Many modern historians have misread and misinterpreted the work of Augustus by reason of their impatience of what they consider to be political shams. The present-day idea of an empire, or, indeed, of Caesarism in any form, is essentially opposed to the idea of a republic, where the people are supreme. But to the Roman of the time of Augustus, as to Augustus himself, the words principate and republic bore a wholly different signification from that which now attaches to them. That Augustus carried dissimulation to its furthest limits must be frankly admitted, but it is absurd to suppose that this was his guiding principle. His great aim was to graft the Principate upon the Republic. He did not wish to uproot the old tree and plant a new one. His desire was to furnish the old tree with a new branch, which should be the most vital of all its limbs. In the constitution were many magistracies, and he added yet another. If it was one of extraordinary scope and power, the justification was that the times required it. Augustus was no daring reformer like his uncle Julius. He was a conservative, and, in some respects, a conservative of the school of Cato. And it is clear that, at any rate in the early years of his personal rule, after the fall of Antonius, he seriously attempted to associate the Senate with himself in the government of the Roman world. What he established in form was not so much an empire as a dyarchy. Thus Augustus declares in the Monumentum Ancyranum: "Post id tempus praestiti omnibus dignitate, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam qui fuerunt mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae." In other words, he only claims that he enjoyed more prestige than his colleagues. In actual power, they were his equals. The words were false, and we can scarcely doubt that they were deliberately intended to create a false impression at the time when they were written. Twenty years before, they might have been employed with much less open violence to the truth.
There is a striking phrase of Seneca which sums up admirably the whole position: "Se induit rei publicae Caesar." Augustus, that is to say, clothed himself with the Republic. This was something more than merely masquerading in its old garments, as so many historians have interpreted his action. It was a real attempt — to vary the metaphor — to make an antiquated machine work with new driving wheels. Time was to show that they were too powerful for the purpose, for they shattered the original framework to pieces. But the attempt was honestly made, and, as a conservative, he naturally selected the Senate to be his coadjutor. Let us see, then, how the Senate fared at his hands. We have already shown that one of Augustus' first acts was to revise its membership, to purge it of those whom the wits of Rome had dubbed in derision the Orcini and Charonitae, and to hand over into its keeping half the provinces. He also created a number of new patrician gentes to fill the gaps which the civil wars had made in the number — never a large one — of those who were entitled to hold the auspices. Whether there had been any senatorial census under the Republic is doubtful. Augustus either introduced the principle or made the old census more rigorous, for he raised it from 400,000 to 800,000, and finally to 1,200,000 sesterces. He did not want poor men in his Senate, but men of substance with a stake in the country. Subsequent emperors endorsed his policy. In Pliny's time, every senator was obliged to invest part of his capital in Italian land. Augustus' rules were stringent, but he did not refuse himself the privilege of making exceptions. In numerous instances, he provided out of his own purse sums sufficient to enable poor men, who were personally agreeable to him, to retain their seats in the Curia. These became his pensioners, while others, whom he disliked, he could at once degrade, as not complying with the requirements of the census, if they fell on evil times. With the same object in view — that of keeping the Senate select — he gradually reduced its numbers to six hundred. Though he did not change the avenues of entrance, by the simple device of imposing upon the quaestorship the obligation to provide gladiatorial shows, he confined the holding of that office to men of wealth. Moreover, no one was eligible to stand for the quaestorship unless he had served in the army as a military tribune, or had held one of the lower magistracies. Here again, in the case of favored candidates, Augustus sometimes granted exemption from these obligations, and conferred the senatorial stripe on his own authority by his right of adlectio. Still more significant was the fact that, either indirectly or directly, he controlled, or could control if he so desired it, certain of the magisterial elections. He possessed the right of "nomination" and "recommendation." He could refuse, in other words, in his capacity as presiding officer, to accept the name of a candidate, on the plea that he was not qualified for the office; while his "recommendation" absolutely secured the favored candidate's return without rejection or canvass (sine repulsa et ambitu). Augustus instituted stated days for the meetings of the Senate — twice a month, except in September and October — and attendance on these occasions was obligatory. Extraordinary meetings, however, might be summoned for any pressing business.
