The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Distribution of legions, a.d. 23 394

The geography of Gaul according to Strabo 467

Autun: town-plan 494 10 Sketch map of Rome 786

TABLES

New senatorial posts within Rome and Italy page 338

Provinces and governors at the end of the Julio-Claudian period 369

The legions of the early Empire 388

STEMMATA

I Descendants of Augustus and Livia page 990

II Desendants of Augustus' sister Octavia and Mark Antony 991

The family of Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi 992

Eastern clients of Antonia, Caligula and Claudius 993 V Principal members of the Herodian family 994

Map i. The Roman world in the time of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian emperors,

PREFACE

The period covered in this volume begins a year and a half after the death of Iulius Caesar and closes at the end of a.d. 69, more than a year after the death of Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors. His successors, Galba, Otho and Vitellius had ruled briefly and disappeared from the scene, leaving Vespasian as the sole claimant to the throne of empire. This was a period which witnessed the most profound transformation in the political configuration of the res publico. In the decade after Caesar's death constitutional power was held by Caesar's heir Octavian, Antony and Lepidus as tresviri ret publicae constituendae. Our narrative takes as its starting-point 27 November 43 b.c., the day on which the Lex Titia legalized the triumviral arrangement, a few days before the death of Cicero, which was taken as a terminal point by the editors of the new edition of Volume ix. By 27 в.с, five years after the expiry of the triumviral powers, Octavian had emerged as princeps and Augustus, and in the course of the next forty years he gradually fashioned what was, in all essentials, a monarchical and dynastic rule which, although passed from one dynasty to another, was to undergo no radical change until the end of the third century of our era.

If Augustus was the guiding genius behind the political transforma­tion of the res publico, his influence was hardly less important in the extension of Roman dominion in the Mediterranean lands, the Near East and north-west Europe. At no time did Rome acquire more provincial territory or more influence abroad than in the reign of the first princeps. Accretion under his successors was steady but much slower. Conquest apart, the period as a whole is one in which the prosperity resulting from the pax romana, whose foundations were laid under the Republic, can be properly documented throughout the empire.

It is probably true that there is no period in Roman history on which the views of modern scholars have been more radically transformed in the last six decades. It is therefore appropriate to indicate briefly in what respects this volume differs most significantly, in approach and cover­age, from its predecessor and to justify the scheme which has been adopted, particularly in view of the fact that the new editions of the three

xix

volumes covering the period between the death of Caesar and the death of Constantine have to some extent been planned as a unity.

As far as the general scheme is concerned, we have considered it essential to have as a foundation a political narrative history of the period, especially to emphasize what was contingent and unpredictable (chs. i—6). The following chapters are more analytical and take a longer view of government and institutions (chs. 7—12), regions (chs. 13-14), social and cultural developments (chs. 15—21), although we have tried on the whole to avoid the use of an excessively broad brush. Interesting and invaluable though it was in its day, we have not been able to contemp­late, for example, a counterpart to F. Oertel's chapter (1st edn ch. 13) on the 'Economic unification of the Mediterranean region'. We are con­scious, however, that in the absence of such chapters something of value has been lost and we urge readers not to regard the first edition as a volume of merely antiquarian interest; the chapters of Syme on the northern frontiers (12) and Nock on religious developments (14), to name but two, still have much to offer to the historian.

The profound influence of Sir Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution, published five years after the first edition of САН Volume x, is very evident in the following pages, as is that of his other, prosopographical and social studies which have done so much to re-write the history of the Roman aristocracy in the first century of the Empire. No one will now doubt that the historian of the Roman state in this period has to take as much account of the importance of family connexions, of patronage, of status and property relations as of constitutional or institutional history; and to see how these relations worked through the institutions of the res publico, the ordines, the army, the governmental offices and provincial society.