gaul is uncertain, but that he handed over the new province to the tender mercies of the publicani is unlikely. In any case on the accession of Augustus the equestrian order had lost much of its wealth and influence and was in a humble frame of mind. How he reorganized the Order and employed some of its members on administrative work has been shown elsewhere. But the time had not yet arrived when the State could dispense altogether with middlemen in the collection of taxes. It is certain that while the direct taxes were, at any rate in the ‘imperial’ provinces, collected by the Emperor’s procurator in collaboration with the governor, the indirect taxes were still let out to contractors. In the reign of Nero there were complaints of the ‘immodestia’ of the publicani who collected the portoria, and contractors were employed even in the collection of the new death- duties. The ‘publicans’ of the New Testament were humble examples of a type of man found all over the Empire: even in the time of Trajan publicanus was the normal Latin word for tax-collector. But the societates of the Principate were on a comparatively small scale, were controlled by inspectors, and were no longer in a position to exercise political influence.

From the time of Augustus the provincials were much less likely than they had been to suffer from the depredations of an unscrupulous governor. The governors of provinces were carefully selected. They could be withdrawn from an ‘imperial’ province at any time if the Emperor so desired, and rarely governed a ‘senatorial’ province for more than a year. The machinery for bringing complaints to Rome was greatly improved, and a successful prosecution for repetundae would ruin a man’s career.

In dealing with the publicani and the governors of provinces Augustus merely introduced an effective control which the Republic had been too weak to exercise. When by setting himself to acquire exact knowledge of the resources of the Empire he attempted to equalize the burden of taxation he undertook a much more difficult task. In collecting geographical information he received much assistance from Agrippa, who prepared a map of the known world which was after his death publicly displayed in Rome, while detailed information was embodied in commentarii which were freely used by the geographer Strabo and the elder Pliny. But for purposes of taxation it was necessary to have full information about the number and legal status of the inhabitants of each province and about the amount and sources of their wealth. This information could only be acquired by the holding of a census similar to but distinct from the census of Roman citizens which had been held periodically under the Republic, and was held by Augustus himself in 28 b.c. after an interval of forty-two years and on two subsequent occasions. In the older provinces where city life existed the census was a fairly simple affair, which could be carried through with the help of the municipal authorities. Even under the Republic a census had been regularly held in Sicily. By 7 b.c. in the province of Cyrene very exact information was available as to the number and wealth of the inhabitants. But the problem was much more difficult in regions where municipal life was as yet undeveloped, such as Gaul, Spain, and the new Danubian provinces. As the arrangements made by Caesar for the taxation of Gaul required revision, a census was held there as early as 27 b.c., another in 12 b.c. and a third immediately after the death of Augustus. Much of the time which the Emperor spent there in 16—13 b.c. must have been devoted to financial questions. Gaul was a region not of cities but of tribes, whose ruling classes cannot have welcomed the arrival of census officials, and things had not been improved by the behaviour of the notorious freedman Licinus who for some years early in his reign represented Augustus in Lugdunum. That the Emperor was not completely successful in reconciling the Gauls to the payment of tribute is shown by the complaints which were made under his successors. Equal difficulties must have been faced in the more backward parts of the Spanish peninsula and in the Danubian provinces. The famous assessment of Judaea by Quirinius in a.d. 6 shows that the annexation of a new province was at once followed by a valuation of its taxable capacity. Little information is available as to the machinery employed by Augustus and the character of the returns required, which by the second century were very elaborate. In all probability the governor of a province was normally responsible for the census, and was assisted by subordinates of equestrian rank. A good deal of information was available as early as 23 b.c. when Augustus during a serious illness handed to the consul Piso a book containing an account of the public revenues. On his death he left a breviarium totius imperii embodying the results of his investigations.

Augustus owed much of his popularity and influence to the generosity with which he devoted to public purposes money which he was entitled to regard as his own. He had inherited large sums from his father and from Julius Caesar, and in the course of his reign much was left to him by Agrippa and other friends. Moreover he treated as his own property the enormous ‘spoils’ which he raised in Egypt by confiscation after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra. But when he died he was a comparatively poor man. In the Res Gestae he states that he gave 600 million denarii to the Aerarium, to the Roman plebs and to discharged soldiers, and to this must be added the huge sums which he spent on beautifying the city of Rome, on aqueducts, roads, and public games. In what light he regarded the revenues of the provinces for whose government he was responsible is a question which has been much disputed. Under the Republic a provincial governor was expected to pay into the Aerarium any surplus which remained after the expenses of administration had been met, and it seems probable that this principle was accepted by Augustus. On his death he left a record of the sums deposited at the time not only in the Aerarium but in the fisci of the various provinces, mentioning the freedmen and slaves from whom an account could be demanded. It is, however, unlikely that much was left over when the Emperor had paid for the administration and defence of the provinces for which he was specially responsible. The cost of the army and of the wars which occupied so much of his reign fell primarily on the revenues of the frontier provinces. It was possible to tell the inhabitants of Gaul that the taxes which they so unwillingly paid were spent on providing them with security from the German peril. But the wealthy senatorial provinces, such as Asia, Gallia Narbonensis, and Baetica must have contributed something to the cost of the frontier defence from which they derived so much benefit. Under Augustus Africa was not, as later, the only senatorial province in which troops were, at any rate occasionally, stationed. Before the annexation of Moesia the proconsul of Macedonia was often in command of an army, and Quirinius when governor of Cyrene seems to have undertaken operations against the desert tribes.

It was only equitable that the burden of imperial defence should be borne by the empire as a whole, and this end was secured by the preservation of the Aerarium as the central treasury which received any surplus revenues and assisted the poorer and more expensive provinces at the cost of the richer and more peaceful. Whatever may have been the case later, it is unlikely that Augustus applied the principle of dyarchy to finance, and created, as has often been assumed, an imperial Fiscus drawing its main revenues from the taxes of the imperial provinces. The money which he so generously expended on public objects was legally his own property and was not derived from provincial taxation. Any profits from the latter source would go not to him but to the Aerarium. That the revenue of the Aerarium was barely adequate is shown by the fact that on four occasions the Emperor made large payments to it from his private funds, and it might have been expected that he would insist on controlling it by an official nominated by himself. But it was not till Nero’s reign that a permanent praefectus aerarii was appointed. From 23 b.c. the supervision of the Aerarium was entrusted to two of the praetors chosen by lot, a system unfavourable to efficiency but tolerable if most of the public money was raised and expended in the provinces and the Aerarium was little more than a clearing-house in which surpluses were deposited and redistributed.

