by Will Durant
Once a virile Senate would have faced these dangers, raised sturdy legions, found for them able captains, and guided them with far-seeing statesmanship. But the Senate was now only a name. The great families that had been its strength had died out in conflict or sterility, and the traditions of statecraft had not been transmitted to the businessmen, soldiers, and provincials who had succeeded them. The new Senate gratefully yielded its major powers to one who would plan, take responsibility, and lead.
Octavian hesitated before abolishing the old constitution, and Dio Cassius represents him as discussing the matter at great length with Maecenas and Agrippa. Since in their judgment all governments were oligarchies, the problem could not present itself to them as a choice among monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; they had to decide whether, under the given conditions of space and time, oligarchy was to be preferred in a monarchical form based upon an army, or an aristocratic form rooted in heredity, or a democratic form resting on the wealth of the business class. Octavian combined them all in a “principate” that mingled the theories of Cicero, the precedents of Pompey, and the policies of Caesar.
The people accepted his solution philosophically. They were no longer enamored of freedom, but wearily wished for security and order; any man might rule them who guaranteed them games and bread. Vaguely they understood that their clumsy comitia, clogged with corruption and racked with violence, could not govern the Empire, could not restore health to Italy, could not even administer Rome. The difficulties of freedom multiply with the area it embraces. When Rome ceased to be a city-state, empire drove it inexorably toward the imitation of Egypt, Persia, and Macedon. Out of the collapse of freedom into individualism and chaos a new government had to be created to forge a new order for a widened realm. All the Mediterranean world lay in disorder at Octavian’s feet, waiting for statesmanship.
He succeeded where Caesar had failed, because he was more patient and devious, because he understood the strategy of words and forms, because he was willing to move cautiously and slowly where his great-uncle had been forced by the brevity of time to wound living traditions and crowd a generation of changes into half a year of life. Moreover, Octavian had money. When he brought the treasury of Egypt to Rome, says Suetonius, “money became so abundant that the interest rate fell” from twelve to four per cent, and “the value of real estate rose enormously.” As soon as Octavian made it clear that property rights were again sacred, that he was through with proscriptions and confiscations, money came out of hiding, investment took courage, trade expanded, wealth resumed its accumulation, and some of it trickled down to the workers and the slaves. All ranks in Italy were pleased to learn that Italy was to remain the beneficiary, and Rome the capital, of the Empire; that the threat of a resurrected East had for a time been laid; and that Caesar’s dream of a commonwealth with equal rights had been replaced by a quiet return to the privileges of the master race.
From this bountiful rapine Octavian first paid his debts to his soldiers. He kept 200,000 men in service, each bound to him by an oath of personal loyalty; the remaining 300,000 he discharged with an allotment of agricultural land; and to each soldier he gave a substantial gift of money. He lavished presents upon his generals, his supporters, and his friends. On several occasions he made up deficits in the public treasury from his private funds. To provinces suffering from political depredations or acts of God he remitted a year’s tribute and sent large sums for relief. He forgave property owners all tax arrears and publicly burned the records of their debts to the state. He paid for the corn dole, provided prodigal spectacles and games, and presented cash to every citizen. He undertook great public works to end unemployment and beautify Rome, and paid for them out of his purse. Was it any wonder that the nations looked upon him as a god?
While all this money slipped through his hands this bourgeois empereur lived simply, shunning the luxuries of the nobles and the emoluments of office, wearing the garments woven by the women in his home, and sleeping always in one small room of what had been the palace of Hortensius. When this burned down after he had occupied it for twenty-eight years, he built his new palace on the plan of the old, and slept in the same narrow cubiculum as before. Even when away from the eyes of the city he lived like a philosopher rather than a prince. His sole indulgence was to escape from public affairs by sailing leisurely along the Campanian coast.
Step by step he persuaded, or graciously permitted, the Senate and the assemblies to grant him powers that in their total made him in all but name a king. He kept always the title of imperator, as commander in chief of all the armed forces of the state. As the army remained for the most part outside the capital and usually outside Italy, the citizens could forget, while they went through all the forms of the dead Republic, that they were living under a military monarchy in which force was hidden so long as phrases could rule. Octavian was chosen consul in 43 and 33, and in every year from 31 to 23. By the tribunician authority conferred upon him in 36, 30, and 23, he had for life the inviolability of a tribune, the right to initiate legislation in the Senate or the Assembly, and the power to veto the actions of any official in the government. No one protested against this amiable dictatorship. The businessmen who were making hay under the sun of peace, the senators who sniffed Octavian’s Egyptian spoils, the soldiers who held their lands or status by his bounty, the beneficiaries of Caesar’s laws, appointments, and will-all were now agreed with Homer that the rule of one man is best, at least if he should be so free with his funds as Octavian, so industrious and competent, and so visibly devoted to the good of the state.
