The Grandeur That Was Rome: a survey of Roman culture and civilisation

by J. C. Stobart

Thus it was part of the system of Augustus to provide careers for talent in every class. Even the slaves and freedmen had immense opportunities in Cæsar’s bureaux. For the freedmen in the country towns, where they were often the richest inhabitants, he invented the special titular distinction of “Augustals,” their principal duty being to give dinners and festivals in his honour, precisely the sort of duty to flatter their pride without doing any harm.

As for the ancient magistracies of the Roman people, while they were strictly preserved, they were utterly disarmed. Consulships remain important only as leading to a subsequent proconsulship over a province. The prætors still sat in their courts of justice but really important cases came up to Cæsar on appeal. The tribunes were of no account beside their mighty colleague. Magistracies were bestowed as marks of imperial favour. Often there would be two or three successive consuls in a single year. Cæsar himself would sometimes deign to take a consulship when he wished to honour a colleague or a relative. Here again, however, the impotence of the magistracies was very largely due to the intellectual bankruptcy of the Roman nobility. They could not perform the simplest task such as the charge of the corn-supply without bungling and requiring the assistance of Cæsar. But on one occasion when a certain ædile organised a fire-brigade of his own and became very zealous in extinguishing fires, he received a hint that his zeal was unwelcome in the highest quarters. Thus the magistracies declined little by little into mere decorations, or became once more what they had been in the beginning, municipal officers for the city of Rome. But even there they were superseded by the organising activity of the princeps. He resuscitated the ancient office of city prefect and put him in charge of the new police and the new fire-brigade while two other new prefects commanded the prætorian guards. These two officers soon began to overshadow the old magistracies.

Army and Treasury

Dio Cassius rightly asserts that the real power of Augustus rested upon two things—the control of the army and of the finances. We have already seen that in the so-called abdications of Augustus there was no surrender of these and no suggestion of their surrender. In view of the present tendency among historians to attach real importance to the restoration of the Republic in 27 B.C. and again in 23 B.C. it is all the more important to remember that the twenty-three legions which with their auxiliaries and reserves formed the entire military force of the Roman Empire took their oath solely to Augustus and were with one exception stationed exclusively in his provinces, fought under his auspices and took their orders from no other but Cæsar and his legates. Beyond these he had a prætorian corps of 9000 men in permanent cantonments within striking distance of Rome, as well as a drilled bodyguard of slaves in his own house. In view of these facts it is absurd to limit our conception of the power of Cæsar to a survey of the constitutional offices which he held. It is only in the language of lawyers and pedants that his authority rested upon consular and tribunician powers. Everybody knew that a letter sealed with Cæsar’s sphinx was backed by the swords of 140,000 legionaries. The military situation of Augustus is therefore of the utmost importance.

Plate XL. AUGUSTUS AND FAMILY OF CÆSARS
CAMEO

Augustus was, as we have seen, a statesman and not a soldier. The stories of his cowardice, repeated by Suetonius, are confessedly drawn from the venomous letters of his enemy, Antony. Augustus had emerged successfully through five civil wars, had crossed tempestuous seas in small boats, had faced mutinous armies and every sort of hardship. But all his instincts were for peace and statecraft. We have seen that it was the need of a standing army at Rome which led to the need of permanent generals, and this to the downfall of the old Roman constitution. When Cæsar built his throne on the ruins of the Republic the plain fact was that the general had become monarch. Thus, in spite of the fact that Augustus was not of a military character, and in spite of all his efforts to prevent it, the monarchy of the Roman Empire was eventually revealed as a military despotism. It was the irony of fate that such a man as Augustus should have founded such a monarchy.

But for the present the ugly fact that the army had bestowed the purple was decently concealed. Augustus from the very beginning of his power did his best to reduce the military element in the state. During the civil wars, and indeed for fifty years before they began, the troops had made and unmade consuls, there had been constant mutinies and blackmail in the army. Cæsar’s own first consulship had been obtained in this way. A centurion had marched into the senate-house and cried, “If you will not make him consul, this”—and he tapped the hilt of his sword—“this shall.” But now the older discipline was revived. Agrippa in particular was a stern disciplinarian of the old school. The soldiers were flattered no longer. No more legionary coins were issued. For an honour a legion was allowed to call itself Augusta, for a punishment the title was revoked. The highest military distinction, the triumph, was gradually reserved for the princeps and the members of his house alone. Even when the title of Imperator was earned by a victorious general it was transferred to him. But it was his aim to see that no private citizen should have the opportunity of securing the high military honours. Agrippa might have been dangerous and accordingly he was brought into the family by marriage with Cæsar’s daughter. But for the rest the conduct of important operations was almost always confided to one of the young princes—to Tiberius, or Drusus, or Germanicus. And they were always victorious. When Quintilius Varus, a general of humbler birth, was allowed to lead a great army he conveniently pointed the moral by a signal failure. No senatorial governor might now levy troops or declare war on his own account.

The only hand that the senate still had in military affairs was that a “senatus consultum” was generally asked for a new levy of troops. This was probably because it concerned the state treasury, but partly also because it served to shift an unpleasant responsibility off the shoulders of the princeps. It is not likely that Augustus had forgone the right to levy.