One of the most beneficent reforms of Augustus was his solution of the problem of the ‘ex-service man’ which had never been properly faced by the Republic. He realized that on discharge after sixteen or twenty years’ service the legionaries had a moral right to a pension. During the early part of his reign the enormous cost of providing soldiers with land or gratuities was met out of his own resources, but in a.d. 6 a new system was introduced by the creation of a special treasury, the aerarium militare. Into this the Emperor paid 170 million sesterces and arranged that in future it should receive the yield of two new taxes, the death-duties (vicesima hereditatum) and a tax on sales (centesima rerum venalium). This new treasury was put under the charge of a body of three ex-praetors holding office for three years. Careful calculations must have been made of the probable yield of these taxes and of the sum which would be required for pensions, and these calculations would be upset by any change in the conditions of military service.

A feature of these taxes which made them unpopular was that they fell on Roman citizens resident in Italy; the death-duties indeed were paid by Roman citizens only, of whom the proportion resident in the provinces was still comparatively small. Augustus seems to have felt that the privileged position of Italy in the matter of taxation was unjustified. Since 167 b.c. no tributum had been paid by Italians, whose only contribution to the revenue was made indirectly through the portoria and an old tax on the value of manumitted slaves. Even under the Principate Italian land was exempt from taxation, and the greatest privilege which could be granted to a provincial community was what came to be called the Ius Italicum, which freed its soil from the land-tax. Before the end of the Republic a fair amount of provincial land was regarded as the property of the Roman State and was usually let out by the censors to regular tenants. But such land was put in a special category, and was sharply distinguished from the rest of the provincial soil. Though whole provinces (e.g. Asia, Bithynia, Cyrene) had been left to Rome by the will of their previous rulers, the idea that all provincial land was ager publicus was not definitely held in Republican times, nor probably till after the reign of Augustus. When he founded colonies overseas he paid for provincial land exactly as he did in Italy. In his time full owner­ship of land ex iure Quiritium was possible in the provinces. It is not quite clear what theory underlay provincial taxation in the early Principate, but the view that the land-tax normally paid by provincial landholders was of the nature of rent and a charge on occupiers of land belonging to the State was only gradually developed until it was formulated by the lawyers of the Second Century. Even in Cicero’s time the idea may well have occurred to those who remembered that the province of Asia, for example, had been the gift of king Attalus, and that the right of collecting its revenues was let out by the censors. In any case Italian land enjoyed a privileged position both under the Republic and in the Principate, and it was only right that Italians should in some other way make a contribution to the expenses of government. But it required all the authority possessed by Augustus to persuade the predominatingly Italian Senate to agree to the imposition of the death-duties, which were accepted as a less undesirable alternative to a tax on Italian land.

The distinction between direct and indirect taxes—tributa and vectigalia—was familiar to the Romans. As has been stated above, the former were from the time of Augustus normally collected by the governor of a province and his staff, while for the collection of the latter contractors were employed. In the senatorial provinces the direct tax was termed stipendium not tributum, but it is doubtful whether the distinction has any significance. It is possible that under Augustus the direct tax was collected by publicani in, at any rate, some of the senatorial provinces, but, if so, the method was soon abandoned. Though the main tax in every province was the tributum soli, paid by the occupiers of land, the owners of other forms of property were liable to a tributum capitis, and the value of their belongings was recorded by the census-officials. The tributum capitis was not in spite of its name a poll-tax: this was only raided in Egypt and perhaps in backward provinces, where an accurate valuation of property was difficult to secure. In the collection of tribute it was essential to receive assistance from the local authorities within a province, for the number of imperial officials was in the early Principate still small. The unwillingness of Rome at all periods to annex uncivilized districts may be explained by the difficulty of collecting taxes in a country devoid of the type of organization to which she was accustomed.

Of the indirect taxes the frontier-dues (portoria) were the most important. These were imposed simply for revenue purposes and were not intended to protect the products of certain areas against competition; no attempt was made to exclude provincial goods from Italian markets. A fixed but varying percentage was charged on the value of all goods crossing certain frontiers. For this purpose the Gallic, the Danubian, and perhaps the Spanish provinces were grouped together, but it is doubtful whether the details of the organization which is found in existence later can be attributed to Augustus. Of the other indirect taxes the vicesima hereditatum and the centesima rerum venalium have been already mentioned. The death-duties were not levied on property inherited from very near relations or on very small estates. The only other taxes calling for mention are the 5 per cent, tax on manumissions and the 4 per cent, tax on the sale of slaves, the latter of which was earmarked for the maintenance of the urban cohorts.

A word must be said in conclusion on the measures taken by Augustus to deal with the Roman coinage. Nothing shows more clearly the all-pervasive power of the princeps in the new system than the fact that no coin above the value of a farthing (quadrans) was issued during his reign which does not bear his head or at any rate his name or some reference to his exploits. In the last days of the Republic the Senate lost control of the coinage, the right of issuing which was usurped by the great generals from Sulla onwards, and after Caesar’s death the old chaos reappeared. Practically no bronze coins were minted between 80 b.c. and 23 b.c., when Augustus took the matter in hand.

During the earlier part of his reign gold and silver coins were struck in Asia and Spain and for a few years (19—12 b.c.) in Rome itself. The Spanish coins of 25—22 b.c. bear together with the name of the Emperor that of his legatus P. Carisius, but this experiment was never repeated. The years 15—14 b.c. are important in the history of Roman coinage, for about that time Augustus established at Lugdunum in Gaul an imperial mint, which was for the remainder of his reign practically the only source of the gold and silver coinage of the empire. The mint was under the charge of imperial freedmen and slaves and was protected by an urban cohort stationed in the city.

