Chapter XI: Italy and the Provinces Under the Principate

§ 1. _The Organisation of Italy_

The chief feature of the organisation of Italy during the early Principate was the completion of the efforts made during the later Republic at incorporating its towns with Rome. The unity aimed at was chiefly that of jurisdiction, but we have no evidence of the steps which Augustus took to perfect the system of judicial centralisation, which had been devised at the close of the Republic.[2067] At the same time this Emperor adopted a device which, though its full details and effects are unknown, seemed to foreshadow the later principle of a close administrative unification of Italy with the capital. He divided the peninsula, exclusive of the immediate territory of Rome, into eleven regions (_regiones_).[2068] The immediate purpose contemplated by this division is unknown; but it laid the basis for subsequent distributions of many branches of Italian administration. The public domains, taxes paid by Roman citizens such as the _vicesima hereditatum_, and the results of the census, were organised or calculated by regions.[2069] They were employed, therefore, for work which necessarily fell on the central government, and this organisation so far implied no infringement on the communal autonomy of the towns. Such infringement came as a necessary result of the influence of the personality of the Princeps, which finally dominated Italy as effectually as it controlled Rome. But its coming was very gradual· The final change may be illustrated by the disappearance of the municipal _comitia_, the limitation of local jurisdiction, the loss of an independent system of local finance, and the control ultimately assumed by the central government of the actual administration of many of the Italian states.

Of these changes, the downfall of the _comitia_ is perhaps less remarkable than their continuance for so long a period after the assemblies had ceased to be a reality at Rome. A Latin colony in the time of Domitian still elects its magistrates at a _comitia curiata_,[2070] and the transference of this principle to Spain shows its prevalence at the time in Italy. The paucity of inscriptions of the early Principate which speak of elections by the only alternative body, the local Senate, is remarkable, and there are clear indications of the survival of the principle of popular election until the time of Antoninus Pius.[2071] It doubtless retained its hold on Italy as late as it did on the western provinces; its disappearance from the whole municipal sphere was the result of a new system of creating magistrates, the characteristics of which will be traced when we are dealing with the provinces of this period.[2072] The elective power of the assemblies no doubt survived all their administrative functions. The tendency even of the early Principate was to confine these to the local Senates, which were accounted more responsible bodies, and were far better instruments of the central controlling power of Rome.

The limitation of the local courts of law cannot be fully illustrated, but it is to some extent connected with the establishment of high individual authorities for jurisdiction in Italy, which begins with Hadrian. That Emperor divided Italy into four great circuits, and placed each of them under a _consularis_.[2073] These magistrates were replaced under Marcus Aurelius by _juridici_[2074] of praetorian rank, whose purely civil jurisdiction was finally concerned with that portion of Italy which was separated from the _urbica dioecesis_, the sphere of the praetor’s competence.[2075] These officials are mentioned only in connexion with extraordinary jurisdiction concerned with trusts, the nomination of guardians,[2076] or questions of administrative law, such as a controversy concerning the qualification for the decurionate.[2077] But, as extraordinary jurisdiction was gaining the upper hand of the _jus ordinarium_, and as such administrative questions would at an earlier period have been settled by the municipalities themselves,[2078] the powers of the _juridici_ may be regarded as a very real limitation of those of the local magistrates and senates. We have already seen that all the higher criminal jurisdiction of these towns had disappeared. Within the limit of a hundred miles from Rome such cognisance belonged to the praefect of the city, outside this limit to the praefect of the guard.[2079]

The financial difficulties under which many of the Italian towns laboured, invited a further system of imperial control. This took the form of the institution of _curatores rei publicae_, of senatorial or equestrian rank, whose existence is traceable from the close of the first century A.D., and who were given by the Princeps as extraordinary commissioners to reinvigorate the financial life of poverty-stricken municipalities.[2080]

