Glorification of the reigning house, together with a document such as Vespasian’s Lex de Imperio, helped to advertise the emperor’s position; and under the Flavians and Antonines the principate became much more like an avowed monarchy. Proconsular imperium began to be reflected in the imperial titulary, and official documents started calling the emperor dominus noster (“our master”).
The development of imperial law-making clearly illustrates the change. From the beginnings of the principate, the emperor had had the power to legislate, although no law is known that formally recognized his right to do so; by Antonine times, legal textbooks stated unequivocally that whatever the emperor ordered was legally binding. The early emperors usually made the Senate their mouthpiece and issued their laws in the form of senatorial decrees; by the 2nd century the emperor was openly replacing whatever other sources of written law had hitherto been permitted to function. After 100 the Assembly never met formally to pass a law, and the Senate often no longer bothered to couch its decrees in legal language, being content to repeat verbatim the speech with which the ruler had advocated the measure in question. After Hadrian, magistrates ceased modifying existing law by their legal interpretations because the praetors’ edictum perpetuum had become a permanent code, which the emperor alone could alter. By 200, learned jurists had lost the right they had enjoyed since the time of Augustus of giving authoritative rulings on disputed points (responsa prudentium). Meanwhile, the emperor more and more was legislating directly by means of edicts, judgments, mandates, and rescripts—collectively known as constitutiones principum. He usually issued such constitutiones only after consulting the “friends” (amici Caesaris) who composed his imperial council. But a constitutio was nevertheless a fiat. The road to the later dominate (after 284) lay open. Political life
Nevertheless, the autocratic aspect of the Flavian and Antonine regimes should not be overstressed. Augustus himself had been well aware that it was impossible to disguise permanently the supremacy that accumulation of powers gained piecemeal conferred; his deportment in his last years differed little from that of Vespasian, Titus, and the so-called five good emperors who followed them. Nor had other Julio-Claudians hesitated to parade their predominance—Claudius, by centralizing the imperial powers, reduced their apparent diversity to one all-embracing imperium; Gaius and Nero revealed the autocracy implicit in the principate with frank brutality.
What impresses perhaps as much as the undoubtedly autocratic behaviour of the Flavians and Antonines is the markedly civilian character of their reigns. They held supreme power, and some of them were distinguished soldiers; yet they were not military despots. For this the old republican tradition—whereby a state official might serve in both a civilian and a military capacity—was largely responsible. Matters, however, were open to change after Hadrian separated the two realms of service. Actually, the 3rd century soon showed what it meant to have a princeps whose whole experience had been confined to camps and barracks.
As imperial powers became more concentrated, republican institutions decayed; the importance of imperial officials grew, while the authority of urban magistrates declined. Quaestorship, praetorship, and consulship (the last-named now reduced to a two-month sinecure) became mere stepping stones to the great imperial posts that counted most in the life of the empire. Governors of imperial provinces and commanders of legions were Roman senators; but they were equally imperial appointees. Clearly, the emperor was the master of the Senate; and it was disingenuous for him to get impatient, as some emperors did, with the Senate’s lack of initiative and reluctance to take firm decisions of its own. The emperor might not even consult the Senate much, preferring to rely on his imperial council, in which equestrian bureau chiefs over the course of the 2nd century came to constitute an established element.
The Senate, however, at least until the reign of Commodus, was treated courteously by most Flavians and Antonines. They recognized its importance as a lawcourt, as the body that formally appointed a new emperor, and as a sounding board of informed opinion. Senators came increasingly from the provinces, and, although this meant preeminently the western provinces (the Greek-speaking East being underrepresented), the Senate did reflect to some extent the views of the empire at large.
The equites, meanwhile, steadily acquired greater importance as imperial officials. In newly created posts they invariably became the incumbents, and in posts of long standing they replaced freedmen and publicani. During the 2nd century equestrian procurators increased markedly in numbers as the direction of imperial business came to be more tidily subdivided. Four grades of service distinguished by salary were established. While the government assumed a more rational flow and outline, its total number of employees nevertheless remained quite tiny, compared with that of the 4th and later centuries. Rome and Italy
By the 2nd century the city of Rome had attracted freeborn migrants from all over the empire; it housed, additionally, large numbers of manumitted slaves. These newcomers were all assimilated and diluted the city’s Italian flavour. The vast majority of them were poor, the handful of opulent imperial freedmen being entirely exceptional. But many were energetic, enterprising, and lucky, able to make their way in the world. Freedmen laboured under a social stigma, although some of them managed to become equites. Their sons, however, might overcome discrimination, and their grandsons were even eligible for membership in the Senate.
Inevitably, there was extensive trade and commerce (much of it in freedman hands) in so large a city, which was also the centre of imperial administration. There was little industry, however, and the urban poor had difficulty finding steady employment. Theirs was a precarious existence, dependent on the public grain dole and on the private charity of the wealthy. Large building programs gave Flavian and Antonine emperors the opportunity not only to repair the damage caused by fire and falling buildings (as stated, a frequent hazard among the densely packed and flimsily built accommodations for the urban plebs) but also to relieve widespread urban unemployment. They also made imperial Rome a city of grandeur. Augustus’ building program had been vast but mostly concerned with repairing or rebuilding structures already existing, and his Julio-Claudian successors had built relatively little until the great fire made room for the megalomaniac marvels of Nero’s last years. It was under the Flavians and Antonines that Rome obtained many of its most celebrated structures: the Colosseum, Palatine palaces, Trajan’s Forum, the Pantheon, the Castel Sant’ Angelo (Hadrian’s mausoleum), the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, Aurelius’ Column, as well as the aqueducts whose arches spanned across Campagna to keep the city and its innumerable fountains supplied with water.