While the Emperor made himself responsible for the issue of gold and silver coins and except for a few years minted them in the provinces, the Senate was entrusted with the issue of the lower denominations. The coins of bronze (or orichalcum) issued in Rome between 23 and 4 b.c. bear the names of one or more of the tresviri monetales, a minor Republican magistracy now revived, the holders of which had under the Republic used the coinage as a means of glorifying the deeds of their ancestors, and such gold and silver coins as were issued in Rome also bear their names. But after the year 4 b.c. the names of the tresviri disappear even from the bronze coinage and do not reappear under the successors of Augustus. The provinces enjoyed a certain amount of freedom in minting copper, and occasionally silver, coins for local use, but the main issue of gold and silver was confined to the mint of Lugdunum. An interesting series of copper coins was issued in Gaul to commemorate the altar erected at Lugdunum to ‘Roma et Augustus’ in 12 b.c., and at an earlier date coins had been minted by the Commune Asiae, which superintended the worship of the Emperor in that province.

It will be clear from this summary of the work of Augustus in the field of finance that he established a system which enabled the government of the empire to be carried on efficiently and economically. The resources of the empire were enormous, and it is unlikely (though exact figures are lacking) that the burden of taxation was excessively heavy. At any rate Augustus secured that it should be equitably distributed, and that the revenues of the State should be honestly collected and expended in such a way that the subjects of Rome might regard her rule as a blessing and not as a curse.

III. THE CITY OF ROME AND ITALY

The development of Rome into the capital of a great empire had not been entirely a source of advantage to the inhabitants of the City. Whereas in other Italian towns the municipal authorities were able to devote themselves entirely to local affairs, the Roman Senate and magistrates were so much occupied with questions concerning Italy and the provinces that they were apt to neglect the interests of the City itself. Republican Rome possessed no city-council and no municipal officials in the narrow sense. From time to time censors concerned themselves with the condition of public buildings and arranged for construction and repairs, but the duties which in a modern city are entrusted to highly trained experts were in the main allotted to aediles, who like other magistrates held office for one year only. The citizens of London would not welcome the transference of the duties of the London County Council to Parliament and the Cabinet. In the Rome of Augustus, not less than in the London of today, there was need of non-political bodies capable of dealing with the practical problems of local government. In no department of administration was the work of Augustus more successful than in this. He did not indeed create a city-council independent of the Senate, but by the end of his reign all the departments of local administration were in experienced hands, and Rome was a healthier and more peaceful city than she probably had been at any period of her history.

Some aspects of the work done by Augustus in Rome have been discussed in other chapters. There is, therefore, no need to describe here his activities as a builder and restorer of temples and public buildings, or to emphasize the skill with which he secured the loyalty of the poorer classes in the capital by his institution of the vicomagistri, who superintended the worship of the Lares Augusta at the crossroads and performed certain humbler tasks of administration. By 7 b.c. the city had been divided into fourteen regiones, subdivided into 265 wards by which the vicomagistri were elected. Though almost invariably freedmen, they were entitled on certain days to wear the dress of a magistrate and to be preceded by two lictors. In all probability they were at first concerned in a subordinate capacity with such activities as the protection of their district against fire and the distributions of free corn. In this institution we can trace a desire on the part of the Emperor to inspire in the somewhat degenerate population of the capital a sense of responsibility and self-respect.

Mommsen has remarked that when Tacitus states that Augustus gradually ‘took over the functions of the Senate, magistrates and laws’ what he had primarily in mind was the administration of the City. In the early days of his principate Augustus was mainly concerned with provincial affairs, for in theory he was only one of the two consuls to whom an unusually large provincia had been allotted. After 23 b.c. when he resigned the consulship his position was less clearly defined and he was less hampered by Republican precedents. Though his building activities began earlier, it was not till 22 b.c., the year in which he refused the dictatorship and perpetual consulship, that he assumed any direct responsibility for the administration of the City. With character­istic caution he began by interfering intermittently and by modifying the existing system as little as possible. Not till nearly the end of his reign do we find the main departments of administra­tion under the charge of praefecti or curatores nominated by him and holding office according to his pleasure.

The important task of protecting the City against fire had been grossly neglected under the Republic. It seems to have been included among the multifarious duties of the aediles and of the triumviri capitales or nocturni, who had at their disposal a body of public slaves. But their efforts required to be supplemented by private enterprise. We hear of privately organized fire-brigades, and as late as 21 b.c. the aedile Egnatius Rufus gained popularity by employing his own slaves in this capacity. In that year Augustus first intervened by putting at the disposal of the aediles a body of 600 slaves. This system continued till a.d. 6 when a succession of fires showed the need of a thorough reform. The important equestrian office of the praefectura vigilum was created, and to the prefect were allotted seven cohorts of Vigiles, each consisting of 1000 men drawn from the class of freedmen. This institution was closely associated with the division of the City into fourteen regiones, for each cohort was made responsible for the safety of two of them. It is probable that the duties of the Vigiles, about which we have little information, were concerned with the prevention as well as with the extinguishing of fires, and that they performed the duties of police as well as of a fire-brigade. Though their officers were generally men who had served as centurions in the legions, they were not regarded as soldiers, for the possession of free birth was still regarded as an essential qualification for service in the army. There is reason to think that freedmen were not very eager to volunteer for membership of the Vigiles, for in a.d. 24 Roman citizenship was offered to Junian Latins who were willing to serve, and soon after free men are found among the members of the cohorts.

Every reader of the works of Cicero must have been struck by the almost complete absence in the Rome of his period of any machinery for the preservation of public order. Had an organized police-force existed the activities of some of his contemporaries, such, as Clodius, would have been seriously hampered, and the threats of Catiline and his associates would have caused less alarm. The public slaves allotted to the magistrates were ineffective, and in spite of the military attributes of the consulship there was seldom any organized body of troops attached to the consuls when resident in the city. It is probable that Augustus regarded himself as responsible for order in Rome, and by the end of his reign there had been created three cohortes urbanae, each probably consisting of 1000 men, and unlike the Vigiles, regarded as part of the army of the State. The early history of their commander, the praefectus urbi, is rather obscure. L. Calpurnius Piso, who died in a.d. 32, is said by Tacitus to have held office for twenty years, but there is evidence that he received his office from Tiberius. Possibly Mommsen is right in holding that he was appointed about a.d. 13 when Tiberius was regarded as practically joint­ruler with Augustus. Under the Republic a praefectus had been appointed to take the place of the consuls when absent from Rome, and during his Spanish campaign Caesar had put praefecti in charge of the City. Maecenas had occupied a similar position when Octavian was at war with Antony, and it is probable that the appointments of Messalla Corvinus in 26 b.c. and of Statilius Taurus in 16 b.c. were connected with the absence of Augustus from Rome. Not till the very end of his reign did the praefectura urbi become permanent, though the urban cohorts certainly existed earlier. The praefectus urbi was regarded as a high military commander, and, unlike most praefecti, was always a senator of consular rank. Piso was not the only holder of the office to retain it for a long period of years. Tacitus says that it was the duty of the prefect of the city ‘to overawe the slaves and that part of the population which, unless it fears a strong hand, is disorderly and reckless.’ He can be described as the Chief Constable of Rome, and possessed a power of summary jurisdiction which was destined to come into collision with and eventually to supersede the older courts of criminal justice within the city.

