From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (33 page)

For further help Augustus turned to Agrippa, to whom he entrusted
imperium
, which is more likely to have comprised general authority over all the
provinces (senatorial as well as imperial) in the East; Agrippa is unlikely to have received
maius imperium
.
¹³
At any rate he was needed in the East and there he went before the end of 23. Since Augustus had recovered from his illness, there was less need to think of a successor: two possible ‘candidates’ were his nephew Marcellus or his friend Agrippa, but if there existed any tension between them, this was removed less by Agrippa’s departure than by the death of Marcellus during the autumn.

The winter brought flood and famine. Rioting followed, and Augustus was urged to accept a dictatorship, an annual and perpetual consulship, or the censorship. He declined all these offers, but he did accept, like Pompey in 57, a
cura annonae
and helped to relieve the situation; he also secured the appointment of censors for 22, but they did little. Augustus then went to the East (22–19), while Agrippa, after a brief visit to Rome, went to Gaul and Spain where he ruthlessly established peace (20–19). While Augustus was away, the People wanted to elect him consul for 21 and when he refused they would not elect a second consul until Agrippa on his return finally induced them to do so. Even so at the elections for 19 they insisted on keeping a place vacant for Augustus. With the Princeps and Agrippa both away, the sole consul of 19, C. Sentius Saturninus, had to face a difficult situation when a certain Egnatius Rufus presented himself as a consular candidate, encouraged by the popularity that he had won a few years before when as aedile he had organized a private fire-brigade. Saturninus refused to accept Rufus’ candidature; rioting followed and envoys were sent to beg Augustus to return, but before he arrived in October, Rufus had been accused of treason and executed. Augustus, whose return was celebrated by the erection of an altar to Fortuna Redux, was granted the right to sit between the consuls of the year and to have twelve lictors. Whether he received other consular powers is uncertain: the historian Dio Cassius says that he was granted consular powers for life. This must certainly be an exaggeration: it is just possible that Augustus’
imperium
was equated to that of the consuls and thus would be valid in Rome and Italy;
¹⁴
alternatively he may have received some other specific rights enjoyed by a consul, as that of appointing a Prefect of the City. Then in 18 B.C. his ten-year grant of proconsular
imperium
was renewed for another five years.

The needs of the provinces and frontiers had thus kept Augustus abroad for many years (27–24; 22–19; and again 16–13). The burden had to be shared, and he had turned to his friend Agrippa, who served in East (23–22) and West (20–19) and helped (though with what specific authority, if any, is unknown) to steady affairs in Rome in 21. Augustus then made him his son-in-law: Agrippa, who had to divorce his wife (Marcella the niece of Augustus), married Augustus’ daughter Julia, the widow of Marcellus. In 18 Agrippa’s
imperium
was enlarged: for five years he exercised proconsular
imperium maius
(like that of Augustus) and he received a grant of
tribunicia
potestas
. Though he lacked some of the Princeps’ specific powers and his
auctoritas
, he nevertheless was approaching the position of a co-regent. If anything happened to Augustus, he might hope to secure power; for the moment he was needed in the East and he did not return to Rome until 13.

