We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
There has been a tendency among some modern scholars to regard the constitutional position of Augustus as of negligible importance. This is a natural reaction from the excessive legalism of Mommsen and his school, and has had valuable results in elucidating extra-constitutional elements in the position of the first Princeps, such as his outstanding auctoritas and his huge clientela. I do not think however that we can lightly brush aside the constitutional basis of his power. I do not wish to suggest that the restored Republic was intended to be genuine, or even that Augustus meant to share his power with the Senate and People: never for one moment did he part with his control over the great bulk of the legions. But I would suggest he would not have created the elaborate facade of Republican legitimacy, and moreover have subjected his original scheme to at least one radical revision, unless there had been some important element in the State to which the constitution mattered, and mattered so profoundly that its dissatisfaction would endanger the stability of the régime.
This paper was read to the London Classical Society and subsequently to the Oxford branch of the Classical Association. I have thought it best to print it substantially as spoken, with a few alterations and amplifications which arose out of the discussions, adding only the references to the original authorities. The bulk of the literature on the topic is so large that any attempt to indicate when I follow the views of other scholars, or to controvert in detail the views of those with whom I disagree, would bury the text in a quite disproportionate undergrowth of notes.
1 Dio, LIII 12–13. Strabo (p. 840) gives a truer picture of the division of the provinces, when he enumerates the separate public provinces, and treats Caesar's share as one area which he subdivided as convenient into districts under legati, consular or praetorian, or procurators.
2 Cic., ad Fam. I, 9, 25. Dio's words in LIII 12, 1, may imply that the Senate's decree was confirmed by a law; the late Republican precedents are not decisive, particularly as Caesar held Transalpine Gaul by virtue of a senatus consultum only.
3 Dio, LIII 14, 2; cf. XL 56, 1.
4 Strabo p. 840 (peace and war and control over kings); ILS 244 (treaties).
5 Appian, Mith. 97; Dio, XXXIX 33, 2.
6 Dio, LIII 11.
7 Phil., iv 9; ad Att., VIII 15, 3. Mr. C. E. Stevens has pointed out to me that Republican consuls might on occasion exercise this maius imperium in a small way. Cicero writes to a proconsul (ad Fam. XIII, 26, 3), ‘quod quo minore dubitatione facere posses, litteras ad te a M. Lepido consule, non quae te aliquid iuberent (neque enim id tuae dignitatis esse arbitrabamur), sed quodam modo quasi commendaticias sumpsimus,’ which implies that a consul could issue commands to a proconsul by letter. The letter of Octavian to Norbanus Flaccus, proconsul of Asia (Jos., Ant. Jud. XVI 166, cf. 171 and Philo, Leg. ad Gaium 40, § 315), must be dated between Actium and the restoration of the Republic and therefore cannot be used as evidence of normal consular prerogative.
8 Dio, LIV 3, 1–3. For the date see note 10 (Murena was alive at the time).
9 Dio, LIII 31, 1.
10 Dio, LIV 3, 4; Vell. Pat., II 91; Suet., Aug. 19, 1; 56, 4; 66, 3; Tib. 8; for the date, the Fasti Capitolini.
11 Dio, LIII 30, 1–2; Suet., Aug. 28, 1.
12 Dio, LIII 32, 5.
13 Dio, LIII 13, 1; 16, 2; LIV 12, 4–5.
14 SEG, IX 8, especially the use of κελεὺω in III anἀέσκει in IV; Jos., Ant. Jud., XVI 162–5 (κελεὺω is used in the last clause ordering publication in Asia); cf. also Pliny, Epp., X 99, for an edictum divi Augusti regulating Bithynian cities, and a letter of Agrippa to Cyrene (Jos., Ant. Jud., XVI 169–170), also using κελεὺω and citing a letter of Augustus to the governor of Cyrenaica.
15 Cic., ad Fam., I 9, 25.
16 Dig., I XVI, 1; cf. 4, 6: ‘post haec ingressus provinciam mandare iurisdictionem legato suo debet: nee hoc ante facere quam fuerit provinciam ingressus. est enim perquam absurdum, antequam ipse iurisdictionem nanciscatur (nee enim prius competit quam in eam provinciam venerit) alii eam mandare quam non habet’.