To complete the picture of the garrison of Rome mention must at least be made of the Praetorian Guard though it was not till the reign of Tiberius that all its cohorts were concentrated in the city. That the urban cohorts were regarded as a force supplementary to the Praetorians is shown by the fact that both forces were continuously numbered, and in case of need both would be available for the maintenance of order. If on the accession of Augustus the police-force of Rome was almost non-existent, by the end of his reign it had attained dimensions which are probably unequalled in any modern city.

The task of feeding the population of the City was one of increasing difficulty, which even under the Republic had sometimes been beyond the capacities of the aediles, whose functions included the cura annonae. Extraordinary powers had been conferred on Scaurus in 104 and on Pompey in 57 b.c. in order to save Rome from starvation, and Caesar had created two new aediles Ceriales, who were specially concerned with the problem. Since the days of Pompey the food-supply of Rome had again been threatened by pirates, for in 38—36 B.C. Sextus Pompeius had employed the weapon of blockade, and even in normal times the supply of corn from overseas was apt to be inadequate. The task of the aediles was complicated by the distributions of corn, whether beneath the market price or free, which had been introduced by C. Gracchus. The problem was obviously one with which annual magistrates could no longer deal and a radical reform was wanted. In 23 b.c. when the City was threatened with famine Augustus at his own expense increased the corn ration and in the following year accepted a cura annonae which, as he says, he administered with such effect that within a few days he relieved the whole people from the panic and risk to which it was exposed. It is however unlikely that as early as this the feeding of Rome was regarded as one of the functions of the princeps, and the responsibility for it probably remained with the aediles Ceriales. But when in a.d. 6 the situation again became acute a board of two consuiars was created to supersede the aediles, and a few years later (the exact date is uncertain) the office of praefectus annonae was brought into existence and conferred on C. Turranius, a man of equestrian rank, who held it until the reign of Claudius. From this time onwards the emperor made himself responsible for the feeding of the City, and his equestrian prefect became the head of a large department with representatives in the ports and in the provinces. In 22 b.c. a board of two expraetors (raised in 18 b.c. to four) was appointed to supervise the free distributions of corn, and it seems probable that the administration of the ‘dole’ was not the affair of the praefectus annonae but of praefecti frumenti dandi ex s.c. who were not his subordinates though they must have stood in close relations with him. The Senate made itself responsible for the ‘dole’ and the expense of it fell directly on the Aerarium at any rate till the time of Nero. The number of recipients, which had been fixed by Caesar at 150,000, seems to have risen to 320,000 by 5 b.c. (if the ‘plebs urbana’ of Res Gestae 15 is to be identified with the ‘plebs frumentaria’), but in 2 b.c. it was reduced to 200,000 and a system of registration introduced.

Under the Republic the care of the water-supply of the City had been entrusted to the censors. This department of administration seems to have been of special interest to Agrippa, who constructed two new aqueducts, the Aqua Julia and the Aqua Virgo, and trained a body of slaves who were qualified to deal with the matter. On his death in 12 b.c. they became the property of the Emperor, who might well have created an equestrian praefectura, as he did with the annona and the Vigiles. He preferred however to adopt another procedure which was applied to various spheres of administration. After consulting the Senate he appointed a board of three curatores aquarum, consisting of senators and presided over by a consular, Messalla Corvinus. These curatores received pay, wore the insignia of magistrates, and retained office for an indefinite period. Messalla remained in office till a.d. 13, and one of his successors did so from a.d. 74 till 97. The Senate was, at any rate till the reign of Claudius, responsible for the cost of maintaining the aqueducts, but the Emperor was prepared to assist in case of need, as he did in 5—4 b.c., when he repaired various aqueducts and doubled the supply available from the Aqua Marcia.

Another senatorial commission of the same type was created at an uncertain date (in any case after 11 b.c.) to supervise the condition of temples and public buildings. The expense of their erection and repair had been to a large extent borne by the Emperor, but the senatorial treasury was made responsible for the task of maintaining them in good condition. These curatores aedium sacrarum et operum locorumque publicorum were two in number, of praetorian or consular rank, and seem sometimes to have divided their functions, the one concerning himself with temples, the other with public buildings.

Another duty which fell upon Augustus was the protection of the City against inundations of the Tiber. Something was done to strengthen the banks in 8—6 b.c. (inscriptions show that the consuls of 8 b.c. were at work on the river bank) and on at least one occasion the Emperor helped in the matter, but a permanent cura was probably not created till the first year of Tiberius (15 a.d.), when a great flood led to the appointment of a board of five curatores riparum et alvei Tiberis, presided over by a consularis.

This brief summary of the work done by  Augustus in the city of Rome well illustrates several features of his administration: viz. the substitution of experts for amateurs, his readiness to draw his subordinates from the senatorial or the equestrian orders as seemed best, and his unwillingness to make any change till the necessity for it was clear to all.

A word must now be said about the services rendered by Augustus to Italy. Though in the settlement of 27 b.c. Italy was not included in his special sphere of administration, it was inevitable that, as in the City, he should make his beneficent influence felt throughout the peninsula. In the period with which we are concerned Italy occupied a unique position among the lands subject to the rule of Rome. Caesar had extended the citizenship to the Alps, and in the period of the triumvirate Cisalpine Gaul had ceased to be regarded as a province. As is shown elsewhere, residents in Italy were free from direct taxation. Everywhere there was active city life, into which Caesar had done something to introduce uniformity without interfering with the local autonomy of the communities. Only to a slight extent had citizens of these municipal towns taken part in the political life of Rome, which was still merely the chief city of Italy. Interference of the kind which was accepted as a matter of course in the provinces would have been bitterly resented.

