ON THE THIRTEENTH OF AUGUST, B.C. 29, and the two following days, almost two years after the victory of Actium, Augustus celebrated the triple triumph which proclaimed the subjection of three continents. On the first day a train of Gallic and Illyrian captives marched behind the conqueror; on the second the beaks of Antony’s ships were borne in procession, and some Asiatic potentates who had been his allies were led in golden chains; the climax was reached in the African triumph, graced by Cleopatra’s two children – the last of the Ptolemies – and the priceless spoils of Egypt. The scene recalled the quadruple triumph of the great Dictator, celebrated seventeen years before; but the Romans were spared the humiliation of seeing their fellow-citizens amongst the captives. Yet it was noted that the fellow- magistrates of Augustus, instead of leading the procession according to custom, followed in his train. In name the first citizen of a Republic, he was in reality the undisputed master of the Roman world, already worshipped as God incarnate by Greeks and Orientals, reigning over Egypt as the legitimate successor of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies, and, above all, commanding the sworn allegiance of at least 300,000 soldiers.
Three days later the round of ceremonies was closed by the dedication of the temple of the Divine Julius, and men began to ask themselves what form of government it would please his successor to establish. The answer was not given at once. Augustus was a man of very different mould from the Dictator. Lacking his commanding genius, he possessed the infinite tact and patience which succeed where genius fails. Secure in his own grasp of realities, he knew that men are ruled by imagination and cannot be moulded like the potter’s clay. Julius Caesar had treated the forms of the Republican constitution with scarcely veiled contempt, and had shown clearly that his aim was to efface the traditions of 460 years and restore the monarchy. Augustus had no mind to repeat the mistake which had cost the Dictator his life. He saw that the great traditions of the all-conquering Republic formed an inheritance of which Rome would not be robbed, and that only by cherishing them could he command the services of the ablest men without destroying their self-respect. He determined, therefore, that his government should be a monarchy without a king. In the meanwhile he continued to exercise the extra-constitutional and practically unlimited powers originally conferred by the Roman people on himself, Antony, and Lepidus, in B.C. 43, as triumviri reipublicae constituendae. Antony was now dead, Lepidus a prisoner in exile; Augustus concentrated in himself the authority of the state. In B.C. 36, moreover, he had received the tribunicia potestas for life, after the precedent of the Dictator Julius; that is to say, he enjoyed personal sacrosanctity, an unlimited power of veto, and the prestige of a democratic magistracy created for the protection of the people’s rights. Finally, he was year by year elected consul; and it is probable that in the years 29 and 28 B.C. he was careful to perform his public acts, so far as possible, in virtue of this constitutional office.
In 28 B.C. the, foundations of the new government were laid. Augustus’ colleague in the consulship was Marcus Vipsanius. Agrippa, the general who had won most of his battles and his most trusted friend. The powers of the censorship, which in constitutional theory were inherent in the consuls, were called into action. On this occasion the most important censorial function was the lectio senatus, or revision of the roll of the Senate. The name of Augustus was inscribed at the head of the roll, and he thus acquired the honorary title of princeps senatus, a fact which contributed its share of meaning to the wider application of the term princeps. The Senate was purged of unworthy elements, almost two hundred of its members being struck off the roll; its social prestige was thus restored, and it was fitted to become once more an instrument of government. In the same year Augustus annulled the unconstitutional acts of the triumvirs, and, finally, on January 13, 27 B.C., he divested himself of his extraordinary powers and – as the act was officially described – “restored the Republic.” The day was celebrated as a festival in the Roman Calendar, and coins were struck which designated Augustus “champion of the liberties of the Roman people.” But on the day which saw those liberties restored, they were resigned once and for all into the hands of their restorer.
By a decree of Senate and people Augustus was immediately invested with powers which were not indeed singly lacking in constitutional precedent, but were sufficient to make him supreme ruler of the state, although the nominal independence of the Republic and its governing body, the Senate, was retained. Under the Republic Rome had been ruled by yearly magistrates, invested with coordinate authority, whose departments (provinciae) were only in part specialised; and when she became mistress of the Mediterranean basin the system was only modified by the creation of fresh provinciae in the new sense of oversea territories in which magistrates exercised the imperium, or supreme military and civil authority, without being subject to the checks and limitations imposed upon it in Rome. In practice these territories were not governed in any true sense, but merely exploited by an oligarchic clique, whose distribution of the spoils was strictly determined by custom, until they became the base of operations conducted by able and ambitious military leaders, the greatest of whom finally overthrew the Republic. In this period the dormant sovereignty of the people was revived in the interest of the military commanders, upon whom powers far transcending the normal share of a member of the senatorial ring were conferred. Augustus could therefore appeal to precedent when, being already consul and thus chief magistrate in Rome and Italy, he further received at the people’s hands a provincia embracing practically all those external possessions of the Roman people which contained military garrisons – a ring of frontier territories encircling the lands where no troops were needed – and thus became commander-in-chief of the army. This left a number of provinciae which the Senate could apportion to its members: two of these governorships – Asia and Africa – were of considerable importance, and the latter for some time even carried with it the independent command of a legion. Nevertheless, Augustus as consul possessed a higher degree of imperium than his senatorial colleagues, so that no conflict of authority was ultimately possible.
