Before he had even entered the Senate House, Octavian had heeded the key lesson of his adoptive father’s assassination. The republic had been founded on the moment when the last of the Etruscan kings was expelled by the Roman nobility. That moment crystallized those nobles’ hatred of monarchy – their distrust of a single powerful individual who dominated the state. If you exercise supreme power explicitly, suggested the events of the Ides of March 44 BC, you paid the price with your life. If Octavian did indeed hold supreme power he knew he had to disguise it. So at the meeting of the Senate, Octavian renounced all his powers and territories and handed them over to the control of the senators and the Roman people. This extraordinary gesture, however, was highly stage-managed. Just as he had acted his part, so the senators followed suit. In response, they granted Octavian the right to stand for the consulship, and also allowed a fellow consul to put forward his candidacy alongside him. On the surface at least, power had returned to the discretion of the Senate, annual elections and the assemblies of the Roman people. The republic had, it seemed, been restored.
Challenging that appearance, however were the facts of power. Just as in the last decades of the republic, an office holder’s power resided in his authority to command armies and the province in which he could exercise that authority. At the same January meeting, the Senate crucially granted Octavian an ‘extended’ province: Gaul, Syria, Egypt and Cyprus were all under his authority, and were to be commanded by him for no less than ten years. Not by coincidence, these territories bordered the frontiers of the empire and thus contained the vast majority of Roman army legions. Yes, it was true that senators elected to the second consulship would go on to govern provinces, but these were the peaceful ones. The militarily important provinces were controlled by Octavian and governed by his own appointed deputies. For this reason Octavian outstripped all his consular colleagues in the state.
Octavian’s bold balancing act was not easy to maintain. In 23 BC, for example, his holding of the consulship year after year began to smack of supreme power. Although the evidence is murky, a genuine crisis now swiftly gathered momentum, and some senators planned to kill the new ‘king’. Octavian was quick to respond. He neutralized the threat by renegotiating his position and simply changing the legal form of words that gave him control of the armies. In winning this bout with the senatorial élite one critical factor weighed in his favour: his unrivalled popularity with the Roman people. He was, after all, the man who had brought stability to a world of chaos. However he knew that the people were fickle and that he could not rely on the vagaries of public opinion for ever. So he turned his attention to cementing his stature in the people’s eyes too.
Octavian once again took inspiration from the forms of republican office and made a surprising demand of the Senate. He wanted, he said, the power accorded to a tribune of the people. In relation to the powers which gave him control of the army, this was a relatively modest office to wish for. Certainly it gave him the authority to propose and veto bills before the assembly of the people. That, however, was not the chief attraction of the post. Octavian had spotted its true potential. Drawing on the emotional resonance of its origin in the Roman republic, he would amplify the power of this lowly republican office and elevate it to a whole new status. With it he would become not just any old tribune of the people, but the iconic defender, protector and champion of the interests of all Roman citizens, not just in Rome and Italy, but across the length and breadth of the empire.
Was the creation of such a position the act of a man extemporizing, seeking new ways to ensure that stable, constitutional government was restored? Or was it more sinister? Certainly taking the office of tribune of the people suggested a strategy shared by dictators throughout history: Octavian had stealthily jumped over the heads of the political élite and aligned himself directly with the hearts and minds of the people. Once again, the guise of the old republican office was the key to Octavian’s successful adoption of the post. The senatorial heads watched his great leap and consented, if grudgingly and with hatred, all the way.
AUTOCRACY
By 19 BC Octavian had secured the one thing that his adoptive father Julius Caesar had failed to achieve: both unrivalled power and political legitimacy. This unprecedented and deftly created status was summarized with the granting of a solemn, resonant title. Although a change of name might seem superficial, in Octavian’s Rome, as in modern politics, the power of a new brand cannot be underestimated.
Octavian first toyed with the idea of calling himself ‘Romulus’. It neatly cast him as the new founder of Rome. In this name was both ancient tradition but also the idea of a new age. After some consideration, however, Octavian rejected it. The connotations of a man who killed his brother to found a state left an unpleasant taste. Instead, Octavian simply made up a name. ‘Augustus’ literally means ‘sacred’ or ‘revered’ but stopped short of explicitly calling him a god. That would contradict his theme of being a citizen-leader, of being ‘first among equals’ in the republic. In the name, however, was the unmistakable hint of a relationship with the gods. It is derived from the Latin word for reading divine signs – augury. It suggested that Octavian was somehow religious, holy and deserving of special, unique respect. The name change was symptomatic of the revolution. It was unobtrusive, but potent. As Augustus’s reign continued, as his grip on power became firmer, the rattle sounding the death of political freedom became louder and louder.
It echoed, for example, at meetings of the Senate. Under the republic there was a specific order in which speakers stood up and debated the items of business at hand. Augustus maintained this routine so that everyone appeared to have a voice. Their opinions, it seemed, mattered. To some this must have been a relief. After decades of factional strife and the likes of Julius Caesar and Pompey slugging it out, life for junior senators was imaginably rosier. Ultimately, however the role-playing became tedious. The majority of the senators realized that their opinion counted for little in comparison to the wish of Augustus. To inject into senatorial discussions the show of toothsome debate, Augustus innovated: instead of hearing their opinions in a set order, he asked senators to speak on issues randomly. This made it difficult for them to agree resignedly with what the last speaker had said. He also resorted to imposing fines for non-attendance and to limiting compulsory meetings to twice a month.6
Despite these efforts, the old systems of the republic lost their vigour and gave way to autocracy. Indeed, Augustus grew to rely less and less on the Senate for formulating policy. Quite early in his rule, he formulated an advisory body of consuls and senators chosen by lot. They met in his imperial palace and not in the Senate House. As this body grew in importance, so too did the suspicion of those who were left out of it. Under future emperors, similar councils would become the target of a stock accusation: the empire was run not in tandem with the Senate, but by the emperor’s cronies, friends and freedmen. Indeed even by the end of Augustus’s life, critical information was kept from the Senate. In his will Augustus left a note about where information could be found relating to the state of the empire, to the numbers and location of Roman soldiers and to the state’s financial accounts. ‘He added the names of his freedmen and slaves from whom details could be obtained.’7 Most senators, it seemed, clearly did not know about the fundamental workings of the empire. This top-level information was now out of their hands. Such instances hint at how the substance of the republic ebbed away. Appearances, though, were scrupulously kept up.