That the establishment of the Principate was as welcome to Italy as to any part of the empire is shown by the enthusiasm with which it was greeted by that good Italian Virgil. The settlement of veterans in ‘colonies’ after the battle of Actium, unlike similar settlements made by Republican generals, was carried through in such a way as to cause the least possible offence. Augustus boasts that he was the first who had ever paid the townships for the land which he required for his soldiers. Among the 28 colonies which he founded in Italy there must have been many cities which welcomed the new settlers. The presence of these old soldiers in Italian towns may perhaps be connected with the steps which we are told were taken to put down kidnapping and brigandage; they may have volunteered to serve in the garrisons stationed in regions where this evil was rampant.

Though the legions were now stationed on the frontiers it was as important for the Roman government as it had ever been that  the roads of Italy should be kept in good repair, and this was one of the first tasks to which Augustus set his hand. By 27 b.c. he had repaired the Via Flaminia at his own expense and had encouraged leading senators to take other roads in hand. But this was too costly a task to be left to private generosity, and accordingly in 20 b.c. the Emperor was entrusted with a regular cura viarum, which was administered, as was later the water-supply of the City, by a board of senatorial curatores viarum of praetorian rank, who, at any rate under his successors, divided the charge of the chief roads between them. The cost of the upkeep of the roads, as of the other curae, seems under Augustus to have fallen on the Aerarium (on a coin of 17—16 b.c. it is stated that the Emperor contributed a sum to the Aerarium for the purpose), but in 2 b.c. Augustus paid for the repair of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to the river Trebia and this was probably not the only occasion when he showed such generosity. By the Flavian period, however, the costs of the longe series porrecta viarum, like other expenses originally borne by the Aerarium, had been transferred to the imperial Fiscus.

IV. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE PROVINCES

The claim that Tacitus makes Claudius advance in his speech advocating the admission of Gauls to the Senate that throughout her history Rome, unlike Athens and Sparta, had shown generosity to her subjects is a little difficult to substantiate. It is true that in the earlier days of the Republic the Italian cities and tribes probably preferred to be allies rather than members of the Roman State, but the demand for incorporation with Rome arose long before it was granted. Its champions among Roman politicians, such as C. Gracchus and Livius Drusus, met with strong opposition, and Rome did not yield till the Italians had taken up arms. Even after the Social War the Transpadane region was denied the full privileges of citizenship, and did not receive them till the beginning of the Civil War. In view of the fact that when the rule of Augustus began Italy had for barely twenty years been fully incorporated in Rome it is not surprising that he considered it his first duty to foster that Italian patriotism which is such a prominent feature of the poems of Virgil. He identified the interests of Italy fully with those of Rome, so that under his influence the contempt which in the days of Cicero was felt in senatorial circles for natives of cnountry towns, even if they possessed full Roman rights, gradually disappeared. Many such men were given important positions in the service of the state. Italy was, as we have seen, generously treated in the matter of taxation, and much was done to improve communications and to maintain law and order.

The extension by Caesar of citizen-rights to the Alps was only part of a larger policy. He had spent so many years of his life in the provinces that his sympathies extended far beyond the frontiers of Italy. The fact that during his dictatorship Cisalpine Gaul, though inhabited by Roman citizens, was still a province is significant, for it shows that to his mind there was no inconsistency between provincial status and the possession of the full franchise. On his death Antony claimed to have found among his papers a proposal that the whole of Sicily should be enfranchised. How far he would have gone in this direction had he lived longer it is impossible to say. It is possible that he contemplated the full enfranchisement of Gallia Narbonensis in the near future, for those of its cities which did not become coloniae avium Romanorum by the settlement of his veterans seem to have received Latin rights, so that the status of the province was almost identical with that of Gallia Cisalpina between 89 and 49 b.c. In any case his policy of colonization finally put an end to the prejudice, so characteristic of the Republic, against the possession of citizen­rights by provincial towns. Gaul was not the only province in which he founded colonies. Many were established in Spain and in that province the city of Gades was made a Roman municipium. Farther east Carthage and Corinth were refounded as colonies and a few cities in Asia Minor, for example, Sinope, received the same status. All the great generals of the later Republic had been generous in the gift of the franchise to individuals. What is characteristic of Caesar is that he was not content to confer it on individuals whom he wished to honour, but established communities which he intended to serve as centres of Romanization.

Although in this matter Augustus was more conservative than Caesar circumstances made it inevitable that he should pursue in some respects a similar policy. In order to provide for the 300,000 soldiers whom he ‘settled in colonies or sent back to their towns’ he had to have recourse to the provinces, in ten of which he planted colonies. But these Augustan colonies differed from those of Caesar in the important respect that they were with a very few exceptions military, while Caesar had sent overseas not only soldiers but a large number of civilians including freedmen. Many of them were planted in backward provinces to act as a substitute for a legionary garrison, as in Pisidia which formed part of the new province of Galatia, in Mauretania which was not yet a regular province, and in Lusitania. The original settlers in these towns were as a rule men who had served in the same legions and were accustomed to co-operate with each other in putting down disorder.

The contrast between the methods of Caesar and Augustus is seen clearly in Sicily, which, as has been said, Caesar thought of raising to the level of Italy. At the end of the reign of Augustus the island probably contained 6 colonies, 6 municipia and 3 Latin towns, so that out of 68 organized communities only 15 had received a privileged status. Even in the civilized province of Baetica the situation was much the same; about 46 out of 175 towns were included in one of the higher categories. It is characteristic of the Western sympathies of Augustus that he founded few colonies in the Eastern provinces, but even in the West he obviously wished to maintain the predominance of Italy. In every province the cities whose inhabitants possessed the full citizenship formed a small minority, and still smaller was the number of those which enjoyed the privileges of Italians in the matter of taxation.