But an even more vigorous control was impending, which was to bring Italy nearer to the condition of a province. The extraordinary commissioners known as _correctores_ (διορθωταί), whom the Principate often gave to free cities or districts in the provinces,[2081] were finally transferred to Italy.[2082] When its municipalities were placed under this tutelage, there was little more than a formal difference between their condition and that of the subject towns, and nothing but a more regular system of administration and the imposition of direct taxation was wanted to change Italy into a province. Both these changes were effected under the rule of Diocletian. Italy was, it is true, not divided into _provinciae_, but its districts were placed under regularly-appointed _correctores_, and its lands supplied revenues to the imperial court and to Rome. This climax of centralisation was probably the inevitable result of the imperial system and the external circumstances of the time. To the Princeps Italian and provincial problems were the same; Italy was not always the country in which the Emperor established his permanent residence, and, as the onset of the barbarians threatened even the Italian frontier, there was no possible reason why Italy should not pay its quota to the general taxation. But economic and social evils may have contributed to the imperial encroachments on Italian administration. The weaknesses which led to imperial control may have been those which the Emperors sought to cure. These were poverty and depopulation, and how earnestly they were grappled with may be seen by a glance at the system of state support known as the _alimentarium_. The leading idea of this institution is the endowment of a state or district with a fund which should give partial support to children, and by this means encourage production and relieve the responsibilities of parents or guardians. Such charitable efforts had, at an early period, been made by individuals;[2083] and from the reign of Nerva the state, as represented by the Princeps, took up the enterprise. Nerva’s example was followed by Trajan,[2084] who extended and organised the system, and similar efforts were made by Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Severus Alexander.[2085] The form usually taken by the endowment was an advance by the Princeps of funds which were deposited on good landed security at moderate interest, 5 or 2½ per cent. From this interest a certain number of boys and girls were to be supported, by the gift either of a certain amount of corn or of a sum of money—twelve, sixteen, or twenty sesterces—per month. This support was guaranteed until the boys had attained their eighteenth and the girls their fourteenth year.[2086] The details of this organisation were supervised in each locality by a _quaestor alimentorum_, while the general control of the funds over a large district was usually entrusted to the curators of the roads[2087] which ran through that domain, who sometimes bore the title _praefectus_, sometimes that of _curator alimentorum_.[2088] This wise method of charitable relief, which inspired an interest in agriculture while it relieved poverty and encouraged the growth of population, continued in force until the close of the Principate, and the _praefecti_, who administered this department, can be traced till the time of Diocletian.[2089]

§ 2. _The Organisation of the Provinces_

The imperial problem of the later Republic—the task of finding a frontier—occupied the unceasing energy of the early Principes, and in this, as in similar cases in the history of the world, delimitation involved extension. Sometimes the views as to the proper boundary altered, and advance was at times succeeded by retrogression. Thus Augustus sought the Elbe only to fall back on the Rhine, and Trajan adopted against the great eastern power a heroic policy of annexation which did not commend itself to his successor. In one instance, too—that of Britain—a forward movement was made which can scarcely be explained as the search for a scientific frontier. But, on the whole, the slow and ordered progress was one that sought not territories, but boundaries, and the movement necessitated expansion, whether it took the form of the annexation of the wild districts to the south of the Danube, or the gradual absorption of the kingdoms and principalities which intervened between the old Asiatic provinces and the Euphrates or the African dominions and the sea. The Danube, the Rhine, and the German Ocean; the Euphrates and the Syrian Desert; the Ethiopian kingdoms, the Sahara, and the Atlantic, were the limits within which the Principate was to strive to make the best of the means left by the victorious Republic for the government of the world. The Republic had indeed laid a solid foundation for ordered rule, and although we are accustomed to think of the Roman Empire chiefly in connexion with the three peaceful centuries of the Principate, it should not be forgotten that the work of the latter was chiefly the introduction, not of original ideas, but of those slight but decisive modifications which are sufficient to change a clumsy into a workable machine. A more effective, although far from perfect, system of military defence, a greater division of authority amongst the organs of government, a more careful estimate of provincial burdens, a competent although perhaps over-rigid civil service,—these were the immediate gifts of the Principate to the world. The results were comfort and peace; but a comfort that was too often divested of even local patriotism, and a peace that was singularly devoid of intellectual ideals. A universal citizenship was also amongst the hidden treasures of the Empire, but it was a gift conferred in proportion to its valuelessness, and the Princeps whose edict was to make the world a city was a calculating spendthrift bent only on increasing the taxes of his subjects. But, since the golden mean of Empire had yet to be found, we cannot blame the Principate for doing too much that which the Republic did too little. Every reaction is violent, and in this instance at least over-government was intended to be in the interest of the subject. The subject acclaimed it, at least in its initial stages,[2090] although his descendant was to find it a burden in comparison with which the yoke of the Republican proconsul would have seemed a trifle.

Augustus with characteristic modesty and discretion reserved his strength for the most difficult of the provinces—those on the frontier which demanded military occupation and unusual vigilance in administration—and thus created the distinction between Caesar’s provinces and those which were public (_publicae_) and were entrusted to the care of the Senate and people.[2091] There were occasional interchanges of provinces between the co-rulers. Thus Achaea and Macedonia were relinquished by the Senate in A.D. 15, but restored to it in A.D. 44,[2092] and Marcus Aurelius took over or surrendered districts according to the necessities of war.[2093] But in the middle of the Principate the Senate possessed but eleven,[2094] the Princeps twenty-one under regular governors,[2095] nine administered by procurators,[2096] one, Egypt, ruled by an equestrian praefect.

