Augustus

Although the Roman public would have preferred a thoroughgoing military victory, this was a great diplomatic achievement, of which Augustus was extremely proud. Relations between the two empires moved from glacial to cautiously warm, where they remained for some time. In the official account of his life, the princeps allowed himself some exaggeration: “I compelled the Parthians to restore the spoils and the standards of three Roman legions to me and to ask as suppliants the friendship of the Roman People.”

Disturbing news arrived from Rome. In the absence of both the princeps and Agrippa, the public mood had grown feverish. The people left one of the consulships for 19 B.C. unfilled and agitated for Augustus, once again, to assume the vacant post.

A certain Egnatius Rufus, who, according to an unfriendly critic, was “better qualified to be a gladiator than a Senator,” volunteered to fill the gap himself. In 21, when he was serving as aedile, he had made himself very popular by creating Rome’s first fire service (paying out of his own pocket for a troop of some six hundred slaves) and had been elected praetor in the following year. Strictly speaking this was illegal, for the rules called for an interval of some years between successive elective posts in the honors race.

Egnatius’ candidature for the consulship was blocked, but this was not the end of the story, for he was soon arrested, tried, condemned, and executed for plotting to assassinate Augustus. Whether there was any truth in this is unknown, but it would not be surprising if the authorities decided to eliminate a great nuisance by inventing a capital charge. Augustus put an end to further agitation and speculation by nominating a second consul for the year.

The princeps had devoted much of the previous decade to the provinces. On his return to Rome in 19 B.C., he turned his mind to domestic affairs. In the first place, the constitutional settlement needed some further adjustment. He had to find some means of calming public opinion, which remained hostile to the Senate. Also, there were a couple of aspects of a consul’s imperium that neither Augustus’ tribunicia potestas nor his imperium proconsulare covered.

First, he held no imperium specific to Italy, and consequently had no authority to command troops on Italian soil. This was awkward, because after Julius Caesar’s death both Antony and the then Octavian formed large bodyguards, the cohortes praetoriae that we know as Praetorian Guards. After Actium, Octavian retained his cohorts to act as a peacetime security force and stationed them in and around Rome. There were nine cohorts in all, amounting to a maximum of 5,400 men. It was time that the control of these soldiers was placed on a proper footing.

Second, Augustus did not have first place—at least, not officially—in the conduct of senatorial business. A consul had the right to be the first to propose legislation or to speak on a given topic, so the princeps was obliged to wait his turn. This was inconvenient, and might also be embarrassing, if senators did not receive a cue about Augustus’ wishes at the beginning of a debate.

So in 19 B.C. some form of consular imperium was conferred on the princeps although he did not actually have to hold consular office (following the same principle as with tribunicia potestas). The ancient sources disagree on, and are unclear about, the precise nature of this authority or the term for which it was awarded. It may be that Augustus’ proconsular imperium, granted for ten-year periods and renewed, was simply extended to include Rome and Italy. A certain vagueness at the time may have suited all sides. Whatever form it was couched in, though, this new power completed Augustus’ political mastery of the state.

It is possible to guess at the shape of an unstated concordat from what actually happened in the coming years. A generation of nobiles had been drastically thinned out during the civil wars by death in battle or by proscription, but now their children had grown up; if, as they were told, the Republic had been restored, they expected to have the same access to the consulship (and other senior posts) that their fathers had had. It was, they knew, their birthright. For the next five years or so, the consular lists are crowded with old republican names—Cornelius Lentulus, Licinius Crassus, Calpurnius Piso, Livius Drusus.