Other prerogatives and distinctions were conferred upon Augustus by special enactments. But the essence of his authority is to be sought in the unbroken tenure of the imperium exercised in a provincia incomparably wider than those of his colleagues, supplemented by the tribunicia potestas to which reference has already been made. In B.C. 23 the Principate – as the new constitution is most conveniently termed – received its permanent shape. In that year Augustus resigned the consulship, which he had held for nine years in succession. In the provinces assigned to him he continued to exercise his authority pro consule, as the Romans expressed it; but he gave up the pre-eminence in Rome and Italy which belonged to the consuls, and special enactments were passed to remedy this defect. Henceforth, moreover, he laid greater stress on the tribunicia polestas, which was annually numbered, and became the basis of dating. Finally, it is to be noted that these powers were conferred upon Augustus for a limited period of time, and formally renewed at intervals of five, and afterwards of ten years.
Thus Augustus preserved the Roman Republic in name inviolate, and was careful to assume no title, such as king or dictator, which was offensive to Roman sentiment. The modern title of Emperor is derived from the word Imperator, which Augustus used as a personal name and claimed as his inheritance from the Dictator Julius. “Augustus” is an epithet, whose nearest counterpart is to be sought in the phrase “by the grace of God” applied to modern rulers. It was conferred upon him on January 16, 27 B.C.
The defect of the system lay in its ambiguity. Since the Republic was kept alive in theory, it was easy for a veiled opposition to maintain itself, and, without seriously impeding the work of government, to produce sensible friction. Above all, dynastic succession, which Augustus was determined to establish, could only be secured by the same indirect and evasive methods which served to perpetuate the authority of the Emperor. On the death of the princeps the Republican institutions would automatically recover their primitive independence. Augustus met the difficulty by associating with himself in each renewal of his constitutional powers a colleague who, if he survived him, would remain in possession of the reins of government.
But it was the least part of Augustus’ task to devise a theory by which a monarchy might be enabled to masquerade as a republic. He was not neglectful of forms, but it was in the realm of facts that his chief work was accomplished. For forty- three years he laboured incessantly to give the world which lay at his feet an organised government worthy of the name, and to solve the practical problems which the Republic had never faced. Even then his work was far from finished. At the close of his life he entrusted to his destined successor, Tiberius, a series of documents to be made public after his death. Amongst these was a record of his achievements – res gestae divi Augusti – which was inscribed on two pillars of bronze at the entrance of his mausoleum. It is almost wholly preserved to us in the copy engraved upon the walls of a temple erected in his honour at Ancyra in Galatia. But neither this document – which is proved by internal evidence to have been composed at intervals of several years – nor the political testament which laid down principles for the guidance of his successor disclosed the whole mind of Augustus, who preferred to leave unspoken the words which would have revealed the silent revolution in process of accomplishment.
The Roman Empire embraced a congeries of cities, peoples, and territories bound to Rome by diverse ties and enjoying various degrees of autonomy. In the East, kings and potentates who were permitted to style themselves “friends of the Roman people” ruled over what in modern parlance would be named “protected” states, and hundreds of Greek cities, old and new, retained constitutional government moulded to an oligarchic type under Roman influence, whether as allies or as subjects of Rome. In the West – save where Carthage (or the more adventurous of the Greek colonists) had planted cities – Rome had to deal with tribes of Celtic, Teutonic, Iberian, and other stocks, to whom she had to teach her language as well as the principles of city life. But amid all this external diversity there remained the essential fact – the absolute supremacy of the Italian race. And all the threads of government were gathered together and centred in the city of Rome, where the supreme power had just passed from a narrow aristocracy into the hands of a single ruler, himself a representative of the ruling caste. Now, so far as he gave utterance to his thought, Augustus professed to maintain inviolate both the supremacy of the Italians and the concentration of the higher functions of government in the hands of the senatorial oligarchy. As we shall see, he spared no pains to build up and to foster a specifically Roman sentiment of patriotism, restoring where he could the mythical and historical traditions and the religious and social observances of Rome’s past. He professed, moreover, an anxiety to preserve the purity of the ruling race; he was sparing in his grants of citizenship, and limited the rights of slaveowners to bestow freedom on their slaves, and in his political testament adjured his successor to maintain this policy. In this respect, as in so many others, his rule marks a reaction against that of Julius Cæsar. And yet we cannot doubt that to his farseeing eye there was revealed the vision of that unified Empire whose subjects were all citizens of Rome – the Empire whose poet could sing –
“Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.”
