For the year 28 B.C., Octavian associated with himself in the consulship his friend and minister, Marcus Agrippa, and one of his first acts was to hold a "Lectio Senatus." This duty had formed part of the functions of the censorship, but that venerable office had fallen into abeyance during the death throes of the Republic and there had been no formal revision within living memory. Consequently, the Senate was, in the picturesque words of Suetonius, "a shapeless and disordered mob." It had originally consisted of six hundred members. Julius by his new creations had raised its number to nine hundred. Antonius had crowded it with his partisans, and there were now more than a thousand who wore the broad stripe upon their togas. Many of these had no shadow of claim to a place in the assembly, but had gained admission by influence and bribery, without having filled the requisite magistracies which gave the right of entry. Octavian and Agrippa set themselves to weed out the unfit. They offered the opportunity of voluntary withdrawal to all who desired to be spared the ignominy of expulsion, and fifty who took the hint were allowed to retain the senatorial ornaments as a reward for their frank acknowledgment of personal unfitness. Another hundred and fifty were expelled in disgrace and the numbers of the Senate were thus reduced to about eight hundred.
Octavian did not hold the office of censor, which from time immemorial had been considered incompatible with the tenure of the consulship. But, if he was not actually censor, he was at least invested with censorial powers. Either then or at some later date, the new title of Praefectus Morum was bestowed upon the head of the State to take the place of the censorship, which thenceforward practically became extinct and was but seldom revived. But the revision of the Senate had a result even more important than the restoration of that body to its ancient dignity and the rehabilitation of its character. It had been the custom of the censors in the old times, on the conclusion of their periodical revisions, to select the name of the most respected ex-censor in the Senate and place it at the head of the roll of membership. According to the rules which governed the procedure of the House, the presiding consul always called upon the senator whose name stood in this place of honor to open the discussion on the subject in debate. The distinction was purely honorary. The title of Princeps Senatus carried with it no other privilege than that of speaking first, and since the death of the venerable Quintus Catulus in 60 B.C., the title itself had fallen into abeyance. It was now to be revived with a new significance. Octavian's name, at the suggestion of Agrippa, was placed first upon the list, and he thus became Prince of the Senate. This thoroughly constitutional appellation speedily acquired an unconstitutional importance. The word itself suggested to the Roman ear no connection with monarchy, but just as the name of Caesar has become the symbol of monarchy, so the innocent and republican title of Princeps has become the appanage of royalty. In the opening chapters of the Annals, Tacitus twice takes occasion to lay emphasis upon this important fact. "Augustus," he says, "subjected the world to empire under the title of Prince." And again: "The Republic was organized neither as a monarchy nor as a dictatorship, but under the title of a Prince." So, too, in a famous passage of the Histories, he speaks of the legions discovering "the secret of empire that a Prince can be made elsewhere than in Rome," while Suetonius, in writing of Caligula, says that he came within an ace of assuming the diadem and converting to the definite form of a monarchy the system which masqueraded as a principate. It would be a mistake to suppose that, when Octavian first became Prince of the Senate, the senators and the people at once appreciated the full significance of the act. The shrewder among them might guess what it portended in the future, but in all probability not even Octavian himself foresaw how quickly the title of Princeps Senatus would be shortened into that of Princeps alone and would stand in the eyes of the world as the designation of sovereign authority.