In 28, as co-censor with Agrippa, he took a census of the people, revised the membership of the Senate, reduced it to 600, and was himself named permanently princeps senatus. The title had meant “first on the roll call of the Senate”; soon it would mean “prince” in the sense of ruler, just as imperator, through Octavian’s life tenure of the name, would come to mean “emperor.” History rightly calls his government, and that of his successors for two centuries, a “principate” rather than strictly a monarchy; for until the death of Commodus all the “emperors” recognized, at least in theory, that they were only the leaders (principes) of the Senate. To make the constitutional façade of his authority more imposing, Octavian in 27 surrendered all his offices, proclaimed the restoration of the Republic, and expressed his desire (at thirty-five) to retire to private life. Perhaps the drama had been arranged; Octavian was one of those cautious men who believe that honesty is the best policy, but that it must be practiced with discrimination. The Senate countered his abdication with its own, returned to him nearly all his powers, implored him to continue his guidance of the state, and conferred upon him the title of Augustus which history has mistaken as his name. Hitherto the word had been applied only to holy objects and places, and to certain creative or augmenting divinities (augere, to increase); applied to Octavian it clothed him with a halo of sanctity, and the protection of religion and the gods.
The people of Rome seem to have thought for a while that the “restoration” was real, and that they were receiving back the Republic in return for an adjective. Did not the Senate and the assemblies still make the laws, still elect the magistrates? It was so; Augustus or his agents merely “proposed” the laws and “nominated” the more important candidates. As imperator and consul he ruled the army and the Treasury and administered the laws; and by his tribunician privileges he controlled all other activities of the government. His powers were not much greater than those of Pericles or Pompey, or any energetic American president; the difference lay in their permanence. In 23 he resigned the consulate, but received from the Senate a “proconsular authority” that gave him control of all officials in all provinces. Again no one objected; on the contrary, when a scarcity of grain threatened, the people besieged the Senate with demands that Augustus be made dictator. They had fared so ill under the Senatorial oligarchy that they were inclined toward a dictatorship, which would presumably cultivate their favor a
s a foil to the power of wealth. Augustus refused; but he took charge of the annona, or food supply, quickly ended the shortage, and earned such gratitude that Rome looked on with complacency as he remolded its institutions in his image.
II. THE NEW ORDER
Let us study this principate government in some detail, for in many ways it was one of the subtlest political achievements in history.
The powers of the prince were at once legislative, executive, and judicial: he could propose laws or decrees to assemblies or Senate, he could administer and enforce them, he could interpret them, he could penalize their violation. Augustus, says Suetonius, regularly sat as a judge, sometimes till nightfall, “having a litter placed upon the tribunal if he was indisposed. . . . He was highly conscientious and very lenient.”1 Bearing the duties of so many offices, Augustus organized an informal cabinet of counselors like Maecenas, executives like Agrippa, generals like Tiberius, and an incipient clerical and administrative bureaucracy chiefly composed of his freedmen and slaves.
Caius Maecenas was a wealthy businessman who devoted half his life to helping Augustus in war and peace, in politics and diplomacy, at last, unwillingly, in love. His palace on the Esquiline was famous for its gardens and its swimming pool of heated water. His enemies described him as an effeminate epicurean, for he flaunted silks and gems and knew all the lore of a Roman gourmet. He enjoyed and generously patronized literature and art, restored Virgil’s farm to him and gave another to Horace, inspired the Georgics and the Odes. He refused public office, though he might have had almost any; he labored for years over principles and details of administration and foreign policy; he had the courage to reprove Augustus when he thought him seriously wrong; and when he died (8 B.C..) the Prince mourned his loss as beyond repair.
Perhaps it was on his advice that Augustus—himself of middle-class origin, and free from the aristocrat’s contempt of trade—named so many businessmen to high administrative posts, even to provincial governorships. To a Senate offended by this innovation he made amends by many obeisances, by giving exceptional powers to Senatorial commissions, and by gathering about him a concilium principis of some twenty men, nearly all senators. In the course of time the decisions of this council acquired the force of senatusconsulta, or decrees of the Senate; its powers and functions grew as those of the Senate waned. However he might lavish courtesies upon it, the Senate was merely his highest instrument. As censor he four times revised its membership; he could, and did, eject individuals from it for official incompetence or private immorality; most of its new members were nominated by him; and the quaestors, praetors, and consuls who entered it after their term of office had been chosen by him or with his consent. The richest businessmen of Italy were enrolled in the Senate, and the two orders were in some measure brought together in that concordia of united domination which Cicero had proposed. The power of wealth checked the pride and privilege of birth, and an hereditary aristocracy checked the abuses and irresponsibility of wealth.
At the suggestion of Augustus the meetings of the Senate were confined to the first and fifteenth of each month and usually lasted but a day. As the princeps senatus presided, no measure could be submitted without his consent; and in fact all measures presented had been prepared by himself or his aides. The judicial and executive functions of the Senate now outweighed its lawmaking. It served as a supreme court, governed Italy through commissions, and directed the performance of various public works. It ruled those provinces which required no extensive military control, but foreign relations were now controlled by the Prince. Shorn in this way of its ancient authority, the Senate grew negligent in even its limited functions, and yielded ever more responsibility to the Emperor and his staff.
