The Augustan Empire 43 BC

Dio gives a list of further constitutional grants to Augustus in 19 B.C.: an 'overseership of morality' {praejectura morum would have been the Latin), a censorial authority, a grant that most scholars interpret as the consular power for life, and the right to enact any laws he might wish, presumably without submitting them to the comitia, and to call them leges Augustae.*⁰⁹ Was that the successful outcome of a Machiavellian policy of 'reculer pour mieux sauter'? Had the popular agitations given Augustus the all-embracing formal authority he coveted, under an at last accep­table formula? Though widely believed, that is probably not right; the context will suggest an alternative view. In the Res Gestae, Augustus strenuously denies receiving all-embracing formal authority: but what he did proceed to in the years that followed was a programme of legislation, particularly such as he hoped would restore traditional standards of the Roman people. The intention so to legislate must have been known in advance, through the deliberations of the senatorial sub­committee. Praefectura morum, we may guess, was a suggestion mooted for the formal authority on which Augustus should proceed, censorial power another, the right to enact leges Augustae another; all politely rejected, but somehow the offers have got into the record as accepted.¹¹⁰ The 'consular power' is a more complex, and certainly a controversial, question. Most scholars, nowadays,¹¹¹ are only too happy to believe that Augustus accepted it for life in 19 B.C., because it serves to provide formal justification for certain actions he took, for which they can see no other. There is, however, no explicit statement but Dio's and Dio,

¹⁰⁷ Dio says he celebrated an ovation, but see Abaecherli Boyce 1942 (л i).

¹⁰⁶ For the date, and the argument that the Fasti were on a 'Parthian arch', see Coarelli 198) (e 19)11. ¹⁰⁹ Dio Liv.io.j-6.

¹¹⁰ Rejection of magistracy of curator morum, RG 6.1 (Greek only); of censorial power, implicit in RG 8; only Dio mentions leges Augustae, and Augustus' reference to his laws at RG 8.5 gives no hint. Suetonius was misled: Aug. 27.5. ^1,1 Following Jones i960 (a 47) 15-15.

properly read, is saying something different: .. and the power of the consuls he took for life, to the extent of using the twelvefasces always and everywhere and sitting on a magisterial chair between the consuls at any time'.[198] In the Rw Gestae Augustus informs the reader of revisions of the Senate list carried out 'by consular power': he surely means ad hoc grants, and so implies that he did not possess it permanently. What Dio is telling us about is not a power but an honour; for some 'social' rule was bound to be invented, now that Augustus no longer held, every year, one of the two highest offices of the state, about where, on formal occasions, he should be placed in relation to those two officers and what insignia he should have: we remember how the idea of three consuls did not appeal and was dropped.

In fact, those who like to see the first third of Augustus' reign punctuated by 'constitutional settlements' might better look to 18 than to 19 в.с. (though what is to be seen in 18 gives no comfort to any belief that he had acquired some kind of 'total power' in 19.) In 18 B.C. Augustus' provincia ran out: something certainly had to be done about that, and it was, in fact, renewed for the modest term of five years. Simultaneously, Agrippa's proconsular imperium was renewed for the same five years, and in addition he received the tribunician power for five years.[199] In that development there is constitutional novelty in plenty: an original and experimental arrangement based on a collegiate conception of the rulership. Agrippa and Iulia now had a son, and another baby was due, so dynasty was once again assured. The past decade had been uncomfortable for the ruler and his regime; now, with a good measure of optimism and militarism, Rome was to resume her role of conqueror and mistress of the world.

So the years 18 and 17 were marked by a programme of social reform, public and private, including a second revision of the Senate list, and by a great festival of Rome, to proclaim regeneration and traditional values, the ludi saeculares of 17 в.с.