The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Caesar[177] now had, at just under thirty years of age, all the power there was, but not yet - if ever - was there a 'happy ever after', for there was no necessary acquiescence. The presuppositions of republican political life did not disappear overnight, and though many had gone and many survivors leapt on to the winning bandwagon, opposition did not instantly die away. That fact has received much emphasis in recent scholarship, to the point of finding in 'opposition' the key to most of what happened down to 17 B.C.,[178] but it is best not to exaggerate: such opposition had no sufficient base of power to force Caesar to take or refrain from any action. It is, perhaps, a matter of the right language to use, for there were certainly considerations that he had to face. Victory cast into his lap, along with it, all current problems and all future policies. He held power as long as he satisfied the various elements in the body politic - the armies, mostly wanting demobilization on good terms,¹⁹ his supporters who had made victory a reality, the plebs of Rome, too large, politicized and volatile to ignore,²⁰ and the surviving governing class, without whom an empire could not be maintained. And there were pre-existing structures to which, for the very sake of power, he must relate himself, and which could not be wished away, such as career expectations and clientelae.

A career reward for an important supporter may be the banal explanation of the first momentous decision taken after Cleopatra's death, with which our tale begins. Egypt was a new responsibility. The question was, how that land should be governed; the answer, that it should be a province of the Roman empire, but with an eques, not a senator, as its governor. The choice may, at the time, have been obvious: simply, the member of the victorious junta who had successfully handled the Egyptian campaign and who deserved a major reward. That Gaius Cornelius Gallus²¹ was only an eques was perhaps of secondary or no consideration. Like Dio and Tacitus,²² with hindsight we seek a principle for the consigning of Egypt, ever after, to an eques: the crucial importance of its corn for Rome and the need to deny its resources to opponents. But Gallus was the man on the spot, and Upper Egypt, the old traditional part of the Double Kingdom, recalcitrant to the Ptole­mies and wooed by Cleopatra, had to be integrated militarily with the rest. Meanwhile, the royal treasure-house was seized, which meant the end of shortage of funds and enabled promised payments to be made for the land bought for discharged veterans.

At Rome, tight control was exercised on behalf of his absent chief by another member of the triumphant junta, also an eques, Gaius Maecenas. He scotched an alleged plot by Lepidus, the son of the deposed triumvir, to assassinate Caesar — an unconvincing story indeed, given that Caesar was across the seas. Anyone looking for what was usurpatory and unconstitutional about the new rulers who had vaulted into power need look no further, for there is no sign that Maecenas had any formal authority at all, and there were perfectly valid consuls in office: 'non mos, non ius', yet.²³ And though certain new constitutional powers were voted to the absent Caesar, the 'Vote of Athena' or power of pardon,²⁴ the auxilii latio or power, like a tribune , to come to the aid of citizens in the city of Rome,²⁵ and the power to 'judge when called upon'²⁶ (which scholars seize upon in the search for a constitutional basis for the emperor as judge), they are best seen either as marks of honour, simply — for 30 B.C., with Caesar away from Rome, was hardly a time for constitution-making — or else as giving him some judicial standing in the East, in relation to former partisans of Antony, or of himself.²⁷ (Cf. ch. i. Endnote 2.)

²¹ Boucher 1966 (c 37). ²² Dio li.17.1; Tac. Ann. 11.59.3. ²³ Tac. Ann. 111.28.1.

Jones i960 (a 47) 95.

Dio li. 19.6 says all powers of a tribune, for life. That may have been offered; Caesar accepted (only)'most'of what was offered, li. 20.4. ²⁶ екнХт/тбу Stxa^etv.

²⁷ His partisans in the cities may have been calling for support.

jo—17 в.с.