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Augustus and the Senate: 23 B.C.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

W.K. Lacey
W.K. Lacey*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland, New Zealand
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Extract

While the exact meaning of Res Gestae 34, the powers of Augustus at various moments in his principate, and the significance of his auctoritas have been extensively argued, more practical questions about how his political arrangements might have been set into action have not generally excited much interest. In 1974 I put forward a suggestion about how the so-called first settlement of 27 B.C. came about. It was, in brief, that Octavian, as he then was, used the traditional consular mechanisms, and proposed for debate in the Senate a motion, de provinciis consularibus, and this explains why, on the one hand, the result of the debate was that he had provinces allocated to him, and, on the other, claims could be made that the res publica was restored, because one of the things which characterized res publica (as distinct from dictatorship or triumviral rule) was that the determination of who should command which army stationed in the provinces now lay, ostensibly at least, with the publicum consilium, the Senate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 19 , 1985 , pp. 57 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1985

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References

1 “Octavian in the Senate, January, 27 B.C.” (JRS 64 [1974], 176–84). I have to thank my colleague, Mr R.H. Allison, for many helpful comments and discussion on drafts of this paper, also the contributors to the discussion at AULLA 22.

2 Dr R. Develin tells me that I am too tentative, and that it was constitutionally impossible to have imperium that was both consular and proconsular. Badian, E. agrees, with emphasis; Romanitas-Christianitas (Berlin/New York 1982), 25 n. 18.Google Scholar I am grateful to Professor Graeme Clarke for drawing my attention to this valuable article.

3 Dio (Boissevain’s text) says they voted… If means ‘have, possess’, they voted he should be given imperium proconsulare and hence he did not have it already; if means ‘hold’ (LSJ A2) and means ‘his’, they voted that he should hold his imperium proconsulare (which by implication he already had) once for all. This would imply he had it, having acquired it by the act of resigning the consulship: “his consular imperium automatically became proconsular” as Brunt, P.A. expressed it, ZPE 13 (1974), 165.Google Scholar But he more probably needed a lex curiata for this, unless the necessary 30 lictors had been present on the Alban Mount, and there conferred consular imperium on Sestius and proconsular imperium on Augustus. However, it is difficult, and not very relevant, to be sure of the constitutional niceties in the case of a resignation from the consulship, as all the precedents, though comparatively recent, occurred when there was no res publica — under Caesar’s dictatorship or the triumvirate.

4 Dio is using shorthand here. For the actual wording of the decree possibilities are as in Cicero, ad Att. 4.1.7, discussed by Balsdon, J.P.V.D. (JRS 47 [1957], 16 ff.),Google Scholar or as in Tacitus, Annals 2.43.2 as suggested by H.M. Last, who argues for a relationship between Augustus and other proconsuls of what he calls maius/minus imperium Type A, JRS 37 (1947), 157 ff.

5 See p. 66 below.

6 Presumably these votes of trib. pot. to Augustus’ colleagues were ratified by laws of the comitia tributa/concilium plebis. If Augustus’ was similarly granted (as it would have been had the grant been made following a Senatorial vote in 23 B.C.), the extent of distortion by silence in Res Gestae 10 is far greater than that anywhere else, except in the opening chapters where suppression of the truth was necessary. It was not necessary to draw any distinction between himself and his colleagues on the question of the conferment of trib. pot. — unless there actually was one, and Augustus was given his by the people without any intervention by the Senate.

7 Whether Tiberius was ever given an unrestricted trib. pot. by a law after Augustus’ death is unknown, but Caligula, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian all had comitia tribuniciae potestatis commemorated annually when relevant (Brunt, P.A.JRS 67 [1977], 98 ff.).Google Scholar

8 The date Fasti was published, Syme, R.History in Ovid (Oxford 1978), 34.Google Scholar For the importance of the title trib. pot. by A.D. 4, see JRS 69 (1979), esp. 32–3.

9 Such as 1.533 ff.; Syme, op. cit, 28 ff.

10 E. Badian, op. cit (n.2.), 34, has recently noted that Piso, consul ordinarius for 23 B.C. on all records but the offfcial fasti consulares, must be presumed to have been persuaded by Augustus to take a consulship conformable to his dignitas. Mutatis mutandis the same must be true of L. Sestius Albanianus Quirinalis who succeeded Augustus. For Sestius’ name, Badian, loc. cit, n.39, quoting Shackleton Bailey, D.R.Two Studies in Roman Nomenclature (1976), 6 f.Google Scholar

11 The last-named subject is “The Romans at home” (51.19.1), which is prefaced to the first of the two lists of honours recorded as granted this year (30 B.C.): the first list after Actium (1–3), the second after the report of Antony’s death and the capture of Alexandria (4–6). All subsequent verbs are merely third person plurals. These honours were mostly accepted (51.20.4), the exception being the vote that the whole population should turn out to greet him (which was one of the list following Actium [51.19.2]).