The original scheme of Augustus provided that the Senate should hold coordinate powers with the Princeps, though it rapidly degenerated into a subordinate position. The process of this degeneration, which in the nature of things was inevitable, cannot be traced step by step. Augustus, from the very first, took the control of all foreign politics into his own hands. He alone made war and alliances. The senators might continue to receive foreign embassies and provincial deputations, as a formal act and by grace of the princeps, but they had no armies in their provinces, with the exception of a single legion in Africa. Their share in foreign and military affairs was confined to hearing despatches read to them, voting resolutions of congratulation, and decreeing triumphs for the Princes of the Imperial House. Even as an advisory body, their influence was steadily lessened by the growing importance of the Imperial Concilium, or Council of State. Originally formed in 27 B.C., this Council consisted of the emperor, the consuls, the consuls-elect, and fifteen senators elected by lot to act for six months. In 12 A.D., its composition was reorganized, and the senatorial members were chosen by the emperor, but long before that time the Concilium had become a sort of Privy Council, in which legislation was initiated, and the main body of the Senate merely registered its decrees. The condominium of Principate and Senate thus year by year became more and more a matter of form. All real control rested with the emperor. The world was governed not by the resolutions of the Senate, but by the edicts, decrees, and rescripts of the emperor, by his ministers of state, and by the new Imperial Civil Service.
Yet, in one matter of first-rate importance, Augustus increased the authority of the Senate. He bestowed upon it that jurisdiction in important criminal cases for which the Optimates had struggled hard in the days of the Republic, and for the illegal exercise of which, during the Catilinarian conspiracy, Cicero was subsequently exiled. This had been vested from time immemorial in the sovereign people, and the popular party had stubbornly maintained the claim of the populus to criminal and appellate jurisdiction. The change had important results. It became the custom for the Senate to try all members of its own body who were charged with serious criminal offenses, all political offenders of importance, all governors or officials charged with peculation or extortion, and all who were accused of the crime of lèse-majesté. The ordinary quaestiones perpetuae continued as before to exercise their jurisdiction, but apparently the Senate, as the supreme High Court in criminal cases, could at any time order that a particular case should be brought before itself. This was a most important extension of the functions of the Senate, but here again its powers came to be overshadowed by those of the princeps. He, too, possessed criminal jurisdiction to an unlimited extent. Whenever he desired, he could order that an accused person should be brought before him for trial, and, as time passed on, most cases in which members of the Imperial Civil Service or officers of the army were involved, were heard by the princeps, or by his praefects. And not only that, but the supreme appeal from the provinces, in cases where the life of a Roman citizen was at stake, lay to Caesar, and not to the Senate. It is impossible to say at what moment this came to be the recognized custom. Certainly during the reign of Augustus, the Principate was not the universal Court of Appeal from the provinces which it afterwards became. The fact would seem to be that in the matter of criminal jurisdiction, as in most other matters, the dyarchy established by Augustus gradually broke down, owing to the enormous prestige of the emperors. Consequently, under emperors like Tiberius or Domitian, the Senate in its judicial capacity merely became an instrument of imperial tyranny, as it gave its verdicts under the eye of the emperor. On the other hand, the theory of its coordinate powers lasted long, and, in normal circumstances, was not felt by the senators themselves to be the hollow sham which it is usually considered to have been. Take, for example, the speech of Otho to his troops when news came of the revolt of Vitellius:
"Vitellius is the master of a few tribes, and has some semblance of an army. We have the Senate... The eternal duration of empire, the peace of nations, my safety and yours, rest on the security of the Senate. This order, which was instituted under due auspices by the father and founder of the city, and which has lasted without interruption and without decay from the kings down to the emperors, we will bequeath to our descendants, as we have inherited it from our ancestors. For you give the State its senators and the Senate gives it its princes."
Such a passage as this, coupled with many others which might be quoted from Tacitus and Pliny, and taken in conjunction with the fact that Tiberius, despite his suspicions of the Senate and his slaughter of individual senators, gave to that body the right of electing to all the magistracies which was formerly exercised by the people, shows that the Senate was an integral part in the imperial constitution. Nor would it have suffered so severely at the hands of emperors had it not still been capable of inspiring suspicion and fear. In other words, it was a real, though constantly diminishing, power in the new constitution.