As in the Republic, the only true provincial _civitates_ were those which were _stipendiariae_. The free or free and allied communities were still technically exempt from the governor’s control. But the free cities were lessened in number and restricted in privileges. The supposed abuse of its self-governing powers by a _foederata civitas_ might cause the treaty to be rescinded and the state to be brought under direct provincial rule;[2097] while, even when _libertas_ was retained, its merits might be suspected, and the state might be placed under the financial tutelage of _curatores_ (λογισταί) or the administrative care of _correctores_ (διορθωταί) appointed by the Princeps.[2098] It is also certain that _libertas_ no longer conferred immunity from taxation. We know that, of the cities of Asia which are described as tributary in the reign of Tiberius,[2099] two, Magnesia ad Sipylum and Apollonidea, were _liberae_,[2100] while Byzantium, which had been in alliance with Rome during the Republic, also paid tribute in the reign of Claudius.[2101] This change, which is specially noticeable in the East, has been with great probability attributed to Pompeius. While granting or renewing charters and privileges, he reserved to Rome the right to tax,[2102] and thus dissociated the ideas of _libertas_ and _immunitas_, which had hitherto been inseparable. The new principle was so fully accepted by the Principate that even the possession of Latin rights could not have exempted a state from taxation,[2103] and the immunity of cities became more of an exceptional political privilege. Sometimes it took the form of exemption only from a special tax, such as the freedom from the port dues of Illyricum claimed by the state Tyras in Moesia.[2104] Less frequently it was a freedom from all external burdens, such as that enjoyed, on account of its historical associations, by the town of Ilium.[2105] But the favourite means of granting immunity to a state was to confer the right known as the _jus Italicum_—a right which implied that the members of the city were, like the inhabitants of Italy, in quiritarian ownership of their soil, and, therefore, exempt from the land-tax. This right generally accompanied the honorary designation of the town as a _colonia_, although the title might be conferred without the right,[2106] or be accompanied by only a partial immunity.[2107] Many states in Lusitania, Gaul, Germany, Syria, and Phoenicia were made _coloniae_ and granted the _jus Italicum_.[2108]

The two great problems in taxation which confronted the early Principate were the formation of an estimate of the resources of the Empire, and the apportionment of burdens by reference to the capacities of the various countries. Both tasks were undertaken vigorously by Augustus. To both belong his budget of the resources of the Empire,[2109] the geographical works undertaken under the auspices of Agrippa,[2110] and the comprehensive assessments made in various provinces. The right of making such assessments belonged to the Princeps,[2111] and seems not to have been limited to his own provinces, although it is to these that our definite information chiefly refers. The first known census of the kind was that undertaken in the three Gauls in 27 B.C.,[2112] which we find renewed in the years 14, 17, and 61 A.D.[2113] There is a trace of an Augustan census in Spain,[2114] and a similar task was undertaken in Syria.[2115] When these great preliminary estimates were over, provision had to be made for a periodical revision of the assessment. This was done under imperial control and for each province separately. A special imperial decree was issued, and under it the commissioner (_censor_, _censitor_, _ad census accipiendos_)[2116] made a renewed estimate, with the assistance of delegates, in the shape of equestrian officers and procurators, for the special communities or districts in the provinces subject to the census. Originally the chief officials were of senatorial rank, but after the end of the second century equestrian procurators were generally entrusted with the census[2117]—a circumstance which is probably to be accounted for by the fact that in the course of years the duty of making out the returns had become more automatic and therefore simpler.[2118] It is not known whether there were fixed dates for the regular recurrence of the census in each province;[2119] but there were taxes, such as the _tributum capitis_ in Syria, paid only by people of an age that fitted them for labour,[2120] which would have demanded renewed registration at somewhat short intervals; and in Egypt there was a cycle of fourteen years for the payment at least of the poll-tax, which goes back to the time of Tiberius and perhaps of Augustus.[2121] The careful nature of the estimate of the land-tax is shown by the official form of the schedule of returns (_forma censualis_), which has been preserved. This specified the community and _pagus_ in which the farm was situated, the names of two neighbours, and the character of the land assessed.[2122]

The taxes were either imposts on the land (_tributum soli_) or on the person (_tributum capitis_). The land-tax was in most provinces paid either in money or grain, more usually in the former; but in certain minor districts it was delivered wholly, or almost wholly, in kind. Cyrene sent its famous silphium, the Sanni in Pontus wax, and the Frisii of Germany the skins of oxen.[2123] The personal tax might be one on professions, income, or movable property. It was rarely a poll-tax pure and simple, although this is found in Egypt[2124] as a relic of the Ptolemaic organisation; amongst the Jews, when the δίδραχμον had been diverted from the Jewish temple to that of Jupiter Capitolinus;[2125] in Britain,[2126] where it would have been difficult to collect any other personal tax from the mass of the people; and in the tiny island of Tenos,[2127] whose poverty probably forbade any other method of assessment. It may, however, have existed in many provinces by the side of other personal taxes as a burden imposed on those whose property fell below a certain rating.

