The campaign resulted in the complete destruction of all the armies opposed to the triumvirate, the most decisive battle of the campaign being that at Philippi. How Antony and Octavius again quarreled after their common enemy had been overthrown, how the destruction of Antony resulted from his infatuation for Cleopatra, and how Octavius at length secured the undisputed rule of the Roman world need not here be described.
The date of the beginning of the reign of Octavius Cæsar as Emperor of Rome is generally taken as 31 B.C. Like his predecessor, Octavius Cæsar endeavored to preserve as far as possible the empty forms of republican rule.
In the overthrow of the early Roman kingdom the power of the kings had mainly passed to the consuls, but partially to other officials, and some of the powers possessed by the early consuls had been gradually taken away from them and given to other newly created officials, such as the censors and prætors. For centuries there had been a continued policy of division of powers; this policy was now suddenly reversed, and governmental powers of all kinds reunited in a single official. This was accomplished by conferring upon Octavius Cæsar, for life, each of the various offices known in the government of the Roman republic. Octavius Cæsar became life censor, life consul, and life tribune. The appointment of his colleagues in all these offices was likewise in his power. The cycle of governmental change had now been completed, and the Roman emperor possessed all the old powers of the Roman kings. In the field of legislation it is indeed probable that the power of the emperor was greater than that of his early predecessors.
"The old popular assemblies for a period after the establishment of the Empire still went through the form of passing acts, which had been prepared by the real governing power, but in addition to this the Emperor was given the power of direct legislation by his own authority.
"Laws which owed their force to the authority of the Emperor were known as Constitutiones and may be divided into four principal classes, as follows:
"1. Edicts, which were public ordinances, of universal application throughout the Empire. These had the authority of laws, inasmuch as they were generally enforced and applied to all. In the earlier reigns they were frequently renewed, and they derived their authority from the Emperor as the prætorian edict did from the prætor. Gradually they came to be held as permanently binding the real ground of their permanent force, custom was overlooked, and the imperial authority was regarded as such ground.
"2. Decrees, which were decisions in judicial cases brought before the Emperor as final court of appeal. Inasmuch as they were interpretations of law, they were regarded as binding upon all courts.
"3. Rescripts, which were decisions upon questions of law submitted by courts and private persons. They were closely connected with the pontifical interpretations.
"4. Mandates, which were directions to officials in the exercise of their offices. These, by repetition in the various instructions sent out from time to time by the Emperor, became a source of general law. They were theoretically in force only during the lifetime of the Emperor from which they proceeded; but they became of permanent force because of repetition and custom." (Lee's Historical Jurisprudence.)
There are writers who look with favor upon this establishment of the Roman empire, just as there are those of the same caliber who, if some form of a dictatorship should be substituted for our present republican form of government, would be loudest in their approval of the change. Dr. Hirschfeld, of the University of Berlin, gives us the following roseate picture of the benefits which Rome received from the change:
"The reorganization of the government by Augustus, open to criticism as it is in many respects, was a blessing to the Roman empire. The view which prevailed under the republic, that the provinces had been conquered only to be sucked dry by senators and knights, governors, and tax-farmers in league or in rivalry of greed (we have one example out of hundreds in Verres, condemned to immortality by the eloquence of Cicero), this view was laid aside with the advent of the empire, and even if extortion did not wholly cease in the senatorial provinces, yet the provincial administration of the first two centuries A.D. is infinitely superior to the systematic spoliation of the republic. The governors are no longer masters armed with absolute authority, constrained to extort money as fast as possible from the provincials committed to their charge in order to meet debts contracted by their own extravagance and, more especially, by that bribery of the populace which was indispensable to their advancement. They are officials under strict control, drawing from the government salaries fully sufficient to their needs. It was a measure imperatively called for by the altered circumstances of the time and fraught with most important consequences to create, as Augustus did, a class of salaried imperial officials and definitely break with the high-minded but wrong-minded principle of the republic by which the higher posts were bestowed as honorary appointments, and none but subordinate officials were paid, thus branding the latter with the stigma of servitude.