Augustus strove to make the Senate a select assembly of rich men who should be compliant to his will. He also endeavored to create an aristocratic order, a new senatorial nobility, in the modern sense of the term. He gave the right of wearing the laticlave to the sons of senators and allowed them to attend the meetings of the Senate in order that they might become familiar in their early years with the course of public business. Great importance was attached to purity of birth. The laticlave was granted to no one who could not show pure Roman descent for three generations. The new marriage laws prohibited the marriage of senators with freed-women or actresses, and they were scrupulously debarred from engaging in commercial pursuits. The army and the Senate were the two main careers open to the members of Augustus' new aristocracy and, by the side of the senatorial nobility, Augustus reorganized the equestrian nobility as the second order in the State. Their property qualification was fixed at 400,000 sesterces. Their military character was both revised and revived, and Augustus frequently reviewed their squadrons in person. But the military duties of the order were comparatively unimportant, except in so far as the young knights supplied the legions with mounted officers. The order itself owed its power and influence to other considerations. To it belonged the great capitalists and from its ranks were drawn most of the procurators and praefects who did the main work of the Empire in the imperial provinces. They did not seek for office and dignity at Rome. They preferred, as a class, to let politics alone, and though sometimes rich knights, who possessed the requisite qualification, passed into the senatorial order, the majority of them were well content to remain where they were. For if membership of the Senate conferred additional dignity, it also entailed additional burdens and corresponding expenses, and the typical knight preferred less dignity and more freedom. Not for him, as Cicero had eloquently declaimed, in his speech on behalf of Cluentius, were the locus, auctoritas, domi splendor, apud exteras nationes nomen et gratia, toga praetexta, sella curulis, fasces, imperia, provinciae, which were rightly enjoyed by the senatorial order in return for the public burdens which they undertook. The knights eschewed these burdens and sacrificed their chance of attaining to these distinctions, in order that they might live their own "tranquil and quiet life" and devote themselves to business. Less was expected of them by the public. They even claimed to be judged by a less exalted standard of moral rectitude. But under Augustus and his successors, the knights were the chief pillar of the Principate. They wanted a strong, stable, resolute government, and this the Empire gave them. In return, they gave the Empire their loyal support and a constant supply of able and experienced administrators.
When we pass from the senators and the knights to ask how the old popular assemblies of the Republic fared under the new regime, we are confronted once again by the difficulty of reconciling theory with practice. Suetonius declares in the most precise language that Augustus restored the comitia to their ancient status: "Comitiorum quoque pristinum jus reduxit." He increased the penalties against bribery and himself distributed largesse among his own tribesmen on election days that they might not look for bribes from any of the candidates for office. We are also told that he introduced a plan whereby citizens dwelling at a distance might record their votes and have them carried to Rome in ballot boxes in time for the election. Yet nothing is more certain than that Augustus detested popular rule as mob rule, and that he paved the way for the first act of his successor, Tiberius, who transferred the elections from the comitia to the Senate. There was no room in his scheme for a sovereign people. He might reorganize the comitia in outward form, but he took from them every shred of real power. They still assembled to elect the yearly magistrates, but they rarely had free choice of candidates. The powers of nomination and commendation exercised by the princeps made the proceedings almost, if not quite, a solemn farce. The legislative functions of the comitia suffered a like fate. They remained untouched in theory, but the leges and plebiscita passed by the populus and the plebs grew rarer and rarer, and no measures were submitted to them, which had not been carefully drafted beforehand by the higher authorities. Thus, though the comitia still survived and the decorous ceremonial attaching to their meetings was even more carefully preserved than it had been under the Republic, their real power had vanished beyond recall, even before the death of Augustus. Nor can it be pretended that this was a loss to the world, especially as regards the legislative authority which once reposed in the sovereign Roman people. The whole idea of the comitia was based upon the conception of a small city-state and was only suitable for the requirements of such a community. Rome itself, to say nothing of the larger Roman world, had outgrown institutions which, according to modern ideas, were only fit for a parish. It was preposterous that the affairs of an empire should be directed by mass meetings in the Forum or the Campus Martius. The only practicable reform was to sweep the comitia away.
It followed as a natural result of the destruction of the real powers of the people that the tribunes, who were the special guardians of the popular rights, should suffer a like extinction. They were still elected, but their occupation was gone when the tribunicia potestas of the Princeps was the principal weapon in the armory of absolutism. The tribunate remained a great name, and it doubtless flattered the pride of many a tribune in Imperial times to remember that the office had once conferred sacrosanctity upon its possessor. Yet, after his year of office was over, he probably agreed with the younger Pliny that its dignity was the shadow of a shade: "Inanis umbra et sine honore nomen." Almost certainly, therefore, the tribunes "knew the change and felt it" more intimately and closely than the other magisterial colleges. With the rest, the process of decay was more gradual. The consulship continued to retain its supreme dignity. The praetors still presided over the civil jurisdiction. The quaestors, reduced in number to twenty — Julius had raised them to forty — were still the chief financial officials of the treasury. The aediles, though some of their principal duties were now taken away from them, still performed what may be described as the vestry work of the capital.
