The Roman Empire

THE ROMAN EMPIRE

H. Stuart Jones

OZYMANDIAS PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by H. Stuart Jones

Published by Ozymandias Press

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ISBN: 9781531281328

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. AUGUSTUS

II. THE JULIO-CLAUDIAN DYNASTY

III. THE YEAR OF FOUR EMPERORS

IV. THE FLAVIAN DYNASTY

V. NERVA, TRAJAN, AND HADRIAN

VI. THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES

VII. THE DYNASTY OF THE SEVERI

VIII. THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE EMPIRE

IX. THE RESTORATION OF IMPERIAL UNITY

X. DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE

XI. EPILOGUE

I. AUGUSTUS

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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