The History of the Roman Empire: 27 B.C. – 180 A.D.. John Bagnell Bury
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this comes to pass, the Empire can no longer be described as the Principate.
The Princeps was a magistrate. His powers were entrusted to him by the people, and his position was based on the sovereignty of the people. Like any other citizen he was bound by the laws, and if for any purpose he needed a dispensation from any law, he had to receive such dispensation from the senate. He could not be the object of a criminal prosecution; this, however, was no special privilege, but merely an application of the general rule that no magistrate, while he is in office, can be called to account by anyone except a superior magistrate. Hence the Princeps, who held office for life and had no superior, was necessarily exempted from criminal prosecution. If, however, he abdicated or were deposed, he might be tried in the criminal courts. And as Roman Law permitted processes against the dead, it often happened that a Princeps was tried in the senate after his death, and his memory condemned to dishonor, or his acts rescinded. The heavier sentence deprived him of the honor of a public funeral and abolished the statues and monuments erected in his name; while the lighter sentence removed his name from those Emperors, to whose acts the magistrates swore when they entered on their office. When a Princeps was not condemned, and when his acts were recognized as valid, he received the honor of consecration.
The claim to consecration after death was a significant characteristic of the Principate, derived from Caesar the Dictator. He had permitted himself to be worshipped as a god during his lifetime; and though no building was set apart for his worship, his statue was set up in the temples of the gods, and he had a flamen of his own. After his death he was numbered, by a decree of the senate and Roman people, among the gods of the Roman state, under the name of divus Julius. His adopted son did not venture to accept divine worship at Rome during his lifetime; he was content to be the son of a god, divi filius, and to receive the name Augustus, which implied a certain consecration. But like Romulus, to whom he was fond of comparing himself, he was elevated to the rank of the gods after his death. It is worth observing how Augustus softened down the bolder designs of Caesar in this as in other respects. Caesar would have restored royalty without disguise; Augustus substituted the princeps for the rex. In Rome, Caesar was a god during his lifetime; Augustus the son of a god when he lived, a god only after death.
In one important respect the Principate differed from other magistracies. There was no such thing as designation. The successor to the post could not be appointed until the post was vacant. Hence it follows that, on the death of an Emperor, the Empire ceased to exist until the election of his successor; therepublic was in the hands of the senate and the people during the interim, and the initiative devolved upon the consuls. The principle “The king is dead, long live the king”, had no application in the Roman Empire.
As a magistracy, the Principate was elective and not hereditary. It might be conferred on any citizen by the will of the sovereign people; and even women and children were not disqualified by their sex and age, as in the case of other magistracies. Two, or rather three, acts were necessary for the creation of the Princeps. He first received the proconsular imperium and along with it the name Augustus; subsequently the tribunician power; and also other rights defined by the special Law de imperio. But it must be clearly understood, that his position as Princeps really depended upon the proconsular imperium, which gave him exclusive command of all the soldiers of the state. Once he receives it, he is Emperor; the acquisition of the tribunician power is a consequence of the acquisition of the supreme power, but is not the supreme power itself. The day on which the imperium is conferred (dies imperii) marks the beginning of a new reign.
It is important to observe how the proconsular power was conferred on the Princeps. It was, theoretically, delegated by the sovereign people, but was never bestowed or confirmed by the people meeting in the comitia. It was always conferred by the senate, which was supposed to act for the people. When the title Imperator was first conferred by the soldiers, it required the formal confirmation of the senate, and until the confirmation took place the candidate selected by the soldiers was a usurper. On the other hand the Imperator named by the senate, although legitimate, had no chance of maintaining his position unless he were also recognized by the soldiers.
The position of the new Princeps was fully established when he was acknowledged by both the senate and the army. After Augustus, the proconsular power of the Princeps was perpetual, and it was free from annuity in any form.
The tribunician power, on the other hand, was conferred by the people meeting in comitia. It properly required two separate legal acts—a special law defining the powers to be conferred, and an election of the person on whom they should be conferred. But these acts were combined in one; and a magistrate, probably one of the consuls, brought a rogation before the comitia, both defining the powers and nominating the person. The bill of course had to come before the senate first, and an interval known as the trinum nundinum elapsed between the decree of the senate and the comitia. Hence under the earlier Principate, when such forms were still observed, the assumption of the tribunician power takes place sometime after the dies imperii. The tribunician power was conferred for perpetuity, but was formally assumed anew every year, so that the Princeps used to count the years of his reign as the years of his tribunician power.
But though the Empire was thus elective, in reality the choice of the new Princeps depended on the senate or the army only in the case of revolutions. In settled times the Emperors chose their successors, and in their own lifetime caused the objects of their choice to be invested with some of the marks or functions of imperial dignity. It was but natural that each Emperor should try to secure the continuance of the Empire in his own family. If he had a son, he was sure to choose him as successor; if only a daughter, her husband or one of her children. If he had neither son nor daughter of his own, he usually adopted a near kinsman. Thus the Empire, though always theoretically elective, practically tended to become hereditary; and it came to be recognized that near kinship to an Emperor founded a reasonable claim to the succession. This feature was present from the very outset; for the founder of the Empire himself had first assumed his place on the political stage as the son and heir of Julius, and no one was more determined or strove harder to found a dynasty than Augustus.
Augustus assumed other functions and titles (as well as the proconsular imperium and the tribunician potestas), but they had no place in the theory of the imperial constitution. He was named by the senate, the knights and the people, "pater patriae" (2 B.C.), and subsequent Emperors regularly received this title. He was elected Pontifex Maximus by the people in 12 B.C. (March 6) after the death of Lepidus, who had been allowed to retain that office when he was deprived of his triumviral power. Henceforward the Chief Pontificate was always held by the Emperors, and formed one of their standing titles. Augustus also belonged to other religious colleges. He was not only Pontifex; he was also a septemvir, a quindecimvir and an augur; he was enrolled among theFetiales, the Arvales and the Titii.
Augustus was not a censor, nor did he, as Emperor, possess the powers of the censor's office, although he sometimes temporarily assumed them. The reason why he refrained from assuming these powers permanently is obvious. It was his aim to preserve the form of a republic and to maintain the senate as an independent body. One of the chief functions of the censors was to revise the list of senators; they had the power of expunging members from that body and electing new ones. It is clear that if the Emperor possessed the rights of a censor, he would have direct control over the senate, and it would no longer be even nominally independent.
In 28 B.C., as we have seen, Augustus and Agrippa held a census as consuls, by virtue of the censorial power which originally belonged to the consular office. And on the two subsequent occasions on which Augustus held a census, once by himself (8 B.C.) and once in conjunction with Tiberius (14 A.D.), he did not assume the title of censor, but caused consular power to be conferred on him temporarily by the senate. In 22 B.C. the people proposed to bestow on Augustus the censorship for life, but he refused the offer, and caused Paulus Emilius Lepidus and Munatius Plancus to be appointed censors. This was the last occasion on which two private citizens were colleagues in that office. Three times it was proposed to Augustus to undertake as a perpetual office "the regulation of laws and manners" (morum legumque regimen), but he invariably refused. Such an institution would have been as openly subversive of republican government as royalty or the dictatorship. Nevertheless some of the functions of the censor, and especially the census equitum, seem from the very first to have fallen within the competence