The Augustan Empire 43 BC

But, though legitimacy is important, the most direct influence on soldiers is that of their immediate commanding officers. It was those people's loyalty that Augustus needed to secure. The Republic had had no professional officer class with a distinct ideology or solidarity: commanding troops was something that every member of the governing class must do, but none could or wished to do for more than sporadic periods. Augustus, then, had no army lobby either to oppose him or to

³ Raaflaub 1980 (c 190).

be coaxed into supporting him. His formal powers gave him the right to choose his legati for his provincia, which included most of the areas of military activity, and the formally independent commands soon with­ered away; beyond that, his ability to control who commanded the armies remained simply a part of his general patronage of those who sought high office in the state. So two things were needful to enable Augustus to keep control of the army: he had to satisfy the aspirations of the political class, and to be a reliable paymaster to the troops.

That consideration leads to the second 'brute fact' about the power of Augustus, his overwhelming predominance in resources. The figures he gives in the Res Gestae suffice to show that the resources he directly had and personally controlled, from the start (once the Ptolemaic fortune passed into his hands), made it inconceivable for any alternative paymaster to arise, capable of supporting any notable army against him. The imperium that he caused to be bestowed on himself supplied the formal right to receive out of public revenue the cost of the major part of the armies; but beyond that, though he did not need to mingle the state's revenues officially with his private fortune, he took care to account for, and budget in the light of, the whole resources of the state.

A third aspect of Augustus' de facto power, and that which has received most emphasis recently, is his role as the universal patron, the sole source of benefits.[241] Already in preparation for war upon Antony and Cleopatra he had obtained from Italy and the provinces of the West an oath of personal allegiance, which was to become a standard element in the position of the ruler.[242] For a time, recently, historians urged us to see it as an oath of 'clientship' and describe Augustus as the universal patronus in as formal a sense as a former owner was patronus of his freedmen. That notion has been shown to have been too schematic,[243] and, besides, the practical importance of the oath, beyond its original context, cannot be judged. Nevertheless, patronage played a great role in the ruler's position, and its workings can be seen, already under Augustus, in various spheres. The leading families of the Republic had cultivated clientships all over the Roman world, especially in the East and in Spain and Africa; and numerous documents of the triumviral period show the 'dynasts' of the civil wars using their clients as agents in the control of cities and regions.⁷ 'So-and-so, my friend' [philos, amicus) might be the key figure in a locality. And when there was only one 'dynast' left it was his 'friends' around the world who kept cities and regions in line with his wishes, and could expect rewards such as the grant of Roman citizenship. (One category of such supporters were the 'client kings',⁸ who, even if originally Antony's men, soon submitted to the patronage of the victor of Actium.)

But how far the upper class of Rome as a whole depended for their careers, henceforward, on the patronage of the ruler is, at least for Augustus' time, dificult to determine. It cannot be ascertained how minutely he supervised entry into the militiae that formed the base of every public career. After those first steps, civil promotion depended, as before, on election. We know that Augustus was prepared to promote specific candidates openly by his own canvas and vote; and he could grant the latus clavus or see that a man did not lack the senatorial census. In so far as he created new executive posts, such as the praetorian prefectures, he nominated to them as he chose. But he did not have to control the whole promotion system in painful detail. The Roman state had never had high governmental or executive posts held for life or till retirement: there were no Chancellorships or the like. Nor did Augustus establish any such posts. The structure of public careers remained sporadic and gentlemanly in character: offices were held on short tenures, and none created any kind of fief. That was in one way an advantage to the ruler, but it precluded him, even if he had wished otherwise, from dominating areas of political life through the promotion of his amici to permanencies.