VII. The Problem of the Succession
The policy of Augustus. In theory the position of the princeps was that of a magistrate who derived his powers from the Senate and the Roman people, and hence the choice of his successor legally lay in their hands. However, Augustus realized that to leave the field open to rival candidates would inevitably lead to a recrudescence of civil war. Therefore he determined to designate his own successor and to make the latter’s appointment a matter beyond dispute. Furthermore, his own career as the son and heir of Julius Caesar warned him that this heir to the principate must be found within his own household, and his precarious health was a constant reminder that he could not await the approach of old age before settling this problem. And so, from the early years of his office, he arranged the matrimonial alliances of his kinsfolk in the interests of the state without regard to their personal preferences, to the end that in the event of his decease there would be a member of the Julian house prepared to assume his laborious task. Yet the unexpected length of his life caused Augustus to outlive many of those whom he from time to time looked upon as the heirs to his position in the state.
Marcus Marcellus and Agrippa. Augustus had one daughter Julia, by his second wife Scribonia. He had no sons, but Livia Drusilla, whom he took as his third wife in 36 B. C., brought him two stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus. Yet not one of these but his nephew, Marcus Marcellus, was his first choice for a successor. Marcellus received Julia as his wife in 25 B. C., the next year at the age of nineteen he was admitted to the Senate, and in 23 B. C., as aedile, he won the favor of the populace by his magnificent public shows. When Marcellus died in 23 B. C., Augustus turned to his loyal adherent Agrippa, to whom Julia was now wedded. In 18 B. C. Agrippa received proconsular imperium and the tribunicia potestas for five years, powers that were reconferred with those of Augustus in 13 B. C.
Tiberius. But in the next year Agrippa died, and Augustus, regarding his eldest stepson Tiberius, the conqueror of Noricum, as the one best qualified to succeed himself, forced him to divorce the wife to whom he was devoted and to marry Julia. At that time he was given the important Illyrian command and in 6 B. C. the tribunician authority was granted him for a five year term. But Tiberius, recog[pg 224]nizing that he was soon to be set aside for the two elder sons of Agrippa and Julia, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, whom Augustus had adopted and taken into his own house, and being disgusted with the flagrant unfaithfulness of Julia, retired into private life at Rhodes, thereby incurring the deep enmity of his stepfather.
Gaius and Lucius Caesar. Gaius and Lucius Caesar assumed the garb of manhood (the toga virilis) at the age of fifteen in 5 and 2 B. C., respectively. To celebrate each occasion Augustus held the consulship, and placed them at the head of the equestrian order with the title principes iuventutis. They were exempted from the limitations of the cursus honorum so that each might hold the consulate in his twentieth year. In 1 A. D. Gaius was sent to the East with proconsular imperium to settle fresh trouble in Armenia. There in the siege of a petty fortress he received a wound from which he died in 4 A. D. Two years previously Lucius had fallen a victim to fever while on his way to Spain. In the meantime Augustus had experienced another blow in his discovery of the scandalous conduct of Julia. Her guilt was the more unpardonable in view of the efforts of her father to restore the moral tone of society. She was banished to the island rock of Pandataria, her companions in crime were punished, the most with banishment, one with death on a charge of treason (1 B. C.). Her elder daughter, also called Julia, later met the same fate for a like offence.
Tiberius. At the death of Gaius Caesar, Augustus turned once more to Tiberius, who had been permitted to leave Rhodes at the intercession of Livia. In 4 A. D. he was adopted by Augustus and received the tribunicia potestas for ten years. In 13 A. D. his tribunician power was renewed and he was made the colleague of Augustus in the imperium. Tiberius himself had been obliged to adopt his nephew Germanicus, the son of Drusus, who married Agrippina, the younger daughter of Agrippa and Julia. Association in authority and adoption where necessary had become the means of designating the successor in the principate.
VIII. Augustus as a Statesman
The death of Augustus. In 14 A. D. Augustus held a census of the Roman citizens in the empire. They numbered 4,937,000, an increase of 826,000 since 28 B. C. In the same year he set up in [pg 225]Rome an inscription recording his exploits and the sums which he had expended in the interests of the state. A copy of this has been found inscribed on the walls of the temple of Roma and Augustus at Ancyra, and hence is known as the Monument of Ancyra. On 19 August, 14 A. D., Augustus died at Nola in Campania, at the age of seventy-six.
An estimate of his statesmanship. Opinions have differed and probably always will differ upon the question whether or not Augustus sought to establish a disguised form of monarchical government. Still, in his favor stands the fact that, although when a young man confronted or allied with rivals who sought his destruction he seized power by illegal means, after the fate of the state was in his hands and he had reëstablished an orderly form of government, he conscientiously restricted himself to the use of the powers which were legally conferred upon him. So ably did he conciliate public opinion that the few conspiracies formed against his life and power had no serious backing and constituted no real danger to himself or his system. To have effected so important a change in the constitution with so little friction is proof of a statesmanship of a high order.