Meanwhile Augustus was busy initiating reforms in Rome. He probably refused a ‘cura legum morumque’ which was voted him, and using his
tribunicia potestas
he carried some important social legislation (which is discussed below). He also remodelled the criminal code (including laws against electoral bribery and violence), and his right of appellate jurisdiction, that is of judging cases when Roman citizens, condemned on criminal charges, ‘appealed to Caesar’, was put on a sounder footing. He also conducted in 18 B.C. another revision of the Senate, by which its numbers were reduced to six hundred.
¹⁵
By 17 B.C. the general work of reconstruction, which is discussed in more detail below, had reached a point at which Augustus felt that the new age of peace and prosperity might be marked by a public ceremony. By a certain manipulation the staging of the Ludi Saeculares was arranged for 17 (a
saeculum
was fixed at 110 instead of 100 years). At this thanksgiving ceremony a chorus of youths and girls sang the
carmen saeculare
, which was composed by Horace, on the Capitol and Palatine to the older and newer gods of Rome, and Augustus and Agrippa offered sacrifice. ‘Grant, o gods,’ sang the choir, ‘grant to the young a spirit to learn and righteous conduct, grant to the old peace and calm, grant to the race of Romulus wealth and offspring and all glory.’
¹⁶
This same year Julia bore Agrippa a second son, Lucius, who with his elder brother Gaius was adopted by Augustus, who had no son of his own. His stepsons, however, were advancing into public life: in 16 Tiberius held a praetorship and Drusus a quaestorship, after which they campaigned with success on the German front (see below). Meanwhile Augustus was away in the west for three years; this time he left Statilius Taurus, his old general and fellow-consul of 26, as Praefectus Urbi. On his return to Rome in 13, when Tiberius was consul, the only honour that he accepted was the erection on the Campus Martius of an Ara Pacis Augustae, one of the great monuments of the age. His proconsular
imperium
was renewed for another five years and Agrippa’s
imperium
and
tribunicia potestas
were also renewed. Augustus carried out a third
lectio
of the Senate (probably in 11 rather than 13).

In 12 B.C. Lepidus, the former triumvir, died; Augustus had allowed him to retain the position of Pontifex Maximus, but now he assumed it himself, thus becoming the official head of the priesthood. Another death had important consequences: Agrippa, who had been in Pannonia, returned to Italy and
died before Augustus could reach him. The Princeps therefore had to adjust his thoughts about the future: no doubt he had anticipated that one of his grandsons would ultimately succeed to his position, but in the meantime Agrippa could have watched over their interests. Augustus therefore now turned to his stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus. Tiberius was compelled to divorce his wife Vipsania (daughter of Agrippa), whom he loved, and to marry the now widowed Julia. During the next two or three years the two brothers did good work on the northern frontier, but Drusus was killed in 9 B.C., so that Augustus had to rely more on Tiberius, for whom he had no great affection. In 8 B.C. Augustus received a renewal of his proconsular
imperium
, this time for ten years, and held a census ‘consulari cum potestate’; perhaps he used this power in order to levy troops which were needed for the German wars, which he himself directed this year. In 5 B.C. and again in 2 B.C. he reverted to an office that he had not held since 23 B.C., the consulship. His primary object was to introduce his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, to public life on the occasion of their assuming the
toga virilis
(their ‘coming of age’). The young princes received the title of
principes inventutis
, and the Senate designated Gaius as consul for A.D. 1. Tiberius, who felt overshadowed, retired to Rhodes for the next seven years. Besides holding his thirteenth, and last, consulship in 2 B.C., Augustus that year received the title of Pater Patriae, which brought the long list of his titles to an end; it did not of course add to his powers, but he might now be regarded as the father of the State, and Romans would recall the authority, the
patria potestas
, that a father exercised within his own family. In a sense the settlement, which basically had reached its final shape in 23 B.C. and has been consolidated in detail in the years that had followed, now reached its culmination.

