“tribunician power,” which had been conferred upon him for life 718. 731. 731. in 36, and was well suited, from its urban and democratic traditions, to serve in Rome as “a term to express his supreme position.”[1] From 23 onwards the tribunicia potestas appears after his name in official inscriptions, together with the number indicating the period during which it had been held (also reckoned from 23); it was in virtue of this power that Augustus introduced the social reforms which the times demanded;[2] and, though far inferior to the imperium in actual importance, it ranked with or even above it as a distinctive prerogative of the emperor or his chosen colleague.[3]
The imperium and the tribunicia potestas were the two pillars upon which the authority of Augustus rested, and the 731. 749, 752. 742. 732. other offices and privileges conferred upon him were of secondary importance. After 23 he never held the consulship save in 5 and 2 B.C., when he became the colleague of his grandsons on their introduction to public life. He permitted the triumvir Lepidus to retain the chief pontificate until his death, when Augustus naturally became pontifex maximus (12 B.C.).[4] He proceeded with the like caution in reorganizing the chief departments of the public service in Rome and Italy. The cura annonae, i.e. the supervision of the corn supply of Rome, was entrusted to him in 22 B.C.,[5] and this important branch of administration thus came under his personal control; but the other boards (curae), created during his reign to take charge of the roads, the water-supply, the regulation of the Tiber and the public buildings, were composed of senators of high rank, and regarded in theory as deriving their authority from the senate.[6]
Such was the ingenious compromise by which room was found for the master of the legions within the narrow limits of the old Roman constitution. Augustus could say with truth that he had accepted no office which was “contrary to the usage of our ancestors,” and that it was only in dignity that he took precedence of his colleagues. Nevertheless, as every thinking man must have realized, the compromise was unreal, and its significance was ambiguous. It was an arrangement avowedly of an exceptional and temporary character, yet no one could suppose that it would in effect be otherwise than permanent. The powers voted to Augustus were (like those conferred upon 687. 727. Pompey in 67 B.C.) voted only to him, and (save the tribunicia potestas) voted only for a limited time; in 27 he received the imperium for ten years, and it was afterwards renewed for successive periods of five, five, ten and ten years.[7] In this way the powers of the principate were made coextensive in time with the life of Augustus, but there was absolutely no provision for hereditary or any other form of succession, and various expedients were devised in order to indicate the destined successor of the princeps and to bridge the gap created by his death. Ultimately Augustus associated his stepson Tiberius with himself as co-regent. The imperium and the tribunicia potestas were conferred upon him, and he was thus marked out as the person upon whom the remaining powers of the principate would naturally be bestowed after the death of his stepfather. But succeeding emperors did not always indicate their successors so clearly, and, in direct contrast to the maxim that “the king never dies,” it has been well said that the Roman principate died with the death of the princeps.[8]
In theory, at least, the Roman world was governed according to the “maxims of Augustus” (Suet. Ner. 10), down to the Changes in the constitution of the principate. time of Diocletian. Even in the 3rd century there is still in name at least, a republic, of which the emperor is in strictness only the chief magistrate, deriving his authority from the senate and people, and with prerogatives limited and defined by law. The case is quite different when we turn from theory to practice. The division of authority between the republic and its chief magistrate became increasingly unequal. Over the provinces the princeps from the first ruled autocratically; and this autocracy reacted upon his position in Rome, so that it became every year more difficult for a ruler so absolute abroad to maintain even the fiction of republican government at home. The republican institutions, with the partial exception of the senate, lose all semblance of authority outside Rome, and even as the municipal institutions of the chief city of the empire they retain but little actual power. The real government even of Rome passes gradually into the hands of imperial prefects and commissioners, and the old magistracies become merely decorations which the emperor bestows at his pleasure. At the same time the rule of the princeps assumes an increasingly personal character, and the whole work of government is silently concentrated in his hands and in those of his own subordinates. Closely connected with this change is the different aspect presented by the history of the empire in Rome and Italy on the one hand and in the provinces on the other. Rome and Italy share in the decline of the republic. Political independence and activity die out; their old pre-eminence and exclusive privileges gradually disappear; and at the same time the weight of the overwhelming power of the princeps, and the abuses of their power by individual principes, press most heavily upon them. On the other hand, in the provinces and on the frontiers, where the imperial system was most needed, and where from the first it had full play, it is seen at its best as developing or protecting an orderly civilization and maintaining the peace of the world.
The decay of the republican institutions had commenced before the revolutionary crisis of 49. It was accelerated by Decay of republican institutions. 705, 726. the virtual suspension of regular government between 49 and 28; and not even the diplomatic deference towards ancient forms which Augustus displayed availed to conceal the unreality of his work of restoration. The comitia received back from him “their ancient rights” (Suet. Aug. 40), and during his The comitia. lifetime they continued to pass laws and to elect magistrates. But after the end of the reign of Tiberius we have only two instances of legislation by the assembly in the ordinary way,[9] and the law-making of the empire is performed either by decrees of the senate or by imperial edicts and constitutions. Their prerogative of electing magistrates was, even under Augustus, robbed of most of its importance by the control which the princeps exercised over their choice by means of his rights of nomination and commendation, which effectually secured the election of his own nominees.[10] By Tiberius this restricted prerogative was still further curtailed. The candidates for all magistracies except the consulship were thenceforward nominated and voted for in the senate-house and by the senators,[11] and only the formal return of the result (renuntiatio) took place in the assembly (Dio lviii. 20). And, though the election of consuls was never thus transferred to the senate, the process of voting seems to have been silently abandoned. In the time of the younger Pliny we hear only of the nomination of the candidates and of their formal renuntiatio in the Campus Martius.[12] The princeps himself as long as the Principate lasted, continued to receive the tribunicia potestas by a vote of the assembly, and was thus held to derive his authority from the people.[13]
- ↑ Tac. Ann. iii. 56; “summi fastigii vocabulum.”
- ↑ Mon. Anc. Graec. 3, 19.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. i. 3 (of Tiberius), “collega imperii, consors tribuniciae potestatis”; cf. Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 1160.
- ↑ Suet. Aug. 31.
- ↑ Mon. Anc. 1, 32; Dio liv. 1.
- ↑ See Hirschfeld, Verwaltungsgesch. i. 173.
- ↑ Dio liii. 13, 16.
- ↑ Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 1143.
- ↑ The plebiscita of Claudius, Tac. Ann. xi. 13, 14, and the lex agraria of Nerva; Digest, xlvii. 21, 3; Dio lxviii. 2; Plin. Epp. vii. 31.
- ↑ On these rights, the latter of which was not exercised in the case of the consulship until the close of Nero's reign, see Mommsen, Staatsr. ii. 916-28; Tac. Ann. i. 14, 15, 81; Suet. Aug. 56; Dio lviii. 20.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. i. 15, “comitia e campo ad patres translata sunt”; compare Ann. xiv. 28. The magistracy directly referred to is the praetorship, but that the change affected the lower magistracies also is certain; see, e.g., Pliny's Letters, passim, especially iii. 20, vi. 19.
- ↑ Plin. Paneg. 92.
- ↑ Gaius i. 5, “cum ipse imperator per legem imperium accipiat.”
