Augustus (38 page)

The army was permanently stationed where it was most needed: along the imperial frontiers in the east and northern Africa, Spain, northeast Gaul, and what we now call the Balkans. These dispositions were adequate, but there was no reserve to send to trouble spots in times of emergency. Intent on reducing public expenditure and seeing no great and imminent threat, Octavian was willing to take the risk of a lean military establishment.

He then turned his attention to civilian matters. According to Suetonius, he gave serious consideration after Actium to bringing back the Republic, but everything we know about Octavian—above all, his slow, undeviating pursuit of mastery—suggests that this must be a misunderstanding. What he did do was give very careful thought to the kind of polity that should now be installed. Dio imagined that a debate took place at this time in Octavian’s presence, in which Agrippa put the case for a democratic or, in effect, republican constitution, and Maecenas argued the benefits of monarchy. Though such a discussion probably never took place, it is true that Octavian found a way forward that married these two opposing positions. As usual, he took his time, and a good three years passed before he came to a conclusion.

In 28
B.C.,
Octavian held his sixth consulship, this time alongside Agrippa. All the acts of the triumvirs were annulled, and assurances given that there would never be a return to the terrible past. The consuls assumed
censoria potestas,
the powers of censors. The censors were two senior officials elected every five years. They had three main tasks: first, to hold a
lustrum
or general ritual purification of the people; second, to conduct a census of Roman citizens; and third, to supervise the conduct of citizens, and more especially of members of the Senate.

The census held by Octavian and Agrippa revealed that there were 4,063,000 citizens (we do not know whether the number included women and children). A more ticklish job was to identify and weed out senatorial undesirables. The number of senators was reduced from one thousand to a somewhat more manageable eight hundred. As Suetonius records, this was a highly unpopular procedure. At the meeting when the outcome of the review of the Senate was announced, Octavian is said to have worn a sword and steel corselet beneath his tunic. Senators were allowed to approach only after their togas were searched.

The regime was not yet quite ready to chart a course for the long term, but an awkward incident took place which strongly suggested that a new political framework must be put in place sooner rather than later. People needed to know what the rules of the political game now were.

Marcus Licinius Crassus, the able grandson of Julius Caesar’s onetime colleague, returned to Rome from a highly successful campaign on the Macedonian frontier. He claimed not only a triumph but also
spolia opima
. This high and rare honor was granted to a general who had killed the enemy commander with his own hands and stripped him of his armor—namely, the
spolia opima,
or splendid spoils. This was what Crassus had done. In the history of the state, only two men had achieved this feat previously.

Unchallenged control of the legions was crucial to Octavian’s hold on power, and so he felt it important that no other independent personality should be allowed to win a military reputation. It was unthinkable for Crassus to dedicate the armor of his defeated opponent, according to the traditional ritual, in the tiny antique Temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol. So a technicality was cited to prevent him. Crassus was allowed his triumph, but nothing more is heard of him; we must suppose that excessive keenness brought his military career to a premature end.

At last in 27
B.C.
Octavian, now thirty-six years old, was ready to unveil his constitutional blueprint. On January 1, he entered his seventh consulship with Agrippa again as his colleague. On the Ides (the thirteenth of the month) he made a most extraordinary speech to the Senate—perhaps the most important speech of his life. Dio gave him words that cannot have been very far from those he actually uttered:

I lay down my office in its entirety and return to you all authority absolutely—authority over the army, the laws and the provinces—not only those territories which you entrusted to me, but those which I later secured for you.

For most of Octavian’s listeners, the statement came as a shock. No one knew exactly how to react, and his cautious audience either believed him or pretended to. While he was speaking, senators broke in with shouts and interjections.

When he sat down, the protests continued. With a great show of reluctance, he allowed himself to be persuaded to accept an unusually large “province” for ten years, consisting of Spain, Gaul, and Syria, presumably with proconsular authority; he would be able to choose deputies, or legates, to rule them on his behalf while he remained consul at Rome. All other provinces would fall under direct senatorial management in the old way: that is, the Senate would appoint former consuls and praetors to govern them.

A grateful Senate voted Octavian new honors. The doorposts of his house on the Palatine were decorated with laurel and the lintel with oak leaves for having saved the lives of Roman citizens (as coins had it,
ob cives servatos
). A golden shield was set up in the Senate House, as he later proudly recalled, “in recognition of my valour, my clemency, my justice and my piety.”

In a remarkable innovation, Octavian was given a new
cognomen,
by which he was to be known in future. There had been an idea of calling Rome’s second founder, as the rhetoric had it, by the name of its original founder Romulus. But Romulus had made himself king and, according to one story, had been murdered by angry senators. A much better proposition was Augustus, meaning Revered One; and so it was agreed. Octavian’s official name was now Imperator Caesar Augustus.

A modest title was adopted for everyday use:
princeps,
“first [or leading] citizen.” It had respectable precedents: the leader of the Senate had always been called
princeps senatus,
an honor now accorded to Augustus, and men such as Pompey and Crassus had also been known as
principes
. A new name signified a new start. Octavian, the bloodstained triumvir, was now Augustus, the law-abiding
princeps
.