We shall see that the gradual absorption of client- kingdoms into the Empire was begun by Augustus; and if the Romanisation of the provinces – or at any rate the extension of citizen rights to the provincials – did not make as rapid progress in his reign as in those of several of his successors, this was because he judged that an education in Roman sentiment and traditions must precede admission to the citizenship of the Empire. Many colonies of time-expired soldiers were, however, planted in the provinces as outposts of Roman life; and above all it is to be remembered that, although the legions were almost wholly recruited from the citizen body, one half of the army was composed of “auxiliary” troops drawn from the more vigorous of the subject nations, who on the completion of their term of service under Roman discipline received the rights of citizenship together with their families, and were thus absorbed into the ruling race.
We should likewise greatly err in supposing that Augustus regarded the senatorial aristocracy as capable of administering the Empire. Here, above all, it behoved him to move warily. Augustus desired to enlist all classes, especially the highest, in the service of his government. This meant that the great Republican offices and the highest military commands must be reserved for senators; even a few fresh administrative posts were created, which formed a part of the senatorial career, and the dignities of senatorial rank were enhanced. There was actually a short period during which the governors of Asia and Africa were permitted to stamp coins with their own effigy. But with all this the reins of government was gradually withdrawn from the hands of the Senate. Personal service to a superior the senator was not schooled to render, though military subordination was of course understood, and it was thus possible to govern the Imperial provinces through the Emperor’s “lieutenants” (legati). But the due administration of the affairs of empire demanded an organised service dependent on the Emperor; and this was gradually and silently built up by Augustus, who must have been fully conscious that under his successors its power would continually increase at the expense of that of the Senate.
Thus Augustus laid the foundations of a new Rome whose mighty superstructure was to envelop without destroying the old. But he was not only keenly alive to the need of time and caution in carrying out reforms; he was also hampered by the pressure of external problems. The victory of Actium left him master of some fifty legions. The maintenance of these armaments was a burden too heavy for Italy and the provinces, which had for years been groaning beneath extraordinary taxation. Augustus’ first step was to reduce his army to a peace footing, and to provide for the discharged soldiers, not as the triumvirs – himself amongst them – had done some years before, by confiscation, but by wholesale purchases of land. Italy breathed again, since not only lasting peace, but also a speedy recovery from economic exhaustion was assured, and Augustus was greeted as the saviour of society. Yet he had missed a great opportunity. The Empire was, it is true, secured from the menace of invasion on its Southern and Western frontiers by the barriers of the desert and the ocean: but in the North and East the problem of defence was not so simple of solution. Within the great reentrant angle of the Rhine and Danube there seethed in ceaseless ferment the tribes of Germany, whose advancing tide was one day to submerge the Empire; and in the East the Parthian kingdom opposed to Rome a power which had hitherto brought disaster to every attacking force. In the burning abyss of the Mesopotamian desert lay the bones of Crassus and his legions, whose eagles adorned the Parthian capital; and the soldiers of the Eastern legions, whose allegiance had been transferred to Augustus, could tell of the horrors of Antony’s retreat from Praaspa four years before. Had Augustus determined to use the overwhelming force at his disposal in order to assert the supremacy of the Roman arms and settle the vexed question of the frontiers once and for all, a century of bloodshed and failure might have been spared. But although his personal courage has been unjustly impugned, he was not a soldier; and he decided to leave the regulation of the Eastern frontier to diplomacy, and of the Northern to time. The number of the legions was reduced, probably to eighteen. It should be remembered that the legion itself was roughly equivalent to the modern brigade; but as it was always supplemented by its complement of “auxiliary” cavalry and infantry, about equal to it in strength, it may be counted as a division in estimating the garrisons of the Empire. It is difficult to be sure of the distribution of these forces at the commencement of Augustus’ reign, but it seems to have been somewhat as follows: four legions – the equivalent of two army corps – were stationed in Syria to guard the Eastern frontier; six – or three army corps – in the Balkans and the Austrian Alps, in preparation for an advance to the line of the Danube; three on the Rhine, and three in Northern Spain, where the untameable forefathers of the Basques held their own in the mountains of the Asturias and Biscay. A single legion stationed in Numidia sufficed to hold the Berbers in check; another formed the army of occupation in Augustus’ kingdom of Egypt. The total force seems a small one to garrison so great an empire, and we shall see that Augustus was forced to increase it by almost one-half during his reign. But it must be remembered that the rulers of the protected states were obliged to furnish contingents for Imperial service. Thus the line of the Upper Euphrates was held for Rome by the vassal kings of Cappadocia and Commagene; while on the death of Amyntas, King of Galatia, in B.C. 25, his fine troops were transferred by Augustus to Egypt, and thirty-four years later were honoured by enrolment in the Imperial army as the Twenty-second Legion.