The revision of the Senate and the taking of the census, which showed that there were 4,063,000 Roman citizens of military age, were the two principal measures of the year 28 B.C. Octavian's sixth consulship, however, was also distinguished by the formal annulment of every illegal and unconstitutional measure which had been passed during the Triumvirate. "At last, in his sixth consulship," says Tacitus, "Caesar Augustus, feeling his power secure, annulled the decrees of his Triumvirate and gave us a constitution which might serve us in peace under a monarchy." In other words, the slate was wiped clean. But though the pages of the statute book whereon these measures were inscribed were thus formally cancelled or even torn bodily out, their consequences remained, and this act of generosity or repentance on the part of Octavian signified little. The Actian festival, which he celebrated this year on a scale of unexampled magnificence. His fourfold increase of the ordinary corn distribution. His cancellation of arrears of debt to the treasury his lavish expenditure upon the new public buildings which were beginning to rise on every hand — all these things were so much dust thrown into the eyes of the people to reconcile them to the changes which he was about to introduce, and to the consolidation of his own power. And his success was marvelously complete, so complete, indeed, that when he met the Senate on the first day of January in 27 B.C. and entered upon his seventh consulship, he felt secure enough to offer to resign the whole of his extraordinary powers. But he took care that he received back again in another form the powers which he then laid down. The Senate conferred upon him the most supreme authority which they had to bestow. They gave him the pro-consulare imperium for ten years. In other words, they legalized his military position as chief of the Roman armies. For the provinces assigned to him, in the great division of the provinces of the Empire which was now made, were precisely those in which the legions were stationed. By such a decree, they themselves invested Octavian with supreme military control, and voluntarily riveted his yoke upon their necks.
At the same time, they conferred upon him the title of Augustus. It was Munatius Plancus, the archtraitor, who moved that this should be the cognomen of Octavian, after others had proposed that he should take the name of Romulus, as the second founder of Rome. The choice was skillful, for the word was closely associated with the ideas of divine majesty and abundant fruitfulness. The epithet which had hitherto been confined to the holiest temples and the most sacred religious observances of the Republic, and which had been specially reserved to denote the bounty of Jupiter himself, was thus transferred to an individual, and it was too conspicuous, too isolating, too suggestive of worship and adoration to be compatible with political freedom. Augustus, as we shall henceforth call him, must have felt perfectly satisfied when he accepted this flattering and supreme distinction, together with the proconsular imperium which invested him with the undivided control of the legions, that he had lost nothing by refraining from establishing a monarchy. The Senate had granted him a title which was to transcend in dignity that of king, which his Greek subjects translated into "Sebastos" or "the Hallowed One," and though his imperium was limited nominally to a term of ten years, he knew well that in the interval he would either fail utterly and lose all, or he would be able to extort a renewal for as long a period as he desired. He was now firmly seated in the saddle and the new regime had begun. He was Augustus. He was consul with full proconsular imperium. He was Imperator. He was Princeps Senatus, and he wielded all the functions of a censor. There still remained other powers and offices to be absorbed, but for the present he was content. Rome and the Roman and Greek world were content also.
Then, towards the close of the year, Augustus again quitted Rome, nor did he return until nearly three years had elapsed. The affairs of Gaul and Spain claimed his personal attention throughout this period. It was believed that he meditated an expedition to Britain, but if that had been his intention the project was speedily dropped and was never revived in his lifetime. Augustus' stay in Gaul was brief, and after completing in Lugdunum, the capital, the census of the province and regulating its tribute, he passed into Spain at the head of a powerful army. There a far more difficult problem presented itself and one which was not finally solved for many years to come. The Iberian Peninsula had never been thoroughly subdued by the Republic, and tranquillity was only assured in the immediate neighborhood of the legions. The natives were still as adept in the art and practice of guerilla warfare as they had been in the days of Sertorius and, though constantly defeated as often as they offered battle in the plains, they maintained a ceaseless struggle in their mountain fastnesses. Augustus crossed the Pyrenees, but was soon compelled by illness to repair to Tarraco, on the coast. This he made the new capital of the province Tarraconensis, formerly known as Hither Spain, removing thither the center of administration from Nova Carthago, the modern Carthagena. While he lay ill, his lieutenants overthrew the Cantabrians in a great battle near Vellica, and the enemy betook themselves to the hills. The spirit of the tribes was not yet thoroughly broken. In fact, they rose in revolt as soon as Augustus quitted Spain, but he laid the foundations, during his stay in the country, for the permanent pacification of the peninsula.
