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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
JuliusCaesar was murdered not because he abused his autocratic powers but because the Roman nobility was not prepared to stomach an autocrat at all. Octavian, therefore, made fair profession of restoring the Republic and watched over the establishment of a new constitution in which the functions of government were divided between the Princeps, First Citizen of Rome, and the Senate, a constitution in which, in the last resort, although the fact was ingeniously concealed, supreme power lay with the Princeps. When, towards the end of his life, Augustus wrote: ‘Of power I had no more than my colleagues in each several magistracy’, he expressed no more than an ingenious half-truth. The Senate might console itself with the reflection that it voted the Emperor his imperium for limited periods of five or ten years, and that it reserved the right to refuse to extend this imperium or, after the death of Augustus, to elect a successor to him. These were vain thoughts, but they were entertained none the less. In the background was the army, strong enough and ready enough to see that the empire which had been established by the legions should not be destroyed by the politicians.
page 161 note 1 Res Gestœ vi. 21–3.
page 161 note 2 Ann. i. 33; ii. 82.
page 161 note 3 Cf. Dessau, I.L.S. 72.
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