But by their side, there arose a group of new Imperial offices which speedily overshadowed all the older magistracies, with the possible exception of the consulship. These were the four great imperial praefectures, the appointments to which were made by the princeps alone. The first was the praefecture of the city, a post usually filled by a man of consular rank. It was his duty to keep public order, and act as chief commissioner of police. Three cohorts, stationed in Rome but without fixed barracks, were placed under his command. He was also a magistrate with both civil and criminal jurisdiction, and he controlled the theaters and the various religious and trading guilds. In the absence of the princeps, he was responsible for all that took place in the capital and was possessed of practically unlimited powers, though an appeal always lay from his decisions to the princeps himself. The second great praefecture was that of the praetorian guard. This was the bodyguard of the princeps, a picked force which enjoyed special privileges and pay, and its commander stood high in the emperor's confidence. During the reign of Augustus, little is heard of this office, which subsequently became even more important than the praefecture of the city when the stability of the throne came to depend upon the loyalty of the praetorians and their praefect. The third praefecture was that of the corn supply. Under the Republic, the whole college of aediles had had charge of this duty, but they had mismanaged it and Julius had appointed special aediles to look after nothing else. It was found, however, to be beyond the capacity of minor officials and, after sundry experiments, Augustus accepted the responsibility himself and appointed a praefectus annonae, whose duty it was to see that the corn supply did not fall short, that it was placed on the market at a reasonable price, and that the poorer citizens regularly received their gratuitous doles of wheat. Finally there was the praefecture of the watch, praefectura vigilum. The duties of this official were similar to those of the praefect of the city, though on a minor scale. His police patrolled the streets at night, and under his direction was placed the newly instituted fire brigade, divided among the several wards of Rome.
Then, in addition to these four praefectures, Augustus established a host of minor officials bearing the title of curatores. It was, says Suetonius, his policy to create an extensive bureaucracy in order to give as many people as possible some slight share in the administration. Quoque plures partem administrandae rei publicae caparent, nova officia excogitavit. Hence his curators of the Italian highways, his Board of Works, his Tiber Conservancy Board, his Water Supply Committee. We may see in the appointment of these curatorships, charged with specific duties, the new spirit of order which Augustus introduced into the administration to secure efficiency and regularity. And there is no possible doubt that the new boards performed their multifarious duties far more efficiently than they had been performed under the haphazard and ill-defined arrangements of the Republic. The Emperor's motto in municipal, as in imperial, affairs was the one word "Order." So, too, with the reorganization which Augustus carried out in Italy. He divided the whole peninsula, exclusive of Rome itself, into eleven districts (regiones). The authorities are curiously silent as to this reform, but there is good reason to suppose that the new arrangement was made solely for purposes of financial administration and that it did not imply any interference with the local self government of the districts, though in later times that autonomy was ruthlessly swept away. Certainly for more than a century the Italian cities, coloniae, and municipia alike, enjoyed the free exercise of their democratic constitutions long after such liberty had been lost in Rome. Their comitia continued to be held as before to elect their duumvirs, their aediles, and their quaestors. The local Senates, continued to control their municipal affairs without interference from the central government, and local life and local patriotism were even more keen and vigorous than they had been in the days of the Republic. Juvenal might jeer at the tattered robes of the aediles of Ulubrae, but the extraordinary public spirit which pervaded the Italian townships, the zest with which the local magistracies were sought after, and the lavish way in which these magistrates ruined their private fortunes in building temples, baths, and porticoes — the cost of which in our days is thrown upon the rates — disclose an amount of local patriotism which may well awake the envy of the modern municipal reformer. Honore contentus, impensam remisit — the open-handed liberality of the Italian magistrate to his native place was not confined to the erection of public buildings but extended in many instances to the repair of the public highways and the improvement of the local water supply. It was only in Rome itself that the Principate destroyed public liberty and public spirit. Elsewhere it stimulated them to renewed vigor.