Such was the standing army which under Augustus replaced the mercenary army of the civil wars, itself the successor of the citizen army of the Republic. But the military spirit which had made that army invincible was no longer to be found in Italy. To the Italians, indeed, Augustus reserved the privilege of serving in the nine regiments of household troops known as the “proctorian cohorts,” and they were no doubt preferred as legionaries: but their aversion from active service grew so rapidly that under the Flavian dynasty they ceased to enrol themselves in the legions. Even more remarkable is the distaste for the military career shown by the higher classes of society. It was the intention of Augustus that every member of the senatorial and equestrian orders should serve as a subaltern in the legions or auxiliaries as the prelude to his career: but this service rarely exceeded a year in length, and was sometimes dispensed with altogether. Yet after several years of civil life the senator was thought fit to assume the command of a legion, or even of a whole army corps, as’ legatus, when he had held the prætorship. Thus the efficiency of the Imperial army depended in part on the innate capacity for leadership which still distinguished the Roman aristocracy, but even more on the incomparable discipline maintained by the non-commissioned officers. The military traditions of Rome were kept alive by the centurions, who were largely drawn from the highest class in the country towns of Italy – the healthiest element in the population of the Empire. The Imperial fleet was of small importance. Piracy had been crushed and the enemies of Rome possessed no naval power. Augustus created two squadrons, manned by non- Romans and commanded by freedmen, whose headquarters were at Ravenna and Misenum. After a time the heavier battleship, the trireme, was disused, and the “Liburnian” galley was alone retained.
The course of Augustus’ work of reconstruction cannot be traced in detail, but the sequence of events reveals certain landmarks. In the first half of Augustus’ reign he spent several years in the provinces, returning to Rome at intervals. These visits were always marked by some significant act, ceremony, or group of reforms. We saw that the years 29-27 B.C. were spent in laying the foundations of government. The census of 28 B.C. was of importance in two respects. In the first place, the strict hierarchy of classes which was a fundamental principle of the Empire was now established. As censor, Augustus revised not only the roll of the Senate, but also that of the equestrian order. This body drew its name from the fact that its property qualification was the same as that of the equites, once the citizen cavalry of the Republic; but in the period of the civil wars the term denoted the wealthy commercial class outside the Senate, whose riches were largely drawn from the farming of the public taxes. Augustus completely transformed this order, and made of it an Imperial service, half civil and half military, admission to which lay with the Emperor. As the senator’s toga was marked by a broad stripe of purple, so was that of the knight by a narrower band. This was worn by senators’ sons of right, and also by those to whom the Emperor granted the “public horse.” The whole body of knights was reviewed as a cavalry force on the 15th of July; the procession started from the temple of Mars without the walls, passed the Emperor by that of Castor and Pollux at the entrance of the Forum, and proceeded to the Capitol. The knight’s career began with service as a subaltern officer; after this, as a general rule, a choice was made between the military and civil branches of the service. The soldier knight who was favoured by fortune and connections might become an officer in the guards; otherwise he would hold minor independent commands in the Imperial provinces with the title of praefectus, and come in time to administer a territory of the second rank, such as the annexed kingdoms of Noricum or Mauretania. The civilian entered the service of the Imperial house or treasury as an “agent” (procurator), and, advancing from post to post, ultimately became qualified – as well as the praefectus – for the prizes of the profession, which by the end of Augustus’ reign were four in number – namely, the command of the guards, the viceroyalty of Egypt, the administration of the corn supply of Rome, and the command of the vigiles, the fire brigade and night-watchmen of the capital. The equestrian services, created by Augustus and wholly dependent upon him, formed the mainstay of the Imperial Government, and enabled the Emperor to remove the control of administration from the Senate without offending its pride. Moreover, as the ranks of the Senate were thinned by the extinction of the older families, the order was reinforced by the knights whose devotion to the Imperial house was unquestioned, and an aristocracy reconciled to despotism was thus created. The knights in turn were recruited from the plebs or third estate, and the carrière ouverte aux talents, which autocracy employs as its most alluring bait, was opened to all grades of society.
The census, too, gave Augustus an opportunity of reviewing and reorganising the finances of the state. This was, indeed, the work of many years, but Augustus’ principle was clearly laid down from the first. The financial administration of the Republic had been sadly lacking in system, and the charge of the treasury had been committed to the quaestors, young men just entering on their official career, who were in the hands of the permanent clerks. Augustus did not abolish the old treasury, or aerarium, housed in the vaults of the temple of Saturn under the Capitol, but he transferred its management to senators of prætorian rank. Its revenues were, however, unimportant in comparison with those which flowed in from the Imperial provinces and from the public domains – above all, from the kingdom of Egypt. All these were at the disposal of the Emperor, who defrayed the expense of the army and most of the public services.
Now all the great families of Rome were banking and mercantile houses, whose agents might be found in every province of the Empire, and the Imperial house was merely the greatest of these. Augustus had, of course, vast private possessions, which were constantly increased by purchases, legacies, and confiscations, and these were managed by a whole army of procuratores, while the accounts were kept in Rome by a staff of slaves and freedmen. When it became his duty), to “place the Empire on a business footing,” he simply brought the public revenues under the same management, selecting his agents, as we saw, from the equestrian order. There was no breach with the Republican constitution, but the fact was that the Imperial house had become a Ministry of Finance. More than this, Augustus determined to carry out a statistical survey of the Empire and its resources. The evidence shows that this survey – which seems to have begun in Gaul in 27 B.C. – was prolonged for many years, and was extended to the dependent kingdoms, such as that of Herod in Judæa, and also that reassessments were made at intervals of fourteen years. Here, as in much else, Augustus seems to have learnt from the scientific system of taxation elaborated by the Ptolemies in Egypt.
