Note 151 — Below is a copy of the deeds of the divine Augustus, by which he subjected the whole world to the dominion of the Roman people, and of the amounts which he expended upon the commonwealth and the Roman people, as engraved upon two brazen columns which are set up at Rome.1

This chapter is possibly the most weighty in the whole inscription, inasmuch as it sets forth the view of his policy which Augustus wished the world to hold. How far his statements in the opening and closing sentences represent his own actual notions of his relations to the sovereign power in Rome is a matter of debate. For a full discussion Mommsen, Röm. St. II, p. 723, ff., may be read, and Gardthausen, Aug. Iᵉʳ Th. IIᵉʳ Bd., pp. 485-540 and IIᵉʳ Th., pp. 277-299.

The question is: Did Augustus in any real sense restore the republic, or did he conceive of himself as monarch, but find it politic to suppress all outward marks of royalty? Was his chief concern to maintain the peace and prosperity of the Roman people, with as little alteration as possible of the old constitutional forms, or was his object the building up of power for his own sake? This is confessedly one of the riddles of history. The best that can be done is to study his actions, estimating their worth and tendency, and leaving the motives of the great statesman where he hid them,—locked in his own bosom.

Undoubtedly, all through the Res Gestæ, as is pointed out in the introduction, and as has been noticed from time to time in these notes, one of his great aims is to represent himself as a conservative, moving within constitutional limits. Coins of the period emphasize the view set forth in the opening sentence of this chapter with regard to the restoration of the republic. Cf. Eckhel, VI, 83: imp. Cæsar divi f. cos. VI, libertatis p. R. vindex; “The imperator, Cæsar, son of the divine (Cæsar) consul for the sixth time, (726) restorer of the freedom of the Roman people.” Cf. C. I. L. VI, 1527: “the whole world pacified, the republic restored.” Also, C. I. L. I, p. 384; the date referred to is Jan. 13, 727: “The senate decreed that an oaken crown should be fixed above the door of the imperator, Cæsar Augustus, because he restored the Roman republic.” Contemporary Roman writers simply echo the views of Augustus. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, I, 589, for Jan. 13, 727, Velleius, II, 89, says: “When the civil wars were finished in the twentieth year, (724) and the foreign wars brought to a close, peace was brought back, power restored to the laws, authority to the tribunals, majesty to the senate, the imperium of the magistrates reduced to its old time form, the original and ancient form of the state restored.” Cf. Livy, Epit., CXXXIV. The Greek Strabo, also a contemporary, writes, XVII, 3, 25: “The country committed to him the headship of her sovereignty, and made him lord of peace and war for life.” Later writers, even the Romans, are equally free in their judgments. Dio, LII, I, says: “From this time (725) the affairs of Rome began to be in the control of one man (μοναρχεῖσθαι).” Cf. Suet. Aug., 28; Tac. Ann., III, 28. Dio’s account of the conference in which Agrippa advises a real abdication by Augustus, and Mæcenas urges a bold assumption of supreme power (LII, 1-40) is regarded as fictitious.

The facts in the case are these: In 711 the Titian law gave the triumvirs a five years’ lease of power. In 716 this was renewed not by formal legislation, but “by universal consent.” Cf. App., B. C. V, 95. This triumviral power Augustus wielded till his sixth consulship, 726, though there was a pretence of its cessation in 721. Cf. c. 7, N, 1, and Mommsen, Röm. St., II, 698. In this and the following years he divested himself gradually of one extraordinary power after another. He could not at once fall back to the position of an ordinary magistrate. The armies, the laws, the provinces, the revenues had all been in his control. These he must gradually restore Cf. Dio, LII, 13; LIII, 4, 9, 10. In 726 he began his return to older customs by alternating with Agrippa, his colleague, in the consulship, in having the fasces borne before him by the lictors for a month. Cf. Dio, LIII, 1. The restoration of the censorship was part of the same programme. Dio, LIII, 2, says that by an edict he declared all the revolutionary and extraordinary acts of the triumviral period should cease to be effective with the expiration of his sixth consulship (726). The inscription of Jan. 13, 727, above alluded to, C. I. L. I, p. 384, marks that date as that on which the business of restoring the provinces was finally given over to the senate.

From this time on the senate divided the control of the provinces with him. Augustus took the troublesome provinces and the frontier ones, leaving to the senate the older and more peaceable. Over these provinces he received a proconsular imperium for ten years, which was renewed at the expiration of that term. In c. 7 he says that he found the tribunitial power a sufficient basis for all the measures which he wished to put through. Now the proconsulship and tribuneship were both ordinary and constitutional offices. Augustus’ occupancy of each affords an illustration of the way in which he held ordinary offices in an extraordinary way. For by the old customs a proconsul must exercise his imperium in his province, and never at Rome. Augustus could not be in ten provinces at once, and must be at Rome most of the time. Hence a violation of the constitution was necessary. The tribuneship, instituted for the protection of plebeians could be held only by a plebeian. But Augustus was a patrician. For this reason he did not take the tribuneship in the ordinary way, nor by the ordinary title, but designated himself as tribunicia potestate, “of tribunitial authority.”

The title princeps, “prince” is never used by Augustus as an official designation in laws and inscriptions, but indicates simply his primacy of rank and is so used throughout the Res Gestæ. Cf. cc. 13, 30, 32.