Augustus

Augustus was in despair, for there seemed to be no hope of recovery; it appeared that the new regime was about to end. This would be a tragedy not just for him but for many others in public life. He had to take what steps he could to ensure a permanent legacy.

He gathered around his bedside the officers of state and leading senators and equites. He spoke to them on matters of public policy and handed his fellow consul, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the breviarium imperii, a book that recorded the empire’s financial and military resources.

Many were expecting the princeps to bequeath his authority to Marcellus, whom he had only too evidently been grooming. But this had been a long-term plan, and the boy was too young and inexperienced to hold supreme power now. Agrippa would have had little trouble deposing him once Augustus was dead. Bowing to this reality, the dying man handed Agrippa the symbol of his authority: his signet ring bearing the head of Alexander the Great.

Much to everyone’s surprise, including his own, the princeps recovered. His doctor, Antonius Musa, turning medical orthodoxy on its head, decided to abandon the hot fomentations he had been using to no avail in favor of cold baths and cold potions. The shock treatment worked. (It has been suggested that Augustus was, in fact, suffering from typhoid fever, which could well have been the cause of the epidemic devastating Rome at the time; cold packs were a well-known treatment for the disease in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.)

The convalescent princeps showed that he was aware of the general unpopularity of his dynastic plans by bringing his will to a meeting of the Senate. He intended to read it out, as proof that he had no successor in mind, but in the event, to show their confidence in him, the senators would not permit it.

The settlement of 27 B.C. needed revision and it was time to make a fresh start. Augustus resigned as consul on July 1 and let it be known that he would no longer be a regular candidate. For him to continue holding the consulship year after year was stretching constitutional propriety very thin, for it made the post look like a permanent one, not so far from Julius Caesar’s unpopular dictatorship for life. Too, the office entailed a good deal of routine business and time-consuming ceremonial, and as long as Augustus held it he was blocking off access to one of Rome’s two top jobs every year, so irritating political aspirants.

But if he was to give up the consulship, the princeps would need some other source of imperium. With typical ingenuity, he came up with two devices. For some years he had been awarded tribunicia sacrosanctitas, or the immunity from physical attack given to a tribune of the people. Now he decided to assume tribunicia potestas in perpetuity: he would enjoy the power of a tribune without actually having to hold the post. That power was considerable. Tribunes attended Senate meetings and were entitled to present laws for approval by the people. They could also veto any officeholder’s decisions, including those of other tribunes.

Augustus recognized that tribunicia potestas, together with his enormous provincia, gave him almost all the authority he needed to govern without hindrance. He dated his “reign” from when it was awarded, on July 1, 23 B.C., and added the potestas to his long list of titles. However, a couple of gaps needed to be filled. Proconsuls, or provincial governors, lost their imperium when they crossed the pomerium—the sacred boundary of Rome—and entered the city. That would mean that when he was in the city the princeps would only have the status of a private citizen. Thanks to his prestige, or auctoritas, his wishes would usually be obeyed, but on occasion there might be some awkwardness. So the Senate voted that Augustus’ proconsular imperium should not lapse when he was inside the city walls.

The Marcus Primus affair had thrown an embarrassing light on Augustus’ relations with the governors of senatorial provinces, in whose business he had no right to meddle—in theory. To correct this problem, he was granted a general and overriding proconsular authority (imperium maius, “greater power”), the right to intervene anywhere in the empire as and when he chose. It was a right he exercised very discreetly and with the utmost caution, for by tradition a Roman governor had a free hand during his term of office.