Rome

by Faulkner, Neil

  He first had to find land for the settlement of 100,000 Philippi veterans. The anger of Italian landowners was successfully exploited by Lucius Antonius, brother of Mark, who raised a revolt against the land confiscations and other repressive measures in 41 BC. This turned out to be a misjudgement: Lucius Antonius was besieged and defeated at Perusia, and the war merely demonstrated the strength of support that Octavian enjoyed in the West. Lucius’s brother, moreover, felt obliged to intervene, landing belatedly at Brundisium to challenge Octavian; but the soldiers of the two Caesarian armies fraternized and refused to fight, compelling their respective leaders to come to terms. The Pact of Brundisium in 40 BC renewed the Second Triumvirate, which was now sealed by Antony’s marriage to Octavian’s sister. The division of the Empire was renegotiated and modified in detail. There is evidence, however, of long-term damage to Antony’s cause. His brother had raised rebellion on behalf of Italian landowners. Octavian had championed Caesarian veterans hungry for land. When the Caesarian general Calenus died shortly afterwards, all 11 of the Gallic legions he had commanded declared their allegiance to Octavian.

  For the next ten years, though, Octavian was preoccupied fighting wars in defence of Italy. Between 42 and 36 BC he was at war with Sextus Pompeius, the surviving younger son of Pompey (the elder had been killed at Munda), who was operating from military bases in Sicily. Pompeius’s naval operations threatened seaborne trade, especially the corn-supply to Rome, so his suppression was a military necessity. But Octavian’s forces suffered reverses and the war dragged on. Marcus Agrippa now emerged as Octavian’s leading lieutenant and party loyalist. At great expense and effort he established a new shipbuilding complex on the Bay of Naples, where an enlarged fleet could be constructed. This fleet, reinforced by ships sent by Antony (with whom a further renewal of the triumvirate had been negotiated at Tarentum in 38 BC), finally brought Sextus Pompeius to battle off Naulochus near the Straits of Messina in 36 BC and inflicted crushing defeat. A second major land settlement was now necessary as the forces assembled against Sextus Pompeius were demobilized. Octavian retained a large army, however, and a campaign of conquest was fought in Illyricum (the coastal region of the north-western Balkans) in 35–34 BC. But ambitious plans to push north towards the Danube were soon cut short. Relations with Antony had soured, and from 33 BC onwards Octavian was preparing for a new civil war.

  Antony’s attack on the Parthian Empire – like that of Crassus – had gone badly wrong. Though the lesson had been learnt that strong contingents of cavalry and light infantry were essential, Antony had opted for a direct assault on distant Persia, bypassing Mesopotamia. As winter closed in, his army found itself at the end of a dangerously long and exposed supply-line, having failed to bring the Parthians to battle. The relentless attacks of Parthian skirmishers on Antony’s retreating column in the winter of 36–35 BC decimated his army. His power was diminished at the very moment that of Octavian, after the defeat of Sextus Pompeius, reached its peak. Sensing his vulnerability, Antony entered deeper into alliance with Cleopatra, the Greek queen of Egypt. While it is undoubtedly the case that Antony – like Caesar before him – was Cleopatra’s lover, it does not follow that the alliance between Roman triumvir and Greek monarch was driven by lust. Rather, Antony required Cleopatra’s military support for his Parthian campaign, and yet further support after his retreat, and this was paid for in a series of political concessions (the so-called ‘Donations of Alexandria’) by which Cleopatra’s empire was to include Media, Parthia, Armenia, parts of Palestine and Nabataean Arabia, Cyprus, Cyrene, Syria and Cilicia. These territories – a mixture of Roman provinces, client-states and prospective conquests – were to be ruled either by Cleopatra herself, or by the couple’s anticipated son, or by Ptolemy Caesarion, Caesar’s son by Cleopatra. The ancient historian Max Cary sums up the implications laconically: ‘Had all these transfers of territory been carried into effect, the result would have been to form an empire within the Roman Empire, and in all probability to disintegrate the Roman dominions into two rival states. Antony’s complaisance to Cleopatra, if not actually treasonable, might easily be construed as such.’(22)