"It is true that the cautious reformer adopted into his new system of government the old names and the offices which had come down from republican times, with the exception of the censorship and the dictatorship, which last had long been obsolete. But these were intended from the outset to lead but a phantom existence and to take no part in the great task of imperial administration. Augustus drew his own body of officials from the knightly class, and under the unpretentious titles of procurator and præfect practically committed the whole administration of the empire to their hands, reserving, apart from certain distinguished sinecures in Rome, and Italy, for the senators the præfecture of the city, all the great governorships except Egypt, and the highest commands in the army. The handsome salaries—varying in the later days of the empire from £600 to £3,600 ($3,000 to $18,000)—and the great influence attached to the procuratorial career, which opened the way to the lofty positions of præfect of Egypt and commander of the prætorian guards at Rome, rendered the service very desirable and highly esteemed.
"While the high-born magistrates of the republic entered upon their one year's tenure of office without any training whatsoever, and were, of course, obliged to rely upon the knowledge and trustworthiness of the permanent staff of clerks, recorders and cashiers in their department, there grew up under the empire a professional class of government officials who, schooled by years of experience and continuance in office and supported by a numerous staff recruited from the imperial freedmen and slaves, were in a position to cope with the requirements of a world-wide empire. These procurators, some as governors-in-chief of the smaller imperial provinces, some as assistants to the governors of the greater, watched over the interests of the public exchequer and the emperor's private property, or looked after the imperial buildings and aqueducts, the imperial games, the mint, the corn supply of Rome, and the alimentary institutions, the legacies left to the emperors, their castles and demesnes in Italy and abroad,—in short, everything that fell within the vast and ever widening sphere of imperial government. Meanwhile the exchequer of the senate dwindled and dwindled, till it finally came to be merely the exchequer of the city of Rome."
There is scarcely any event which takes place upon this earth which produces unmixed evil or unmixed good. There is some slight element of truth in some of the statements of the last quotation. There was some temporary restraint placed upon the dishonesty and cruelty of the Roman tax collectors; and there was undoubtedly a permanent improvement in the ability of the men holding the minor positions under the Roman government, through the introduction of what may be called a civil-service system. But the contention that the establishment of the empire was for the benefit either of the Roman citizens or of the Roman subjects is too ridiculous to merit even a denial. To show the ridiculousness of such a statement it is only necessary to point to the history of the Roman empire during the half century following the death of Octavius Cæsar. Corrupt as the administration of the government often was under the republic, and cruel as were the successful factional leaders on a few occasions, such conditions as existed in Rome under the emperors Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero could never have existed under the republic.
The character of the Roman empire was a most anomalous one. In the history of the empire we find the unparalleled situation of an absolute despotism without any hereditary nobility and even without any well-established principle as to the descent of the royal power to the children of the deceased emperor. Under the most despotic days of the empire any Roman citizen might rise to any position of power or dignity under the emperor; nay, more than this, any subject of the Roman empire, no matter how low his origin or condition in society, might be thrust, by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into the imperial purple itself.
The Roman emperors came from every strata of society, and from every portion of the Roman empire. At different times we see the son of a slave, a Syrian sun priest, a Dacian peasant, seated in the chair of the Cæsars; but this state of affairs in no way alleviated or excused the evils which the empire brought upon its subjects. The exploitation of the millions at the hands of a favored few is not rendered more defensible by the fact that any individual has the chance, by extraordinary ability, extraordinary dishonesty, or extraordinary good fortune, to raise himself out of the ranks of the exploited into those of the exploiters.
The history of Rome, therefore, cannot be so perverted as to teach the lesson which some seem to draw from it, that the substitution of a despotism for popular rule may, under some circumstances, be a benefit to the community. It is never by the destruction of liberty that the evils of popular rule can be eliminated. In the past, in the present, and in the future, the only remedy for the evils of liberty is more liberty; and the lesson which should be learned from the fall of the Roman republic is that any country, where the privileged classes are suffered to retain their unjust privileges at the expense of the community, must in the end suffer some such terrible penalty as that paid by Rome under the tyranny and misrule of the Roman empire.