Rome

by W. Warde Fowler

Augustus was able to do all this work beyond Italy quite legally, and as a servant of the State. He had succeeded in identifying himself, his family, and all his interests, with the State and its interests, in a way of which Sulla had never dreamt, and which had not been possible for Julius Cæsar. When he restored the Free State he divided the work of government with the Senate and the magistrates, and in this division he took care that the whole range of what we should call imperial and foreign affairs should fall to himself, with the sole command of the army. Thus he became supreme ruler of all provinces on or near the frontiers, appointed their governors, and kept them responsible to himself. If there was war on a frontier, it was carried through by his lieutenants, under his imperium and his auspices. For a governor to wage war on his own account was no longer possible, for it was made high treason under a new and stringent law. The safety of the Empire, and especially of the frontier provinces, depended on the army, and the army was now identified once more in interest through Augustus with the State.

But of course a system like this would not work of itself; it needed constant looking after. Augustus knew this well, and knew also that he could not by himself either set it going or continue to look after it. It was part of his good fortune that he found a really capable and loyal helper in Agrippa, a tried soldier and organiser, who till his death in 12 B.C., during the most prosperous years of Augustus’s power, was able to identify his own interests with those of his friend and the State. The two worked admirably together, and between them found time to travel over the whole Empire, working hard at settlements of all kinds, and conducting military operations where they were absolutely necessary. It was the same kind of work, but on a far larger scale, as that of Pompeius after his conquests in the East: founding new cities, and settling the status of old ones: making treaties with kings and chieftains: arranging the details of finance, land-tenure, and so on. Let us notice two important points in all this work of organisation, which will help to show how greatly in earnest Augustus was in his task of welding the Empire into real unity, and ruling it on rational principles.

First, he instituted for the first time (though Julius is said to have contemplated it) a complete survey, or census as the Romans called it, of all the material resources of the Empire, in order to ascertain what taxes all its free inhabitants ought to pay for purposes of government. Under the Republic there had never been such a survey, and the result was that abundant opportunity had been found for unfair taxation, and for extortion by corrupt officials. Now every house, field, and wood was duly valued by responsible officials, so that unjust exactions could be easily detected. By accurate keeping of accounts the government was able to tell what sums it ought to receive, and how much it had to spend; and we know that Augustus’s foreign policy was greatly influenced by such financial considerations. He kept a kind of yearly balance-sheet himself, and his successor found the affairs of the Empire in perfect order.

Secondly, each province was now for the first time given a kind of corporate existence, and became something more than the military command of a Roman magistrate. A council of the province met once a year at its chief town, and transacted a certain amount of business. True, this did not give the province any measure of real self-government, but it had some useful results, and it is not impossible that Augustus may have intended that more should eventually follow. This meeting of a provincial council brought each province into direct touch with the home government, and in particular enabled it to make complaint of its governor if he had been unpopular and oppressive. And one most interesting feature of these councils was that they had a worship of their own, meant, no doubt, to dim the lustre of local and tribal worships, and to keep the idea of Rome and her rulers constantly before the minds of the provincials. For the divine objects of worship were Augustus himself or his Genius, in combination with the new goddess Roma. The most famous example of this worship is found at Lugdunum, now Lyons, where there was an altar dedicated to Rome and Augustus, at the junction of Rhone and Saone, which served as a religious centre for the three provinces into which Augustus now divided the great area of the Gallic conquests of Julius.

Though his object was undoubtedly peace, Augustus could not, of course, entirely escape war on his frontiers. He could not have finally settled the frontier on the line of the Danube, which was far the most valuable military work of his time, without wars which were both long and dangerous. It was absolutely necessary to cover Italy on the northeast, where the passes over the Alps are low and comparatively easy, and also to shield the Greek peninsula from attack by the wild tribes to the north of it. I have already alluded to the great work of Tiberius (the stepson of Augustus) in this quarter, which marks him as the third of the great generals who saved the civilisation of the Mediterranean for us. At one time Augustus thought of advancing the frontier from the Rhine to the Elbe, and so of connecting Elbe and Danube in one continuous line of defence. But this plan made it necessary to enclose all Germany west of the Elbe in the Roman Empire, and it was soon found that the Germans were not to be made into Roman provincials without a prolonged struggle for which Augustus had neither money nor inclination. So the frontier came back to the Rhine, and the Rhine and the sea marked the Roman frontier on north and west, until Claudius, the third successor of Augustus, added our island, or rather the southern part of it, to the Empire, in A.D. 43.