  It was certainly so construed by Octavian’s propagandists. Antony was stereotyped as a Roman corrupted by the decadence of the East and emasculated by a devious seductress. He was the heinous turncoat in a Manichaean struggle between us and them, civilization and barbarism, the West and the Orient. ‘Opposing them [Octavian’s forces at the naval battle of Actium] was Antony; with him, on board, he had Egyptians and the whole strength of the East, even to most distant Bactria; on his side was the wealth of the Orient and arms of varied design, and he came victoriously from the nations of the Dawn and the Red Sea’s shore, followed – the shame of it! – by an Egyptian wife … The queen in the centre called up her columns by sounding the tambourine of her land … Her gods, monstrous shapes of every species, even to the barking Anubis, levelled weapons against Neptune, Venus, even Minerva herself.’(23) Thus the Augustan court-poet Virgil.

  At first, Antony’s portion of the triumviral carve-up may have looked tastier. While Octavian landed the unhappy task of dispossessing Italian landowners to make farms for soldiers, and an unglamorous but expensive and difficult war against Sextus Pompeius’s sea-raiders, Antony seemed poised for glory in an eastern crusade. But things had worked out differently. The Republican opposition had been crushed, and peace restored to Italy and the West. Exhausted, Roman society had settled into relative stability. Octavian had been able to repackage himself: no longer a murderous civil war faction-leader, he now approximated to the image being conjured by court artists of a patriotic and paternal statesman. His popularity with both the propertied classes and the common people soared. But what truly mattered was his military power. Control of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul was a decisive advantage: these were still the principal recruiting-grounds of Rome’s army, and from here came most of the men of the 45 legions and 500 warships at Octavian’s command. These men were the military embodiment of the traditional Romanitas he claimed to represent in the struggle with Antony. The poet was not far wrong about Actium. Octavian’s forces were united by language, religion and ideology in a way that Antony’s polyglot army was not; Romans were a minority in the eastern army, and their discomfort among so many exotic allies was to be reflected in a wave of desertions in the days and hours before the battle.

  The final breach had come in 32 BC. Antony had refused to see his wife Octavia after 35 BC. He had married Cleopatra and become the Egyptian queen’s prince-consort under Greek dynastic law in 33 BC. He then divorced Octavia the following year. Not until 31 BC, however, was Octavian ready to move; only then was he confident that his Italian base was secure, his forces large enough, their cohesion and commitment certain. Antony and Cleopatra moved to block an assault on their eastern empire, so that the civil war, just as in 48 and 42 BC, came to be fought in Greece. But the eastern forces lacked centralized command and a common cause. Mismanaged and demoralized, their fleet found itself blockaded in the port of Actium on the north-west coast of Greece, where it ran short of supplies and was weakened by desertions. Antony attempted a mass breakout, but in the confused and desultory fighting that followed, only Cleopatra, Antony and some 60 ships broke through; the rest of the eastern fleet returned to port and soon surrendered.

  Octavian marched overland to the East – through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, the Levant, and finally to Egypt. He encountered little opposition. Antony’s empire was a façade without substance. Once master and mistress had fled, the peoples of the East had no interest in resistance. Octavian’s march was a triumphal procession in which the new ruler showed himself to his new subjects. When Octavian reached Egypt in 30 BC, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Their conqueror was then master of the entire Roman world. And, though people could not at first be sure, the civil wars were finally over. The Roman Revolution was complete. The Senate had been overthrown and replaced by a military dictator, a regime of ne
w men, and a policy of conservative reform.

  Chapter 4

  The Pax Romana, 30 BC–AD 161

  The new order: the reign of Augustus, 30 BC–AD 14

  Octavian returned to Rome in 30 BC hugely popular. He would remain so for the rest of his reign. He was the Caesarian leader who would prevent oligarchic counter-revolution; the military strongman who guaranteed an end to war and a new period of peace and prosperity; and the conqueror able to crush foreign enemies and extend the borders of empire. But his authority was a constitutional anomaly, his real power-base the army, and many secret enemies lurked in the dark places of the Roman state. The fate of his adoptive father was a chilling warning. Octavian’s aims, therefore, were essentially two. First, to demobilize surplus soldiers, concentrate a trimmed-down army on the frontiers, and thus demilitarize society and restore normal civil administration. Second, to reward his followers, conciliate defeated enemies, and forge a comprehensive political settlement that would reunite, enlarge and strengthen the Roman ruling class. Achieving all this would take time. Demilitarization was the first priority.