12 In Pauly’s RE 10, Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats and Volkstribunat und Kaisertum respectively; see Last’s article Istituto Lombardo di scienze e lettere Milano, Rendiconti 2.84 (1951), 93–110 for an analysis of the relevant passages.

13 CIL 12 p.58 shows only the letters IVL surviving from the date. One of the three Kalends, Nones and Ides look the most likely by analogy from the previous years, but, plainly there is room for almost any number of days a.d., or even PR, the only impossible dates being the dies nefasti: the printing of CIL actually suggests remains of perhaps 5 letters, something like PR KAL.

14 To me it is not credible that Sestius had not been asked publicly, and agreed. Last’s remarks, art cit., p. 105, are worth quoting: “the Romans were a civilised people and did not thrust distinction on at any rate the more eminent of their citizens without first seeking the agreement of those it was intended to honour”.

15 Caesar’s arbitrary decision to resign in 45 B.C. had plainly caused much resentment (Suetonius, Iul. 80.2 for example), and was part of his regnum, and a denial of a res publico under his dictatorship. Cicero, ad fam. 7.30, ad Att. 14.5.2, and Shackleton Bailey’s notes ad locc.

16 Prevention (), not objections, is what Dio says. Only colleagues in the consulate and tribunes could actually stop a consul carrying out his intentions. Piso, his colleague, was most unlikely to do so; if tribunes were to try they could do so only in the city, but it is far from clear how they could stop a consul from resigning if he were determined to do so. There were no precedents. All that they could do was to try to rally popular opinion, and organize demonstrations, but even the comitia tributa could not force Augustus to go on being consul.

17 For a recent attack on this view, Badian op. cit. (n.2), esp. 28–36, who argues that the trial of M. Primus was not earlier than Marcellus’ death (or the onset of the disease which led to it) at the end of 23 B.C., hence the “conspiracy” was where Dio put it, in 22 B.C., and consequently any unpopularity resulting from it has nothing whatever to contribute to the Senate’s view of Augustus in mid-23 B.C. (loc. cit., 19–23).

18 Presumably before the Ides of June, the date of the Latin Festival in 24 B.C. (when he was sick) (CIL 12 p. 58, q.v. for the similar entry for 27 B.C.).

19 Badian, E.Mnemosyne 27(2) (1974), 160 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Of which there were 12 in his eleventh consulate (Res Gestae 15.1). We have no information when they began, nor at what intervals they were given, nor when they were announced in advance, or promised. But they are very signal evidence of the popularis aspect to be given to this consulship.

21 Suetonius, Tib. 8, Velleius 2.94.3–4.

22 J.C. Rolfe in L.C.L. Suetonius 1.305; Robert, Graves in The Twelve Caesars, Penguin Books, 114.Google Scholar

23 Crook, JohnLaw and Life of Rome, 58–61,Google Scholar for voluntary slavery, 173 for “addiction” for debt, and being sold up by “bonorum venditio”; the possibility of a poor man offering his services even in an ergastulum to avoid having his goods sold — and his family beggared — should not be excluded. Dio Chrysostom, On Slavery, 13 envisages this for the Greek part of the Roman World, Columella 1.3.12 for his Roman readers. Ramin, J. and Veyne, P.Historia 30 (1981), 486–7Google Scholar suppose that purging ergastula was a characteristic activity of a new regime, comparing Constantine (Cod. Theod. 5.8.1), but it was four years since the ending of the triumvirate. The sources give plenty of support to the view that there might be debtors in ergastula, hence possibly — perhaps probably — some unjustly so detained.

24 If latebras is to be taken literally, the ergastula should belong to people other than the creditors; that is, the debtors had left home and were vagabonds, for whom an ergastulum might offer food and asylum (temporarily a man might hope) both from his creditors and from the agents of the law until the hunt for him had died down.

25 Especially the highly emotional and dramatic story of the veteran soldier in 2.23–4, see Ogilvie’s, R.M.Commentary on Livy 1–V (Oxford 1965), 296–8.Google Scholar

26 Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. fero 34b.

27 E.g. the CIVIBUS SERVATEIS coins with oak-wreath and laurels, H. Mattingly, British Museum Catalogue of Coins of the Roman Empire (BMCRE) 1.655–8.