The Principate was now running smoothly. The chief remaining problem was to secure that it so continued when Augustus died. To this he gave much thought, but in his plans for a succession, he suffered grievous setbacks. In 2 B.C. he was forced to banish his own daughter Julia because her scandalous conduct contrasted too sharply with his attempts to improve family life; thus she could no longer be used in the furtherance of dynastic plans. Two further blows followed in quick succession: Lucius Caesar died in A.D. 2 and his brother Gaius, who in 1 B.C. had received proconsular
imperium
in the East, died in Lycia in A.D. 4. Reluctantly Augustus turned to Tiberius, who had come back to Rome in A.D. 2; in A.D. 4 he adopted him as his son (though he required Tiberius in turn to adopt his nephew Germanicus, the son of his brother Drusus).
¹⁷
Tiberius was again given
tribunicia potestas
for ten years and was sent off to the Rhine frontier with a special
imperium
. Defence problems soon caused increasing anxiety. In A.D. 6 a serious revolt broke out in Pannonia, and three years later when this was finally being crushed, Varus and three legions were destroyed in Germany. Augustus was
badly shaken by this disaster and when in A.D. 13 he realized that his life was reaching its close, he elevated Tiberius to a position of virtual co-regency with himself: Tiberius’ tribunician power was renewed and by a special enactment he received equal rights in provincial administration and the command of armies, and the authority to hold a census with Augustus. The
lustrum
was concluded in the spring of A.D. 14, but Tiberius had no sooner started for Illyricum than he was recalled by news that Augustus was ill; they met for one day before Augustus died.

Augustus had achieved a unique position. He had received at the hands of the Senate and Roman People a great variety of powers, many of which had precedents in the Republic, but his accumulation and long tenure of these, together with his personal
auctoritas
, raised the First Citizen far above the level of a magistrate and made him in effect seem not unlike a constitutional monarch. His authority both at home and abroad was unparalleled. He commanded the armies, who took an oath of allegiance to him in person, and he made provision for their retirement. Since he had received the right to make treaties, he virtually controlled foreign policy. He governed a large part of the Empire directly through his deputies, and all new provinces added to the empire likewise came under his administration; if need arose, he could even intervene in the provinces that were still left under senatorial government. The Senate frequently transferred to him various tasks of administration in Rome and Italy which his agents then undertook. He took an increasing part in financial, legislative and judicial matters. And behind all his official authority lay his unequalled powers of patronage. How he used, and to what extent he shared, these wide-ranging powers, must now be considered in greater detail.

The Augustan system was regarded by the great German historian, Mommsen, as a Dyarchy, a joint rule of Princeps and Senate, under which in effect the Emperor undertook the administration of one part of the Empire, and the Senate that of the other. This conception is not now generally regarded as valid, since whatever the appearance Augustus designed to create, it is clear that power was not divided: he carefully kept in his own control the ultimate sanction that was the army. On the other hand there was a division, but what was divided was work. In building up the administrative machinery necessary to run the Empire, Augustus carefully preserved all that he could from the shipwreck of the Republic and leaned heavily upon the Senate: tradition, common sense, need and his own inclination, all united to commend this policy, and he will not have been unmindful of Julius Caesar’s cavalier attitude to Rome’s most venerable Council. In order to purge it of
unworthy members who had crept in during the civil wars, he had gradually reduced its numbers to 600 (pp. 178, 183), and, as will be seen, he carefully regulated conditions of entry into the senatorial Order. The Senate, together with the People, remained the sole permanent legal source of authority, as becomes clear on the death of a Princeps, but in practice it could not enforce its wishes in the last resort because it lacked military power. Augustus, however, treated it with great respect, and we must now see how the various functions of government were shared between the two.

In the sphere of legislation both the Princeps and Senate could take action. This is well illustrated in a phrase of Augustus in his first edict to Cyrene in which he suggests that governors there should follow a certain method when impanelling jurors ‘until the Senate shall deliberate on this matter or I myself shall have found some better solution’. The Princeps could legislate in various ways: apart from presenting bills to the People by virtue of his
tribunicia potestas
(cf. the
leges Iuliae
, pp. 231), he could take more direct action by issuing legally-binding edicts (this right was specifically recognized about 19 B.C.),
decreta
(judicial decisions),
mandata
(instructions to officials) and
epistolae
or rescripts (replies to petitions). The Senate on the other hand ultimately gained the right to make law, i.e. its
senatus-consulta
became law, and although this right may not have been formally established before the reign of Antoninus Pius, even under Augustus the Senate’s advisory capacity was recognized and some of its resolutions became law (e.g. the S.C. Silanianum proposed by Silanus, consul in A.D. 10). But though in practice the Senate increasingly developed into an active legislative assembly, the initiative and advice behind its activity may often have come from the emperor.