The result of this policy was that the cities of a province were classified according to the privileges which they possessed. At the top of the scale stood the coloniae civium Romanorum, which in the time of Augustus were almost all towns to which military settlers had been sent, though later on the term merely denoted a certain status. Sometimes a colony was granted partial or complete immunity from taxation, but this was not usually the case. The other towns whose inhabitants possessed the franchise were called municipia or oppida civium Romanorum. Next came the interesting group of ‘ Latin ’ towns, where the franchise could be obtained by the holding of a magistracy, so that they possessed an aristocracy of Roman citizens. The other cities enjoyed no special privileges, but among them there were a few which still called themselves ‘free’ or ‘federate’ communities. This status was now an anachronism, although in the days of Cicero it had been a cherished privilege. The provincials of the Principate, like the Italians of the Republic, regarded incorporation by Rome as something desirable, and realized that single cities could hardly be ‘allies’ of a State whose territories included most of the civilized world.

Though the Romans felt most at home in provinces whose inhabitants belonged to cities possessing institutions of a type with which they were familiar, they were too wise to impose the municipal system on regions accustomed to a different kind of organization. In Gaul, North West Spain, Africa and even in North Italy there were districts where no regular cities existed. The problem had to be faced on a very large scale in the newly conquered part of Gaul, where the unit of government was the tribe and not the city. Augustus wisely decided to recognize the old tribal institutions on condition that their authorities were willing to co-operate with the Roman representatives, especially in the matter of taxation. In Spain and Africa he adopted the same policy in dealing with districts which were not municipalized. In North Italy some of the Alpine tribes were ‘attributed’ to neighbouring cities; their inhabitants were subject to the authority of the local magistrates, but did not in the first instance receive the full citizenship. In general it may be said that the policy of Augustus in the bestowal of the citizenship showed moderation and good sense. The fact that in the course of his reign the citizen population of the empire rose from about four to five million shows that he was not unduly conservative. While maintaining the primacy of Italy he won the support of the Western provinces by conferring the franchise on many communities, whose citizens were soon to obtain posts in the Civil Service or even seats in the Senate. In the East the franchise was given less freely to cities, for Augustus had won his victory over Antony as the champion of the West and wished his empire to have a Latin character. But citizenship was often given to individuals from all parts of the Roman world, though in every case their credentials were carefully examined. We are told that when his wife asked the Emperor to confer the citizenship on a certain Gaul he refused the request, but offered him immunity from taxation, saying that he preferred that the treasury should lose something than that the gift of the franchise should be made cheap.

As in dealing with the provinces it is impossible to avoid the use of the word ‘Romanization,’ the question must be raised how far it was the aim of Augustus and his successors to secure uniformity of law, government and civilization throughout the empire. The unification of so large a part of the world under the rule of Rome was bound in the long run to produce such uniformity, but in the period with which this volume is concerned this development was still far in the future. The distinction between Italy and the provinces was sharp, and there existed still sharper distinctions between the provinces. Unique problems were raised by the government of Egypt. The other Eastern provinces were essentially Greek in language and civilization, and their inhabitants, though contented enough under Roman rule, probably regarded the civilization of Italy with something like contempt. Among the Western provinces great differences existed. The southern parts of Gaul and Spain had come under Italian influence even in the Republican period, but much of Spain was not finally subdued till the reign of Augustus, and Gaul possessed a civilization of its own which it did not wish to lose. In North Africa Carthaginian influences were still strong and the Punic language was spoken by many. In these circumstances all that Rome could hope to do was to maintain internal peace and to win the gratitude of her subjects by protecting them against invasion. In the north the rivers Rhine and Danube formed a kind of cordon sanitaire round the Roman world, so that the in­habitants of the frontier provinces learned to regard their neighbours on the farther banks as barbarians who might not even set foot on Roman soil without special permission. But, as has been said, no attempt was made to impose municipal institutions on unwilling subjects. The government did not interfere in religious matters unless, as in the case of Druidism, a religion contained features which were politically undesirable. At the same time it was inevitable that before long the political and economic advantages which the rule of Rome conferred on provincials should break down the barriers which originally separated one province from another and Italy from them all. In particular the improvements made by the Roman government in communica­tions were bound to favour the development of a homogeneous culture. But in the time of Augustus the process of raising the provinces to the level of Italy had not gone far and was probably regarded with disfavour in some influential circles.

Though the status of the provinces varied they were effectively attached to Rome by the veneration which they felt for the person of the Emperor, whom they were prepared to treat as a god. It has been shown elsewhere that the practice of offering divine honours to Augustus began in the East soon after Actium and in the course of his reign penetrated to all parts of the empire. What was originally an oriental practice was adopted with remarkable enthusiasm in the West, where the government was very conscious of its political value. The various centres of emperor-worship whether in provincial capitals or in smaller towns or in Gallic tribes provided a rallying-point for the friends of Rome, who were proud to hold the position of priest of a province or of flamen of Augustus in their own city. This tribute to the Emperor was nearly everywhere spontaneous. In Narbo, for example, the plebs erected an altar in the forum to the numen Augusti, at which on certain anniversaries offerings of incense and wine were made by a board of six men, none of whom were even members of the local Senate. In newly conquered districts, however, the government took the initiative, as when the ara Ubiorum was erected on the Rhine, or when Drusus dedicated an altar to ‘Roma et Augustus’ near Lugdunum for the ‘Three Gauls’ in 12 b.c. By no means every province possessed a similar centre of worship before the death of Augustus, but there were probably few if any in which individual cities had not adopted this method of showing their gratitude. One of the defects of the provincial administration of the Republic had been that provinces as a whole had no recognized means of expressing their views to the government though particular cities might send embassies to Rome. This defect was now remedied by the institution or recognition of concilia containing representatives of the various cities or tribes and meeting periodically to celebrate the worship of the Emperor. No doubt only ‘loyalists’ were elected, but they were allowed to exercise the right of criticism and to express opinions freely on the character of the administration. When a governor was prosecuted on his return to Rome the procedure was usually initiated by the concilium of his province. The institution of these concilia must have done much to inspire the leading inhabitants of provinces with loyalty to Rome.