28 The senatus consultum sent to Mytilene in 25 B.C., dated by Augustus’ 9th consulate (IGRR 4.3 3, Ehrenberg and Jones 307) is hardly significant; it is merely given a date of a normal type.

29 See JRS 69 (1979), 28–34 for example, and Jones, A.H.M.Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford 1960), 12.Google Scholar Whether Agrippa in 18 and 13 B.C. or Tiberius in 6 B.C. were seen as more than guardians of Augustus’ grand-child(ren), is uncertain, but in A.D.4 trib. pot. was added to adoption to mark Tiberius out as destined successor beyond doubt.

30 The date (23 B.C. or about 19) is still disputed among numismatists, JRS 69 (1979), 28 n.7.

31 BMCRE p. 28, two coins not in the British Museum collection, cf. BMCRE 137, 138, 143–6, 153–6, 161–4, 169–70, 174, etc.

32 BMCRE 135–6, 141–2, 150–1, 158–60, 166–8, 173, 176–7, etc

33 BMCRE 134, 139, 140, 147–9, 157, 165, 171–2, 175, etc.

34 The aorist is surely gnomic here despite E. Cary’s translation in L.C.L. Dio’s accuracy has often been impugned, but perhaps unjustly. If we can imagine a senatorial debate without Augustus, when his representatives (possibly Tiberius his quaestor) told a Senate reacting enthusiastically to his resignation from one of the consulships, that he wished to have only a tribune’s powers for the future, it seems to me perfectly credible that the Senate voted that h00E7;e should be tribune — subject to his consent, naturally; Dio could hardly be expected to put in something so obvious in a constitution in which for centuries acceptance of a vote by the presiding magistrate or other officer was needed before it became effective. A vote of powers to Augustus in his absence which he declined — in fact had to beg the people not to force on him — took place the very next year when they tried to make him dictator, an office abolished in 44 B.C. The situation seems closely parallel. He did not become dictator, because he refused to accept the vote. But it was voted to him none the less. The same should be true for the tribunate which had not been abolished.

35 See n.3 above.

36 Whose province, of course, was the city itself. This ambiguity may well be the source of the problem which had to be settled in 19 B.C., when it had to be decided whether or not Augustus’ imperium when he crossed the pomerium was consular or not. His republican façade prevented him from claiming imperium domi superior to that of the consuls; it could not be more than equal to theirs, though this, of course, created the possibility of collegiate veto.

37 The covert expansion of his proconsular imperium in this manner coheres well with the covert acquisition of a position outside the constitution by means of the apparently innocuous guardianship of the people by trib. pot.

38 It could, of course, have been Piso his colleague; whether Sestius, succeeding Augustus who had obviously held the fasces first, would hold them in his place, or Piso who had held them in June would continue to do so in July because he was now senior, is impossible to determine. Probability seems to me to lie with the view that Sestius took Augustus’ place in this respect as well as others.

39 The question whether a consul could be seen as a protector of the people has been raised. Brunt, P.A. ‘Laus imperii’ in Garnsey, P. and Whittaker, C.R.Imperialism in the Ancient World (Cambridge 1978), 162–4,Google Scholar has demonstrated the popular approbation of military success, and the consequently expected popularity of victorious generals; the presence of the statues of the triumphatores in the forum Augustum indicates the same. Julius Caesar was certainly seen as both consul and protector of the people to such an extent that later writers at least said that he had been given virtual tribunicia potestas. For this controversy, Yavetz, Z.Plebs and Princeps (Oxford 1969), 54Google Scholar and n.4. As the same writer put it more recently, “Caesar grasped every opportunity and spared no efforts to appear the people’s friend, a man whose chief concern was the well-being of the common man”, Julius Caesar and His Public Image (London 1982), 56. He was never tribune. Augustus himself, by his constant stream of thanksgivings and holidays for victories won by himself and his legati (Res Gestae 4, 55 thanksgivings, 890 days of holidays), showed he was equally interested in enabling the people to share in his victories. The whole question has been discussed by Yavetz in his paper at Sir Ronald Syme’s 80th birthday symposium. I am most grateful for a preview of the paper.

40 Bickermann, E.J.Chronology of the Ancient World (London 1968, English edn.), 70 ff.Google Scholar

41 Dux as Syme put it, Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939), Ch. 21.

42 When the dux had becomeprinceps in Syme’s interpretation, after “the painless and superficial transformation” of January 27 B.C.: Roman Revolution, 313.