Tiberius had to take on Germany. He toiled for three more hard years,[238] with nothing to show for all of them that could be treated triumphally; when his ceremony of reditus finally took place,[239] and his celebration of a full triumph, it was labelled not as 'over the Germans' but as the postponed triumph 'over Illyricum'. There was to be no provincia Germania.
In the year 12 Germanicus was consul. He was emerging as the new 'limelight personality': Dio has surprisingly much about his part in the Illyrian and German campaigns, which suggests that someone must have been writing them up.[240] However, his consular year was anything but cheerful. Natural disaster played its part again: the Tiber in spate, the Circus flooded and the ludi Martiales displaced. A new, sinister, note is heard, of seditious literature burnt and authors punished. Dates are uncertain, but this year is quite likely that of the banishment of the abrasive, witty barrister Cassius Severus,217 for having 'defamed men and women of the highest status with licentious writings' — not, to judge from Tacitus' phrase, the ruler himself; but the offence was treated, for the first time, under the law of treason. One of Cassius' sarcasms related to the burning, by decision of the Senate, of the writings of a fellow- barrister, Titus Labienus, who wrote history, it seems, with a 'republicanist' flavour: he committed suicide.218 And Ovid's books had been withdrawn from the libraries. The deterioration is evident: an anxious, touchy government and a subservient Senate.
In a.d. 13 the constitutional powers of Augustus and Tiberius were renewed again for ten years, and the imperium of Tiberius was at last declared equal to that of Augustus:219 he was collega imperii. He had saved the sum of things, twice, he was fifty-six, and his duty was now quiedy to take over, with Germanicus, his adopted son, and Drusus, his original son, as the hopefuls for the succession. The senatorial sub-committee that prepared business for the full Senate, which Augustus had always used as his sounding-board, was given a revised membership and new powers, enabling it to pass resolutions equivalent to formal senatus consulta\ Tiberius, Germanicus and Drusus joined it as regular members.220 The purpose was stated to be to relieve Augustus of regular attendance at the Senate, but one can see how it could be an organ for quiet transition. Not that Augustus was 'going downhill': paradoxically, the very next thing we hear in Dio, when upper-class fretfulness over the iniquities of the death-duty became vocal again, displays the hand of the old manipulator still on the helm of policy. Augustus challenged the senators, individually, to suggest any better way of raising the necessary revenue, and then put in hand apparent preparations to institute an even stiffer scheme (a land-tax on solum Italic urn), whereupon they decided to keep the devil they knew.221
Augustus and Tiberius began a census, with a special grant of consular imperium, and completed the lustrum in the next year on 11 May. Augustus travelled as far as Beneventum with Tiberius, who was on his way to Illyricum. Velleius has it that Tiberius' journey was 'to consolidate in peace what he had conquered in war',222 which is an admission that there was not anything needing the attention of Tiberius in Illyricum; but the two collegae imperii could not sit in Rome together. As
2,7 Tic. Ann. 1.72.5 with the notes of Goodyear 1981 (в 62). 218 Sen. Contra/, x Prtuf. 4-8.
2,9 Veil. Pat. 11.121. i with the note of Woodman 198 3 (в 203); Suet. Tib. 20-21.1. There can be no certainty just when Tiberius received that grant.
220 Dio lvi.28.2-5; Crook 1955 (d 10) 14-13. Cf. EJ2 579, which may have some genuine documentary basis. 221 Dio lvi.28.4-6. 222 Veil. Pat. 11.123.1.
in Marcus Agrippa's distant day, they must operate apart; yet, evidently, it was no longer wise for Tiberius to be many days' journey away. Augustus, on his way home, spent a few days at Capri, which he had acquired from the city of Naples, in exchange for Ischia, because he and Tiberius liked it.223 He attended local games at Naples, and struggled as far as an old family property at Nola, where, on 19 August, he died.
Transmission, both constitutional and dynastic, had been taken care of. There was a collega imperii in place, and he should not have too many problems, for all that three members of the 'divine family', Augustus' nearest blood-relations, lived in exile - one, poor fellow, too dangerous to be left.224 Factual power would depend on whether the system had become sufficiently ingrained in Roman political life to survive, without seriously imaginable alternative, the rule of successors less skilful and less ruthless than Augustus; and in that respect his long reign had helped to make success somewhat more likely than not. In the course of the more than forty years since Actium a new age of European history had, in fact, managed to struggle into being, but our narrative has at least shown how far its genesis was from any kind of blueprint.
Suet. Aug. 92.2 Dio Lii.43.2.
Pani 1979 (c 185) has acute, if over-stated, analysis of the dynastic situation.
CHAPTER 3
AUGUSTUS: POWER, AUTHORITY, ACHIEVEMENT
J. A. CROOK
I. POWER
Rome's tradition of government, down to Iulius Caesar, was characterized by distributed power and multiple sources of decision. That was never to return. From 30 в.с. onwards, the whole Roman world found itself in the grasp of a single ruler, possessing all power and making all decisions, except insofar as he might choose to leave some of them to others. We are insistently bidden to penetrate behind the 'facade' to the 'reality' of Augustus' power, and some advantage is to be gained if, to begin with, we separate the power - its extent and sources and the functions it was used to accomplish — from the authority, which was the dress in which the power was clothed. But we must remember that such a separation is, in the long run, artificial, because, in the actual political life of a nation, power and its formalizations are inextricably linked, and where authority is entrenched recourse to power is unnecessary.
Tacitus, in a paragraph which, if its hostility of tone be discounted, remains the most masterly succinct statement of what Augustus did, writes thus:"... he laid aside the title of triumvir and paraded himself as consul and as content with the tribunician authority for looking after the commons. The soldiery he enticed with gifts, the people with corn, and all alike with the charms of peace and quiet; and thus he edged forward bit by bit (insurgere paulatim), taking into his hands the functions of Senate, magistrates, laws.'1 Both as to the use of power, and its spheres of application, and as to its translation into constitutional terms, insurgere paulatim describes what occurred with profound insight. What did not change or develop was the ruler's hold on actual coercive power: he possessed that, totally, from the start, and never let a particle of it slip from his hands. Power, he had; functions, he increasingly took over; formulations of that power and those functions he carefully fostered. But one aspect deserves to be stressed from the outset: initiative. All policy was decided by Augustus, as far as we know.2 In making decisions he naturally listened to representations from, and took advice from, appropriate quarters, and, for all we know, he may have put into practice