Macedonia were moved so as not to be under the control of the Senate. In the end, the only senatorial province with a garrison was Africa, with just one legion. Instead of the consulship, Augustus was now given tribunicia potestas (tribunician power) on an annual and indefinite basis, and this became the way Augustus and all subsequent emperors counted the years of their “reign”. So, coins would normally show a number after the tribunician power, thus: “TRIB. POT. IV”. In fact, Augustus may have been granted tribunician power long before 23 BCE, or at least some aspect of it, but it is in that year that the formal use of tribunician power as a reign tabulator begins. But why tribunician power and not simply the position of tribune, tribunus plebis? The formal reason is that, as a patrician by adoption, the emperor was ineligible to be elected a tribune. But, in fact, the emperors had more power than an actual tribunus plebis would have had during the Republic. One important power associated with tribunician power was the ius auxilii, or the right to come to the assistance of a citizen who complained of being oppressed by another magistrate). In Republican times, a tribune could exercise this power only in the city of Rome itself, but the imperial tribunician power extended throughout the Roman world. Augustus’s tribunician power also gave him the right to submit legislative proposals to the Concilium Plebis the popular assembly, and to summon the Senate and submit motions to it as well. Another important power included in the tribunician power was the ius intercessionis the right to veto the acts of other magistrates, including the consuls, and the Senate itself. In addition, tribunician power gave the emperor coercitio (the right enjoyed by all magistrates to compel a reluctant citizen to obey his orders on pain of sanction). Above all, Augustus’s tribunicia potestas carried with it sacrosanctitas, or inviolability of their persons, which meant that any assault on his person was prohibited by law. The position of tribune itself was low down on the traditional senatorial cursus honorum, or career structure, but, starting out as it did as a protection of the (original) plebeians against the patricians, the imperial tribunician power remained redolent of this ancient class struggle and enabled Augustus and his successors to stand as champions of the urban plebs against the senatorial aristocracy (see below).
Augustus and the urbanplebs: Augustus established a bond with the urban plebs which his successors continued to maintain. In his important study titled Plebs and Princeps, Zvi Yavetz summed up the position in these words: “With the commencement of the Principate, the emperors became in a sense patroni of the entire urban plebs. The tribunicia potestas was an important advantage, while generous largitiones and proper conduct helped in no small measure to this end.” (Yavetz 1988, p. 152.) However, a section of the plebs remained part of the clientela of major aristocratic houses. “Although the emperor was not officially referred to as patronus of all the plebs, there was a clear conflict between his influence and the patronage exercised by individual senators.” (Ibid., p. 97.) Yavetz also plausibly suggests that “…the laws limiting the emancipation of slaves were likewise passed for no other reason but to restrict the private clientela of the senatorial aristocracy.” (Ibid., p. 96f.) because a manumitted slave became a libertus or libertinus (in the later Roman Empire the two terms are used interchangeably, meaning freedman), who would automatically become a cliens to his former master as patronus. “As a general principle he (Augustus) prevented anyone (Agrippa being the exception that proves the rule) from bestowing beneficia (favors) on the masses.” (Ibid., 97.) Later emperors followed the same pattern, and it is worth noting that the supposedly “bad” emperors got that reputation largely from their treatment of the upper echelons of society, while retaining the support of the plebs. (See Yavetz on Nero, Ibid., p. 153.)
Augustus and the Senate: In his autobiography Augustus makes a point of stressing that all his honors and titles were granted to him by the Senate and people in time-honored Republican fashion and that he refused the tainted title of dictator. The modest-sounding title Princeps, or “first citizen,” which is mentioned three times in the autobiography in a very matter-of-fact way, was intended to suggest that Augustus was merely “first among equals”, although the reality was very different. It is this title which has given the whole period from Augustus to the accession of Diocletian in 284 the designation of the Principate, as it is usually termed by historians, although it is commonly referred to by the general public simply as “the Roman Empire”, from the title imperator, which, as we have seen, was adopted by Augustus as a forename. Augustus made much of restoring the Republican constitution. Elections to the traditional Republican magistracies were put on a firm footing, and provincial commands were reserved for those who had reached the praetorship and the consulship. But Augustus did not want the old nobiles, the top echelon of the Senate, to continue to monopolise these commands. So, he introduced into the Senate novi homines, “new men drawn from the length and breadth of Italy”. (Jones 1955, p. 20.) As we are told in the Appendix to his autobiography, he even gave some personal “…grants to individual friends and senators to make up their property qualification”, a way of introducing hand-picked friends to high office. Augustus also used as a counter-measure against the nobility the “ingenious electoral machinery of the Lex Valeria Cornelia of 5 CE, whereby, although the freedom of the comitia (popular assembly) was theoretically left untrammelled, a strong lead was given to it by ten centuries composed in the main of the very class whom Augustus wished to see elected to praetorships and consulates…. By the accession of Tiberius the monopoly of the nobiles had been broken, and a sufficient number of new men had been promoted to the higher ranks of the Senate to make it possible to entrust elections to the Senate itself.” (Ibid., p. 20 f.) It is important to realise, however, that being a member of the Senate was in itself no longer of great importance. Membership was only necessary in order to obtain appointment to provincial governorships, the overwhelming majority of which were in the gift of the emperor. Only the so-called senatorial provinces had governors allocated by the Senate. At the time of Augustus’s death, in 14 CE, there were only ten of these.
Augustus and the equites : Augustus tried to bolster the equites (“equestrians”, literally “knights”), the second rank in the state, as a counterweight to senators, relying on them as military commanders, tax collectors, and in many other capacities. He broadened the scope of the equestrian class, encouraging the Italian towns to nominate suitable entrants into this order. (Suetonius, Augustus, 46.)
Augustus and the army: Important though the army was to Augustus, I agree with Brunt and Moore that it would be “…a mistake to represent his power as depending mainly on the support of the army.” (Brunt&/Moore (eds.), 1967: 15,) Augustus went out of his way to reward his troops and veterans and to settle them in coloniae (“settlements”) all around Italy and the provinces. Augustus made sure that the army was largely under his control, and by the end of his reign, Africa was the only senatorial province with any troops at all (see above). And from the reign of the Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (37–41), the whole army was commanded by the emperor. The praetorian guard under a Praetorian Prefect came to play an increasingly important role in the Roman Empire, especially after the time of Augustus. And the setting up of the cohortes urbanae, (urban cohorts), a sort of police force for Rome, which, together with the vigiles, or (firemen), were seen as important factors contributing to Rome’s generally peaceful existence for the better part of four centuries.
Consilium Principis : Augustus established the Consilium Principis or emperor’s advisory council, a semi-informal body drawn from his much larger body of amici (friends), which he consulted from time to time. This arrangement continued right throughout the Principate and ultimately became more formalised as the consistorium, a department of state) under Diocletian. John Crook’s learned study of the Consilium does, however, appear to overestimate the influence of the Consilium on imperial decision making. In the words of A.N. Sherwin-White, “It is by no means proved that the emperors regularly took the advice of a substantial body of amici, in any particular form, on most matters of high or low policy.” (Sherwin-White 1957, p. 253.)
Augustus: “Optimi Status Auctor”?
Suetonius quotes an edict in which Augustus expresses the hope that he will be remembered by posterity as optimi status auctor (architect of the best state of affairs). (Suetonius, Augustus, 28.) In the Aeneid, similarly, Vergil
