Augustus completed the work begun by the
Gracchii, Gaius Marius, and Julius Caesar. He suffocated the Constitution of the Roman Republic. He consolidated the power into the Roman
executive over time. Roman
patriots would dream of the Republic’s restoration but never realize it. Rome forever entered into the age of
the Caesars.
A constitution is a system of fundamental
laws and principles that prescribes the nature, functions, and limits of a
government or another institution.
Polybius described the Romans establishing their Constitution in the 8th
Century BC. The ideas of Lycurgus
of Sparta influenced the Romans.
Lycurgus saw 3 constitutions founded on a
single principle. Those forms of
government were monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Each government is greatest when those that govern it are
virtuous and each government is hated when those that govern it take on a
hateful character. Lycurgus
foresaw that virtue oscillates from the one, the few and the many and that the
best defense of being held hostage to the times was to establish a new
constitution by which power could be shared amongst the one, the few and the
many equally. The Roman Republic
emulated Lycurgus’ principles.
The Roman Republic balanced the powers of
the one, the few and the many. The
Roman Republic empowered the executive or monarchical rule in the magistracies
– the annual offices of censor, tribune, aedile, praetor and consul. The Roman
Republic empowered government by the few or the aristocracy in the investiture of
the Senate. The Roman Republic
conceded power to democracy in its popular assemblies.
Much of Augustus’ work in strangling Roman
liberty had been done for him. The
Roman Republic divided the power of one man amongst many men to be held for a
limited amount of time. At the
time of Tiberius Gracchus, the office of tribune had been shared among three
men. Tiberius Gracchus forcibly
removed his fellow tribune Marcus Octavius when the Octavius disagreed with him
on land reform. Land reform was a scheme by which Tiberius could monetize votes
by giving away lands held by the state and aristocracy. Tiberius Gracchus’ forcibly ejection of
his colleague Marcus Octavius violated the Constitutional power of the tribunes
as sacrosanct. It was not only
intra-Executive usurpation it also attacked the democratic elements of Roman
Constitution. Tiberius Gracchus
poisoned the assembly to give way to the horror of mob rule – a specific injunction
Lycurgus warned against.
Tiberius Gracchus’ usurpations did not end
there. He abused the Lex Hortensia
to enact his land reform scheme, Tiberius Gracchus usurped the power of the
Senate – the balance of powers afforded to the aristocracy in the Constitution.
Tiberius Gracchus stood for
re-election. Re-election was
another unprecedented intra-Executive usurpation. Tribunes never ran for
re-election. Mob violence erupted in the forum on the day of his
re-election. The Romans clubbed
Tiberius Gracchus and 300 of his supporters to death.
Gaius Gracchus continued his brother’s
reform by more constitutional means. There was one prominent exception. His target would be an unlikely
one. Gaius Gracchus aimed his next
usurpation against the people. The man who fashioned himself the people’s
advocate now aimed to dilute the power of all Romans by enfranchising the
Italian allies. His actions resulted
in his dying a traitor’s death and precipitating the disastrous Social War.
Gaius Marius, a contemporary of Tiberius
and Gaius Gracchus, usurped the Constitution by running for Consul for an
unprecedented six times. Though
not illegal, it certainly was extra-Constitutional. Upon his return from exile after service in the
aforementioned Social War, Marius pitted the democratic branch against the
aristocratic branch of the Constitution over the appointment of the Eastern
Mithridatic command. This
Constitutional crisis turned bloody, mob violence turned into mafia style
executions only to be resolved by Civil War.
The establishment of a perpetual
dictatorship to resolve problems weakened the other branches of government the
Assemblies and the Senate. Sulla’s
reform of the Constitution not only emasculated the democratic branch of
government by limiting who could participate. His political purges in the form of treason trials,
proscriptions and a culture of summary execution attacked over 700 years of
Roman liberty and rights. These
events no doubt liquefied any attachment to the old Constitution.
But even after Sulla’s friends convinced
him to give up the dictatorship, those who came of age under the suffering of
Marian civil wars could not resist the opportunity to exercise absolute
power. The Gabinian laws invested
imperium infinitium – absolute power in dealing with the pirate crisis. The Gabinian law empowered Pompey who
wiped out the pirate problem in 6 months.
He also used such powers to settle affairs in the East.
The extra-constitutional first triumvirate
and the career of Julius Caesar usurped the effective control of the Republic.
In 60 BC, Julius Caesar had consummated an alliance between two bitter rivals
Crassus and Pompey. The following
year the people of Rome elected Caesar to the Consulship. Caesar violated the Constitution by
beating up his colleague Bibulus in the forum and confining him to a house
arrest. Caesar also beat up those
who dissented from his views. He
arrested Marcus Porcius Cato.
Caesar’s consulship was a foretaste to the dog collar that was preparing
for Rome.
In his proconsular years, Caesar prosecuted
wars without a vote of the people in the Assemblies or as required by law
consultation with the Senate. He
was successful in war. He amassed great sums of wealth. Much of it he used in financing the
career of a rogue tribune Clodius.
This Clodius was a common thug who beat up people who didn’t agree with
him in the forum and agitated riots in the Senate.
The triumvirate, first and the second,
itself was a circumvention of the Roman Constitution. Whatever the Constitutional infractions Caesar committed,
Antony amplified in the spectacle that was his life.
The military of the late Republic was more
of a decentralized set of private armies operating under a loose charter from
the Senate and People of Rome held by a number of strong men. Julius Caesar flourished at killing
men. By killing Romans, Julius
Caesar consolidated the legions under his control. At the death Mark Antony, Augustus received his full
inheritance.
In the triumph that followed Actium,
Augustus had much of his work finished for him.
Augustus used religion to legitimate his
usurpations. Though fallen
Triumvir Lepidus held the office of Pontifex Maximus until his death, the
Pontifex Maximus lived in exile and what was a Pope, when Augustus could claim
to be the son of a god – the divine Julius Caesar?
As Commander in Chief of Roman Army, the
legionnaires had to swear an annual military oath to the Emperor. This oath he called the Sacramentum. Augustus established the Praetorian Guard. Its proximity to power made it morph
over time into a political body and the most important bureaucracy in the
Empire. Augustus issued a Donativum,
formalized bribes meant to win the
loyalty of the legions. Rebellion
would soon enter the scene as a constant staple of Imperial politics.
Augustus used Egypt as a personal
possession – a purse by which he could count on for a limitless supply of
wealth.
Augustus and his allies in the Senate consolidated
powers held by the Plebian Tribunes in the Old Republic. The Senatorial grant of Tribunician
powers to the Emperor Augustus eliminated the office of tribune.
Augustus furthered the theoretical façade
that Senate stood as co-equal branches of government instead of what it was a
rubber stamp for Augustus’ whims.
When he could no longer maintain the façade of co-consul, he sat between
both consuls and acted as presiding officer over the Senate. As censor he controlled the membership
of the Senate.
The once proud freedom loving peoples of
Rome became over time the playthings of a king in all but name. The emperors that would follow
oscillated between various points of enlightenment from the highly virtuous to
the macabre. But the strength of
the Republic that had endured for seven hundred years and built a transnational
polity died when the blood of Brutus ran cold.
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