AugustusAugustus, statue in Rome.© vladacanon/iStock.com
As most of the troops still under arms were in the regions entrusted to Augustus’ charge, the arrangements of 27 bc hardly affected his military strength. Moreover, so long as he was consul (he was reelected every year until 23 bc), he was civilian head of government as well. In other words, he was still preeminent and all-powerful, even if he had, in his own words, placed the res publica at the disposal of the Senate and the Roman people. Augustus particularly wished to conciliate the senatorial class, without whose cooperation civilian government was impossible. But his monopolization of the consulship offended the Senate, making a different arrangement clearly necessary. Accordingly, in 23 Augustus made a change; he vacated the consulship and never held it again (except momentarily in 5 bc and again in 2 bc, for a limited, specific purpose). In its place he received the tribunician power (tribunicia potestas). He could not become an actual plebeian tribune, because Julius Caesar’s action of making him a patrician had disqualified him for the office. But he could acquire the rights and privileges pertaining to the office; and they were conferred upon him, apparently by the Senate, whose action was then ratified by the popular assembly. He had already been enjoying some of a tribune’s privileges since 36; but he now acquired them all and even some additional ones, such as the right to convene the Senate whenever he chose and to enjoy priority in bringing business before it. Through his tribunician power he could also summon the popular assembly and participate fully in its proceedings. Clearly, although no longer consul, he still retained the legal right to authority in civilian affairs.
The arrangement of 23 entailed an additional advantage. The power of the plebeian tribune was traditionally associated with the protection of citizens, and Augustus’ acquisition of it was therefore unlikely to rouse resentment. Indeed, Augustus thenceforth shrewdly propagated the notion that, if his position in the state was exceptional (which it clearly was), it was precisely because of his tribunician power. Although he held it for only one year at a time, it was indefinitely renewable and was pronounced his for life. Thus, it was both annual and perpetual and was a suitable vehicle for numbering the years of his supremacy. His era (and this is true also of later emperors) was counted officially from the year when he acquired the tribunician power.
The year 23 likewise clarified the legal basis for Augustus’ control of his provincia (the region under his jurisdiction) and its armed forces. The Senate invested him with an imperium proconsulare (governorship and high command), and, while this had a time limit, it was automatically renewed whenever it lapsed (usually every 10 years). This proconsular imperium, furthermore, was pronounced valid inside Italy, even inside Rome and the pomerium (the boundary within which only Roman gods could be worshiped and civil magistrates rule), and it was superior (majus) to the imperium of any other proconsul. Thus, Augustus could intervene legally in any province, even in one entrusted to someone else.
The network of favours owed him that Augustus had cultivated within the state, among people of the greatest authority over their own networks, made his position virtually unassailable, but he avoided provoking this high class of his supporters, senatorial and equestrian, by not drawing attention to the most novel and autocratic of the many grants of power he had received, the imperium proconsulare majus. Instead, he paraded the tribunician power as the expression of his supreme position in the state.
After 23 no fundamental change in Augustus’ position occurred. He felt no need to hold offices that in republican times would have conferred exceptional power (e.g., dictatorship, lifetime censorship, or regular consulship), even though these were offered him. Honours, of course, came his way: in 19 bc he received some consular rights and prerogatives, presumably to ensure that his imperium was in no particular inferior to a consul’s; in 12, when Lepidus died, he became pontifex maximus (he had long since been elected into all of the priestly colleges); in 8 bc the 8th month of the year was named after him; in 2 bc he was designated pater patriae (“father of his country”), a distinction that he particularly esteemed because it suggested that he was to all Romans what a paterfamilias was to his own household. He also accepted special commissions from time to time: e.g., the supervision of the supply of grain and water, the maintenance of public buildings (including temples), the regulation of the Tiber, the superintendence of the police and fire-fighting services, and the upkeep of Italy’s roads. Such behaviour advertised his will and capacity to improve the lives of people dependent on him. Of that capacity, manifest on a grand scale, his tribunician power and proconsular imperium were only the formal expression. He was a charismatic leader of unrivaled prestige (auctoritas), whose merest suggestions were binding.
Like an ordinary Roman, he contented himself with three names. His, however, Imperator Caesar Augustus, were absolutely unique, with a magic all their own that caused all later emperors to appropriate them, at first selectively but after ad 69 in their entirety. Thereby they became titles, reserved for the emperor (or, in the case of the name Caesar, for his heir apparent); from them derive the titles emperor, kaiser, and tsar. Yet, as used by Augustus and his first four successors, the words Imperator Caesar Augustus were names, not titles—that is, respectively, praenomen, nomen (in effect), and cognomen. One title that Augustus did have was princeps (prince); this, however, was unofficial—a mere popular label, meaning Rome’s first citizen—and government documents such as inscriptions or coins do not apply it to Augustus. But because of it the system of government he devised is called the principate. The Roman Senate and the urban magistracies
Augustus regarded the Senate, whose leading member (princeps senatus) he had become in 28, as a body with important functions; it heard fewer overseas embassies than formerly, but otherwise its dignity and authority seemed unimpaired; its members filled the highest offices; its decrees, although not formally called laws, were just as binding; it soon became a high court, whose verdicts were unappealable; it supervised the older provinces and nominally the state finances as well, and it also in effect elected the urban magistrates; formally, even the emperor’s powers derived from the Senate. Nevertheless, it lacked real power. Its provinces contained few troops (and by ad 40 it had ceased to control even these few). Hence, it could hardly dispute Augustus’ wishes. In fact, real power rested with Augustus, who superintended state finances and above all controlled membership in the Senate; every senator’s career depended on his goodwill. But he valued the Senate as the repository of the true Roman spirit and traditions and as the body representing public opinion. He was considerate toward it, shrewdly anticipated its reactions, and generally avoided contention with it. He regularly kept it informed about his activities; and an imperial council (Consilium Principis), which he consulted on matters of policy, in the manner of a republican magistrate seeking the opinion of his advisory committee, consisted of the consuls, certain other magistrates, and 15 senators—not handpicked by him but chosen by lot every six months.