Augustus Caesar

David Shotter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415319355
• eBook ISBN: 9781134364527
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

Revised throughout, the second edition of this successful book takes the most recent research in the field into account and reviews the evidence in order to place Augustus firmly in the context of his own times.

History sees Augustus Caesar as the first emperor of Rome, whose system of ordered government provided a firm and stable basis for the expansion and prosperity of the Roman Empire. Hailed as 'restorer of the Republic' and regarded by some as a deity in his own lifetime, Augustus was emulated by many of his successors.

Key topics discussed include:

• the background to Augustus Caesar's spectacular rise to power
• his political and imperial reforms
• the creation of the Republica of Augustus
• the legacy Augustus Caesar left to his successors.

Including more coverage of the social and cultural aspects of this complex character's reign, together with an expanded guide to further reading, students will not miss a beat if this book is included on their course reading lists.

1
THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

In 509 BC, according to Roman tradition, the monarchy in Rome which had been established in 753 BC, was swept aside and replaced by the form of government which we call ‘The Republic’. We should not, however, be over-zealous in seeking close comparisons with what nowadays we refer to as a Republic. For Romans it was a form of government which lasted until it was changed by Octavian (Augustus) following his victory over Marcus Antonius (‘Marc Antony’) at Actium in 31 BC.

This is not the place for a discussion of the changes which took place in the Republic over a period of five centuries; nor do we need to engage with the difficulties of the chronology of the events of the early Republic. For the present purpose, we may accept the chronology which satisfied the Romans themselves, and reserve for a companion volume in this series (The Fall of the Roman Republic) a fuller discussion of the Republic’s developmental history.

Literally, the Latin words res publica (usually printed as one word) meant nothing more specific than ‘the public concern’; however, to Romans they embraced a set of concepts wider than political institutions alone which together constituted the Roman way of life.
The Augustan poet, Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), in his so-called ‘Roman Odes’ (Odes III. 1–6) showed that the fabric of society, the constitution and role of the family, family tradition, the practice of traditional religion and a sense of straightforward morality were all important parts of what made up the Respublica.

Naturally, the form of government within the Roman Republic did not remain static during a history of nearly five hundred years; it underwent changes as Rome developed from a small city-state hemmed in by hostile neighbours to the point where, by the mid-third century BC, she was coming to be seen as the ‘mistress of Italy’ and later still as the head of a large (and multicultural) overseas empire. Such changes of circumstance obviously brought with them new pressures, new challenges, new people and new opportunities. It is reasonable to assert that over the years the most significant problem became the failure to adapt sufficiently the institutions devised for a small city-state to take account of the new circumstances.

Broadly, the government of the Republic was made up of three elements: the ‘executive branch’ comprised the ‘magistrates’, of whom the consuls were the most significant; two consuls were elected each year, and they possessed military authority, known as imperium. The consuls formulated policy after seeking (though not necessarily following) the advice of their aristocratic peers who constituted the unelected senate. Policy, once formulated, was taken to the people (populus) in their assemblies (comitia) for passage into law. However, in any study of the early days of the Republic, we have to remember that we are reliant for information on classical authors who were writing many years, even centuries, after the events.

It is difficult, in any description of the machinery of government, to capture its spirit adequately: the three elements—magistrates, senate and people—were not independent from or equal to each other. As we have seen, the aristocracy made up the senate, and it was from its number that each year the candidates for the consulship came; the consuls, once elected, because of their impermanence and because of their own membership of the senate, tended to carry less weight than the collective views of their peers. Further, the popular assemblies which passed the laws were also dominated by the aristocracy. First, voting procedures were arranged in such a way as to give more weight to citizens who were socially and financially superior. Second, a system of patronage operated whereby the rich and influential citizens were patrons in advice and financial assistance to the poorer citizens who were their clients. In this way, in the absence of secret ballots, which were not introduced until the second century BC, the votes of ordinary citizens could effectively be influenced by their patrons.

Thus, the governmental process in the early Republic was dominated by the aristocracy, and the senate proved to be the most weighty element in that process. Constitutional theory and governmental practice were in this way widely divergent in the early days of the Roman Republic.