After the constitutional settlement of B.C. 27 Augustus was free to visit the Western provinces, in which he had never set foot. In Gaul the revenue settlement was commenced. In Spain, however, the first necessity was to subdue the obstinate resistance of the Northern mountaineers. There was little glory to be won in the guerrilla warfare which constantly broke out in fresh centres, and Augustus’ health suffered from the fatigues of the campaign. In B.C. 24 peace was for a time restored, and Augustus returned to Rome.
In the following year, as was explained above, the constitution of the principate received its final shape; but Augustus received the first stroke of the ill- fortune which was to beset his family and dynasty. His only child was a daughter, Julia, born in B.C. 39. He had married her mother, Scribonia, for purely political reasons, and divorced her on the day of her daughter’s birth. In the following year he married Livia, widow of Ti. Claudius Nero, who brought him one stepson, Tiberius, and in a few months’ time became the mother of a second, Drusus. Augustus was, moreover, bound by the ties of blood to the children of his sister Octavia, who had been twice married, first to M. Claudius Marcellus and then to Antony. By each husband she had two daughters, and by the first a son also. The elder Marcella was married to Agrippa, who, though not as yet formally associated with Augustus in the powers of government, acted as regent in the Emperor’s absence. But Augustus’ hopes were centred in the young Marcellus, whom he caused to marry his cousin Julia in B.C. 25. Marcellus was the darling of the Roman populace, and no one could doubt that Augustus destined him to be his successor. In B.C. 24, when he was nineteen years of age, he was admitted to the Senate, and leave was granted him to anticipate by ten years the normal succession of public offices. In B.C. 23, as ædile, he charmed the populace by splendid shows and set up awnings to shade the Forum throughout the heats of summer. But when Augustus fell ill and believed himself to be at the point of death, he gave his signet-ring to Agrippa as the only man who could reckon on the obedience of the legions. Augustus recovered, heard tales of bitter rivalry between Agrippa and Marcellus, and sent the elder man on a mission to the Eastern provinces. Then the blow fell. Towards the close of the year Marcellus sickened and died, to be rendered immortal by Vergil in the finest lines ever inspired by untimely death.
When the shock was over Augustus determined to divorce Agrippa from his niece and give him in marriage to his daughter. Yet, although he ignored human feeling when dynastic alliances were in question, he would perhaps have deferred the step but for the fact that when he left Rome for the East in B.C. 22 serious tumults arose in the city. The restoration of senatorial government seemed almost a reality. For the first time Augustus was not among the consuls, and the censorship had been restored after many years. This provoked a countermovement amongst the populace, who besieged the Senate-house and demanded the dictatorship for Augustus. He was forced to return, and quieted the mob by assuming the cura annonae, or administration of the corn supply of Rome. Agrippa was recalled and married to Julia, and Augustus set out to deal with the Eastern question.
Negotiations were already on foot which promised a settlement of the affair of honour between Rome and Parthia. The Parthian king, Phraates, demanded the surrender of his rival, Tiridates, who had taken refuge with Augustus and held Phraates’ infant son as a hostage. Augustus stipulated for the restoration of the Roman standards and captives in return for the child, and in B.C. 20 the transaction was completed. The court poets celebrated the bargain as a conspicuous triumph, and the Prima Porta statue of Augustus (Plate, p. 23) displays the delivery of the standards amid the chasings of its corslet.
In the government of the East Rome had made large use of the system of vassal-kingdoms, and Antony, reigning in Egypt as consort of Cleopatra. had dreamt of an Eastern Empire which he should rule as “King of kings.” Augustus, as he recalls in the record of his acts, recovered the East from its potentates. Yet the system seemed to him worth preserving, at least for a time. Two of Antony’s vassals, Amyntas of Galatia and Herod of Judæa, were left in the enjoyment of their sovereignties; in B.C. 25, however, Amyntas died and Galatia became a province. Now Augustus had to face the question of the upper Euphrates frontier and the relations of the Empire with Armenia, whose position between Rome and Parthia has often been compared with that of Afghanistan at the present time. He was not prepared to take the responsibility of annexing the country, a course which would have rendered a large increase in the military establishment necessary; on the other hand, it was unsafe to leave Armenia under the dominant Parthian influence. He took the line of least resistance and established client kings in Cappadocia and Commagene to cover the Anatolian provinces and watch the line of the Euphrates, while Tiberius (now just twenty-one years of age) began his military career by leading an army into Armenia and setting on the throne Tigranes, a brother of the reigning king, Artaxes, who was murdered on the approach of the legions. Tigranes had been brought up in Rome, and Augustus hoped much from the plan of educating princes who should introduce Roman civilisation and methods of government into the protected states and pave the way for eventual annexation. Some years later Prahates of Parthia was induced to send four sons with their families to live in Rome, and the children of Cotys, vassal-king of Thrace, whose wife, Antonia Tryphæna, was descended from Antony, were brought up in the house of Antonia, daughter of the triumvir by Octavia and wife of Drusus.