  The Actium army was promptly demobilized in Octavian’s third major land resettlement – only this time dispossessed Italian landowners were compensated. It has been estimated that in Octavian’s three land resettlements of 41, 36 and 30 BC, 5 per cent of Italian land changed hands, 300,000 families received farms, and 150 million denarii was paid out. The victories the new veterans had won over foreign enemies – Balkan tribesmen and a Greek queen – were duly celebrated the following year (29 BC) in three triumphs for the Illyricum, Actium and Alexandria campaigns. Roman tradition did not permit triumphs for victories in civil war – but nor would it have suited a regime bent on conciliating old enemies to have crowed over the corpses of Brutus, Cassius, Sextus Pompeius and Mark Antony. Even so, in 28 BC, there was a purge of reactionary senators, 200 of whom were ejected from the house – though, in contrast to wartime purges, none were executed or lost their estates. The approach was clear: the victors would reap rewards, the regime would consolidate its grip, but erstwhile opponents would not be hounded to destruction, and those prepared to trim their politics might in time find ways to prosper.

  Still, though, the regime lacked any appearance of stability. Princeps – leading man – was the term applied to Octavian, a title without constitutional significance whose adoption signalled the ruler’s anomalous authority. There were two successive attempts – in 27 and 23 BC – to clothe the dictator’s power with legal form and give credence to his spurious claim to have ‘restored the Republic’. It was the first of these that conferred the new name ‘Augustus’ by which Octavian was hence-forward usually known, a name which, having something of the sense of the English word ‘venerable’, symbolized the makeover that had transformed the ruler’s image since the mid-30s BC. But the first settlement soon broke down over its expectation that Augustus’s constitutional authority would depend on his holding successive annual consulships. This was unsustainable: it burdened the ruler with too much work, and, by blocking the ambition of so many potential candidates, risked alienating the senators. So after 23 BC Augustus rarely held a consulship (though from 19 BC he had a special seat in the Senate between the two consuls). Instead he enjoyed permanent tribunicia potestas (tribunician power), enabling him to posture as popular champion, and giving him the authority to convene the Senate, present legislation to the People, and function as a supreme court. He retained, moreover, the triumvirs’ power of commendatio (recommendation), effectively the right to nominate candidates for magistracies. In the provinces, his power took the form of maius imperium (greater authority) over the proconsuls who governed senatorial provinces, and proconsulare imperium (proconsular authority) in the imperial provinces (and, unlike that of all others, his imperium did not lapse when he entered Rome). The distinction was between old provinces with only small garrisons (senatorial), and frontier provinces where the bulk of the army was now stationed (imperial). Augustus’s direct control over the frontier provinces – administered by governors who were his legati (legates: representatives with delegated powers) – meant that he was, de facto, the commander-in-chief of the Roman army. More than that, he inherited the Late Republican warlords’ role of army patron: he was responsible for pay, conditions, gratuities, and retirement packages; and, in recognition of this, the soldiers on enlistment swore an oath of allegiance to the emperor. Augustus was a military dictator masquerading as an elected politician. The substance and the forms of power diverged. But for the present most men preferred not to expose this truth: too much was at stake. When, occasionally, the façade was breached, the perpetrators were promptly struck down. And when this happened, the majority looked away, preferring peace, order, a career, an easy life. Politics were privatized: no longer a collective struggle over principle and policy, they became a matter of court intrigue for personal advancement – a squabble over spoils at the summit of the enlarged administrative hierarchy.

  The hierarchy’s basic structure was not new. Augustus’s aim was to gull adherents of the old order with a semblance of continuity. But Republican institutions, as well as being open to wider recruitment, were now subject to careful regulation from above. After the purge of 28 BC, the Senate’s numbers were further reduced in 18 and 13 BC, bringing an unwieldy assembly of a thousand or so down to around 600. There were strict qualifications for membership, the most important being a minimum property rating of 250,000 denarii. There was a steady infusion of new blood, of men promoted from among the most successful of the Italian municipal aristocracy, becoming first equestrians, then senators. The Senate became a mainly (but not exclusively) hereditary aristocracy of office dependent on imperial patronage. The second-division equestrian order was also regulated. The minimum property qualification was set at 100,000 denarii. Formal career paths were laid out, culminating in top imperial posts, such as the two prefectures of the Praetorian Guard, the imperial bodyguard troops in Rome, and the governorship of Egypt, a new imperial province which senators were not even permitted to visit. Equestrians also now enjoyed the exclusive right to sit in the jury-courts. For both senators and equestrians – and many others of more modest status – the number and variety of posts to which they might aspire grew rapidly.

