In 17 bc Rome held Secular Games, a traditional celebration to announce the entry into a new epoch (saeculum). New it was, for, though Augustus preserved what he could of republican institutions, he added much that was his own. His Rome had become very Italian, and this spirit is reflected in the art and literature of his reign. Its greatest writers were native Italians, and, like the ruler whose program they glorified, they used the traditional as the basis for something new. Virgil, Horace, and Livy, as noted above, imitated the writing of classical Greece, but chiefly in form, their tone and outlook being un-Hellenic. It was the glory of Italy and faith in Rome that inspired Virgil’s Georgics and Aeneid, Horace’s Odes, and the first 10 books of Livy’s history.

In Augustan art a similar fusion was achieved between the prevailing Attic and Hellenistic models and Italian naturalism. The sculptured portraits on the Ara Pacis (Altar of the Augustan Peace) of 9 bc, for all their lifelike quality, are yet in harmony with the classical poise of the figures, and they strike a fresh note: the stately converging processions (Rome’s imperial family and magistrates on one side; senators, equites, and citizens on the other) became the prototypes for all later processional reliefs. Augustan painting likewise displays a successful combination of Greek and Roman elements, to judge from the frescoes in the house of Livia on the Palatine. In Augustan architecture, decidedly conservative and Hellenic, the potentialities of curving and vaulted spaces that had been revealed in the earlier 1st century bc were not realized. Building was, however, very active and widespread.

The culture of the age undoubtedly attained a high level of excellence, dominated by the personality of the emperor and his accomplishments. Imperial art had already reached full development, a matter of no small moment, because Rome’s political predominance made the spread of its influence inevitable. The Mediterranean world was soon assuming a Roman aspect, and this is a measure of Augustus’ extraordinary achievement. Yet it was an achievement with limitations. His professed aim—to promote stability, peace, security, and prosperity—was irreproachable, but perhaps it was also unexciting. Emphasizing conservatism by precept and his own example, he encouraged the simpler virtues of a less sophisticated age, and his success made this sedate but rather static outlook fashionable. People accepted the routine of his continuing rule, at the cost, however, of some loss of intellectual energy and moral fervour. The great literature, significantly, belongs to the years near Actium, when people’s imagination still nursed heady visions of Roman victory and Italian destiny. After the Secular Games the atmosphere became more commonplace and produced the frivolities of Ovid and the pedestrian later books of Livy.

Appraisal of Augustus

Augustus’ position as princeps cannot be defined simply. He was neither a Roman king (rex) nor a Hellenistic monarch (basileus), nor was he, as the 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen thought, a partner with the Senate in a dyarchy. He posed as the first servant of an empire over which the Roman Senate presided, and it would appear that his claim to have accepted no office inconsistent with ancestral custom was literally true. Proconsular imperium was a republican institution, and, although tribunician power was not, it contained nothing specifically unrepublican. But, while precedents can be cited for Augustus’ various powers, their concentration and tenure were absolutely unparalleled. Under the republic, powers like his would have been distributed among several holders, each serving for a limited period with a colleague. Augustus wielded them all, by himself, simultaneously and without any time limit (in practice, at least). This fact made him an emperor, but it did not necessarily make him a military tyrant.

In discharging both military and civilian functions, Augustus was no different from republican consuls or praetors. Admittedly his military power was overwhelming; but, if he chose not to brandish it, the tone of his reign could remain essentially civilian. Constitutional safeguards were indeed lacking; everything was at the emperor’s discretion, and even Augustus passed legislation that made anti-imperial behaviour, real or suspected, treasonable (men were, in fact, executed for conspiracy during his reign). But there had been no constitutional safeguards in the republic, under Sulla, Pompey, the triumvirs, or even Julius Caesar. Augustus’ improved police services probably made lower-class Romans at least feel safer under him. The senatorial class, however, contained a minority resentful of the sheer undeniable preponderance of the princeps’ power, and he was the target of several unsuccessful plots against his life.

The principate was something personal, what the emperor chose to make it, and the relations prevailing between emperor and Senate usually indicated what a reign was like. In Augustus’ case they reveal a regime that was outwardly constitutional, generally moderate, and certainly effective. But, as he himself implied at the end of his life, he was a skillful actor in life’s comedy. Later emperors lacked his sureness of touch.

