constitutional questions
a further debilitating series of revolts and civil wars, once again fought out in Italy and Greece, was just as likely. And no one could see what would emerge at the end.
Enthusiasm for Octavian comes less naturally to us now than fifty years ago. 'Because he stood for something more than mere ambition he could draw a nation to him in the coming struggle'341 — one would not write that now. We admire the political shrewdness which forwarded ambition so well, but we admire it grudgingly: we have seen too many similar leaders since, and what they have meant for the world. Now the story is once again told, not as Octavian's triumph, but as the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. But, still, they could not have coped with success, and Octavian could: his mastery of Italian propaganda may not have won him the war, but it did much to win the ensuing peace. For Rome, the right man won.
ENDNOTE: CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS
i. the terminal date of the triumvirate
This is notoriously disputed. For thorough discussion of the evidence and bibliography, reaching opposite conclusions, cf. esp. Fadinger 1969 (в 42) 98— 153, Gabba 1970 (в 55) lxviii—lxxix.
The Lex Titia of 27 November 43 established the triumvirate for five years: its terminal date was 31 December 3 8 and the term was more precisely five years and a little over a month-. It was renewed for a further term, but not until the conference of Tarentum in 37 (above, p. 27). The disputed question is the terminal date fixed at the time of this renewal, whether 31 December 3 3 or 31 December 32.
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At RG 7.1 Augustus claims to have held the triumvir per continues annos decern / ovvexeoiv ereaiv 84ка (cf. Suet. Aug. 27.1): i.e. clearly, from 27 November 43 to 31 December 3 3: cf. Brunt - Moore ad loc. I agree with those who regard this as decisive. Thus the Fasti Capitolini, inscribed under Augustus, include the triumvirs before the consuls in their entry for 1 January 37 (rather than 36): the second five-year term had retrospectively been fixed as beginning then. App. III. 28. 80 shows that Appian regarded the triumvirate as due to end at the end of 3 2 rather than 3 3: 8vo yap eXeiirev ётт) rfj Sevrepq. TrevratTla -rfjabe rrjs apxys [of 1 January 33], but that seems to be his own misinterpretation: even though in III. Appian is in general drawing on Augustus' Autobiography, it would not be surprising if Augustus was delicately vague in that work about his status in 32, and it would be in Appian's manner to fill out the gap with his own explanation. BCiv. v.95.398, brei Se о XP°V°S fXrjye rrjs apxrjs ■ ■ ■ [of Tarentum], perhaps implies that Appian wrongly thought that the triumvirs still held office in 37, when in fact this had already expired (cf. Dio xlviii. 5 4.6): in that case he would naturally assume that the five-year renewal would last from 36 to the end of 32. As Antony and Octavian were due to assume the consulship on 1 January 31, it J" .Charlesworth, САН x' 65.
was tempting to infer that the triumvirate was due to expire on the previous day, and that perhaps misled Appian, But such extensions usually went in five-year terms, and at Tarentum the triumvirs' first priority was to legalize their current position retroactively and therefore to backdate the new term to i January 37.
The oddity is in fact not that they renewed their term only to December 3 3 (that is explained sufficiently by the taste for five-year terms and the need for retrospective recognidon in 37); but that at Misenum, when they completed their consular lists for the following years, they had fixed on 31 rather than 3 2 as the date for their own consulship. They might then already have anticipated that a second quinquennium would expire in 33 rather than 32. But that may well have been Antony's choice: he was in a strong position at both Brundisium and Misenum, and the Antonians Ahenobarbus and Sosius were due to be consuls in 32. Antony may well have been content to rely on them to support him and embarrass Octavian in a crucial year.
2. octavian's'tribunicial sacrosanctity'
Dio xlix. 15.5—6 clearly implies that Octavian was granted this in 36: 'they [the people] voted him... protection from insult in word or deed (то ^ijre еруш р-утс Xoyw Ti v^pt^eadai): anyone who committed such an outrage was to fall liable to the same penalties as in the case of a tribune'. (On the terminology cf. Bauman 1981 (c. 20)). He also received the right to sit on the tribunician bench, ibid.-, the following year sacrosanctity was extended to Octavia and Livia, Dio xlix. 38.1. But App. BCiv. v. 13 2.548 says that in 36 'they' elected Octavian 8-qp.apxos is act, i.e. presumably gave him tribunicia potestas, 'encouraging him, it seems, to replace his previous apxy) [the triumvirate] with this permanent one': Oros. vi. 18.34 also attests a grant of full tribunicia potestas in 36. At li. 19.6 Dio says that Octavian was voted tribunicia potestas in 30; then, oddly enough, at liii. 3 2.5-6 he records a similar vote in 2 3. In fact Augustus certainly counted his trib. pot. from 23 (RG 4.4), and the easiest resolution of the evidential tangle seems to be to assume that Dio xlix. i 5.5—6 is right about sacrosanctity. The misinterpretation of Appian and Orosius is then unsurprising. Dio liii. 32.5 will then correctly record the final vote to confer trib.pot. in 23, and liii.32.6 makes it clear that the honour was then accepted. AtLi.19.6Dio specifies only an offer of trib.pot. in 30; at li. 20.4 he says that Octavian accepted 'all but a few' of the honours voted on that occasion - admittedly surprising phraseology, if the trib. pot. was among those he rejected, but perhaps not impossible (Dio elsewhere tends to present catalogues of honours voted as if they were generally accepted). So Last 1951 (c 15 3)-
Some prefer to assume that Octavian provisionally accepted trib. pot. in 36, but only on condition that both he and Antony laid down the triumvirate; on this view the proposal lapsed when Antony refused, but Octavian managed to preserve sacrosanctity from the original offer: cf. e.g. Schmitthenner 1958 (c 304) 191 n.2, Palmer 1978 (c 184) 322—3. That is possible. Some, e.g. von Premerstein 1937 (a 74) 260-6, suggest that Octavian accepted full trib. pot. in 36, then renounced it at some time (probably early 27) before re-accepting it in 23; but in that case it is odd that this first trib. pot. is never mentioned in