As has been explained above, the arrangement made in 27 b.c. between Augustus and the Senate according to which for purposes of administration the provinces fell into two groups cannot be described as revolutionary. Under the Republic it had always been possible to suspend the ordinary system according to which each province had its own governor, and the sphere of authority entrusted to Augustus in 27 B.C., though larger than any hitherto known, was not so extensive as to imply a new principle. The provinces of Augustus, roughly speaking, comprised Gaul, Spain, Egypt, Syria, and the more backward parts of Asia Minor, while the Senate was responsible for the rest of the empire. In 22 b.c. Gallia Narbonensis was transferred to the Senate, and at an uncertain date Baetica was separated from the rest of Spain and surrendered by the emperor. On the other hand the wars waged by Tiberius against the Pannonians from 12 b.c. rendered it desirable that Illyricum should become an ‘imperial’ province, and it was therefore transferred to Augustus in 11 b.c. The new provinces which were acquired in the course of his reign, Galatia, Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, and Moesia, came, as was natural, directly under the control of the emperor.

It is commonly stated by historians, who can claim the support of the nearly contemporary Strabo, that the principle on which the division of provinces was based was that the Emperor undertook the rule of those among them which required military defence, while the senatorial provinces had no need of a garrison. But this statement requires some qualification. As is well known, legionary troops were stationed in Africa throughout the Principate and till the reign of Gaius were under the command of the proconsuls, who in the reigns of both Augustus and Tibbrius undertook important military operations. What is less often noticed is that the same is true of the proconsuls of Macedonia and Illyricum, who during the earlier part of the reign of Augustus commanded armies consisting of several legions. The situation in these districts was altered by the annexation of Pannonia and Moesia. Macedonia became an unarmed province before the death of Augustus, but till the Flavian period legions were stationed in Illyricum, which was now ‘imperial.’ In the three provinces which have been mentioned it is certain the armies were commanded by proconsuls and it is possible that this occurred elsewhere. There is some evidence for a war against a desert tribe conducted by Quirinius from the province of Cyrene. These considerations make it probable that while the usual theory is true of later times it is not applicable to the greater part of the reign of Augustus, and that no rigid rule was laid down in 27 b.c. Under Augustus legions were employed where they were wanted, even in senatorial provinces, and not till later were they treated as a frontier garrison. Peaceful as Augustus was by temperament, more fighting occurred during his reign than under most of his successors.

The distinction between the two types of province was thus even in the reign of Augustus to a large extent illusory. As supreme commander of the army he could not remain indifferent to the administration of provinces requiring military defence even if they were not normally garrisoned by legions. Whatever may have been his legal position under the settlement of 27 b.c., there is no doubt that in 23 b.c. he received maius imperium over the whole empire. That his control of the senatorial provinces was a reality is shown by the important edicts dated between 7 and 4 b.c. which have been discovered in the province of Cyrene. From these it is clear that Augustus considered himself entitled to introduce on his own authority reforms of judicial procedure in the interests of non-citizens. The wording of the edicts shows characteristic tact. The procedure which he favours is to be followed ‘until the senate comes to a decision on the subject or I find a better plan.’ His directions take the form of advice rather than of command. ‘I think that the governors of Crete and Cyrene will do well in the future not to allow a Roman to be the prosecutor of a Greek.’ The new method laid down for the settlement of charges of extortion is indeed enacted by a senatus consultum, but it is definitely stated that the consuls who proposed it did so on instructions from the Emperor and that it was signed by him. The embassies mentioned in the edicts as coming to Rome from the provincial cities probably went straight to the princeps. If, as has been suggested above, part at least of the revenues of senatorial provinces was expended by the Emperor it was impossible to apply to administration a rigid system of dyarchy. In the Cyrene edicts the Emperor and the Senate appear as two agents who act in friendly co-operation in the task of government.

Of all the problems which Augustus was called upon to solve perhaps the most urgent was that concerning the method by which provincial governors should be appointed. In the Republican period the government of provinces had originally been a function of the annual magistrates, and, although the system had b$en modified, the connection between the magistracy and the administration of provinces always remained close. Even Caesar had introduced no radical reform. The arrangements in force at his death show that he wished the provinces to be governed by men whose year of office as consul or praetor had just expired. In limiting by law the tenure of a consular province to tw years and that of a praetorian province to one he took what was essentially a reactionary step, and the fear lest long provincial commands might lead others to follow the example which he had set showed a want of confidence in the stability of his system of government. The views of Pompey on this question seem to have been more radical than those of Caesar. His own extraordinary commands stood in little relation to the magistracy, and a law for which he was responsible interposed an interval of five years between the consulship or praetorship and a provincial command. What was wanted was the creation of a system whereby important commands could be held by the same man for a long period without danger to the state. In no other way was it possible to govern the provinces efficiently and to find scope for men who combined energy and capacity with loyalty and public spirit. Rome had always possessed such men, but full use could not be made of them so long as the Republic lasted.

The system of appointment which prevailed throughout the Principate is to a large extent the creation of Augustus. As has been already said, he decided to retain the connection between the Senate and imperial administration, and to insist that the tenure of the consulship or praetorship must still be a qualification for the most important provincial commands. Though under the Principate the city magistracies became to an increasing extent sinecures, the fact that their tenure was a necessary preliminary to a governorship generally secured that enough candidates presented themselves. When a man had held the praetorship he was qualified to become proconsul or legatus pro praetore of one of the less important provinces, to command a legion, or to become a member of various administrative boards, while to have held the consulship opened to him the highest posts of all.

Of the senatorial provinces Asia and Africa were governed by consulars and the remainder by praetorians. To both types of province the principle laid down in Pompey’s law of 52 b.c. was applied, so that an interval of time elapsed between the magistracy and the proconsulship, which in the case of praetorians was at least five years and in that of consulars at least ten. The allocation of provinces among the qualified candidates was made by lot, and the tenure was usually for a year, though exceptions were often made, as when M. Silanus under Tiberius governed Africa for six years. Under Augustus P. Paquius Scaeva was reappointed proconsul of Cyprus after an interval auctoritate Augusti Caesaris et s.c., an interesting case of the interference of the Emperor in the senatorial sphere. At this period it seems that the rules determining appointment were less rigid than they became later. M. Lollius, for instance, probably governed Macedonia after his consulship, though the province was normally praetorian. Under the Republic the allocation of a province to a consul or praetor had been determined by the circumstances of the case.