When Augustus died, the Senate unhesitatingly pronounced him divus—the deified one who had restored peace, organized a standing army to defend the frontiers, expanded those frontiers farther than any previous Roman, improved administrative practices everywhere, promoted better standards of public and private behaviour, integrated Rome and Italy, embellished Rome, reconciled the provinces, expedited Romanization, and above all maintained law and order while respecting republican traditions.

Augustus’ luck was hardly inferior to his statecraft. Despite indifferent health, he headed the Roman state in one capacity or another for 56 years. His rule, one of the longest in European history, consolidated the principate so firmly that what might have been an episode became an epoch. At his death there was practically no one left with any personal memory of the republic, and Augustus’ wish came true: he had fashioned a lasting as well as constitutional government. The principate endured with only minor changes for about 200 years.

The succession

Like any great Roman magnate, Augustus owed it to his supporters and dependents to maintain the structure of power which they constituted together and which would normally pass from father to son. In accepting the heritage from Caesar, he had only done the right thing, and he was respected for it by his peers. None of them would have advised him later to dismantle what he had since added to it. When, for instance, he was away from Rome, rather than accepting a diminution in his prerogatives of administration, a senator as city prefect was deputed to represent him. Consequently, Augustus began thinking early about who should follow him. The soldiers’ views on legitimacy reinforced his own natural desire to found a dynasty, but he had no son and was therefore obliged to select his successor. Death played havoc with his attempts to do so. His nephew Marcellus, his son-in-law Agrippa, his grandsons Gaius and Lucius (Julia’s children by Agrippa), were groomed in turn; but they all predeceased him. Augustus, finally and reluctantly, chose a member of the republican nobility, his stepson Tiberius, a scion of the ultra-aristocratic Claudii. In ad 4 Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son and had tribunician power and probably proconsular imperium as well conferred upon him. This arrangement was confirmed in 13, and, when Augustus died the following year, Tiberius automatically became emperor.

Tiberius (ruled 14–37), during whose reign Christ was crucified, was a soldier and administrator of proved capability but of a reserved and moody temperament that engendered misunderstanding and unpopularity. Slander blamed him for the death in 19 of his nephew and heir apparent, the popular Germanicus; and, when informers (delatores), who functioned at Rome like public prosecutors, charged notables with treason, Tiberius was thought to encourage them. By concentrating the praetorian cohorts in a camp adjoining Rome, he increased the soldiers’ scope for mischief-making without building any real security, and in 26 he left Rome permanently for the island of Capreae (Capri), entrusting Rome to the care of the city prefect. Tiberius heeded the aged Augustus’ advice and did not extend the empire. (The annexation of Cappadocia, a client kingdom, represented no departure from Augustan policy.) In general he took his duties seriously; however, by administering the empire from Capreae he offended the Senate and was never fully trusted, much less really liked. At his death he was not pronounced divus. His great-nephew, Germanicus’ son Gaius, succeeded him.

Gaius (better known by his nickname, Caligula, meaning Little Boot) ruled from 37 to 41 with the absolutism of an Oriental monarch: his short reign was filled with reckless spending, callous murders, and humiliation of the Senate. Gaius’ foreign policy was inept. Projected annexation proved abortive in Britain; it touched off heavy fighting in Mauretania. In Judaea and Alexandria, Gaius’ contemptuous disregard of Jewish sentiment provoked near rebellion. When assassination ended his tyranny, the Senate contemplated restoration of the republic but was obliged by the Praetorian Guard to recognize Claudius, Germanicus’ brother and therefore Gaius’ uncle, as emperor.

