LIBERTAS—LEGES

As has been seen, libertas at Rome and with regard to Romans is not an innate faculty or right of man, but the sum of civic rights granted by the laws of Rome; it consequently rests on those positive laws which determine its scope. This fundamental idea implies that libertas contains the notion of restraint which is inherent in every law. In fact, it is the notion of restraint and moderation that distinguishes libertas from licentia, whose salient feature is arbitrariness; and libertas untempered by moderation degenerates into licentia. True libertas, therefore, is by no means the unqualified power to do whatever one likes; such power—whether conceded or assumed—is licentia, not libertas. The necessary prerequisite of libertas is the renouncement of self-willed actions; consequently, genuine libertas can be enjoyed under the law only.

There is profound truth in Cicero's saying, “legum idcirco omnes servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus”. For were it not for the restrictions imposed by law, everyone would be free to do always as he liked, and that would result—to use Hobbes' phrase—in a “bellum omnium contra omnes”, that is to say, it would result, not in the enjoyment of complete freedom, but in its self-destruction through excess. Fools, observed Tacitus, identified licentia with libertas.

The element of restraint inherent in libertas is not necessarily, nor primarily, self-restraint; it is not, nor expected to be, solely the result of sophrosyne which voluntarily follows the maxim “nothing to excess”.

PAX ET PRINCEPS

Even Tacitus, who found much to criticize in the Augustan Principate, did not deny it one great achievement, the restoration of peace: “Sexto… consulatu Caesar Augustus, potentiae securus, quae triumviratu iusserat abolevit, deditque iura quis pace et principe uteremur.” And in an earlier work he indicated that the coincidence of peace and the Principate was not accidental, “postquam bellatum apud Actium… omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit”. It is no doubt a fact of great moment for our estimate of the Principate that Augustus himself laid as much stress on the restoration of peace as on the restoration of the Republic. And indeed it seems that the Romans, in so far as they had a free choice at all, willingly accepted the Principate, not because they believed that it was tantamount to the old Republican form of government, but above all because they realized that the new dispensation offered a prospect of lasting peace.

A people exhausted with fratricidal wars needed and desired internal peace, stability, and order more than anything else. The decisive victory of Actium put an end to civil war. But while victories may bring peace, they cannot alone secure it. Sulla was victorious; he claimed to have established peace, yet it did not last long. Caesar also was victorious, and the peace his victories brought was short-lived too. How could the hard-won peace be made to last? This was the heart of the problem that faced the Romans after Actium.