Such then was the general outline of the new constitution. But the reign of Augustus was long, and the constitution, as fixed in 27 B.C. and again in 23 B.C., was profoundly modified before his death, in 14 A.D. The scheme of coordinated authority between princeps and Senate proved unworkable in practice, simply because the two powers did not start on equal terms. Insensibly the prestige of the princeps and his officers tended to thrust into the background the prestige of the Senate and its officers. The strong increased in strength. The weak grew weaker. Before Augustus died, the Principate had ceased to be a magistracy within the Republic, for the princeps had founded a dynasty, and the empire was an accomplished fact. This was not acknowledged in theory, as the attitude of Tiberius towards the Senate and that of the Senate towards Tiberius clearly proved, when each waited for the other to make a declaration of policy and feared to commit a false move. But practically the Senate admitted that the dyarchy had fallen to the ground and that there could be but one real master in the Roman world, namely, the heir of Augustus and the lord of the legions.
Augustus received the tribunicia potestas in 23 B.C. At that moment, his popularity was at its height and it remained unimpaired for many years. There were, indeed, a few Republicans left who regretted the change and were rash enough to intrigue against him. But throughout his entire reign, Augustus was little troubled by conspiracies. Fannius Caepio and Licinius Murena, who plotted against him in 22 B.C., were condemned in their absence and shortly afterwards put to death. Three years later, Egnatius Rufus, Plautius Rufus, and Lucius Paulus engaged in a similarly hopeless conspiracy, and were crushed with equal promptitude by the consul Lucius Sentius. The only other serious conspiracy with which Augustus had to deal was hatched twenty years later by Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna. Augustus not only pardoned his enemy but restored him to favor, and conferred upon him the consulship. "You may be assured," said the Emperor in addressing the culprit, "that it is not I alone who stand in your way if your ambition is to fill my place; neither the Paulli nor the Cossi, neither the Fabii nor the Servilii, will allow you to exercise domination over them." However, the popularity of Augustus is best shown not by the negative evidence that there were but few conspiracies against him — that is testimony rather to his vigilance — but by the extraordinary manifestation of public feeling which took place in the year 22 B.C. No sooner had he lain down the consulship than Rome was visited by famine and pestilence, while the Tiber overflowed its banks and washed away a number of temples in the low-lying parts of the city. This seems to have been interpreted by the superstitious citizens as proof that the gods were displeased at Augustus' retirement from the consulship, and a tumult followed, in which the people snatched the fasces from the lictors of the consuls and threatened to burn down the Curia unless the senators agreed to appoint the popular idol dictator for life. Then followed a most curious scene. For Augustus confronted the mob, threw off his toga from his shoulders, and, with bared breast and bended knee, deprecated the honor which they sought to thrust upon him. The dictatorship, he said, was a hated office which had been solemnly abolished because of the tyrannous uses to which it had been put. Would they force it upon one whose sole care was to be the servant of the State? The utmost he would consent to accept was to take personal charge of the corn supply, in order to relieve the existing distress, and to appoint — for the last time — two citizen-censors, who, under his direction, should set the moral affairs of the Roman people in order. The scene was merely a solemn piece of hypocrisy so far as Augustus was concerned, but it at least proved that the people looked up to him as their only possible ruler and protector.
An equally significant episode took place a few months later while Augustus was in Sicily. At the consular comitia for the ensuing year, the people elected him consul and gave him Lollius as a colleague. When Augustus refused the honor and ordered a new election, the intrigues of the rival candidates led to public disturbances, which necessitated the return of Agrippa to Rome. A similar tumult arose at the following elections when the people again insisted upon choosing Augustus with Sentius Saturninus, and, upon his declining the honor a second time, the disorder in Rome became so serious that the Senate declared the State to be in danger, and passed the usual formula clothing Sentius with supreme authority. Sentius, however, was too wary to assume powers which might seem treasonable in the eyes of Augustus and he induced the senators to rescind their resolution and send envoys to Augustus to ask him to help them out of their difficulty. Sharply rebuking them for their incapacity to keep the peace in Rome, Augustus consented to nominate a second consul to act with Sentius and the storm blew over. But it left the Senate weaker and the Princeps stronger than before. Augustus, on his return from Asia in 19 B.C., instituted the praefecture of the city as a definite office, and thenceforward, even in the emperor's absence, there were no disturbances in Rome.