Administrative reforms. The post.

The life of Augustus was now near its close, and there are no more military enterprises to record. He had never commanded in the field since the Cantabrian war of B.C. 25; but he had taken part in the most important wars by moving to within such a distance of the seat of war as to hear news quickly and to superintend the despatch of provisions and reinforcements. He was probably more usefully employed in this way, and was enabled to see, by personal observation, the needs of the provinces and the best methods of remedying abuses and promoting prosperity. In the course of his reign he is said to have visited every province except Sardinia and Africa, and hardly any is without some trace of his activity and liberality in the way of roads, bridges, or public buildings. He was anxious that all, however distant, should feel in touch with the central authority at Rome. Among other means to promote this was the establishment or improvement of an imperial post which should reach the most distant dependencies.

We must not think of this as being like the modern postal service—meant for the general use of the public. It was purely official. Just as the main purpose of the great roads was to facilitate the rapid movement of armies and officials, so the post was a contrivance to expedite official despatches, to convey the Emperor’s orders to remotest parts of the Empire, and to carry back news and warnings to the government at home. Along the great roads in Italy and the provinces there had long been posting houses where relays of horses, mules, or carriages could be obtained, but there was never what we should call a postal service for the transmission of private letters. Rich men kept slaves for this purpose (tabellarii), the magistrates had official messengers (statores), and the companies of publicani had their regular service of carriers. Private people could, as a favour, get their letters occasionally conveyed by some of these; and it was considered a proper act of politeness at Rome when despatching a slave with letters to distant places, to send round to one’s friends to know whether they wished to send any by him. Again, governors of provinces under the republic had arranged with certain scribes in Rome to copy out the diurna acta and transmit them by slaves or paid messengers. But for official purposes Augustus arranged a number of stations along the great roads with men, horses, and carriages, to convey to and from Rome all the news that it was needful for the government to know or all orders that emanated from the Emperor.[268] Private persons would have no right to use these public servants or conveyances; but no doubt the organisation for the public service facilitated the transmission of private correspondence also.

This actual and material tightening of the bond which united distant parts of the Empire with the central government went side by side with the moral effect of the change in the position of the governors. No longer permitted to make what profit they could from excessive exactions, or percentages allowed by usage though not by law, they all received a fixed salary, as did the lesser officials; and though extortion was still occasionally heard of, the provinces knew that they had a rapid means of appealing to the Emperor and a fair certainty of redress.

The army under one commander-in-chief.

Another change that made at first for unity, though it afterwards had the contrary effect, concerned the army. In the time of the republic there was in theory no one standing army. There were many armies, all of which took the military oath to their respective commanders. Now the military oath was taken by all to one man—the Emperor. The commanders of legions were his legati. He regulated the pay, the years of service, the retiring allowance for all alike. Each of the republican imperators had a prætorian guard, generally consisting of auxiliary troops. Now there was one prætorian guard, naturally stationed at Rome, and though distinguished from the rest by increased pay and easier years of service, it, as well as the cohortes vigilum, was under the same command. This applies also to the fleet which was organised under Augustus chiefly to protect the coast and clear the sea of pirates: the two principal stations being at Misenum on the west, and Ravenna on the east coast, with a third maintained for a time at Forum Iulii (Fréjus). The men serving in these ships occupied the same position as citizen soldiers or auxiliaries, and like them took the oath to one man—the Emperor. But the very completeness of the organisation, it is right to notice here, eventually made for disruption. Certain legions became constantly attached to certain provinces, the auxiliaries serving with them being as a rule recruited from the same provinces. The several branches of the army thus came to feel an esprit de corps, and to regard themselves as a separate entity with separate interests and claims. Consequently, when in after-times the central authority was in dispute or in process of change, the legions in the different provinces spoke and thought of themselves as separate “armies,” capable of taking an independent line and having a determining voice in deciding who should be their Imperator. In those troublous times the provinces which had no military establishment, or only a weak one, ceased to count for much, and had to follow the strongest army near them.[269] For the present such difficulties were not foreseen. Augustus was a strict disciplinarian, and little was heard as yet of any serious insubordination. When it did occur it was promptly punished. He disbanded the 10th legion for misconduct, and exercised at times the full vigour of military punishment for desertion of posts or lesser offences, and was careful in addressing his troops not to lower his dignity by affectation of equality. He called them “Soldiers!” not “Fellow-soldiers!” At the same time he kept up the traditional exclusiveness of the legions, and seldom employed freedmen, except as a kind of special constable in the city, and twice in times of great distress, the Illyrian and German wars: even then they were formed in separate cohorts, and armed in some way less complete than the legionaries.

The same conservative attachment to the ancient superiority of Rome made him chary of granting the citizenship either to individuals, or to masses of soldiers, or to states. This was one of the points in which his policy was opposite to that of Iulius. The latter by his large grants of citizenship to soldiers, professional men and communities, had helped to raise the number of citizens from about 450,000 in B.C. 70 to 4,063,000 (the number in the Census of B.C. 28). During the forty-five years that remained to Augustus the number had only gone up to 4,937,000 (the Census of A.D. 13). This is probably little more than can be accounted for by the growth of population; so that extensions of the franchise must have been insignificant. His idea was an empire, one in its military obligations and in its subjection to one supreme head, and yet not divorced from the original city state. Rome was to be the imperial city, the seat of government; the Populus Romanus was to be the inhabitants of Rome extended to the limits of Italy. There was to be a sharp line of division between the ruling and the ruled. It was one of those compromises that are without the elements of permanence. And yet it established a sentiment that has lasted, and is a reason that even to this day the centre of spiritual life to a large part of Europe is on the banks of the Tiber. In material matters the extension of the citizenship meant the gradual shifting of the centre of power, and when early in the third century Caracalla, for purposes of taxation, extended the citizenship to the whole Empire, though the Roman name and its historical prestige remained, Rome itself became only one of a number of cities in a widely spread empire, and politically by no means the most important. Such a conception was far from the mind of Augustus. It would have seemed to him to be more worthy of his rival Antony, who was for setting up a new Rome in Alexandria.

CHAPTER XI
AUGUSTUS AND HIS WORSHIPPERS

O tutela præsens