Claudius I (ruled 41–54) went far beyond Augustus and Tiberius in centralizing government administration and, particularly, state finances in the imperial household. His freedmen secretaries consequently acquired great power; they were in effect directors of government bureaus. Claudius himself displayed much interest in the empire overseas; he enlarged it significantly, incorporating client kingdoms (Mauretania in 42; Lycia, 43; Thrace, 46) and, more important, annexing Britain. Conquest of Britain began in 43, Claudius himself participating in the campaign; the southeast was soon overrun, a colonia established at Camulodunum (Colchester) and a municipium at Verulamium (St. Albans), while Londinium (London) burgeoned into an important entrepôt. Claudius also promoted Romanization, especially in the western provinces, by liberally granting Roman citizenship, by founding coloniae, and by inducting provincials directly into the Senate—he became censor in 47 and added to the Senate men he wanted, bestowing appropriate quaestorian or praetorian rank upon them to spare the maturer ones among them the necessity of holding junior magistracies; lest existing senators take offense, he elevated some of them to patrician status (a form of patronage often used by later emperors). Claudius’ provincial policies made the primacy of Italy less pronounced, although that was hardly his aim. In fact, he did much for Italy, improving its harbours, roads, and municipal administration and draining its marshy districts. The execution of many senators and equites, the insolence and venality of his freedmen, the excessive influence of his wives, and even his bodily infirmities combined to make him unpopular. Nevertheless, when he died (murdered probably by his fourth wife, Julia Agrippina, Augustus’ great-granddaughter, who was impatient for the succession of the 16-year-old Nero, her son by an earlier marriage), he was pronounced divus.

Nero (ruled 54–68) left administration to capable advisers for a few years but then asserted himself as a vicious despot. He murdered successively his stepbrother Britannicus, his mother Julia Agrippina, his wife Octavia, and his tutor Seneca. He also executed many Christians, accusing them of starting the great fire of Rome in 64 (this is the first recorded Christian persecution). In Rome his reliance on Oriental favourites and his general misgovernment led to a conspiracy by Gaius Calpurnius Piso in 65, but it was suppressed, leading to yet more executions; the victims included the poet Lucan. The empire was not enlarged under this unwarlike emperor, but it was called upon to put down serious disorders. In Britain in 60–61 the rapacity and brutality of Roman officials provoked a furious uprising under Queen Boudicca; thousands were slaughtered, and Camulodunum, Vernulamium, and Londinium were destroyed. In the east a major military effort under Corbulo, Rome’s foremost general, was required (62–65) to reestablish Roman prestige; a compromise settlement was reached, with the Romans accepting the Parthian nominee in Armenia and the Parthians recognizing him as Rome’s client king. In 66, however, revolt flared in Judaea, fired by Roman cruelty and stupidity, Jewish fanaticism, and communal hatreds; the prefect of Egypt, Julius Alexander, prevented involvement of the Jews of the Diaspora. An army was sent to Judaea under Titus Flavius Vespasianus to restore order; but it had not completed its task when two provincial governors in the west rebelled against Nero—Julius Vindex in Gallia Lugdunensis and Sulpicius Galba in Hispania Tarraconensis. When the praetorians in Rome also renounced their allegiance, Nero lost his nerve and committed suicide. He brought the Julio-Claudian dynasty to an ignominious end by being the first emperor to suffer damnatio memoriae—his reign was officially stricken from the record by order of the Senate.

The year of the four emperors

Nero’s death ushered in the so-called year of the four emperors. The extinction of the Julio-Claudian imperial house robbed the soldiers of a focus for their allegiance, and civil war between the different armies ensued. The army of Upper Germany, after crushing Vindex, urged its commander, Verginius Rufus, to seize the purple for himself. But he elected to support Galba—scion of a republican patrician family claiming descent from Jupiter and Pasiphae—who was recognized as emperor by the Senate. However, the treasury, emptied by Nero’s extravagance, imposed a stringent economy, and this bred unpopularity for Galba; his age (73) was also against him, and unrest grew. Early in January 69 the Rhineland armies acclaimed Aulus Vitellius, commander in Lower Germany; at Rome the praetorians preferred Marcus Salvius Otho, whom Galba had alienated by choosing a descendant of the old republican aristocracy for his successor. Otho promptly procured Galba’s murder and obtained senatorial recognition; this ended the monopoly of the purple for the republican nobility.

Otho, however, lasted only three months; defeated at Bedriacum, near Cremona in northern Italy, by Vitellius’ powerful Rhineland army, he committed suicide (April 69). The Senate thereupon recognized Vitellius; but the soldiers along the Danube and in the east supported Vespasianus, the commander in Judaea. In a second battle near Bedriacum, the Rhineland troops were defeated in their turn, and on Vitellius’ death soon afterward an accommodating Senate pronounced Vespasian emperor.