During the later Republic capital jurisdiction had resided in the
iudicia publica
(the
quaestiones
which Sulla had organized); these courts alone could condemn a Roman citizen to death, since a magistrate’s
imperium
was limited by the right of
provocatio
which applied throughout Italy and the provinces, in war as in peace.
¹⁸
These courts continued to function, but they were supplemented in a novel manner: cases of treason and of political importance and those that involved senators or men of high rank were now generally brought before one of two new courts, either the emperor in council or the consuls in the Senate. Thus both emperor and Senate gained a primary jurisdiction against which there was no appeal to the People. Such senatorial trials were being held before A.D. 8, and although our knowledge of trials before Augustus personally derives mainly from undated anecdotes, such trials were well established at the beginning of Tiberius’ reign. Further, as Roman citizenship spread more widely through the provinces, it became difficult to remit all criminal charges to Rome; as a result proconsuls, and perhaps all provincial governors, were granted limited criminal jurisdiction. But, by a grant in 30 B.C., Augustus was enabled to reverse a capital sentence
passed by a magistrate using his
imperium
: thus
provocatio ad populum
was replaced by
appellatio ad Caesarem
, the most famous case of the latter being the appeal of St. Paul to Nero. Thus the judicial activities of both emperor and Senate increased, and in particular their two new high Courts of criminal justice emerged; these were quite independent, and there was no appeal from the verdict of one to the other.
¹⁹

In the sphere of finance also both emperor and Senate were active, but the old view must be abandoned that there was a division on ‘dyarchic’ lines by which the emperor established a Fiscus at Rome for the revenues of the imperial provinces while those of the public provinces continued to be paid to the senatorial Aerarium. Rather, the Aerarium remained the chief Treasury, and its management was entrusted (from 23 B.C.) to two praetors in place of quaestors. Into it were paid the revenues of
all
the provinces and from it Augustus, like a Republican magistrate, was authorized by votes of the Senate to withdraw sums necessary for the discharge of his duties. In practice, however, it was unnecessary to move much of the actual cash to and from Rome, since the emperor kept departmental chests, fi
sci
, in his provinces (as the governors of the public provinces also probably did); into these went the taxes of each province and from them the emperor would draw money for military and administrative purposes, so that in the main only accounts of balances would pass between each provincial fi
scus
and the Aerarium. As few provinces produced a surplus over local expenditure, not much money would go from them to Rome. In fact the Aerarium was often in financial difficulties, and Augustus made grants to it from his private funds. This he could do because he had great wealth, which came from inheritance, the civil wars, the imperial estates, and legacies. From this
patrimonium
(sometimes called fi
scus
, which may cause confusion) he paid to the Aerarium, to the Roman plebs and to discharged veterans no less than 600 million sesterces: he was comparatively poor when he died.
²⁰

It was not desirable that the financial burden of providing for retired soldiers should seem to depend on the private generosity of the emperor. In A.D. 6 therefore Augustus created a special fund for this purpose, the Aerarium Militare; he started it off with a gift of 170 million sesterces and arranged that in the future it should receive the yield of two new taxes that he instituted, a sales-tax (
centesima rerum venalium
) and death-duties (
vicesima hereditatum
). This was a very wise move, since it cut the personal link between a general and his men who had been forced to look to him to make provision for their future; if such a public fund had been established a hundred years earlier, in the days of Marius, the history of the later Republic would have been very different. This new treasury was administered by three expraetors. Thus in general while the Senate and magistrates had a fair share in the work of financial administration, the emperor was probably able to direct policy.
This is seen in the fact that he regularly published for information a general balance-sheet of the Empire (
rationes imperii
), a practice which his successors soon dropped.

