Sublime

The message is clear. It was an axiom of the Augustan regime that the emperor paraded his generosity to the ordinary people of the city of Rome and that they in turn were to look to him as their patron, protector and benefactor.

Caesar was duly elected consul for 59 BCE and, among a series of measures that strongly resembled the programmes of earlier, radical tribunes, sponsored legislation on behalf of the other two. He also secured a military command for himself in southern Gaul, to which a vast area on the other side of the Alps was soon added.

In broad terms, Augustus bought senatorial acquiescence and senatorial service at the price of granting them honours, respect and in some cases new powers.

For several Roman observers, senatorial weakness for bribery was one major factor lying behind their failure: ‘Rome’s a city for sale and bound to fall as soon as it finds a buyer’, as Jugurtha was supposed to have quipped when he left the city.

Equally worrying for Roman traditionalists was the sense that Antony was beginning to treat Alexandria as if it were Rome, even to the point of celebrating the distinctively Roman ceremony of triumph there, after some minor victory in Armenia. ‘For the sake of Cleopatra he bestowed on the Egyptians the honourable and solemn ceremonies of his own co

For the founding father of all Roman emperors, however, it has always proved difficult to pin him down. In fact, the new name ‘Augustus’, which he adopted soon after his return from Egypt (and which I shall use from now on), captures the slipperiness very nicely. It is a word that evoked ideas of authority (auctoritas) and proper religious observan

The first emperor

Important, and visible, as some of these developments were, the basic structures of imperial power, as the first Augustus had formulated them, remained in place throughout the rule of these fourteen emperors, no matter who was on the throne: Tiberius near the beginning of the first century CE would not have found it difficult to slip into the imper

am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the Caesars. *n