While the selection of the governors of the comparatively civilized senatorial provinces could without any great risk normally be left to the chances of the lot, it was otherwise with the provinces for which the Emperor was directly responsible. In them it was all-important that the right man should be appointed, and that, in choosing the legati pro praetore whom, following the precedent set by Pompey, he employed as his representatives, the Emperor should not be hampered by rigid rules. As these legati were invariably men of consular or praetorian standing it is not surprising to find that by the end of his reign Augustus exercised much influence on the election of magistrates, for it could not be a matter of indifference to him who obtained the necessary qualification. When once the requisite magistracy had been held, a man could at any time obtain an appointment from the emperor and retain it for as long a period as seemed desirable. Normally certain provinces were governed by consulars and certain others by praetorians, but under Augustus exceptions were sometimes made. There is at least one example of the appointment of a praetorian to the command of Nearer Spain, and it is probable that what was later the praetorian province of Galatia was governed by at least two consulars, L. Calpurnius Piso and P. Sulpicius Quirinius. It is also by no means certain that every province had at this period a separate governor, though our ignorance may be due to the fact that inscriptions frequently fail to record the names of provinces governed by legati of Augustus. In any case, during the wars in Germany the whole of Gallia Comata was probably under the command of a single man, whether a member of the imperial family such as Drusus, Tiberius or Germanicus, or a senator like Lollius or Quinctilius Varus, though later each of the ‘Three Gauls’ had its own governor. Similarly when Agrippa was in the East his authority may well have extended beyond the borders of Syria.

Though by far the greater part of the empire was governed by men of senatorial rank there were certain districts to which for one reason or another a different system was applied. Members of the equestrian order, the importance of which under Augustus has been discussed above were entrusted not merely with financial posts but with the government of several newly conquered provinces. The position of the praefectus Aegypti was unique, for though an eques he had a legionary force under his command. In other provinces governed by equites only auxilia or local militia would be found, and when legions were required application would have to be made to the nearest senatorial governor. The most important districts entrusted by Augustus to equestrian procurators were Raetia and Noricum and, in the East, Judaea after the dynastyof Herod came to an end in a.d. 6. Herod himself can almost be considered a procurator of Augustus though he bore a royal title. A parallel to his position can be found in the Cottian Alps, where a number of tribes were put under the rule of M. Julius Cottius, the son of King Dtmnus, with the title of praefectus. The adjoining region of the Maritime Alps was treated in a similar way, though the first praefectus of whom we know, C. Baebius Atticus, was not a local chief but a man who had served as primus pilus in a legion.

Augustus continued the policy of the Republic in leaving under the rule of ‘client-kings’ certain districts which, while in a sense included in the empire, were not ripe for annexation as provinces. This policy was applied to Armenia, to Judaea until a.d. 6, and to Thrace, Mauretania, and Cappadocia. In Thrace constant intervention was required to save the weak Odrysian dynasty, and it is rather surprising that Augustus did not anticipate Claudius in annexing the country. In Mauretania the scholarly King Juba, with his wife Cleopatra Selene apparently as co-regent, was entrusted with the difficult task of ruling a turbulent people, which would have been beyond his powers without the assistance of Roman troops. These client-kings were left free in their internal administration, and probably paid no regular taxes: at least we know that the annexation of Cappadocia by Tiberius increased the Roman revenues, but they might be required to provide troops and their foreign policy was determined by the Emperor. In case of need a Roman ‘resident’ might be stationed in their country.

The proconsul of a senatorial province was, as under the Republic, assisted in the work of administration by a quaestor and one or more legati of senatorial rank. In an imperial province the right-hand men of the governor were the legati legionum, who acted as his deputies in the districts where their legions were stationed. Each province too had its equestrian procurator who in the eyes of the provincials was almost as important as the governor himself. These procurators were appointed by the Emperor quite independently of the legatus and the relations between the two were frequently none too friendly. A procurator of Augustus remained in Spain for ten years and such cases were probably not uncommon. The supervision of taxation was almost entirely in their hands. The fact that imperial procurators are found also in senatorial provinces confirms the view taken above that a contribution was made by them to the funds administered by the Emperor.

The reforms introduced by Augustus into provincial administration were a source of great advantage both to the government and to the subjects of Rome. The method of administration was carefully adapted to the circumstances of each province. The burden of taxation was equitably distributed, and the revenue went to the treasury and not into the pockets of middlemen. The governors were selected with care, and competent men could attain to the highest posts even if their origin was obscure. The machinery for bringing complaints to Rome was reformed, and a charge of extortion was more likely to receive a fair hearing from a Senate which feared the Emperor’s wrath than from the venal quaestio repetundarum of the age of Cicero.

Reference has already been made to the interest shown by Augustus in the roads of Italy and to his establishment of a regular cura viarum. But a very much larger problem was created by the reorganization of the empire and by the annexation of new and backward provinces. In order that the authorities in Rorge might be kept informed of all that was happening the extension throughout the empire of the network of roads starting from the ‘golden milestone’ in the City was a matter of prime necessity. Under Augustus are to be found the beginnings of the cursus publicu which enabled official despatches to be forwarded rapidly by means of posting-stations erected along the trunk-roads. Evidence from many provinces testifies to active road-construction at this period. The newly conquered north-west of Spain was opened up, and in the south of the peninsula a new road shortened the line of communication between Baetica and the north. The road-system of Gaul was greatly improved by Agrippa, who made Lugdunum the centre from which four roads radiated, leading respectively to Aquitania, to the Rhine, to the northern Ocean, and down the Rhone to Massilia. The conquest of Raetia was followed by the planning of a road from north Italy to the Danube. As has been shown elsewhere the clue to the military operations on the northern frontiers of the empire is the desire of the Romans to control the road which ran down the Save to the Danube and thence to Byzantium, thus providing a land-route from Italy to the East. It is indeed true that the primary reason for the development of Roman roads was military: it might at any time be necessary to move legions rapidly from one part of the frontier to another. But of course, their existence had far-reaching effects of another character. Not only was the exchange of commodities greatlyfacilitated, but the improvement of communications led to an interchange of ideas which gradually created a more or less homogeneous civilization throughout the vast area which recognized the overlordship of Rome.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ARMY AND NAVY