The issuing of coinage was also a joint responsibility of Princeps and Senate, but not on equal terms. During the civil war the rival military
imperatores
had minted what they needed. Octavian, the war-lord, and Augustus, the Princeps, had issued plentiful gold and silver in Asia, Spain and, perhaps after 23, at Rome. But in 15 B.C. he established an imperial mint at Lugdunum in Gaul, which from 12 B.C. became the sole source of gold and silver. The senatorial mint in Rome, in the charge of
triumviri monetales
, was thus restricted to the output of bronze and copper. The Senate doggedly continued to proclaim its control of the
Aes
coinage almost as long as the Empire lasted, by putting on all the coins the letters S.C. (Senatus-consulto), but in the choice of types the Princeps soon exercised as efficient a control over the ‘senatorial’ bronze as over the ‘imperial’ gold and silver. This was important because the types were a deliberate reflexion of official policy, designed to provide world opinion with a commentary on this policy; in the twenty-five years after Actium the silver issues displayed no less than 400 types. In this aspect the views of the Princeps must prevail.
²¹

The administration of Rome and Italy was the concern of the Senate and ordinary magistrates, and Augustus may well have intended that this should continue. At first he interfered very little, but the failure of the Senate to provide adequate public services led him gradually to take action, with the result that by the end of his reign most departments had come under the control of prefects or
curatores
nominated by him (pp. 193 ff.). In the wider sphere of provincial administration, as has been seen, the Princeps and Senate shared the task. The original settlement of 27 B.C. was modified later when for instance the Senate took over Gallia Narbonensis in 22 B.C. and the Princeps took Illyricum
c.
11 B.C., while all the new provinces created after 23 came under his administration. The division between the two parties, however, remained clear-cut, although his
maius imperium
gave Augustus a potential right to intervene anywhere.
²²

Thus in all spheres of government and administration, other than military, the Senate retained some of its traditional activities, and co-operated with Augustus in running the Empire. He showed it respect and often consulted it, and in order that it should take its duties seriously he increased fines for non-attendance in 17 B.C. and again in 9 B.C. when he also established the quorum necessary for transacting various kinds of business. How he influenced its composition and tried to increase its sense of responsibility is discussed in the next section. In one important way he made the Senate more efficient and at the same time more amenable to his own wishes: he established (probably between 27 and 18 B.C.) a senatorial standing
committee, consisting of himself, one or both consuls, one of each of the other magistrates, and fifteen other senators chosen by lot; some of the members changed every six months, and the whole committee (apart from the Princeps) every year. Its function was probouleutic, to prepare business for the full Senate; its usefulness is obvious, both in enabling Augustus to test senatorial reactions more privately and in expediting the conduct of business in the larger body. Near the end of his reign in A.D. 13 he changed its composition and thereby its nature: consuls-designate replaced the other magistrates; the ordinary members, now twenty and annual in tenure, were not perhaps chosen by lot; three powerful men were made permanent members (Tiberius, his son Drusus and nephew Germanicus); the emperor could co-opt; and above all, its decisions were given the validity of
senatus consulta
. This re-organization no doubt helped to smooth the transmission of power from Augustus to Tiberius, but it killed the probouleutic committee. Alongside the latter Augustus had throughout his principate consulted his friends for everyday political and administrative advice, and in particular for judicial matters he had turned to a council of advisers. These
amici principis
did not develop into an official permanent
consilium
, but they were publicly recognized as the men whom the emperor summoned to meet him in council for judicial or other business. They were soldiers, jurists, diplomats, men like Agrippa and Maecenas and their less famous successors; and since many of them survived from one reign into the next, they helped to give continuity to policy. The immediate effect, however, of the drafting by Augustus of some of his
amici
into the senatorial committee in A.D. 13 was so to change its basis that it never revived in its earlier form (Tiberius’
consilium
, though theoretically its continuation, consisted in fact of his
amici
, the
principes viri
) and thus the useful link between the Princeps and the average member of the Senate, which Augustus had originally designed, was destroyed.
²³