The assemblies still met, though with decreasing frequency; they still voted, but only on measures or nominations approved by the Prince. The right of the plebs to hold office was practically ended in 18 B.C.. by a law restricting office to men having a fortune of 400,000 sesterces ($60,000) or more.2 Augustus ran for the consulate thirteen times and canvassed for votes like the rest; it was a gracious concession to dramatic technique. Corruption was hindered by requiring every candidate to deposit, before election, a financial guarantee that he would abstain from bribery.3 Augustus himself, however, once distributed a thousand sesterces to each voting member of his tribe to make sure that its vote would be correct.4 Tribunes and consuls continued to be elected till the fifth century A.D.; 5 but as their major powers had fallen to the Prince, these offices were administrative rather than executive and finally became mere dignities. The actual government of Rome was placed by Augustus in the hands of salaried regional officials, equipped with a force of 3000 police under a praefectus urbi, or municipal police commissioner. Further to assure order of the desired kind, and support his own power, Augustus, seriously violating precedent, kept six cohorts of a thousand soldiers each near Rome and three cohorts within it. These nine cohorts became the Praetorian Guard—i.e., guard of the praetorium, or headquarters of the commander in chief. It was this body that in A.D. 41 made Claudius emperor and began the subjection of the government to the army.
From Rome the administrative care of Augustus passed to Italy and the provinces. He conferred Roman citizenship, or the limited franchise of “Latin rights,” upon all Italian communities that had borne their share in the war against Egypt. He helped the Italian cities with gifts, embellished them with new buildings, and devised a plan whereby their local councilors might vote by mail in the assembly elections at Rome. He divided the provinces into two classes: those that required active defense, and those that did not. The latter (Sicily, Baetica, Narbonese Gaul, Macedonia, Achaea, Asia Minor, Bithynia, Pontus, Cyprus, Crete and Cyrene, and north Africa) he allowed the Senate to rule; the others—“imperial provinces”—were governed by his own legates, procurators, or prefects. This pleasant arrangement allowed him to keep control of the army, which was mostly quartered in the “endangered” provinces; it gave him the lush revenue of Egypt; and it enabled him to keep an eye on the Senatorial governors through the procurators whom he appointed to collect the tribute in all the provinces. Each governor now received a fixed salary, so that his temptation to mulct his subjects was moderately reduced; furthermore, a body of civil servants provided a continuing administration and a check upon the malfeasance of their temporary superiors. The kinglets of client states were treated with wise courtesy and gave Augustus full allegiance. He persuaded most of them to send their sons to live in his palace and receive a Roman education; by this generous arrangement the youths served as hostages until their accession, and then as unwitting vehicles of Romanization.
In the flush aftermath of Actium, and possessed of an enormous army and navy, Augustus apparently planned to extend the Empire to the Atlantic, the Sahara, the Euphrates, the Black Sea, the Danube, and the Elbe; the pax Romana was to be maintained not by passive defense but by an aggressive policy on every frontier. The Emperor in person completed the conquest of Spain and so ably reorganized the administration of Gaul that it remained at peace for nearly a century. In the case of Parthia he contented himself with the return of the standards and surviving captives taken from Crassus in 53; but he restored to the throne of Armenia a Tigranes favorable to Rome. He sent abortive expeditions to conquer Ethiopia and Arabia. In the decade from 19 to 9 B.C.. his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus subjugated Illyria, Pannonia, and Raetia. Agreeably provoked by German invasions of Gaul, Augustus ordered Drusus to cross the Rhine, and rejoiced to learn that the brilliant youth had fought his way to the Elbe. But Drusus suffered internal injuries from a fall, lingered in pain for thirty days, and died. Tiberius, who loved Drusus with all the intensity of a restrained but passionate nature, rode 400 miles on horseback from Gaul into Germany to hold his brother in his arms in the final hours; then he conveyed the body to Rome, walking before the cortege all the way (9 B.C.). Returning to Germany, Tiberius in two campaigns (8-7 B.C., A.D. 4-5) forced the submission of the tribes between the El
be and the Rhine.
Two disasters, coming almost together, changed this fever of expansion into a policy of peace. In A.D. 6 the lately won provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia revolted, massacred all the Romans in their territory, organized an army of 200,000 men, and threatened to invade Italy. Tiberius quickly made peace with the German tribes and led his depleted forces into Pannonia. With patient and ruthless strategy he captured or destroyed the crops that could supply the enemy, and by guerrilla warfare prevented new plantings, while he saw to it that his own troops were well fed. For three years he persisted in this policy despite universal criticism at home; at last he had the satisfaction of seeing the starving rebels disband, and of re-establishing the Roman power. But in that same year (A.D. 9) Arminius organized a revolt in Germany, lured the three legions of Varus, the Roman governor, into a trap, and killed every man of them except those who, like Varus, fell upon their own swords. When Augustus heard of this he was “so deeply affected,” says Suetonius, “that for several months he cut neither his beard nor his hair; and sometimes he would dash his head against a door, and cry out, ‘Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!’”6 Tiberius hastened to Germany, reorganized the army there, stood off the Germans, and, by Augustus’ orders, withdrew the Roman boundary to the Rhine.