The relationship between emperor and Senate is a major concern of other senatorial writers beside Tacitus. The language in which they tend to express that concern is that of a contrast between 'tyranny' and 'freedom' (libertas), concepts inherited from the late Republic. But this republican vocabulary should not mislead us into treating the history of the Julio-Claudian period as similar to that of the Republic — as a chronicle of the magistracies and honours achieved by politicians as the result of competition with one another. There was competition, but it was for the emperor's favour. It was the emperor who took the decisions.
Cassius Dio on secret politics: liii.19. The consilium-, ch. 7 below. Claudian, IV Cons. Hon., 8.511-15.
Furneaux's edition of Tacitus' Annals remains the most accessible; for commentaries, see Koestermann 1963-8 (в 98); Goodyear 1972 and 1981 (в 62). On Tacitus, Syme 195 8 (в 176) remains basic; among others, see Christ 1978 (в 28).
In recent years historians have stressed that imperial 'policy' was often purely passive, that the decisions taken by emperors were often made in response to the actions of others. The emperor's most important activity was the exercise of gratia; as the most powerful of patrons, he was expected to distribute favours to senators and the plebs, to Romans and provincials who came and asked for them. The story of how imperial responses to such initiatives changed the nature of Mediterranean culture and society is traced in other chapters of this volume. We should be sceptical about earlier views of the emperors as great visionaries who sought to impose upon their officials policies of administrative centralization, the systematic spreading of Roman culture, the systematization of Roman law, justice for provincials (let alone slaves), and even, as was once believed, a positive attitude towards agriculture, trade and industry. Nor should we put too much emphasis on the emperor's need to be a successful showman, like the leader of a modem mass democracy; an emperor certainly had to advertise his popularity, but that popularity itself was based on the care he took for his people as patron of rich and poor alike, pater patriae. But not all imperial policies were passive responses to the demands of others. Every emperor needed to have a minimal policy - to stay in command of the political process; to maximize his own prestige; and to maintain in his own hands the choice of whom to hand his power on to after his death. These aims had applied to Augustus as much as they applied to his Julio-Claudian successors.[408]
The events which followed the death of Augustus at Nola in Campania on 19 August a.d. 14 became a paradigm for the smooth transfer of power from an emperor to his successor; few future emperors found themselves in total control with as little difficulty as Tiberius did. Nevertheless the moment at which monarchical power is transferred from one man to his successor is a critical point at which the different elements that constitute a political system can be seen most clearly. Although Tacitus' record of these events at the opening of the Annals betrays his concern about the accessions of much later emperors (Trajan in 97 and Hadrian in 117), it reveals the control that a new emperor had to exercise over, first and foremost, the imperial household, the domus Caesarir, and then over the soldiers of the praetorian guard, magistrates, the Senate and people of Rome, and the Roman armies in the provinces.
Although the domus Caesaris was in law just another Roman household, it gave its head (Lat. paterfamilias) access to material resources, services (via procurators managing estates throughout the empire) and informal social control on a scale with which no other household could compete. The emperor's domus contained not just those of his descendants who were under his legal control {in potestate), a definition much narrower than that of the word 'family' in English, but also their chattels and estates, including slaves (Lat. Jamilia), and dependants: freedmen, provincial magnates (including 'client kings'), and also those Roman amici who regarded themselves as owing their personal or political lives to the present Caesar or his predecessors. In this sense, every ex- magistrate had to consider that he had a personal duty to ensure the well- being of the current head of the imperial household.
Tiberius was Augustus' stepson; notwithstanding his marriage to Augustus' daughter lulia, it was not his birthright to succeed Augustus as 'Caesar'. But in a.d. 4 he had been formally adopted by Augustus as his son. The grant of tribunicia potestas awarded then and renewed in a.d. 1 j together with a grant of imperium maius meant that there was no doubt as to who would rule Rome after Augustus. Some of the men who might have been Tiberius' rivals had been disgraced along with lulia in 2 B.C.; others were sent into exile in connexion with the fall of her daughter, lulia the Younger, in a.d. 8. At the moment of Augustus' death, Tiberius was the only man who could seriously be considered as his political successor.[409] But there was someone else with a legitimate claim to a share in Augustus' personal estate: his grandson Agrippa Postumus, whom Augustus had adopted at the same time as Tiberius. Although Roman law gave a paterfamilias wide rights to dispose of his property as he pleased, it was customary for sons (together with the widow and daughters who were still in potestate) to inherit equal portions of the estate. Anyone who wished to disinherit a son had to do so explicitly in his will; even if he had been explicitly disinherited, a son could still appeal against the will as 'undutiful' {querella inofficiosi testamenti). Although Postumus had been sent into exile by his adoptive father, there is no clear evidence that he had been disinherited: in terms of Roman private law, he had the same claim to be 'Caesar' as Tiberius. However weak his political influence, the existence of Agrippa Postumus as an exile on the island of Planasia threatened the smooth transfer of power; it gave Tiberius' opponents the option of making use of him.
This made it imperative for Tiberius as heir to step into the persona of Augustus immediately that he died. He had to be on the spot to be recognized as the new paterfamilias, but Augustus' final illness came suddenly. Earlier in the year, the seventy-six-year-old emperor had still been in good health; on 11 May, he had completed a census revision, with Tiberius as his colleague. Early in August Tiberius left Augustus in Campania to return to the army in Pannonia. He hastened to Nola as soon as he heard that Augustus was ill, possibly in response to a summons by the emperor himself. Tacitus reports a rumour that when Tiberius reached Nola, he found Augustus already dead, and that Livia kept the truth hidden in order to facilitate the transfer of power to her son (more suggestive of the role played by Plotina at Hadrian's accession in a.d. 117). Tiberius himself claimed that he had spoken to Augustus before he died.