(1) It established a priestly aristocracy. On the death and deification of Augustus a college of Sodales Augustales was created for Rome, consisting of twenty-one nobles, and containing in its list members of the imperial house.[2196] Flamines Augustales held the same dignified position in their provinces or in their native towns, and were drawn from the aristocracies of the states. The Flamen of the worship of Roma and Augustus, that had its centre at Narbo, wore the praetexta, was attended by a lictor, had a front seat at games, and the right of taking part in the deliberations of the local Senate. His wife, the Flaminica, was clothed on festal days in white or purple, and, like the Flaminica Dialis at Rome, might not be compelled to take an oath.[2197] The lower and middle classes were not forgotten in the distribution of these religious honours. From the magistri Augustales, whom we have already mentioned, developed an ordo Augustalium, which existed before the death of Augustus both in Italy and the provinces, and the cult with which it was associated was partly of spontaneous origin, partly cultivated by the imperial government, and may in some cases have been founded by the municipal towns themselves. The Augustales were not priests, like the Flamines and Sacerdotes, but merely an order with certain insignia—the praetexta, the fasces, the tribunal—which they displayed in the performance of their official duties, and they have been compared to magistrates without secular magisterial functions.[2198] The form which the organisation assumed was the appointment of sexviri or seviri, probably by the senate of the municipal town; after the year of service they pass into the order of Augustales.[2199] The order was composed mainly of freedmen—of a class, that is, whose birth excluded them from the public offices of their states, but who, forming as they did a large portion of the trading population, contributed, perhaps more than any other, to the economic vitality of the towns. The worship of Augustus, by giving them insignia and certain proud moments in which they appeared to dazzling effect before the public eye, compensated to some extent for the loss of privileges which the law withheld.
(2) Caesar-worship was the only force that gave a kind of representative life to the provinces. Great provincial diets (concilia, communia, κοινά) made their appearance both in the Eastern and Western world. Asia had already dedicated temples to kings, proconsuls, and to the city of Rome;[2200] and in the Hellenic world the national assemblies which survived the Roman conquest may have suggested, or may even at times have been continued in, these new amphictyonic gatherings. The favour shown by the imperial government to this proof of loyalty soon led the West to follow the example of the East, and the establishment of the worship of Roma and Augustus at Lugdunum, by creating a concilium for the three Gauls, was the prototype of a similar organisation in other European provinces. Eventually every province of the Empire seems to have evolved a diet of some kind, and even Britain, the least organised of Roman dependencies, possessed at Colchester a temple to the deified Claudius.[2201] The high-priests of the cult (sacerdotes provinciae, ἀρχιερεῖς) were chosen annually from the most distinguished families, and delegates (legati, σύνεδροι) from the various districts or states, which made up the province, were despatched to the yearly meetings (concilia, κοινά). These delegates elected the high-priests and voted the sums required for the purposes of the cult. But they felt themselves to be representatives of the province; they voiced its nationality and represented its collective interests as no other power did, and it would have been impossible except by force to limit their utterances to purely religious questions. This compulsion the government did not attempt. It permitted, perhaps encouraged, these delegates to make representations about the condition of the province,[2202] and even to utter complaints about the conduct of Roman officials.[2203] It is a pity that the imperial government did not do even more to preserve the fast-waning sense of nationality; but the value of what it did is proved by the fact that these assemblies and the dignified orders which they created survived into the Christian Empire. Titles such as Asiarch, Syriarch, Phoenicarch, derived from the high-priesthood of Caesar’s cult, were respected by Constantine’s legislation,[2204] and survived like ghosts of the pagan past to haunt for a time the life of a new œcumenical church which, through a fuller faith and a higher allegiance, had effected its triumph over the old.
APPENDIX I
THE TWO ASSEMBLIES OF THE TRIBES
The existence of a comitia tributa populi, as distinct from the concilium plebis tributim, was first demonstrated by Mommsen (Römische Forschungen, Die patricisch-plebejischen Tributcomitien der Republik). The chief lines of evidence on which the proof of the existence of this parliament rests are as follows:—
(i.) We have a series of passages which prove the continued distinction of the Populus and the Plebs and of patrician and plebeian magistrates, and which show that these magistrates could only summon the bodies of which they were respectively the representatives. These passages are:—
Festus p. 293 “Scita plebei appellantur ea, quae plebs suo suffragio sine patribus jussit, plebeio magistratu rogante.”
ib. p. 330 “Scitum populi (est, quod eum magistra)tus patricius (rogavit populusque suis suf)fragis jussit.... Plebes autem est (populus universus) praeter patricios.”
ib. p. 233 “cum plebes sine patri(bus a suo magistratu rogatur) quod plebes scivit, plebi(scitum est: plebs enim cum) appellatur, patrum com(munio excluditur).”
(ii.) There are abundant evidences of the early existence of a comitia of the tribes:—