  Though incorporating much of the former Republican infrastructure and its titles, government administration was so streamlined and expanded under the emperors as to constitute something substantially new. The imperial provinces each required a governor, responsible for justice, general administration, and military affairs, and a procurator, responsible for finance; each had their own staffs; each reported directly to the emperor. Rome, now an imperial capital of a million people, was administered by ‘curators’ (curatores) or ‘prefects’ (praefecti), permanently appointed and operating singly or in boards, each in charge of a department – water-supply, sewage, the corn dole, fire service, building control, police. The men under their charge included seven 500-strong cohorts of paramilitary firefighters and nightwatchmen (cohortes vigilum), and three 1,000-strong cohorts of front-line riot police (cohortes urbanae); these were in addition to the nine 500-strong cohorts of Praetorian Guard, the elite imperial bodyguard troops barracked in the city. At the highest level were men who attended upon the emperor in person, whether as counsellors of the consilium principis (perhaps best rendered as ‘Privy Council’), or as members of the imperial household, including many freedmen (liberti: freed slaves), who, though present in aristocratic households generally, in this case soon acquired a sinister reputation as gatekeepers of the ultimate source of patronage.

  Beyond Rome, in Italy, the Hellenized East, and the more Romanized western provinces, local government was in the safe hands of the gentry, who were enrolled on town councils by virtue of their property-ownership. These decuriones or curiales (as they came to be known in many western provinces) formed, in effect, the third tier of the Roman aristocracy. Concerned mainly with security of property, the defence of
privilege, and their own personal advancement, the decurions were a class of imperial loyalists who could be relied upon to collect taxes, maintain order, and promote Romanitas. The conservative bloc they represented was reinforced by the numerous coloniae – new settlements of Roman citizens – founded by Caesar and especially Octavian-Augustus. As noted, there were perhaps 300,000 farms owned by Caesarian veterans in Italy, the security of their land titles dependent on the regime they had helped to found and to whose defence they were therefore committed.

  Even among the free poor, the regime, as far as we can judge, was popular. Peace meant that farms prospered and the trades picked up. There was work, a market for produce, a measure of security, hope for the future. In Rome especially, but in other towns too, there was much work for builders and decorators. ‘I found Rome built of bricks,’ announced Augustus. ‘I leave her clothed in marble.’(1) The exaggeration is excusable: we know of scores of monumental structures built, reconstructed or repaired in the city during Augustus’s reign, including some of the greatest, the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and the Forum of Augustus with its dominating Temple of Mars the Avenger. We have Augustus himself to thank for much of the detail. An extraordinary contemporary document, ‘The Achievements of Divine Augustus’ (Res Gestae Divi Augusti), has survived almost complete in the form of a stone inscription from the walls of the Temple of Rome and Augustus at Ankara in Turkey. Originally, no doubt, it was publicly displayed in many parts of the empire. In it, the emperor lists the offices and honours he held, his personal expenditures for public purposes, and his deeds in war and peace. It amounts to a comprehensive political testament. It is mainly from the Res Gestae, for instance, that we learn that Augustan Rome was a city not only of great building projects, but also of handouts and spectacles. ‘To the Roman plebs I paid 300 sesterces apiece in accordance with the will of my father … I paid out of my own patrimony a largesse of 400 sesterces to every individual … These largesses of mine reached never less than 250,000 persons … I gave a gladiatorial show three times in my own name, and five times in the names of my sons or grandsons … Twice I presented in my own name an exhibition of athletes invited from all parts of the world … Twenty-six times I provided for the people hunting spectacles of African wild beasts in the Circus, the Forum, or the amphitheatres, in which about 3,500 animals were killed …’(2) Work, bread and shows were the Augustan recipe for a compliant mob.