Roman society was divided into two groups of citizens—patricians and plebeians. In the early Republic, the patricians alone constituted the aristocracy and enjoyed a monopoly of power—military, political, religious and legal; power was their birthright because only they had the expertise in these important fields. The plebeians were their dependents, relying on them for advice, financial help, and legal and religious assistance. The plebeians, however, constituted a large and varied group of citizens, some of whom had wealth despite their socially inferior status. Rich plebeians were not prepared to miss out on the opportunities that privilege conferred upon patricians, and were instrumental over two centuries (until approximately 300 BC) in waging a campaign that is known as the ‘struggle of the orders’.

Plebeians were not content with concessions such as the admission by the patricians that there could be a plebeian assembly (concilium plebis), presided over by its own officers (the tribunes of the plebs), and able to make decisions over matters affecting plebeians alone. Plebeians who were wealthy enough to finance election campaigns and support themselves in unsalaried offices wanted to be able to enjoy full access to power and influence. Thus the ‘struggle of the orders’ was, in reality, largely about the opening up of governmental office, membership of the senate, military commands, and state priesthoods to their number. Gradually during the fifth and fourth centuries this was achieved; similarly successful was the campaign to have the decisions of the plebeian assembly and its officers (the tribunes) made binding over the whole population. However, such changes were more apparent than real; the plebeian assembly, like the assemblies of the whole people, was vulnerable in its procedures to those of its members who were wealthy and influential. More important in establishing the character of Roman politics was the fact that the wealthy plebeians who had gained by patrician concessions wanted nothing more than to be accepted by the patricians as part of a ‘new aristocracy’. Thus the ‘struggle of the orders’ did not result in the democratisation of Roman politics, but in a relatively slight widening of the group that exercised power; in practice it was extremely difficult to tell the difference between a patrician and a plebeian aristocrat. Aristocracy or nobility (as the Romans referred to it) was measured by being a member of a family that could look back to forebears who had held the office of consul.

As Rome grew in stature and influence through the fifth and fourth centuries, so naturally the complexity of government grew too. The powers and duties of the consuls were gradually shared with newly-created officers—quaestors, aediles and praetors—each with a particular function to carry out. It became normal for members of the nobility to progress through these offices from the quaestorship upwards to the consulship in what amounted to a career structure for senators (cursus honorum). Above the consulship for some was the post of censor, two of whom were elected every five years to hold office for eighteen months, and whose particular functions were the financial assessment of citizens and the regulation of the senate’s membership; apart from the censors, all the state’s officers were elected for a year at a time.

The Republic did not recognise a distinction between the civilian and military command structures; consuls and praetors commanded armies. This provided the holders of these offices with an additional hold over the ordinary citizens. For, whereas a consul or praetor acting in his civilian capacity was subject to certain legal checks in his dealings with ordinary citizens, as a military commander he enjoyed the power of life and death over his men. This clearly left ordinary citizens less disposed to question the political arrangements of the Republic’s officers.

Therefore so long as the senate as a body maintained its hold over the magistrates, its position was largely beyond effective challenge. Civilian and military power were lodged with its members, and they ‘toed the line’ partly because they were members of the senate and partly because they would need the support of their fellow senators in future election campaigns. In addition, the growing rigidity of the cursus honorum was meant to prevent anyone gaining extended periods of individual power or advancing too rapidly up the ladder. Again, although no magistrate was obliged to consult the senate, custom and practice dictated that they did, thus allowing the senate to ensure that measures put before the people had its approval.

It should also be remembered that the senate had within its numbers the major priests of the state religious cults. With a population that was always anxious to secure the continuing favour of the gods, the goodwill of the priests was essential. Further, the people were effectively obliged to accept whatever advice these priests/ politicians gave them, and so religious manipulation represented a further element of control exercised by senators over Roman citizens. Senators were also considered to enjoy expertise in the administration of justice; citizens enmeshed in the law had little option but to recognise that senators were in effect the only men who could advise and help them through the procedures.