The “conquest of Armenia,” as it was officially termed, was regarded as a triumph only second to the recovery of the standards, and in B.C. 19 Augustus returned to Rome in a blaze of glory, dimmed only by the death of Vergil on landing in Italy in the Emperor’s train. In the following year Augustus’ constitutional powers were renewed, and Agrippa was confirmed as co-regent, while in B.C. 17 the return of the Golden Age, which had become a commonplace in the mouths of the court poets, was celebrated by the pageant of the Secular Games. All the learning and ingenuity of the Roman theologians were expended to make the ceremonies worthy of the great occasion. The mysterious rites performed at dead of night in honour of the infernal gods alternated with daily processions from the Palatine, where Augustus dwelt under the protection of his guardian deities, Apollo and Diana, to the Capitol, where Jupiter, Best and Greatest, with Juno and Minerva, patrons of Rome since the days of the Etruscan kings, were worshipped as the equals, but not the superiors, of the divinities of the Imperial house.
In B.C. 16 both rulers left Rome. Agrippa had work to do in the East. Augustus felt that the time had come to attack the problem of the Northern frontiers, the more so as German tribes had burst the barrier of the Rhine, cut to pieces a legion, and captured its eagle. He was no general, but his stepsons were of the true Roman stuff and carried out the task assigned to them with brilliant success. Not only were the Alpine tribes of the Italian slope pacified once and for all, but a converging movement executed by Tiberius from the Rhone valley and by Drusus from that of the Adige made the Romans masters of Switzerland and the Tyrol.
There was a brief pause in B.C. 13, when Augustus, who had been occupied mainly in the purchase of lands for the settlement of the time-expired veterans enlisted after Actium, returned to Rome. The Senate decreed the erection of an altar to Pax Augusta, which was consecrated four years later. Its remains, partly scattered in the museums of Italy and France, partly hidden under a Roman palace, show it to have been the crowning achievement of Augustan art (Plate, p. 27).
In B.C. 12, however, the peace was again broken. Tiberius, commanding the armies of the Illyrian provinces, pushed forward the frontier to the upper Danube, while Piso formed the province of Mœsia between the Balkans and the lower Danube. Meanwhile Drusus sailed down the Rhine into the North Sea, regulating the course of the river and connecting it by a canal with the Zuyder Zee, and then carried the Roman arms, first to the line of the Weser and then to that of the Elbe. Then Augustus once again felt the finger of fate. At the height of his glory, Drusus died on his return from the Elbe. Tiberius hastened to Cologne, and thence walked on foot to Rome beside the corpse of his beloved brother. He was now the first man in the state (after Augustus) and its only general, since Agrippa had died in B.C. 12; but the iron had already entered into his soul. For in B.C. 11 Augustus, seeing that Julia’s sons by Agrippa were too young to claim the succession in the event of his death, had forced Tiberius to divorce Agrippa’s daughter, whom he dearly loved, and to marry Agrippa’s widow, whom he justly loathed. It was small consolation to him that in B.C. 8 he was associated with Augustus as co-regent, and he may have been glad to spend the next two years in strengthening the hold of Rome on the districts beyond the Rhine.
In B.C. 8 Augustus held a second census, and seems about this time to have elaborated many administrative reforms in Rome and Italy. Rome was divided, for police purposes, into fourteen “regions,” and Italy into eleven. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Augustus now extended the limits of the pomerium, i.e., the sacred boundary of the city, on crossing which the military commander laid aside the emblems of his power; but the truth of this statement is doubtful. The course of the Tiber was regulated, the calendar was reformed, and the sixth month of the old year (Sextilis) was renamed Augustus. It is important, moreover, to note the growth of the popular conception of divinity attaching to the Emperor and the skilful use to which it was put by Augustus. After the victory of Actium temples had been erected to Augustus, in conjunction with the goddess “Roma,” in the Greek East. This was no new thing; the practice dates back to the time of Flamininus. But Augustus saw that this worship might be made the symbol of an Imperial patriotism embracing all the subject peoples, and provincial diets (concilia) were formed in the West on the model of those already existing in the East (κοινά), whose chief function was to practise the new cult. Augustus professed to forbid the worship of himself in Rome and Italy, in order to mark the distinction of the ruling race. But in fact there sprang up in many of the country towns, especially those of Campania, settled partly by Greeks and partly by veterans, a regular cult of the Emperor. At Cumæ, for instance, there was a sacred year, whose holy days commemorated events in the life of Augustus. After B.C. 12 we hear of “Augustales” as priests of this worship, and the office was used (hardly without encouragement from the government) as a means of satisfying the ambition of an important class, the wealthy freedmen, who were debarred from municipal office by their servile origin. In Rome there was no direct worship of Augustus, but every “region” contained a number of “wards” (vici), whose inhabitants united in the worship of the Lares coupled with the “genius” of the Emperor, who took the place of the genius of the vicus. Thus a double end was attained: the humble plebeian had an object of aspiration in the priesthood of the vicus, and the plebs was confirmed in its devotion to the ruling house.
