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EMPIRE: 27 - 284] by closing the temple of Janus; at the end of the next year he formally laid down the extraordinary powers which

he had held since 43, and a regular government was established.

I.:, 27 - 284—(a) The Constitution of the Princepate.—The conqueror of Antonius at Actium, the great-nephew and heir of the dictator Caesar, was now summoned, by the general consent of a world wearied out with twenty years of war and anarchy, to the task of establishing a government which should as far as possible respect the forms and traditions of the Republic, without sacrificing that centralization of authority which experience had shown to be necessary for the integrity and stability of the Empire. It was a task for which Octavian was admirably fitted. To great administrative capacity and a quiet tenacity of purpose he united deliberate caution and unfailing tact; while his bourgeois birth and genuinely Italian sympathies enabled him to win the confidence of the Roman community to an extent impossible for Caesar, with his dazzling pre-eminence of patrician descent, his daring disregard of forms and his cosmopolitan tastes.

The new system which was formally inaugurated by Octavian in 28-27 assumed the shape of a restoration of the republic

under the leadership of a princeps. Octavian voluntarily resigned the extraordinary powers which he had system, held since 43, and, to quote his own words, “handed over the republic to the control of the senate and people of Rome.” The old constitutional machinery was once more set in motion; the senate, assembly and magistrates resumed their functions; and Octavian himself was hailed as the “restorer of the commonwealth and the champion of freedom.” It was not so easy to determine what relation he himself, the actual master of the Roman world, should occupy towards this revived republic. His abdication, in any real sense of the word, would have simply thrown everything back into confusion. The interests of peace and order required that he should retain at least the substantial part of his authority; and this object was in fact accomplished, and the rule of the emperors founded, in a manner which has no parallel in history. Any revival of the kingly title was out of the question, and Octavian himself expressly refused the dictatorship. Nor was any new office created or any new official title invented for his benefit. But by senate and people he was invested according to the old constitutional forms with certain powers, as many citizens had been before him, and so took his place by the side of the lawfully appointed magistrates of the republic;—only, to mark his pre-eminent dignity, as the first of them all, the senate decreed that he should take as an additional cognomen that of “Augustus,” while in common parlance he was henceforth styled princeps, a simple title of courtesy, familiar to republican usage, and conveying no other idea than that of a

recognized primacy and precedence over his fellow-citizens. The ideal sketched by Cicero in his De Republica, of a constitutional president of a free republic, was apparently realized; but it was only in appearance. For in fact the special prerogatives conferred upon Octavian gave him back in substance the autocratic authority he had resigned, and as between the restored republic and its new princeps the balance of power was overwhelmingly on the side of the latter.

Octavian had held the imperium since 43; in 33, it

is true, the powers of the triumvirate had legally expired, but he had continued to wield his authority, as he himself puts it, “by universal consent.” In 27 he received a formal grant of the imperium from the senate and people for the term of ten years, and his provincia was defined as including all the provinces in which military authority was required and legions were stationed. He was declared commander-in-chief of the Roman army, and granted the exclusive right of levying troops, of making war and peace, and of concluding treaties. As consul, moreover, he not only continued to be the chief magistrate of the state at home, but took precedence, in virtue of his majus imperium, over the governors of the “unarmed provinces,” which were still nominally under the control of the senate. Thus the so-called “restoration of the republic” was in essence the recognition by law of the personal supremacy of Octavian, or Augustus, as he must henceforth be called.

In 23 an important change was made in the formal basis of Augustus's authority. In that year he laid down the consulship

which he had held each year since 31, and could therefore only exert his imperium pro consule, like the ordinary governor of a province. He lost his authority as chief magistrate in Rome and his precedence over the governors of senatorial provinces. To remedy these defects a series of extraordinary offices were pressed upon his acceptance; but he refused them all, and caused a number of enactments to be passed which determined the character of the principate for the next three centuries. Firstly, he was exempted from the disability attaching to the tenure of the imperium by one who was not an actual magistrate, and permitted to retain and exercise it in Rome. Secondly, his imperium was declared to be equal with that of the consuls, and therefore superior to that of all other holders of that power. Thirdly, he was granted equal rights with the consuls of convening the senate and introducing business, of nominating candidates at elections, and of issuing edicts. Lastly, he was placed on a level with the consuls in outward rank. Twelve lictors were assigned to him and an official seat between those of the consuls themselves (Dio liv. 10).

Thus the proconsular authority was for the first time admitted within the walls of Rome; but Augustus was too

cautious a statesman to proclaim openly the fact that the power which he wielded in the city was the same as that exercised in camps and provinces by a Roman military commander. Hence he sought for a title which should disguise the nature of his authority, and found it in the