Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire

by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh

The earliest reforms in the Empire.

The activity of Augustus as reformer in the city and Italy, and to a great extent in the provinces also, was subsequent to the settlement of his constitutional position in B.C. 23, after which date changes in it were generally consequential, and in matters of detail. But it began long before. In B.C. 36 he had taken effective measures to suppress the brigandage which had pushed its audacity nearly up to the very gates of Rome. In B.C. 34-3 Agrippa, under his influence, had started the improvement in the water supply of Rome by restoring the Aqua Marcia; had cleansed and enlarged the cloacæ, repaired the streets, and begun many important buildings. In B.C. 31 we have evidence that Augustus was turning his attention to the details of administration in the provinces,[289] and in the next year, in his resettlement of Asia, he restored to Samos, Ephesus, Pergamus, and the Troad, works of art which Antony had taken from them to bestow upon Cleopatra.[290] In B.C. 28, measures of relief were adopted for state debtors, and a term fixed beyond which those who were in actual possession of properties could not be disturbed by legal proceedings.

Augustus as Senator.

Photographed from the Statue in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

To face page 212.

The roads and police patrols, B.C. 27.

The first need of the country was security. How difficult this had long been to maintain, and how ill the senatorial government at the end of the Republic had been able to cope with the evil is shewn by the fact that remnants of the bands of Spartacus and Catiline were in B.C. 61 still infesting the district of Thurii. In spite of the repressive measures of B.C. 36, which seem to have been successful as far as the immediate neighbourhood of Rome was concerned, at the end of the civil war armed bands still openly appeared in various parts of Italy, seized and carried off travellers, confined them in the slave-barracks, or ergastula, or put them to ransom. These ergastula were originally slave-prisons used for keeping refractory slaves, who worked during the day in chains, and were shut up in separate cells at night, often underground or only lighted by windows high up and out of reach of the inmates. In some parts of Italy—chiefly the north—they were not known, and chained slaves were not employed; but in other parts they were numerous, and afforded convenient hiding-places. The chief abuse connected with them was that men properly free could be carried off and concealed in them as though they were slaves, while they afforded a leader in rebellion convenient sources from which to draw recruits; the miserable inmates being only too ready to join any one who gave them a hope of freedom and release from those horrible dens. Accordingly a review of the ergastula is constantly heard of, till they were finally abolished by Hadrian. Among the measures for the suppression of brigandage now taken was a visitation of these places. It was not done in mercy to the slaves. Augustus, though he treated his own servants with kindness, took the sternest Roman view of the absolute power of a master, and boasts that after the war with Sextus Pompeius he handed over 30,000 slaves—who had been serving with the enemy—to their masters “to be punished.”[291] When we remember what the “punishment” of a Roman slave meant, it is difficult to think without horror of the sum total of human misery which this implies.

The great roads of Italy secured.

A more effective and permanent measure, however, was to secure the roads and make them fit for rapid military movements. A system of road commissions (curæ viarum) was started in B.C. 27, commissioners (curatores) being appointed to superintend each of the great roads leading from Rome to various parts of Italy. The duty at first was usually imposed upon men who had enjoyed triumphs, and Augustus himself, after his triple triumph, undertook the via Flaminia, the great north road from Rome to Ariminum on the Adriatic, from which place other roads branched off through the valley of the Po, and to the Alpine passes. The pavement of the road was relaid, the bridges repaired, and the completion of the work was commemorated by the still existing arch at Rimini, with its partially surviving inscription.[292] For greater safety, also, military pickets were stationed at convenient points along the roads, which put a stop to brigandage.