In the East Augustus contrived to do without war, trusting, and rightly trusting, to the enormous prestige he had won by overcoming Antony and Cleopatra, and annexing the ancient kingdom of Egypt. His fame spread to India, and probably even to China, with the caravans of merchants who then as now passed along fixed routes from Syria and Egypt to the Far East. We Britons know what prestige can do among Orientals; it is a word that has often been in disfavour, but it means that there are ways of avoiding war without withdrawing just claims to influence. Augustus contrived on the strength of his prestige to keep an honourable peace with the Parthians and Armenians who bordered on the Empire along the line of the Euphrates, and his successors would have kept it too had they always followed out his policy. Tiberius, his faithful pupil and successor, did follow out that policy, and showed consummate skill in handling it.

The mention of Tiberius, who succeeded to the position of Augustus at the end of his long life, suggests a few words about a weak point in the new system, which was to give some trouble in the future. How was the succession to be effected? Augustus had not made a new constitution; he had only engrafted his own position of authority on the old republican constitution. So at least he wished his position to be understood, and so he was careful to describe it in the record of his deeds which he left behind him, engraved on the walls of the great tomb which he built for himself and his family. In dignity and consequence he wished to be considered the first citizen; and this he expressed by the word Princeps, i.e. the first man in the State: by the name Augustus, which suggested to a Roman ear something in the nature of religious sanctity: by the honorary title pater patriæ (father of his country), and in other ways. The real power in his hands had its basis and guarantee in the army, of which his imperium made him (as we should say) commander-in-chief; but the army was on the frontiers doing duty for the Empire, all but invisible to the Roman and Italian. Thus his imperium, though it might be legally used in Italy, was primarily a military power indispensable for the guardian of the frontiers. To the Italians it might well seem that the Free State was still maintained, and that no new permanent power had been established; though Greeks and foreigners might be, and indeed were, more discerning as to what had really happened.

But when Augustus died, in A.D. 14, how was a succession to be effected? Or was there to be a succession at all—would it not be better to let the State pass back again into the hands of the Senate and people? This last was the only logical way, and it was the plan actually adopted in form. A position like that of Augustus could not pass to a successor, unless the State in its old constitutional form chose to appoint such a successor with the same authority as that of Augustus. To this, however, we must add (and it well shows the real change that had been effected by the long revolution) that no choice of Senate and people could hold good unless the consent of the army could be had.

Of course, Augustus had considered all this, and had made his own plans. He would choose a member of his own family, one, that is, who inherited the name and fame of Cæsar by blood or adoption, would adopt him as a son (for he had no son of his own), make him his heir, associate him as far as possible in his own dignity and authority, and thus mark him out as the natural heir to the principate. This would make it difficult for Senate or army to refuse him; beyond that Augustus knew that he could not go. He was unlucky in losing one after another the youths whom he thus destined to succeed him, and eventually had to fall back on his stepson Tiberius: a great soldier, as we have seen, and a man of integrity and ability, but of reserved and even morose temper, and one with whom the shrewd and genial Augustus had little in common.

When Augustus died there was an anxious moment. There was no reason why the principate should be confined to the family of the Cæsars, nor any reason but expediency for having a princeps at all. But, after all, the will of the dead ruler prevailed, and Tiberius slipped into his place without opposition; the Senate accepted him as plainly marked out by Augustus, and the army raised no difficulty, though his nephew Germanicus Cæsar was young, popular, and in actual command of the army on the Rhine. Some mocking voices were heard, and throughout his principate of twenty-three years Tiberius had to endure continual annoyance from the old republican families, but there was no real attempt to quarrel with the principate as an institution of the Roman State.