The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Dio xlix. 15.5—6 clearly implies that Octavian was granted this in 36: 'they [the people] voted him... protection from insult in word or deed (то ^ijre еруш р-утс Xoyw Ti v^pt^eadai): anyone who committed such an outrage was to fall liable to the same penalties as in the case of a tribune'. (On the terminology cf. Bauman 1981 (c. 20)). He also received the right to sit on the tribunician bench, ibid.-, the following year sacrosanctity was extended to Octavia and Livia, Dio xlix. 38.1. But App. BCiv. v. 13 2.548 says that in 36 'they' elected Octavian 8-qp.apxos is act, i.e. presumably gave him tribunicia potestas, 'encouraging him, it seems, to replace his previous apxy) [the triumvirate] with this permanent one': Oros. vi. 18.34 also attests a grant of full tribunicia potestas in 36. At li. 19.6 Dio says that Octavian was voted tribunicia potestas in 30; then, oddly enough, at liii. 3 2.5-6 he records a similar vote in 2 3. In fact Augustus certainly counted his trib. pot. from 23 (RG 4.4), and the easiest resolution of the evidential tangle seems to be to assume that Dio xlix. i 5.5—6 is right about sacrosanctity. The misinterpretation of Appian and Orosius is then unsurprising. Dio liii. 32.5 will then correctly record the final vote to confer trib.pot. in 23, and liii.32.6 makes it clear that the honour was then accepted. AtLi.19.6Dio specifies only an offer of trib.pot. in 30; at li. 20.4 he says that Octavian accepted 'all but a few' of the honours voted on that occasion - admittedly surprising phraseology, if the trib. pot. was among those he rejected, but perhaps not impossible (Dio elsewhere tends to present catalogues of honours voted as if they were generally accepted). So Last 1951 (c 15 3)-

Some prefer to assume that Octavian provisionally accepted trib. pot. in 36, but only on condition that both he and Antony laid down the triumvirate; on this view the proposal lapsed when Antony refused, but Octavian managed to preserve sacrosanctity from the original offer: cf. e.g. Schmitthenner 1958 (c 304) 191 n.2, Palmer 1978 (c 184) 322—3. That is possible. Some, e.g. von Premerstein 1937 (a 74) 260-6, suggest that Octavian accepted full trib. pot. in 36, then renounced it at some time (probably early 27) before re-accepting it in 23; but in that case it is odd that this first trib. pot. is never mentioned in

constitutional questions 69

contemporary documents, nor its renunciation in the literary sources. Others, e.g. Kromayer 1888 (c 141) 40, Grant 1946 (в 522)446—5 3, Jones i960 (a 47) 10, 94-5, Reinhold 1988 (в 150) 229-30, prefer to assume that Octavian was allowed the tribunician ius auxilii in 3 o: this rests on Dio li . 19.6, where Dio connects the iusauxilii with the conferring of trib.pot., a notice which that view anyway has to reject or explain in the way outlined above; and it was anyway 'not a Roman habit of thought to decompose the potestas itself' in this manner (Last 1951 (c 153) 101).

CHAPTER 2

POLITICAL HISTORY, 30 B.C. TO A.D. 14

j. a. crook

i. introduction

With the victory of Iulius Caesar's heir there began - though it is apparent only to historical hindsight - both a distinct phase in the history of Europe, the 'Augustan Age', and a distinct epoch in the standard divisions of world history, the 'Roman Empire'. That fact has always constituted a problem for historians, from the earliest writers about Augustus until now, in that Augustus was both an end and a beginning. The temptation is for chronological narrative to be given up - for time, as it were, to stop - at the beginning of the Principate (whether that be put in 27 or 23 or 19 b.c. or in some other year), giving way to thematic accounts of 'institutions' of the Roman Empire as initiated by its 'founder'. Augustus did, indeed, 'found' the Roman Empire; but the danger of succumbing to the thematic temptation is that it makes the institutions he initiated look too much the product of deliberation and the drawing-board, whereas they need to be seen as arising, incomplete and tentative, out of the vicissitudes of a continuing political storv. That story will be told in the present chapter.¹