The Augustan Empire 43 BC

^M Ep 579, lines 34-40. ⁶⁴ Crook 1933 (d to) ch. 3.

Policy about codicils was suggested by the jurist Trebatius Testa, Inst. just. 11. 25.

Hor. Sat. 1.9.43-56; 11.6.58-58.

Crispus may have been solely responsible for the elimination of Agrippa Postumus.

For the process, and the people, see Syme 1986 (a 95).

lors and collaborators; hence the political tragedy of Augustus' unwil­lingness to trust Tiberius and Tiberius' withdrawal from collaboration with Augustus.

2. Policy

What, with hindsight, historians analyse as Roman 'policy' was often, simply, the Roman government's pragmatic reaction to situations. (The 'spread of citizenship', with the founding of new coloniae, is, as far as Augustus is concerned, a case in point, because veterans had to be settled somewhere.) There are, nonetheless, one or two areas in which it is proper to speak of, and needful briefly to review, Augustus' 'policy'. He had a military and imperial policy: that is assessed in chapter 4 below. He had a financial and budgetary policy and a social and demographic policy. He also had an ideology, the most important part of the whole story.

A degree of financial policy and initiative greater than that of the Republic was forced upon Augustus by the need for a permanent military budget. What was needed was relatively exact housekeeping - and the Res Gestae was evidently composed by someone who relished exact figures. A 'statement of accounts' of the empire, such as was left by Augustus to his successor, had already been available to be handed to his fellow-consul in 23 b.C., when he thought he was dying.⁷⁴ The general basis of taxation from the republican time was not seriously changed, except for the introduction, quite late on, of the estate duty, vicesima hereditatium, to feed the new account for meeting army discharge gratuities. However, a full property and poll census of the provinces was put in hand, gradually and over many years; it was imposed particularly on newly acquired regions, where it was regarded as the principal sign of subjection and was a major cause of unrest. Besides army pay, another costly item was the supply of free corn at Rome (though much of the taxation for that came in in kind). Augustus did not invent the policy of 'bread and circuses'; in fact, probably after the great food panic of a.d. 6, he was minded to abolish the Jrumentatio (his motive being not economic but social, namely the very conservative belief that free corn at Rome lured citizens away from the admirable activity of peasant farming). But he concluded that abolition was politically inexpedient.⁷⁵ The main economic fact, however, that determined policy was the enormous, and ever-growing, wealth of the ruler himself; the patrimonium could serve as an alternative treasury, and enabled Augustus to practise a kind of deficit financing on the main accounts, with himself making up the shortfall from his private fortune. Chapters 15 to 18 of the Res Gestae tell the story:

⁷⁴ Dio liii.50.2. 75 Suet. Aug. 42.3.

'... four times I helped the state treasury with my money';'... from the year of the Lentuli [18 B.C.], when the public revenues were insufficient, I gave subventions of corn and cash from my own granary and bank to sometimes 100,000 people and sometimes many more'. The ruler thus imposed on himself, as the richest citizen, a kind of super-liturgy, which enabled him - as the ancient liturgical principle always enabled the payer - to take on the role of super-benefactor.[263]

Except for that part of the taxation of the provinces that was paid in kind, the Roman empire had a money economy. In particular, the armies were paid in cash, and so were the principal officials. Governors of provinces received large salaries (which was an important innovation of Augustus),⁷⁷ and equestrian officialdom was from the start a salaried service. As in every respect, so in that of coinage the Roman imperial system relied on the continuance of local government and practice, and so the cities of the Roman world went on issuing, for everyday use, their own, mostly bronze, coinages. The gold and, above all, the silver coinages, for major payments, passed into the control of Rome, the ruler. Numismatists tell us that under Augustus there came into being a 'world coinage'. There was less of policy about that than just the way things worked out (and the only actual Augustan change in the currency system was, surprisingly, in the non-precious metal currency of Rome, which became bimetallic):[264] huge coinages had been issued in the triumviral period, to pay the rival armies, so there was much in circulation; the government opened and closed mints at different times and places, as and when the need was perceived for specific quantities of new coin. The total production was, undeniably, enormous.⁷⁹