Thus, the hold exerted over the Republic by the senatorial nobility was virtually complete. Their wealth, invested in land, allowed them to control their tenants and make money with which to patronise others—for example, the urban proletariat. Their military, religious and legal expertise led to further means of control over ordinary citizens, whilst as magistrates senators were constrained by group loyalty and by the need to remain accepted by their peers. Even the office of tribune of the plebs, which enjoyed the means to challenge the senate, was brought under control as the patricians joined forces with rich and influential plebeians in the new nobility; because tribunes were now senators and operated within the senate, they were in practice as much subject to the constraints as other magistrates. It was in fact highly significant that, although the tribunate was not a magistracy, yet it came to be regarded virtually as an integral part of the cursus honorum—though open, of course, only to plebeian senators.

Although, as we have seen, we have little or no contemporary analysis of the workings of the Roman Republic during its earlier years, one significant source does survive—the Greek historian, Polybius. Polybius had, along with his father, advocated cooperation with Rome. Captured and brought to Rome in 168 BC after the defeat of Perseus V of Macedon, Polybius eventually gained his freedom in 151 and formed an association with Scipio Aemilianus, who was responsible for the defeat and destruction of Carthage in 146.
Polybius admired the Roman Republic for its stability and Book VI of his Histories contains his famous analysis of this stability.

Polybius will have been familiar with Plato’s cyclical theory of constitutional deterioration, in which monarchy gave way to aristocracy, which was in its turn overtaken by democracy, which then had to be rescued from chaos by a restored monarchy. Whereas Greek states, however, suffered chronically from this cycle, the Roman Republic was seen to have halted it by bringing elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy into balance. A series of balancing powers and needs held together magistrates, senate and people—the Roman ‘representatives’ of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. This balance was the ‘Mixed Constitution’.

Whilst there was much to support Polybius’ views, it would seem that he did not perhaps appreciate how far the links between the magistrates and the senate, together with the institution of patronage, worked to enshrine the aristocracy and the senate in a dominant position. To Romans, the prestige and authority of the senate (auctoritas senatus) were real and effective—and indeed the more impressive because the senate required no legal formulae to enable it to exercise control.

However, just as the senate’s strength during the first three centuries of the Republic was its auctoritas and its ability to exercise control without legally defined powers, so too, as the conditions and circumstances of Roman politics began from the late-third century to change, the potential weaknesses of the senate’s situation began to emerge. As new pressures developed with the growth of the Roman Empire, the senate found that it lacked the means to head off challenges to its corporate auctoritas. From the Republic’s point of view this was bound to lead to a governmental vacuum; this vacuum was to prove the crisis for the Roman Republic.

From the mid-third century BC, a series of foreign wars—against Carthage, against the mainland Greeks and against the Hellenistic kingdoms of Asia Minor—transformed the shape of the Roman world and introduced pressures which had never been felt or contemplated in the early Republic, and which gradually highlighted the weakness of a governmental system that relied upon respect for authority and adherence to tradition.

Foreign wars led to the acquisition of territories in which new organisations for government, peace-keeping and exploitation needed to be put in place. The government of the new provinces fell to senators who, as consuls or praetors, had their terms of office effectively extended to enable them after their tenures in Rome to undertake a year as provincial governors; in these extended roles they were generally termed proconsuls and could taste a larger and less constrained power than could be exercised in Rome under the watchful eyes of their peers. Inevitably, the sense of ambition to which such power gave rise spilled over into the Republic’s domestic politics, and, for the first time, individual senators and the factions into which they formed themselves began to see themselves as more important than the senate’s corporate authority.

The new territorial acquisitions gave rise to commercial opportunities which could not be fully exploited by senators; laws restrained a land-owning aristocracy from becoming involved in trade on the ground that it was an activity beneath them. Thus, the chance to exploit the new commercial opportunities fell to others. Some of these were foreigners—mainly Greeks and Jews, who had long been the leaders of commerce in the Mediterranean world. Amongst Romans, however, it was the members of the equestrian order, a group of wealthy citizens outside the senate, who realised that there were fortunes to be made by financing a range of commercial and industrial activities. The equestrian order had previously been a rather disparate body, but now it organised itself into companies of businessmen ready to become involved in commercial ventures. Moreover, because Rome lacked a civil service, these equestrian entrepreneurs were encouraged to spread their interests into activities which in a modern state would normally be carried out by civil servants—activities such as tax-collection and the operation of the state’s industries.

