The Augustan Empire 43 BC

In the imperial period there is a civil service, purely executive, staffed by 'slaves of Caesar' and 'freedmen of Augustus' (until its headships begin to go to equites, and then we really are in a different world). There are, especially, a number of central posts occupied by freedmen, the secretaryships of correspondence, accounts, and petitions being the principal: and for a period in the first century a.d. holders of some of those posts had powerful personal influence on the rulers. Augustus' part in initiating the system is hard to estimate because of shortage of evidence, but historians, probably rightly, tend to conclude from that shortage that the beginnings, under him, were slight and unsystematic. To his last instructions, leaving behind a military and financial handbook to the empire, he 'appended also the names of the freedmen and slaves who could be called to account',⁶⁵ which suggests a precursor of the Department of Accounts; but the floodtide of correspondence was yet to come,⁶⁶ and the regular answering of, at any rate, legal petitions a later development. Certainly, there is no sign of any such persons having political influence on Augustus. Naturally, there was also a large personnel, greater than, though not different in kind from, that of the republican prirtcipes viri, of household servants, and with the rise of a 'court' (to which we shall come) it was destined to become very large indeed. But Augustus treated his servants sternly,⁶⁷ and no sign is yet to be detected of the influence of chamberlains or the like, let alone of the ruler's inaccessibility behind layers of personnel.

Our focus has shifted from the way Augustus secured the personnel he needed to the extent of their influence upon him. The 'Party' has been

⁶¹ Brunt 1975 (e 906). ⁶² Dio liv. 21.3-8.

It is likely that the praefectus vebtculorum also goes back to Augustus, though not yet epigraphically attested so early: Suet. Aug. 49-3.

" Eck 1985 (c 82). « Suet. Aug. 101.4.

Though for a trace of a precursor of ab epistulis see Suet. Aug. 67.2, with Kienast 1982 (c 136) 262. ⁶¹ Suet. Aug. 67; 74.

adduced, and the amici principis were his obvious channel of advice; but it is practically impossible to attribute any particular action to the influence of a specific individual, except in a few cases of personal patronage. Crucially lacking, of course, are the files, letters, memoirs and diaries from which historians of the modern age extract such information. In accordance with mos maiorum, Augustus brought in persons of standing, of his choice, when public decisions had to be seen to be made; they can be observed, listed hierarchically, in the minutes of formal meetings.⁶⁸ It is also quite certain that Augustus used amici of his choice, according to their talents and the matter in hand, as his informal consilium, summoned according to need.⁶⁹ Doubtless they did exercise influence; someone must have been involved, for example, in the orchestration of the imperial symbolism (a subject to which we shall come). Doubtless, too, the senatorial probouleutic sub-committee was not always on the mere receiving end. But that is all that can be said.⁷⁰ There were eminencesgrises: Maecenas and Sallustius Crispus were sources of confidential infor­mation and privy to secret plans, and people, no doubt rightly, believed that they could get what they wanted;⁷¹ but we do not actually know what items of policy sprang from their brains.⁷² Livia Drusilla, always at her husband's side, may have had the greatest influence of all; in her case, the less people knew, the more — and worse - they guessed. Prosopogra- phy has, to be sure, given vivid life to a number of powerful personalities of the age whom we may well guess to have been immensely influential: M. Lepidus, M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, L. Calpurnius Piso, consul of 15 B.C., Cn. Cornelius Lentulus, consul of 14 B.C., Paullus Fabius Maximus, consul of n B.C., and plenty of others. But the most characteristic means whereby Augustus obtained the co-operation of, and promoted to high responsibilities, the people of his choice, was their incorporation in the ramifications of the 'divine family'.⁷³ Complex family alliances were not in the least contrary to tradition, but when such an alliance revolved round just one princeps vir instead of many, the quantitative change became qualitative, and an imperial court was in the making. To the ideological aspects of the 'divine family' we shall return; its practical aspect was that the greatest commands and the most spectacular diplomatic missions went — and were held for as long as the ruler thought necessary - to the closest members of his family and then, as it were, spread outwards. It is likely that, insofar as they were experienced enough, those men were also Augustus' principal counsel-