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Outlines of European History

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The two volumes which make up the Outlines of European History have been prepared to meet the need expressed in the Report of the Committee of Five urging a two-year course in general history for high schools. In placing emphasis throughout on the conditions and institutions most essential to an understanding of subsequent history, rather than on unrelated events, these books are in full accord with the new spirit in the teaching of history. Moreover, the authors' reputation for sound scholarship is international, and a guaranty of the entire fitness of these texts for class use.

Part I, by James Harvey Robinson, Columbia University, and James Henry Breasted, the University of Chicago, covers Oriental, classical, and mediaeval history to the beginning of the eighteenth century, and includes a wealth of original illustrative materialnotably several "pen etchings"-of immense value to a proper understanding of the text. 730 pages, illustrated, $1.50.

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HARRY E. BARNES, Instructor, Department of Sociology.

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A.

The fundamental work on this whole subject is Mommsen's "Römisches Staatsrecht," II, 2, 3d edition, 1887, pp. 743 ff. It has not been translated into English. It appears in French under the title, "Le droit public romain," Vol. 5, 1896. Its ideas are taken into account in every section of this article.

The old constitution of Rome, when strengthened and modified by an organic union between the senate and the first citizen of the republic, we call the principate. It was at once a new kind of government and the creator of a new administrative system-in both of which aspects it must be considered in this article.

Brought into being by Augustus in 27 B. C., the principate was changed profoundly by him four years later. Thereafter, during his lifetime, it was subjected to many minor alterations before being transmitted at his death (14 A. D.) to the scrupulous care of Tiberius, his personal as well as his political heir. In theory, this curious compromise between aristocracy and monarchy for the government of the republic continued to exist till the reign of Diocletian, when the monarch ceased to rule in virtue of a senatorial mandate and a popular election, and came to derive his authority simply from a nomination by his predecessor or a tumultuous acclamation by the army.

Therewith the republican substructure was withdrawn definitely from the government. Long since the partnership formed by Augustus between the senate and the prince had been dissolved. By a series of apparently disconnected actions, the prince had squeezed first the senate as a corporation, and then its members individually, out of the business of government, so that the last real senatus consultum was passed in the reign of Septimus Severus (193211 A. D.); and in the reign of Gallienus (253-268 A. D.), the senators, to whom Augustus had reserved all high offices, were excluded specifically from the military administration of the state, and were set apart in the empire simply through the possession of fatal social and fiscal privileges. It is our purpose in this article to review this series of encroachments on aristocratic power; but we have also to notice, what is often confused with it, but is really something quite distinct, the corresponding series of steps by which the power of the prince was increased, first to

the benefit, later to the detriment, and ultimately to the destruction, of the cities or municipalities of which the empire was composed. For motived, though it was, in a different set of causes, this triumph of central over local authority belongs properly to our theme, since every aggrandizement of the central government, being in fact a gain for the prince alone, disturbed the balance which Augustus had sought to create between the first citizen and the senate.

The theory of the principate, to resume, was abandoned only in Diocletian's time; the fundamental institutions of the principate were abandoned gradually in the preceding three hundred years. The principate itself, however, as a system of government in which the prince took orders from the senate and people of Rome in domestic or Italian affairs, and enjoyed full discretion of action only in the group of provinces assigned to him, existed only in the mind, or, at most, in the practice of its founder; for from the outset the prince was given rights and powers, not more considerable than the situation demanded, but so extensive that his will was supreme in all matters, even in those in which the decision was reached ostensibly by the senate and people alone. To show that this was the case-that from the very beginning the conditions of which Augustus had to take account were more monarchical than he was himself—is the first task to which we have to give attention. B. The Fight OF AUGUSTUS FOR VENGEANCE AND FOR ITALY.

Firth, "Augustus Cæsar," 1903; Shuckburgh, "Augustus," 1903; Ferrero, "The Greatness and Decline of Rome," Vols. III, IV and V, 1908-9; Gardthausen, "Augustus und seine Zeit," 1891-1904; Domaszewski, "Geschichte der römischen Kaiser," 1st edition, 1909.

The conditions which Augustus faced in 27 B. C. were partly the results of a long historical development, and partly of his own creating. The long historical development which tended to evolve the monarchy in Rome has been traced in a preceding article. Hence we may confine ourselves here to a consideration of Augustus's own share in laying the foundations of the principate.

Nearly four years before he took the matter in hand, as a consequence of his victory Actium (31 B. C.), he had brought under his jurisdiction the eastern provinces of the Roman empire and had con

....

quered Egypt. In 36 B. C., to go back five years farther, after his victory over Sextus Pompeius at Messana, he had rounded out his territory in the west by the addition of Sicily and Africa to Spain and Gaul, which he possessed already. While as early as 42 B. C., after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, he had been the only one of the triumvirsa board of dictators which had been invested by the senate and people in 43 B. C. with sovereign powers concurrent with their own-to take up residence and exercise authority in Italy; in Italy, that is to say, in the land of the Romans, for now the citizens of Rome occupied the whole peninsula south of the Alps; in Italy, that is to say, among the people which had conquered all the rest of the world that was subject to Augustus in 27 B. C. For fifteen years prior to the creation of the principate, Augustus had been at work in Italy transforming agrarian conditions, establishing its commercial independence, defending its coasts and its privileges; to ignore his own activity there when he came to reorganize the state would have been not simply unnatural, it would have been impossible.

Let us see of what this activity had consisted? Augustus was eighteen years old when Julius Cæsar was assassinated (44 B. C.). Despite the entreaties of his guardian and his friends, he accepted the private legacy of his great uncle, in whose will he appeared as chief heir, and with it the political heritage inseparable from it. As yet he had no experience, either of politics or of war, and in the judgment of Cicero he was simply a lad to be praised, honored, and, when convenient, set aside. Yet within eighteen months he showed that he had the clearest head in Italy. The opportunity for political activity he found in the fact, ignored by Cæsar's murderers, that there were in the peninsula hundreds of thousands of men who had given their loyalty to Julius Cæsar, and owed their fortunes to him, and that of these a large number, sincerely desirous of avenging his death and suspicious of Mark Antony, Cæsar's master of horse, who had compromised the murder, looked to Augustus as their natural head. With their support, and that of Cicero, who was quick to see the danger to the murderers of such a colleague, but who was vain enough to imagine that he could break the instrument once he had used it, Augustus forced Antony by his victory at Mutina to recognize the fact that the Cæsarians had not one leader but two. Associating with themselves Lepidus, master for the moment of seven legions, Augustus and Antony formed the so-called second triumvirate and wrested from the Romans electoral and legislative powers coextensive with those of the comitia and administrative and deliberative powers equal to those of the senate. This done, Augustus outlawed the murderers of his "father," Antony and Lepidus, their private enemies, and all three, rich senators and knights from whose confiscated estates they filled their treasury. Thus striking terror into the hearts of the aristocracy, and assuring the peace in Italy, the two leaders of the Cæsarians followed up the "proscriptions" by rout

ing Brutus and Cassius and their forces at Philippi, and dividing the Roman provinces between themselves and their colleague in the triumvirate. Therewith was accomplished the mission to which Augustus had thus far devoted his entire energies-the exacting of vengeance for the foul murder of Julius Cæsar.

With his return to Italy in 42 B. C., a new chapter in his career was opened. His first act was to confiscate the lands of eighteen Italian cities, and settle on them the soldiers of Antony and himself whom he did not wish to keep on active service. Thenceforth the farmers of eighteen cities-all veterans—were bound to keep Augustus in power or risk their holdings. The disbanded army was no longer mobile, but it was more securely his. It had no longer any interest in Antony. His second step was to restore to Italy its control of the adjacent seas which it had lost to Sextus Pompeius, master of Sicily, as well as of three hundred ships. This was of vital importance to Rome, seeing that the food supply for its vast and turbulent population came mainly from abroadfrom Sicily, Sardinia and Africa. Starvation for the multitude, riot for the government, humiliation for all patriots were at the disposal of Sextus Pompeius, until after four years of anxiety and effort Augustus possessed the stronger fleet and crushed the son of Cæsar's rival at Messana. In this long war Augustus discovered his great general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who built and led the victorious fleet, and his great diplomat, Maecenas, who by skilful negotiations kept Antony from interfering while Augustus was in peril. The third step taken by Augustus was to restore to Italy its control over its Greek provinces, which, on his construction of events, it had lost to Antony when Antony, instead of ruling the east and settling scores with the Parthians as a Roman triumvir became the idle and licentious paramour of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, subordinated his course of action to the policy of Egypt, and after distributing his provinces as future kingdoms for Cleopatra's children, threatened even to add Italy and the west to their joint realm. Once again Augustus presented himself to the Italians as their champion, and called upon them to hold their proud position as the masters of the world. All the citizens and municipalities in Italy and the west responded by taking an oath to follow him as their commander-in-chief in the war with Egypt that ensued. It was what the Romans called a conjuratio, we a conspiracy; and as the head of a conspiracy, to which all the Romans were privy, Augustus, by the instrumentality of the faithful Agrippa, won the battle of Actium over Antony, and conquered Egypt.

C. THE SETTLEMENT OF AUGUSTUS WITH IMPERIAL AND REPUBLICAN FEELING.

Kromayer, "Die rechtliche Begründung des Principats," 1888; Meyer, "Kaiser Augustus" in "Kleine Schriften," 1910, pp. 453 ff.; Gardthausen, op. cit., above B, Vol. I, pp. 1334 ff.; Kolbe, "Der zweite Triumvirat" in "Hermes," 1914, pp. 273 ff. See also Ferrero, op. cit., above B.

Foremost among the conditions created by the activity of these fifteen years, at the end of which Augustus, now rid of all rivals, gave himself undisturbed to the great problem of settling affairs definitely for the future, was the national feeling in Italy which he had conjured up. No solution could be satisfactory which did violence to it. Now this feeling was not only imperial-intolerant of any invasion of Roman privileges on the part of the subjects in the conquered provinces-but it was also republican. In this respect it had been violated often in the past, cynically by Sulla, thoughtlessly by Pompey, flagrantly and on principle by Julius Cæsar. But it had persisted despite all outrages. How strong it really was no one could perhaps say. Augustus, himself, estimated it highly. That is proved by his autobiography,' in which he tried to show that all his public actions were in strict accordance with republican practice and precedents. The powers of the triumvirate were legally conferred, but perhaps they could not be exercised legally by one alone of the triumvirs. Hence, between 42 and 32 B. C., while Antony was absent from Italy, it may have been necessary, as well as expedient, that while the consuls were really determined by Augustus and Antony, and the laws really initiated by one or both of them, the elections were held in the comitia, and legislation was there validated. The point has been argued by Mommsen and others that, though the term set to the triumvirate ended with the year 32 B. C., the triumvirs prolonged it automatically in virtue of the absolute power which they possessed, and that it was this office thus continued which Augustus resigned for: mally on January 13, 27 B. C., when, according to his own statement he transferred the republic from his own keeping to the hands of the senate and people of Rome-rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli. But the conclusion is not admitted and probably is not admissible. For it seems reasonable that an authority to which a definite limit of years had been assigned should lapse on its expiry if it was not formally renewed; yet it is incredible that it could have been renewed at the mere volition of any one triumvir or in the circumstances that existed in 32 B. C. by agreement between Augustus and Antony. On the other hand, it has been argued more plausibly by Kromayer and others that the republic which was transferred to the senate and people in 27 B. C. had been consigned to the safekeeping of Augustus by the military oath of obedience to him taken by all the citizens in 31 B. C., when on ceasing through the lapse of triumviral power to be the head of the state he became the head of a universal conspiracy-a conspiracy of which the universality is adduced in Augustus's apology for his life as proof of its legality. In either case, the position of Augustus between 32 B. C. and 27 B. C. was anomalous. If he was triumvir it depended upon his good-will alone that elec

1 Translated with text and commentary by Fairley, “Pennsylvania Reprints," Vol. V, 1, and by Shuckburgh, op. cit., above B, pp. 293 ff.

tions were held, consuls were elected (he, himself, among them every year,) and laws passed. If he was imperator autocrator he had power of life and death over every citizen, and was entitled to unquestioning obedience from senators and magistrates, as well as from all persons in private capacity. Hence it must be taken as evidence of his republicanism, or at least of his desire to conciliate republican feeling, that after his return from Egypt, during 29 and 28 B. C., he refused extraordinary honors tendered to him, and took the measures he deemed necessary for putting the soldiery back into civil occupations, ridding the senate of illegal and unworthy senators, and, in general, administering Rome, as consul and the equal of his colleague in the consulship, with whom, in accordance with old republican practice, he changed the fasces, emblematic of power, every month. Then in 27 B. C. the republic was restored.

For a brief moment the senate and people were free to dispose of it as they pleased. What they pleased, however, was this: to assign to him as consul for the year a province of extraordinary dimensions, including Hither Spain, Gaul, and Syria, all the districts, in fact, in which unsettled conditions or frontier position made the presence of an army desirable. The grant, moreover, was made for a term of ten years, and, as a matter of fact, it was renewed at five or ten year intervals to the end of his life.

D. THE ANTECEDENTS AND ESSENTIALS OF THE PRINCIPATE.

66

Pelham, "The Imperium of Augustus and His Successors," in Essays," edited by Haverfield, 1911, pp. 60 ff.; Abbott, "Roman Political Institutions," 1901, pp. 266 ff.; Greenidge, "Roman Public Life," 1901, pp. 341 ff.; Willems, "Le droit public romain," 7th edition, 1910, pp. 375 ff.

An extraordinary command such as this the senate alone under the Sullan regime (81-70 B. C.) had had the power to create and fill. Thereafter, for a

time at least, the people exercised the right of deciding when such a command was necessary, and the senate merely designated the person to whom it should be assigned. The idea of Sulla seems to have been that the senate should be able to meet a great military crisis by selecting the best general wherever he should be found, among the consuls or praetors, the proconsuls or propraetors, even among private citizens, and by giving him a free field and a free hand for a term ordinarily of five years. The chief beneficiary of this system had been Pompey, for many years the first citizen of the republic, or, as Cicero calls him, the princeps. As a private citizen he had been sent against Sertorius in Spain, as an ex-consul he had commanded against the pirates and Mithradates, as sole consul in the year 52 B. C. he had been

2 Pelham, "Outline of Roman History," 4th edition, 1907, p. 238, n. 3, as against the view of Sulla's reform of the magistracies stated by Mommsen, "History of Rome," III, p. 442; cf. Arnold, op. cit., below I, p. 50, n. 1. It is commonly claimed that the appointment of a private citizen was illegal. Heitland, "The Roman Republic," 1909, Vol. III, p. 7.