Augustus returned to the capital in the year 24 B.C., again ordered the Temple of Janus to be closed, and again distributed a lavish largesse among the people. He had been regularly elected to the consulship at the close of each year, and he entered upon the office for the eleventh time in the January of 23, choosing as his colleague Calpurnius Piso. Soon afterwards, he was attacked by an illness even more serious than that which had prostrated him at Tarraco, and little hope was entertained of his recovery. At such a moment, there can have been only one question uppermost in the public mind. It was this — If Augustus died, who would be his successor? Whom would he nominate as heir, not alone to his private fortune, but to the supreme power? Would it be Marcellus, the son of his sister Octavia by her first husband, to whom two years before he had given the hand of his daughter Julia in marriage? Or would his choice fall upon his old friend and coadjutor Agrippa? The excitement in Rome at such an hour can be imagined, especially as Agrippa, who was the fittest to succeed, was known to be jealous of the favors which Augustus was lavishing upon his young nephew and son-in-law, Marcellus. Augustus summoned the chief men of the State to his bedchamber, and there discussed with them the condition of public affairs. But if they expected from him, in the hour which they believed to be almost his last, the candor which he had never displayed in health, they were disappointed. The consummate actor dissimulated to the very end. Just before he dismissed them from the room, he handed without a word a detailed account of the resources of the State to his colleague Piso, and, at the same moment, placed his seal ring in the hands of Agrippa. Nothing could have been more characteristic of the man. The actions were such as to bear a variety of interpretations, each as plausible as the other. By giving to his fellow consul a schedule of the State, he seemed to be handing back his trust entire to the Republic and to the Senate. By giving his ring to Agrippa, he seemed to nominate him as his heir and successor. If the story is genuine — and we cannot be certain that it is not either a clever invention of later times to illustrate by a crowning instance the dissimulation of Augustus, or merely one of those canards which purport to relate what takes place in the privacy of palaces — if Augustus really believed that he was on the point of death when he left this cruel enigma to torture and perplex the public mind, no condemnation can be too severe for such cynical irony, though in one sense it needed but this to round off a career of studied hypocrisy. The signet ring with which he sealed all papers of State bore the device of a Sphinx. For the Sphinx to speak out in the moment of death would have been to destroy a perfect illusion. His will might have made his purpose clear, but the probabilities are that if Augustus had died then, the sword would again have leaped from the scabbard.
Such speculations, however, are idle. Augustus recovered, to the joy of the whole world, and the dangerous hour passed. Again it was characteristic of the man that the crisis was no sooner over than he solemnly declared to the world that he had had no intention of nominating a successor. He affected to regard such a suggestion with horror, as though it imputed to him treasonable designs against the Republic. He was no king that the government should pass to his heir. He was merely consul, the first man in a free commonwealth, and if he wielded enormous and extraordinary powers, had they not all been formally bestowed upon him by the voluntary vote of the Senate? To prove his sincerity, he was even willing to read his will in public and thus convince the most sceptical that he had never harbored such a thought. But the senators at once protested that they needed no such proof of his single-minded patriotism and warmly repudiated the idea that their confidence in him required to be confirmed. Consequently the incident remained without further light being thrown upon it, and it has perplexed posterity as successfully as it baffled Augustus' contemporaries. And, although there is no written authority to warrant the suspicion, it is perhaps permissible to suggest that Augustus deliberately caused the reports as to the gravity of his illness to be exaggerated, and made political capital out of his undoubtedly feeble and precarious health. It was clearly his policy to bring sharply home to his people a sense of their dependence upon him, to make them realize their need of his controlling hand, to foster the belief that, if he were removed chaos, would inevitably return. Hence his continual references in private conversation to the blessings of retirement and to the burdens of responsibility. Hence too his constant hints in public that he contemplated withdrawal, hints which were always ambiguous in meaning and clothed in the most cryptic language. This year, however, he not only hinted at, but insisted upon, withdrawal from one of his many offices. He resigned the consulship, which he had held without intermission for the last ten years, and bestowed the vacant dignity for the remainder of the year upon Lucius Sestius, who had been a quaestor in the service of Marcus Brutus and still venerated the memory of the republican chief. Such an act of magnanimity cost him nothing. Augustus, by resigning his consular fasces to Sestius, was merely playing to the gallery of public opinion, which is easily impressed by a show of abnegation.