Such involvement brought new wealth and coherence to the equestrian order. Although equestrians generally lacked the desire to become directly involved in politics, they were frequently now the sources of the cash used by senators to patronise and to bribe their way to electoral success. Orthodox wisdom maintained that there was no harm in borrowing heavily to finance election campaigns, since the term of provincial government which followed office in Rome could be used to pillage provincials and thus satisfy creditors in Rome. In this situation the provinces during the later Republic could hardly expect a government distinguished for its fair-mindedness and integrity.

The wealth that flowed into Italy as a result of imperial expansion came in two forms—actual cash and a large pool of prisoners of war who were then sold in the slave markets. Both were considered by traditionalists to be damaging and corrupting in their different ways. The cornerstone of Roman society was the family, which ideally was a self-sufficient unit providing for its own needs. But, for those who could afford them, slaves could be put to work on the land, or to run the house and educate the children. Such a loosening of the family role was seen as inevitably leading to a declining importance of the family, with serious consequences for the nature of Roman society.

Money could also be invested in land, and slaves were bought to work the consequently larger estates with greater efficiency and thus larger profits. Such estates obviously operated in a financial sense more effectively than small farms whose sole workers were members of the families which owned them. Not only that, but the small farmers found that in the town markets their produce was increasingly in competition with grain that was coming by way of taxation from new provinces like Sicily. Wealth also fuelled building programmes in the towns; these enhanced the reputations of the men who financed them and added to the facilities available in the towns, making them ‘magnets’ for those small farmers who, out of increasing disillusionment with trying to make a living from agriculture, were flocking to the towns in large numbers.

Urban instability grew in direct proportion to the growth of urban populations, since there was very little work available in the towns for immigrants, who were therefore left little alternative but to survive on the patronage of the rich.

However, we should not make the mistake of seeing the ordinary people as mere passive bystanders at the activities of the rich and influential. The introduction of secrecy in balloting during the second century BC made the ordinary citizen a potentially powerful figure; as a voter, he now had the opportunity to make more of a difference.

At the heart of the Roman political process lay oratory—the art of persuading an audience of the course of action which it wished to support. We may imagine that as the senate’s cohesion broke down, and greater opportunies were available to individuals and factions, rivalries provided ready material with which to enflame popular audiences. The ‘politics of envy’ will have had much to feed upon in a community where work was occasional and where people relied upon handouts for the means to live, but where some could amass great fortunes. Whether or not we choose to regard this as a move towards democracy, it is certain that in their election campaigns and in their conduct in office, members of the nobility will have had to keep a closer eye than before on the mood of the voter.

But there was also another major consequence of a shift of population from country to town: from the early days of the Republic, Rome had not maintained a standing army; rather the ranks of the legions were filled, when the need arose, from the body of Roman citizens who owned property. This amateur arrangement had worked well enough when wars were being fought within the relatively narrow confines of Italy, since the summer season on the whole provided sufficient time for both soldiering and farming. Already, the rigours of more distant campaigns had led to ruin for some small farmers, thus accentuating the drift away from the land. Importantly, as farmers gave up their land, so too they lost their liability for military service. Thus, at a time in the second century BC when Rome’s military commitments were growing ever larger, the body of men from which the army could be recruited was growing smaller.

The issue of recruitment into the army proved to be that over which political stability in the Roman Republic started seriously to break down. It was a Roman aristocrat’s ambition—almost his duty— to act in a manner that was seen as worthy of his ancestors. In practice, this meant achieving political success which in its turn was transformed into the winning of office. It would not be reasonable to suppose that the politics of...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LANCASTER PAMPHLETS IN ANCIENT HISTORY
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
• ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: THE CRISIS OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
• 2: THE DIVINE YOUTH
• 3: THE POWERS OF AUGUSTUS
• 4: AUCTORITAS—AND PATRONAGE
• 5: THE CITY OF MARBLE
• 6: THE RESPUBLICA OF AUGUSTUS
• 7: THE EMPIRE AND THE AUGUSTAN PEACE
• 8: THE SUCCESSION
• 9: THE LEGACY OF AUGUSTUS
• APPENDIX I
• APPENDIX II The sources for Augustus’ Principate
• APPENDIX III Glossary of Latin terms
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY