The Historians' History of the World 06

But it was not only the patrician class which Augustus endeavoured to preserve; the ancient class distinctions among the citizens were respected as far as possible. The senators, raised in public esteem by the expulsion of unworthy members, wore even under the principate the broad purple hem as a mark of their rank; they had special seats reserved for them in the theatres, and received from Augustus the privilege that the crimes of senators could only be judged by the senate itself. They could contract legal marriages with none but freeborn persons. In like manner the knightly class was purged of unworthy elements and maintained as a distinct order with a fixed income and recognised privileges. As in republican times, the younger members served as a guarda nobile

, being mounted on chargers provided by the state in the field and in the gorgeous processions on civic festivals. The knights were eligible for all curule offices and military appointments, so that the order became the nursery for the military and civil service as well as for the senate. Augustus chose his provincial procurators and tax-collectors by preference from among them. The emperor endeavoured to preserve even the free burgesses from the admixture of alien elements as far as possible, and to this end imposed restrictions and limitations on the manumission of slaves.

Roman Door-knocker

As commander-in-chief of all the military forces, and head of the senate, Augustus was master and ruler of the state; but one important element of the power which Cæsar had wielded was still lacking—the tribunician authority. This also was conferred upon him for life by the senate and people in the year 23, in the general rejoicings at his recovery from an illness, and because he had appointed L. Sestius, the friend and comrade of M. Brutus, to a share in the consulate.

The office of tribune bore a sacred character in the eyes of the Romans. The most glorious deeds of the nation as a whole in the palmy days of the republic were associated with the tribunate of the people; the plebs regarded it as the palladium of their liberties and legal status; from the days of Coriolanus down to the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey, the broils of political factions had raged around this magistracy of the people. Its solemn bestowal upon Augustus therefore supplied him with a religious consecration; by this alone a sacred and indissoluble bond was knit between the people and the supreme head of the state; the prince (princeps) was recognised as the protector of the people, and the magistracy of the popular community was transferred to its ruler. The rights of protection and intercession inherent in the tribunate were then expanded into an imperial prerogative of appeal and pardon and extended to the whole empire. In civil and criminal cases alike, an appeal to the emperor’s judgment-seat might be made from all tribunals and all parts of the empire, and thus the highest judicial authority in the whole sphere of government was committed into the hands of Augustus. The clemency and humanity for which he was famous caused these appeals to the imperial court to exceed all measure. Special courts of appeal had soon to be erected in the city and in the provinces, in the one case under the presidency of the prefect of the city, in the other under special consular authorities to whom the emperor delegated his judicial supremacy. By this means not only was an imperial court of appeal, such as Cæsar had attempted to introduce, established throughout the empire as the supreme tribunal, which gradually drew before itself all important suits after judgment had been pronounced in the prætorian or senatorial courts, but a far-reaching prerogative of mercy became a recognised attribute of the imperator’s power, a prerogative that could pour forth its cornucopia upon free and unfree, citizen and provincial. “Every temple, every shrine of the emperor in Italy or the provinces was a sheltering asylum, his statues and portraits became wonder-working images of deliverance, which paralysed the arm of justice or revenge.”

At the altars of the emperor even slaves found protection against harshness or inhumanity on the part of their masters. Augustus so highly prized the bestowal of this protective office of Tribune of the people, that he even had the day (27th of June, 23 B.C.) recorded on coins and monuments as the beginning of his reign. Three years later the imperial power received its consummation in the grant of the consular authority to Augustus for the term of his life, with the right to nominate his colleagues or representatives and to propose them for election, and with an extension of the right of issuing legal ordinances (edicts). From that time forward he took his seat in the senate upon a curule chair placed at a higher level between the two consuls.