The truth was soon patent. Augustus had come to the conclusion that certain extensions of his powers were necessary for the smooth working of the administration. To obtain those extensions, he was willing to lay down the consulship, though that was still the chief magistracy of the year. He may have found that there were certain inconveniences in sharing the government of Rome and Italy with a colleague. He may even have contemplated occasions arising, especially if he were absent from Rome, when a colleague in the consulship might thwart his policy. Moreover, it is well to bear in mind that Augustus was most scrupulous in respecting the outward forms of the Republic and his repeated assumption of the consulship was distinctly opposed to republican tradition. He might, indeed, have ruled as consul by extending the powers of that office and dispensing with colleagues. But he preferred other means, which were just as unconstitutional in reality though outwardly they did less violence to tradition. The announcement of his resolve created great uneasiness in Rome. He was pressed to reconsider his determination, but remained obdurate and retired from the city to Alba, while the Senate anxiously debated in what form they should give him a renewed pledge of their confidence. No doubt Augustus, by means of trusted intermediaries, himself suggested the new powers which would prove agreeable to him, and finally expressed his desire that he should be invested with the full tribunician authority and an extension of the proconsular imperium. The latter need not detain us long. He had already enjoyed for four years the proconsular imperium in half the provinces of the Roman world. That power was now extended to the other half, which remained as before under the control of the Senate and under governors appointed by that body. But the tribunician authority — the tribunicia potestas — was something, if not entirely new, at any rate magnified beyond all precedent.
According to some authorities, this potestas had been offered to him immediately after the defeat of Antonius. Whether he accepted it, is not clear. But, if he did, the potestas in its new form was so essentially distinct that thenceforth Augustus indicated the years of his reign by the number of times he had held the tribunician power. The title was given him for life, but he assumed it afresh every year and it became the outward symbol of his sovereign authority. Why then did he choose the one title which, above all others, was associated in the history of Rome with the power of the people, with democracy and the popular will? The answer is clear. The possession of the tribunicia potestas enabled him to draw into his hands all the threads of power which had formerly rested in the hands of the people. He did not become simply tribune, because the tribunate was a collegiate body, consisting of ten members, and because, as a patrician and Imperator, he was not eligible for membership. But, while respecting the letter of the law, he did not scruple to invest himself with all the powers belonging to the office on a greatly extended scale. The potestas of the ordinary tribune was confined to the city of Rome and to the one-mile limit beyond the pomoerium. The tribunicia potestas of Augustus was valid throughout the whole of the Roman dominions. It gave him the right to convoke and preside over the Senate and the people, to propose new legislation, to receive and judge appeals, and to veto any measures of any magistrate of which he disapproved. The tribunes, as the direct champions and representatives of the people, had been held to be inviolable, sacrosanct, and exempt, during their term of office, from the ordinary obligations of the laws. Augustus now transferred this inviolability to himself, and from this sprang the law of majestas, one of the most formidable weapons of absolute monarchy. The powers of the tribunes had been so absolute in theory and their right of interference with the machinery of government so complete that had it not been for the mutual jealousies of the ten members and the fact that the Senate had usually managed to secure each year at least one or two tribunes devoted to its interests, they must have been supreme in the Republic. Augustus now took over these powers not only in theory but in practice. The importance of this step, therefore, can hardly be exaggerated, and as the years passed by, its overwhelming significance became more and more clear. The tribunate had been the one office of the Republic full of inherent possibilities, and capable of development along a number of parallel lines. The tribune had been the special champion of the plebs. What more easy than for Augustus to represent that the tribunicia potestas with which he had been invested was the outward token that his rule was based upon the willing consent of the masses? He might thus speciously claim to be their representative as well as their ruler, their protector as well as their master. Again, the person of the tribune had been sacrosanct — what more easy and natural than the development of the theory that the holder of the tribunicia potestas was equally inviolable? Kings have claimed a special sanctity from divine right. Augustus could claim the same from the majesty of the sovereign people. The tribunes again could not only veto legislation, but they had the power to imprison or even put to death any magistrate who resisted their authority. Augustus thus inherited from them all the familiar weapons of absolute authority. And so this new tribunicia potestas, conferred upon Augustus in 23 B.C., marks — even more definitely than the title of Augustus and the assumption of proconsular imperium — the consolidation into one pair of hands of the administrative and legislative machinery of the State.