In making these arrangements, Augustus aimed primarily at persuading the Senate that he was not heading in the same direction as his adoptive father—toward, that is, an out-and-out autocracy, even toward something like a Hellenistic monarchy. If enough senators believed that he intended to follow in Julius Caesar’s footsteps, Augustus ran a high risk of incurring his own Ides of March.

Also, there was no one on hand, apart from the Senate, to help Augustus in the laborious job of running the empire. He needed the collaboration of the ruling class, and this they would be unlikely to supply unless they were satisfied with the new order of things.

The Senate was not quite the body it had been. New men from the Italian countryside had filled the many gaps left by the old governing families that had been weakened in the civil wars or had lost their money and estates. Many came from regions that had received citizenship as little as fifty years before. Theirs was an Italian rather than a Roman identity. Even more controversially, leading men from southern Gaul and Spain, provinces that had long since adopted the Roman language and culture, were recruited as senators. All these arrivistes saw their fate as inextricably linked to the new regime. So did a good number of impoverished aristocrats, for the astute Augustus took good care to fund them generously and thereby constrain their freedom to oppose him. He bound other noble clans to him by arranging marriages with his relatives.

Nevertheless, members of the Senate still held a residual, deeply felt belief in Rome’s constitution. They would not accept one-man rule; and they expected the state to remain a collective enterprise even if led by one man.

The presentation on January 13 of 27
B.C
. was a piece of theater, of course. The Senate and the people remained, as they always had been, the sole sources of legal authority, but Augustus did not hand back any real power. In the last analysis he owed his dominant position to the army (and to a lesser extent to the people, who could be relied on to reelect him as consul for as many terms as he liked). It was no accident that his governorship of Spain, Gaul, and Syria gave him the command of twenty legions. The legions had legitimate reason to be there: the northern of the two Spanish provinces was still not entirely subdued; Gaul remained unruly; and Syria abutted the untrustworthy Parthians. But, by comparison, the “senatorial” provinces, to be governed by proconsuls in the ordinary way, were calm; only three of them required armies, and in total, they commanded five or six legions. Thus, most of Rome’s armies were under the command of the
princeps;
as long as they and their commanders stayed loyal, he was safe.

Another important source of Augustus’ power was patronage. He had inherited Julius Caesar’s empire-wide
clientela,
and no doubt he had greatly expanded it even before Actium won him Antony’s
clientela
too. His authority across the empire was expressed through a web of personal connections and loyalties, to which no other Roman could remotely aspire. In every community large or small, leading men were under an obligation to him, and were usually rewarded with the gift of Roman citizenship.

Augustus was pleased to boast: “When I had put an end to the civil wars, having acquired supreme power over the empire with universal consent, I transferred the Republic from my control into that of the Senate and People of Rome.” That was literally correct—the machinery of constitutional government came creakily back into operation—but for anyone with eyes to see, the truth of the matter was obvious. The
princeps
admitted it himself, stating baldly: “After this time, I exceeded everybody in authority.”

This was acceptable because Augustus held no unconstitutional or novel office. Broadly speaking, he was acting within precedent. Also, he gave back to the political class its glittering prizes. Once more it became worthwhile to compete for political office (even though the
princeps
tended to select the candidates). The ambitious and the able could win glory on the floor of the Senate or in the outposts of empire.

It would be wrong to suppose that Romans failed to understand what was going on. They were not deceived. They could see that Augustus’ power ultimately rested on force. However, his constitutional settlement gave him legitimacy and signaled a return to the rule of law. For this, most people were sincerely grateful.

Augustus’ “restored Republic” was a towering achievement, for it transformed a bankrupt and incompetent polity into a system of government that delivered the rule of law, wide participation by the ruling class, and, at the same time, strong central control. It installed an autocracy with the consent of Rome’s—and indeed of Italy’s—independent-minded elites. Some Roman historians, among them Tacitus a century or so later, mourned the death of liberty, but at the time politicians, citizens, and subjects of the empire recognized that the new constitutional arrangements would bring stability and the promise of fair and effective public administration.

If Julius Caesar had lived he would probably have devised a far more radical scheme, imposing a brutally abrupt transition from a republican past to an imperial future. Augustus may have been less brilliant than his adoptive father, but he was wiser. He understood that if his new system was to last, it should be seen to grow out of what came before. Rather than insist on a chasm, he built a bridge.

XVII

WHOM THE GODS LOVE

27–23
B.C.

In the meantime, the huge
provincia
called for his attention. Augustus’ first stop was Gaul, where rumor had it that he intended to complete the task Julius Caesar had left unfinished in 54
B.C.
—an invasion of the remote island of Britannia, perched on the edge of the known world. But Augustus was too busy to waste his time on such a diversion.

During the civil wars, Gaul had fallen into turmoil; Augustus’ presence reasserted Roman authority. After establishing order and conducting a census, he moved on to Spain, where a thornier problem awaited. The native tribes in the northern of the two Spanish provinces, especially the Astures (whence the modern Asturias) and the Cantabri (in the area of today’s Santander and Bilbao), had never been fully subdued. Augustus led a campaign against them, but this time he was without Agrippa to help him. The tribes used guerrilla tactics, hiding in their mountain fastnesses and cleverly avoiding the full-scale battle for which the legion was designed and for which they themselves were poorly adapted. Whenever the Romans marched in a given direction, they found themselves facing enemy fighters on high ground in front of them. In valleys and woods they stumbled into ambushes.