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Rh transformed out of all likeness to its former self by the raising of its numbers to 900, and by the admission of old soldiers, sons of freedmen and even “semi-barbarous Gauls.” But, though Caesar's high-handed conduct in this respect was not imitated by his immediate successors, yet the main lines of their policy were laid down by him. These were—(1) the municipalization of the old republican constitution, and (2) its subordination to the paramount authority of the master of the legions and the provinces. In the first case he only carried further a change already in progress. Of late years the senate had been rapidly losing its hold over the Empire at large. Even the ordinary proconsuls were virtually independent potentates, ruling their provinces as they chose, and disposing absolutely of legions which recognized no authority but theirs. The

consuls and praetors of each year had since 81 been stationed in Rome, and immersed in purely municipal business; and, lastly, since the enfranchisement of Italy, the comitia, though still recognized as the ultimate source of all authority, had become little more than assemblies of the city populace, and their claim to represent the true Roman people was indignantly questioned, even by republicans like Cicero. The concentration in Caesar's hands of all authority outside Rome completely and finally severed all real connexion between the old institutions of the Republic of Rome and the government of the Roman Empire. But the institutions of the Republic not merely became, what they had originally been, the local institutions of the city of Rome; they were also subordinated even within these narrow limits to the paramount authority of the man who held in his hands the army and the provinces. Autocratic abroad, at home he was the chief magistrate of the commonwealth; and this position was marked, in his case as in that of those who followed him, by a combination in his person of various powers, and by a general right of precedence which left no limits to his authority but such as he chose to impose upon himself. During the greater

part of his reign he was consul as well as dictator. In 48, after his victory at Pharsalia, he was given the tribunicia potestas for life, and after his second success at Thapsus the praefectura morum for three years. As chief magistrate he convenes and presides in the senate, nominates candidates, conducts elections, carries laws in the assembly and administers justice in court. Finally, as a reminder that the chief magistrate of Rome was also the autocratic ruler of the Empire, he wore even in Rome the laurel wreath and triumphal dress, and carried the sceptre of the victorious imperator.

Nor are we without some clue as to the policy which Caesar had sketched out for himself in the administration of the Empire, the government of which he had centralized in his own hands. The much-needed work of rectifying the frontiers he was forced, by his premature death, to leave to other hands, but within the frontiers he anticipated Augustus in lightening the financial burdens of the provincials, and in establishing a stricter control over the provincial governors, while he went beyond him in his desire to consolidate the Empire by extending the Roman franchise and admitting provincials to a share in the government. He completed the Romanization of Italy by his enfranchisement of the Transpadane Gauls, and by establishing throughout the peninsula a uniform system of municipal government, which under his successors was gradually extended to the provinces.

On the eve of his departure for the East, to avenge the

death of Crassus and humble the power of Parthia, Caesar fell a victim to the wounded pride of the republican nobles; and between the day of his death (March 15, 44) and that on which Octavian defeated Antony at Actium (September 2, 31) lies a dreary period of anarchy and bloodshed.

For a moment, in spite of the menacing attitude of Caesar's self-constituted representative Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), it seemed to one man at least as if the restoration of republican government was possible. With indefatigable energy Cicero strove to enlist the senate, the people, and above all the provincial governors in support of the old constitution. But, though his eloquence now and again carried all before it in senate-house and forum, it was powerless to alter the course

of events. By the beginning of 43 civil war had recommenced; in the autumn Antony was already threatening an invasion of Italy at the head of seventeen legions. Towards the end of October Antony and his ally M. Aemilius Lepidus coalesced with the young Octavian, who had been recently elected consul at the age of twenty, in spite of senatorial opposition; and the coalition was legalized by the creation of the extraordinary commission for the “reorganization of the commonwealth” known as the “Second Triumvirate.” It was appointed for a period of five years, and was continued in 37 for five years more. The rule of the triumvirs was inaugurated in the Sullan fashion by a proscription, foremost among the victims of which was Cicero himself. In the next year the defeat of M. Junius Brutus and C. Cassius Longinus at Philippi, by the combined forces of Octavian and Antony, destroyed the last hopes of the republican party. In 40 a threatened rupture between the two victors was avoided by the treaty concluded at Brundusium. Antony married Octavian's sister Octavia, and took command of the eastern half of the empire; Octavian appropriated Italy and the West; while Lepidus was forced to content himself with Africa. For the next twelve years, while Antony was indulging in dreams of founding for himself and Cleopatra an empire in the East, and shocking Roman feeling by his wild excesses and his affectation of oriental magnificence, Octavian was patiently consolidating his power. Lepidus his fellow-triumvir was in

36 ejected from Africa and banished to Circeii, while Sextus Pompeius, who had since his defeat at Munda maintained a semi-piratical ascendancy in the western Mediterranean, was decisively defeated in the same year, and his death in 35 left Octavian sole master of the West. The inevitable trial of strength between himself and Antony was not long delayed. In 32 Antony openly challenged the hostility of Octavian by divorcing Octavia in favour of the beautiful and daring Egyptian princess, with whom, as the heiress of the Ptolemies, he aspired to share the empire of the Eastern world. By a decree of the senate Antony was declared deposed from his command, and war was declared against

Queen Cleopatra. On the 2nd of September 31 was fought the battle of Actium. Octavian's victory was complete. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide (30), and the Eastern provinces submitted in 29. Octavian returned to Rome to celebrate his triumph and mark the end of the long-continued anarchy