In the year of his second census Augustus lost his trusted friend and adviser Mæcenas. His tact and finesse in diplomacy had stood Augustus in good stead during the years of the triumvirate; under the principate he figured in the eye of the world as the patron of poets and director of the literary movement of the time. What part he may have played as the power behind the throne we can only guess. In the same year Horace died, and the sun of Augustan poetry set.
In the following years Augustus’ thoughts were again turned towards the question of the succession. His hopes were centred in his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Cæsar, the elder children of Agrippa by Julia, whom he had adopted as his own sons in B.C. 17. Although Tiberius shared the command of the army with Augustus and was therefore permitted in B.C. 7 to celebrate a triumph in honour of his successes on the Rhine – an honour now reserved for the Imperial house – he had never been adopted into the Julian house, and it was clear that Augustus intended to postpone his claims to those of his own descendants. When, therefore, in B.C. 6, Tiberius received, together with the tribunicia potestas, a commission to regulate the affairs of the East, where the settlement effected in Armenia in B.C. 20 had broken down, he treated Augustus’ decree as one of virtual banishment, and spent the following years in retirement at Rhodes. Meantime the young Cæsars were pushed rapidly forward. They became principes iuventutis – chief of the youth of Rome – and as such rode at the head of the knights in the yearly cavalcade. Augustus himself held the consulship in B.C. 5 and B.C. 2 in order to introduce them successively to public life in their fifteenth year, and they were designated for the consulship when they should reach the age of twenty.
In B.C. 2 Augustus received the crowning honour of the title Pater patriae – Father of the Fatherland – which the Senate conferred upon him on the proposal of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, whose boast it was that he had fought beside Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. The reconciliation of the aristocracy with the principate was sealed. But in the same year the tide of fortune turned again. The first blow was struck when Augustus’ eyes were suddenly opened – by Livia, as it was said – to the grave scandal of Julia’s life, which had helped to drive Tiberius into banishment. Her offence was the more unpardonable in Augustus’ eyes because it was his wish to be regarded as a moral reformer, and he had endeavoured by legislation to enforce the duty and uphold the sanctity of marriage. Julia’s lovers were exiled, except one, Iullus Antonius, the son of Antony, who was put to death on a charge of treasonable conspiracy, and she herself was confined on the barren island of Pantelleria.
But the mother’s disgrace was no check to the rising fortunes of her sons. In B.C. 1 Gaius Cæsar was invested with proconsular power, although his consulship had been fixed for the following year, and despatched as vice-regent to the Eastern provinces, where kings and cities vied in adulation. Tiberius was forced to leave Rhodes and wait upon his stepson, who received him with scant courtesy. The climax of Gaius’s progress was reached when on an island in the Euphrates he was met by the young King of Parthia, Phraataces, who agreed to recognise the candidate put forward by Rome for the throne of Armenia, Ariobarzanes of Media. This took place in A.D. 2. But in the same year his younger brother, while on his way to take command of the army in Spain, died suddenly at Marseilles; and in the following year Gaius was treacherously wounded while besieging an Armenian fortress. His health and spirits gave way, and he begged Augustus for leave to abandon the splendid career which was opening before him and retire into seclusion. With a heavy heart Augustus recalled him to Italy, but he never saw its shores. On February 21, A.D. 4, he died at Limyra, a small haven on the Lycian coast.
There were not wanting malicious tongues to whisper that the hand of Livia had been at work in this, as in the other calamities which had befallen Augustus’ kindred. It was hinted that Marcellus and the two Cæsars had been poisoned by her orders, in order that a son of her own might one day ascend the throne. These rumours are unworthy of credence; but the end for which she must have hoped in silence was attained. Tiberius, who had been permitted to return to Rome in A.D. 2 as a private citizen – his tribunicia potestas had expired – was marked out as the inevitable successor of Augustus. There remained, indeed, one son of Julia, born after his father’s death in B.C. 12, and named Agrippa Postumus. But he showed no promise of intellectual ability or force of character. Augustus, however, bowed to the inevitable and adopted both Tiberius and Agrippa, although Tiberius alone received the tribunicia potestas. Tiberius in his turn was called upon to adopt his nephew Germanicus, who was now nineteen years of age; his own son Drusus was two years younger. A year later Germanicus was married to Agrippina, the younger of Julia’s two daughters. Thus Augustus, though baulked of his cherished hopes, once more placed the dynastic succession on a firm basis. But the troubles of his household were not even yet at an end. The conduct of Agrippa Postumus soon made it necessary for Augustus to banish him to the small island of Planasia (near Elba), and Agrippina’s elder sister, the younger Julia, who was married to L. Æmilius Paulus, renewed the scandal of her mother’s career and was involved in a like disgrace.