17 Cic., In Pis., 50.
18 Dig., I XVI, 2; cf. Pliny, Epp., VII 16, 32.
19 Cic., II Verr., V 39–41; ad Att., VII 7, 4.
20 Res Gestae, 10.
21 Appian, BC, v 132; Orosius, VI 18, 34; Dio, XLIX 15, 5–6. Mr. Last has kindly allowed me to anticipate the publication of an article in which he argues that Octavian refused the tribunician power which was, according to Dio (LI 19, 6), among the many honours offered to him (but not all accepted, Dio, LI 20, 4) in 30–29 B.C.
22 Tac., Ann., III 70; XIV 48; XVI 11.
23 Res Gestae, 6.
24 Cited in Ehrenberg and Jones, Documents, no. 365.
25 o.c, no. 279.
26 o.c, nos. 30 (ludi saeculares), 278 (aqueducts), 307 (Mitylene), 311 (repetundae).
27 Dio, LIII 32, 5; LIV 3, 3; ILS 244.
28 Tac., Ann., 17.
29 Tac., Ann., III 56.
30 Contrast de lege agr., I 21, with 11 10.
31 Caesar, BC I 7.
32 Tac., Ann., I 2.
33 Res Gestae, 5; Dio, LIV I, 3–5; 2, 1.
34 Dio, LIV 6, 1–2.
35 Dio, LIV 10, 1–3; Res Gestae, 11, 12.
36 Dio, LIV 10, 5. It has been suggested to me that it was at this date that Augustus toyed with the idea of being third consul (Suet., Aug., 37).
37 Suet., Aug., 49, 1; Tib., 37, 1; Dio, LV 26, 4; Tac., Ann., 1 7. The mere command of troops in Italy is not perhaps decisive, for the law evidently allowed proconsuls to muster their troops and march them to the frontier or port of embarcation, and Augustus must presumably have used this loophole to keep the praetorians in being between 1st July, 23, and the spring of 22, when he remained in Rome as proconsul. But it would have been stretching the law very far to keep troops permanently in arms, and illegal to use them, as Augustus and Tiberius did (see Suet., Aug., 32, 1; Tib., 37, 1; Tac., Ann., IV 27), to maintain order in Italy.
38 Dio, LIII 17, 5–6. It is difficult to cite evidence for Augustus' jurisdiction beyond the general statement in Suet., Aug., 33, and the rather dubious anecdotes recorded there and in Dio, LV 7, 2; for Tiberius there are of course well attested cases, e.g. Tac., III 10; IV 22; VI 10.
39 Suet., Aug., 45, 4.
40 Ovid, Tristia, II 135. Ovid's use of formal terms (edictum, poena, relegatus) shows that his exile was legal relegatio. The power of relegatio was dependent on the imperium, as is shown by the rulings of the Digest (XLVIII, xxii, 7, 1, 6–17), which lay down that a praeses can relegate to an island only if he has one in his province, and can interdict from his own province only; his writ ran only where his imperium was operative. Augustus could have claimed as a precedent the relegatio of a Roman knight by Gabinius as consul in 58 B.C. (Cic, pro Sestio 29–30).
41 Dio, LVI 23, 2–3; Suet., Aug., 24, 1; Tac., Ann., I 31. If the anecdote in Suetonius is true and belongs to this period, it would prove that Augustus himself enforced the levy.
42 Tac., Ann. VI 11.
43 Dig. v i, 12: ‘item hi quibus id concessum est propter vim imperii, sicut praefectus urbi, ceterique Romae magistratus’.
44 The date is given by Jerome's Chronicle.
45 Dio, LIV 6, 4–5; Tacitus' omission of his name proves that he was not formally praefectus urbi.
46 Dio, LIV 6, 6.
47 The date is given by Dio, LIV 19, 6.
48 Tac., Ann.. I 14, 81 (Tiberius was of course following Augustus' precedent).
49 Res Gestae, 8.
50 Essays, pp. 65 ff.
51 Tac., Ann., XII 41.
52 Dio, LX 23, 4.
53 Dio, LIV 28, 1.
54 Suet., Tib., 21, 1; Vell. Pat., II 121.
55 Tac., Ann., VI 11, contrast I 7. By this theory Piso would have been appointed in A.D. 12 or 13 when Augustus was getting beyond active work (see Dio, LVI 26, 2; 28, 2) and reappointed early in Tiberius' reign, thus providing some nucleus of fact for the scandalous anecdote recorded in Pliny, NH, XIV 145, and Suet., Tib., 42, 1; cf. Seneca, Epp. 83, 14.
