Scholars have long debated the periodisation of Roman history. Attention once focused on Late Antiquity, but has recently been extended to the republican period, after Harriet Flower's stimulating essay on Roman Republics (2010). This volume now turns to the ‘imperial Republic’. The concept is not new. In the early 1970s, it gave the title to an essay by Raymond Aron on the United States after World War II (République impériale. Les États-Unis dans le monde (1973), discussed here at 20 and 71), but it has also been used to refer to other geo-historical contexts: from the United States of the eighteenth century (Michael A. Blaakman et al., eds, The Early Imperial Republic. From the American Revolution to the U.S.-Mexican War (forthcoming)) to the French Third Republic (Le Cour Grandmaison, La République impériale (2009)). It has been used for ancient Rome, too. La repubblica imperiale is the title of volume II.1 of Einaudi's Storia di Roma (1990) and, more recently, of Flower's chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies (2010). In both cases the period considered is that of Rome's passage from city-state to capital of the Mediterranean, i.e. from the Samnite Wars to the end of Civil Wars. Nathan Rosenstein referred the expression to the middle Republic (Rome and the Mediterranean 290 to 146 BC: The Imperial Republic (2012)), while Allan M. Gowing employed it for the period of Augustus and Tiberius (A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (2007): II, 411–18). This volume aims to apply the label to the first century b.c. and first century a.d. combined, a timespan which ancient sources and modern historians usually divide between Republic and Empire, and to study them as a unitary period.
At first glance, this proposal might seem perplexing. As Frédéric Hurlet clearly states (204–6), an ‘imperial res publica’ is one thing (the concept of res publica remains widely used long after Augustus, although it had different meanings for Scipio Africanus, Trajan or Justinian), an ‘imperial Republic’ quite another. This formula could hint at an institutional continuity between ‘Republic’ and ‘Empire’, implying that the Augustan regime was an ‘extension’ of the Republic with no real break with the past; but it can also imply that the new imperial reality created by conquest deeply transformed the functioning of the Republic. So, the authors’ proposition is perfectly justified. The ‘imperial Republic’ is precisely this period in which politics was being transformed: a transformation involving not just power structures, but also the very notion of imperium, from a ‘power’ to a ‘territory’ (see Richardson, The Language of Empire (2008)). From this point of view, a key factor is the emergence of a sense of the Empire as a territory, a long-term process which ends only under Claudius, as is revealed by Hurlet's analysis of the senatorial cursus inscriptions. Here we enter the heart of the matter: the ‘imperial Republic’ was a period of evolution in institutions, as they adapted themselves to the new regime; but also in the way the Romans looked at their Empire, in their collective and individual mentality. The case of Messala Corvinus (studied here by Cyrielle Landrea) clearly shows the need to reconcile republican ideals with the Augustan Principate.
The concept of res publica, widely discussed throughout the book, is the particular focus of Philippe Le Doze's chapter, which shows that the use, if not the creation (see Moatti, Res Publica (2018)) of the Senatus Populusque Romanus formula enabled Augustus to distinguish between the Principate and ‘tyranny’. It would be an error to refer to Augustus’ regime as a ‘monarchy with a republican façade’. The restoration of the res publica was not an illusion: the institutions of the res publica (Senate, comitia, magistracies) continued to function, without thereby concealing the monarchic nature of the new power (which Augustus’ mausoleum hinted at ever since Actium). As Le Doze points out (128), the Roman state was becoming ‘imperial’ but it was still a res publica, which could influence the action of the princeps. The passage from ‘prince mandataire’ to ‘prince souverain’ took place later, through successive stages.
If in many respects the development of new power structures and a new mentality was a gradual process, which started before Augustus and continued after him, there are certain areas where we can see Augustus’ attempt to impose a radical change — as well as the difficulties he faced. An example is that of triumphal parades, which are the topic of Flower's excellent chapter (a French translation of a paper already published in ClAnt, 2020). Augustus’ effort to eliminate them can be related to the limits he placed on further imperial expansion after his death. Tiberius’ and the Senate's unwillingness to conform to this new order represents a different vision of the role that triumphal celebration should take in a res publica restituta. Such examples justify the long-term perspective adopted in this book.
Some may argue that the definition of ‘imperial Republic’ is not always consistent. If we consider the first centuries b.c. and a.d. as a period of ‘modélisation du pouvoir personnel dans le cadre du fonctionnement traditionnel de la res publica’ (71), one may wonder if this picture was not profoundly altered already in a.d. 5 by the lex Valeria Cornelia, or anyway in a.d. 19 by the attribution to the Senate of the candidates’ destinatio: a measure which put an end once and for all to the electoral function of the centuriate assembly. If we admit that the ‘imperial Republic’ covers both centuries, stating that the comitia regained their full functions in 28 b.c. (124), which is of course perfectly true, may appear to be misleading, because they lost them again and forever twenty-three years later. Or placing ‘the embryo of an imperial Republic’ in the 20s b.c. (146) may seem to contradict the very periodisation here adopted. But such perplexities are perhaps unavoidable and do not undermine the importance of this interesting book, which will surely pave the way for new research.
