These considerations are enough to prove that Monarchy is the only term which can properly describe the real nature of the new government. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere in this system of compromise and half-way houses, we must walk warily between two fallacies. The senate is there and will always be there. When Constantine made a new Rome he made a new senate. As we study the subsequent progress of the Empire we shall sometimes find the senate really supreme. It chose Galba and Nerva. It dared to depose Maximin. It really governed through Tacitus and Probus. It was its constant aim to get its members declared immune from prosecution and sometimes it succeeded; but more often it served as a whipping-stock when Cæsar was in a bad temper. Only in this sense is there any meaning in the term Dyarchy: if we take the whole period of the principate from Augustus to Diocletian there is some trace of equilibrium, faint though it be. And we must not fall into the error of despising the letter of a constitution for the sake of its spirit. Though a king of England never refuses a bill in practice, it nevertheless remains important that he may. The letter is always there for reference, if not for use, and the spirit is always liable to be brought up for trial before it. The practice depends upon personal forces which are transitory, the theory is always there awaiting its opportunity.
The People and the Magistrates
Nevertheless, if it is to the letter of the constitution that one appeals, we must not forget the existence of a third element in the constitution of Augustus—the People. As we have seen, the plebiscite and the lex still passed formally through the comitia. The plebiscite had of late republican years become a weapon of opposition to the senate. Yet even under Augustus we can point to a few measures passed in this form. None were of much importance—one was merely the conferring of the new title of “Father of his Country” upon Cæsar. Another concerned aqueducts. The judicial functions of the populus were entirely abrogated by Augustus, and there only remained that which, after all, had always been its most important function, the elections. Popular election in the comitia was still under Augustus, the only path to the senate and the magistracies. It is true that the magistracies had all paled into insignificance before the new and mighty office of the princeps. For this reason, perhaps, Augustus did not deprive them of what they regarded not only as an ancient right, but still more as a source of income. Here also there might have been effective opposition. The populus might have returned to office, and so to the senate, a series of champions of freedom. But except Egnatius Rufus, there were no such champions. The patron of the people, the man whose munificence fed them and gave them the shows they lived for, was Cæsar. No one could bribe against his purse. He had, moreover, two direct methods of securing the return of his nominees. In virtue of his tribunician powers he had the right to draw up the list of candidates, and in the second place it had always been the practice for candidates to put forward the names of their principal supporters. Augustus in his early days of strict deference to constitutional etiquette used to go down to the forum and personally canvass for his friends, afterwards, however, he reverted to the brusquer methods of Julius, and merely issued a fly-sheet to the electors bearing the names of his nominees. Thus the elections became more and more a form, and Tiberius transferred them to the senate without arousing much opposition. In the whole period of Augustus we have only one instance of his failure to pass a law which he desired and then it was due to the organised opposition of the knights who demanded its rejection publicly in the theatre.
The equestrian order still remained the stronghold of the wealthy bourgeoisie. Owing to their wealth and their want of political recognition, they had always been somewhat of a danger to the republican constitution. It is typical of the skilful statesmanship of Augustus that he saw this and provided an honourable outlet for their ambitions as well as utilising their services on behalf of the state. He had begun his period of rule by putting a mere eques into the seat of the Ptolemies as his prefect of Egypt. Subsequently the imperial legates and procurators who administered the imperial provinces for him were often chosen from this order. In finance he made great use of them, and along with a certain number of clever Greek freedmen they filled the greater part of the new bureaucracy which he gradually created. Mæcenas himself, who was probably at the head of the whole great system, and who acted almost as prime minister to Augustus until he fell out of favour, was content with equestrian rank. Social honours such as rich men love were freely bestowed upon them. The young princes of the imperial house rode at the head of the knights with silver lances as “Princes of the Youth.” Sometimes Augustus treated the equestrian order as if it were a third limb of the constitution on an equality with the senate and people.
FIG. 1.
GERMANICUS: CAMEO
FIG.
2. GEM OF AUGUSTUS
Plate XXXIX.