Nor was it only in his private affairs that Augustus met with disappointment and disaster. The latter years of his reign were clouded by the first great military check sustained by the conquering advance of Rome in the North. Tiberius was before all things a soldier, and he had no sooner been associated as co-regent with Augustus than he assumed the command of the Rhine army and recommenced the forward movement which had been suspended since his retirement in B.C. 6. In A.D. 5 the North Sea fleet sailed to the northern promontory of Jutland, possibly even to the mouth of the Baltic, and returning thence to the Elbe, met the advancing legions of Tiberius. But the crowning movement was fixed for the following year. The campaigns of Drusus had driven the Marcomanni from the banks of the Main to seek a new home in Bohemia, whence they drove out the Celtic inhabitants. Under their king, Marbod, who strove to lead his people in the paths of civilisation and organised life, they became the dominant power throughout free Germany, and a point d’appui for resistance to the advance of Rome. It was determined therefore that the new power should be crushed and a continuous frontier from the Elbe to the Danube established. Bohemia is girt by a lozenge-shaped quadrilateral of mountain ranges, pierced at the acute angles of the northern and southern corners by the Elbe and the March. At the junction of the March with the Danube lay Carnuntum, where six legions were concentrated under Tiberius. C. Sentius Saturninus commanded the army of the Rhine, which likewise numbered six legions, but as an advance up the Elbe valley was impossible, owing to its distance from the Roman base, he was ordered to invade Bohemia from the West by the valley of the Main and the Hercynian Forest.
It seems likely, though not quite certain, that in view of this forward policy the military establishment was largely increased, possibly by as many as eight legions (numbered xiii-xx). At the same time the legionary’s term of service was raised from sixteen to twenty, that of the prætorian from twelve to sixteen years; but in order to provide pensions and gratuities for the time-expired men a new military treasury (aerarium militare) was called into being. Augustus endowed it with 170,000,000 sesterces (nearly £1,700,000), and induced the Senate to impose a 5 per cent. succession duty and a tax of 1 per cent. on goods sold by auction, in order to furnish it with revenues. Direct taxation was so unpopular with the Romans that he was obliged to justify the imposition of the succession duty by appealing to the papers of Julius Cæsar.
But before Tiberius and Saturninus had effected the junction of their forces, the Illyrian provinces, Pannonia and Dalmatia, burst into a blaze of revolt in Tiberius’ rear. In a few weeks’ time a force of 200,000 foot and 9,000 horse was in arms, which harried the centres of Roman occupation with fire and sword, invaded the province of Macedonia, and, what was worse, threatened to invade Italy by way of Laybach and Trieste. Augustus met the Senate with the news that in ten days the enemy, if unchecked, might be at the gates of Rome. Levies were hastily raised and placed under the command of the young Germanicus, while the legions of the lower Danube and even of the further East hurried to Tiberius’ aid. A catastrophe was averted, but three years of fighting were needed before the revolt was subdued, and all thought of the annexation of Bohemia was given up.
Then came the crowning disaster. The armies of the Rhine were now commanded by Quinctilius Varus, who, as the husband of a greatniece of Augustus, stood high in the favour of the court. As governor of Syria, men said, he had made himself rich instead of poor, and his province poor instead of rich. He was now called upon to reduce Northern Germany, from the Rhine to the Elbe, to the condition of a province. But the Germans felt that the time had come to strike a blow for freedom. Arminius, prince of the Cherusci, who had received Roman citizenship and served in the cavalry, plotted the insurrection and lulled Varus into security by protestations of loyalty. Suddenly, as Varus was returning from a punitive expedition through the forests and marshes of Westphalia, his force of three legions was surrounded, and after three days of fruitless efforts to break through was cut to pieces.
The loss of three eagles was a terrible blow to Roman pride, but the danger of an offensive movement from Germany was small, since Marbod refused to join his forces with those of Arminius. The three legions lost by Varus were never reconstituted, but the rabble of Rome were forced to enrol themselves, and in A.D. 10 Tiberius was able to concentrate eight legions on the Rhine. He took with him his nephew Germanicus, and when he returned to Rome in A.D. 13, left him in command. But though his legions crossed the river, there was no attempt at reconquest. Augustus’ spirit was broken. The bitter cry, “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!” was wrung from his lips, and he bequeathed to his successor the injunction that the boundaries of the
Empire should not be extended. In the East as well as in the West the last years of his reign were clouded with failure. In A.D. 7 a prince educated in Rome ascended the throne of Parthia, but in a few years’ time he was ignominiously expelled, and his attempt to hold Armenia as a Roman vassal likewise failed. Beyond the Euphrates Roman influence had ceased to exist.