Cappadocia, Armenia was established as a “friendly and independent ally.”[1]
Next in importance to the rectification and defence of the frontiers was the reformation of the administration, and the Administrative reforms in the provinces. restoration of prosperity to the distracted and exhausted provinces. The most serious defect of the republican system had been the absence of any effective control over the Roman officials outside Italy. This was now supplied by the general proconsular authority vested in the emperor. The provinces were for the first time treated as departments of a single state, while their governors, from being independent and virtually irresponsible rulers, became the subordinate officials of a higher authority.[2] Over the legati of the imperial provinces the control of the emperor was as complete as that of the republican proconsul over his staff in his own province. They were appointed by him, held office at his good pleasure, and were directly responsible to him for their conduct. The proconsuls of the senatorial provinces were in law magistrates equally with the princeps, though inferior to him in rank; it was to the senate that they were as of old responsible; they were still selected by lot from among the senators of consular and praetorian rank. But the distinction did not seriously interfere with the paramount authority of the emperor. The provinces left nominally to the senate were the more peaceful and settled districts in the heart of the empire, where only the routine work of civil administration was needed, and where the local municipal governments were as yet comparatively vigorous. The senatorial proconsuls themselves were indirectly nominated by the emperor through his control of the praetorship and consulship. They wielded no military and only a strictly subordinate financial authority, and, though Augustus and Tiberius, at any rate, encouraged the fiction of the responsibility of the senatorial governors to the senate, it was in reality to the emperor that they looked for direction and advice, and to him that they were held accountable. Moreover, in the case of all governors this accountability became under the empire a reality. Prosecutions for extortion (de pecuniis repetundis), which were now transferred to the hearing of the senate, are tolerably frequent during the first century of the empire; but a more effective check on maladministration lay in the appeal to Caesar from the decisions of any governor, which was open to every provincial, and in the right of petition. Finally, the authority both of the legate and the proconsul was weakened by the presence of the imperial procurator, to whom was entrusted the administration of the fiscal revenues; while both legate and proconsul were deprived of that right of requisitioning supplies which, in spite of a long series of restrictive laws, had been the most powerful instrument of oppression in the hands of republican governors. The financial reforms of Augustus[3] are marked by Financial reforms. the same desire to establish an equitable, orderly and economical system, and by the same centralization of authority in the emperor's hands. The institution of an imperial census, or valuation of all land throughout the empire, and the assessment upon this basis of a uniform land tax, in place of the heterogeneous and irregular payments made under the republic, were the work of Augustus, though the system was developed and perfected by the emperors of the 2nd century and by Diocletian. The land tax itself was directly collected, either by imperial officials or by local authorities responsible to them, and the old wasteful plan of selling the privilege of collection to publicani was henceforward applied only to such indirect taxes as the customs duties. The rate of the land tax was fixed by the emperor, and with him rested the power of remission even in senatorial provinces.[4] The effect of these reforms is clearly visible in the improved financial condition of the empire. Under the republic the treasury had been nearly always in difficulties, and the provinces exhausted and impoverished. Under the emperors, at least throughout the 1st century, in spite of a largely increased expenditure on the army, on public works, on shows and largesses, and on the machinery of government itself, the better emperors, such as Liberal policy towards the provinces. Tiberius and Vespasian, were able to accumulate large sums, while the provinces show but few signs of distress. Moreover, while the republic had almost entirely neglected to develop the internal resources of the provinces, Augustus set the example of a liberal expenditure on public works, in the construction of harbours, roads and bridges, the reclamation of waste lands, and the erection of public buildings.[5] The crippling restrictions which the republic had placed on freedom of intercourse and trade, even between the separate districts of a single province, disappeared under the empire. In the eyes of the Italy and the provinces under the empire. republican statesmen the provinces were merely the estates of the Roman people, but from the reign of Augustus dates the gradual disappearance of the old pre-eminence of Rome and Italy. It was from the provinces that the legions were increasingly recruited; provincials rose to high rank as soldiers, statesmen and men of letters;[6] and the methods of administration, formerly distinctive of the provinces, were adopted even in Rome and Italy. From Augustus himself, jealous as he was of the traditions and privileges of the ruling Roman people, date the rule of an imperial prefect[7] in the city of Rome, the division of Italy into regiones in the provincial fashion, and the permanent quartering there of armed troops.[8]
Augustus founded a dynasty which occupied the throne for more than half a century after his death. The first and by far The Julio-Claudian line. the ablest of its members was Tiberius (A.D. 14-37). He was undoubtedly a capable and vigorous ruler, who enforced justice in the government of the provinces, maintained the integrity of the frontiers and husbanded the finances of the empire, but he became intensely unpopular in Roman society, and was painted as a cruel and odious tyrant. His successor, Gaius (A.D. 37-41), generally known as Caligula, was the slave of his wild caprices and uncontrolled passions, which issued in manifest insanity. He was followed by his uncle, Claudius (A.D. 41-54), whose personal uncouthness made him an object of derision to his contemporaries, but who was by no means devoid of statesmanlike faculties. His reign left an abiding mark on the history of the empire, for he carried forward its development on the lines intended by Augustus. Client-states were absorbed, southern Britain was conquered, the Romanization of the West received a powerful impulse, public works were executed in Rome and Italy, and the organization of the imperial bureaucracy made rapid strides. Nero (A.D. 54-68), the last of the Julio-Claudian line, has been handed down to posterity as the incarnation of monstrous vice and fantastic luxury. But his wild excesses scarcely affected the prosperity of the empire at large; the provinces were well governed, and the war with Parthia led to a compromise in the matter of Armenia which secured peace for half a century.[9]
- ↑ Mommsen, Provinces, cap. 9. Armenia, however, long continued to be a debatable ground between Rome and Parthia—passing alternately under the influence of one or the other.
- ↑ For the provincial reforms of Augustus, see Marquardt, Staatsverw., i. 544 sqq.
- ↑ Marquardt, ii. 204 sqq.; Hirschfeld, Verwaltungsbeamten, 55 sqq.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. ii. 47.
- ↑ Suet. Aug. 18, 47.
- ↑ Jung, Die romanischen Landschaften (Innsbruck, 1881); Budinsky, Die Ausbreitung d. lateinischen Sprache (Berlin, 1881).
- ↑ The praefectus urbi, unlike the other imperial prefects, was always a senator. He commanded the three cohortes urbanae, which preserved order in the city, and possessed a power of jurisdiction which tended to increase in importance. The office, which was only temporary under Augustus, became a permanent one under his successor.
- ↑ Besides the cohortes urbanae mentioned above, the nine regiments of the imperial guard (cohortes praetorianae) were quartered in Rome. The guards were not at first concentrated but billeted in Rome and the neighbouring towns; the praetorian barracks on the Esquiline were built under Tiberius (Tac. Ann. iv. 2). Augustus also formed the quasi-military police force of the vigiles (in seven cohorts), which performed the duties of a fire brigade and night watch. Police duties in those parts of Italy which were subject to brigandage were performed by stationes militum (Suet. Aug. 32).
- ↑ For an estimate of the Julio-Claudian Caesars, based on the results of recent research, see Pelham in Quarterly Review (April 1905). It is now generally admitted that Tacitus's picture is overdrawn.
