The Augustan Empire 43 BC

The aspect of Augustus' activity, however, that most plainly deserves the name of 'policy' is that which is commonly called his 'social policy', since it evidently sprang from passionate personal concern: he doggedly fought his own elite over it. The impression given by much recent writing is that Augustus was both revolutionary, in trying to mould the morality and demography of a society by legislation, and at the same time grossly illiberal and reactionary in the rules he sought to impose. As was pointed out in chapter 2 above, there stood behind Augustus a strong republican tradition of the state's interference in the behaviour of the citizens, through legislation, the courts, and, above all, the censorship.⁸⁰ As to the illiberality, it has often been characteristic of dictators and the like to treat what part, at least, of the citizenry regard as freedoms of personal choice as signs of decadence, and try to curb them, and Augustus is easily tarred with that brush; but the debate about the state's role in relation to morality and family is perennial, and we should beware of imposing a current standard too crudely. Augustus shared with Cicero⁸¹ the belief in a superior early and middle Republic, whose victories had been based on better morals and solider family virtues, and he strove to re-create that idealized past.

The legislation relating to slaves and former slaves (freedmen and freedwomen) occurs relatively late in Augustus' reign, and was not part of the 'package' of the leges Iuliae.^iZ Proposed by consuls, it may well have been with the approval or even at the initiative of the Senate; for the governing class had a tradition (as can be seen in 'sumptuary laws') of restraining their richer members from stepping too far out of line.⁸³ The astute may even detect, in the Lex Aelia Sentia, some competing pressures, for example, between the drastic regulation of the number and kind of persons who could be elevated to Roman citizenship by the mere process of being liberated by a Roman owner, and, on the other hand, the even-handed provisions governing conduct between freed people and their former owners.⁸⁴ The leges luliae de adulteriis and de maritandis ordinibus and the Lex Papia Poppaea are the group that represent a moral commitment evinced by Augustus from the beginning,⁸⁵ and never given up. The curious title of the lex lulia de maritandis ordinibus seems to relate only to those parts of the big statute that restricted the right to full Roman marriage between certain status classes, for example between the senatorial order and freed persons and between all freeborn persons and the usual classes of 'people of low repute' (,infames); but its best-known feature is the pressure that it placed on citizens to marry and re-marry, backed by rewards for those with at least three children and penalties for the childless. The rewards included priority in the competition for public office, and the penalties included severe public marks of disesteem for the unmarried; but the system was made to turn a good deal on how far people were allowed to take inheritances, and those rules did not apply as between close kin, nor below a modestly high property rating. It is fair to infer that it was the birth-rate in the upper ranks of society that Augustus cared about (less so to infer that the true purpose of the legislation was different from what lies on its face, such as the preservation of estates).⁸⁶ It is, of course, true that Augustus did not dispose of proper demo-

Cic. Marccll. 2 3.

The Lex Iunia, which created the status of'Junian Latins', bears the title lunia Norbana in Inst. Jut. i. 5. j, and should be dated to a.d. 19 accordingly. If it had been part of the early batch of Augustus' laws it would have been a Lex lulia like the rest.

For leges sumptmriae of Julius Caesar and of Augustus in the old republican tradition, see Rotondi 1912 (f 68j) 421 and 447 andGell. NA 11.24.14-15.

Accusation of ingratitude against freedmen, Dig. 40.9. 30 pr.; but if patron fails to support freed man he loses rights, Dig. 38.2.33; and if he obliges freedman or freed woman to agree not to marry he loses rights, Dig. 37.14.13.

The standard view; challenged by Badian 1985 (f 4). ⁸⁶ So Wallace-Hadrill 1981 (f 73).