The collection of the chief imperial taxes was now direct, since the system of _decumae_ with the accompanying tax-farmers (_decumani_) had been abolished.[2128] But there seem to have been different degrees of directness in the method. A distinction is drawn between the _stipendium_ of the public and the _tributum_ of Caesar’s provinces,[2129] and as this distinction can scarcely be one of a method of taxation, it must be one based on the method of collection. Perhaps in the public provinces the taxes were still collected by the states themselves and paid by them to the quaestor, while in the imperial provinces the procurator came into direct contact with the tax-payer. But much was still left to the efforts of private companies, and the abolition of the _decumani_ was perhaps the sole infringement made on the vast operations of the _publicani_. The extent to which the system of contracting out was still employed may be illustrated by the facts that “companies of Roman knights” are said still to have gathered in the _pecuniae vectigales_—by which the _portoria_ are chiefly meant—and other _publici fructus_—the revenues from mines, salt-works, quarries, and the like—during the reign of Tiberius,[2130] that in the reign of Nero severe measures had to be taken to repress the exactions of the _publicani_,[2131] and that these state middlemen have a title devoted to them in the _Digest_ of Justinian.[2132] Even a tax which fell to an imperial treasury, such as the _vicesima hereditatum_, was collected by contractors in the reign of Trajan.[2133] The contracts were no longer leased by a central authority in Rome, but by the official who controlled the department with which the tax was concerned. In most cases it was an imperial procurator who leased the tax, and perhaps to some extent supervised its collection.[2134] The direct taxes were paid to the quaestor in the public provinces, and in the imperial were collected by the procurators, of whose functions and operations we have already spoken.[2135] In connexion with the fiscus of each province there was a bureau (_tabularium_)[2136] in which the assessments were kept.

The method of government in the public provinces underwent considerable modifications, but suffered little formal alteration. The tenure of office was still annual, and the regulation that a five years’ interval must elapse between home and foreign command,[2137] which had been neglected by Caesar,[2138] was revived by Augustus,[2139] but considerations of fitness and another method of determining seniority considerably interfered with the application of the latter principle. Some qualified candidates were set aside by the Senate either on its own motion or by the advice of the Emperor,[2140] and the _jus liberorum_ admitted some to the _sortitio_ in preference to others.[2141] All the governors of public provinces were now called proconsuls, whether they had previously held the consulship or not,[2142] in order to distinguish them from the legates of Caesar’s provinces, who all bore the title _pro praetore_. The two greatest of the public provinces, Asia and Africa, were always given to _consulares_, while the other governments might be held by men of praetorian rank. A definite allowance (_salarium_) was now given to the governor,[2143] which must have removed some of his temptation to extortion. Each proconsul was attended by lictors and had the other _insignia_ of his rank. But the _proconsulare imperium_ was in many respects a mere shadow of its former self. Its possessor did not wear the sword or the military dress,[2144] to show that his command was not a military one, and in deference to the full _proconsulare imperium_ possessed by the Princeps. It was an exception to this rule that until the time of the Emperor Gaius the legion in Africa was under the command of the governor of that province;[2145] but even here, where the employment of active military power was needed, the appointment of the proconsul was thrown practically on the Princeps.[2146] The governor was also hampered by assessors[2147] more carefully selected than the _legati_ of Republican times. The _legati proconsulis pro praetore_, three of whom were assigned to the higher class of provinces, such as Asia and Africa, and one to the lower, such as Sicily and Baetica, although nominally selected by the proconsuls themselves, had to be approved by the Princeps; and the fact that they bear a title which suggests the _imperium_ shows, that although they were still delegates of the governor, their jurisdiction was more definite and independent in the dioceses assigned them than it had been in Republican times. Even the quaestor now bears the title _quaestor pro praetore_,[2148] and exercises, besides his financial functions, a definite judicial charge—the kind of jurisdiction which was in the hands of the curule aedile at Rome.[2149] We have already shown the possibilities of imperial interference with the administration and jurisdiction of proconsular governors through the presence of procurators in their provinces, and through the tendencies which led to the Emperor’s becoming a court of appeal for the whole provincial world.[2150]

In his own provinces Caesar was the only possessor of the _proconsulate imperium_.[2151] Hence his governors were merely legates (_legati Caesaris pro praetore_). They were not, however, regarded as mere delegates. They exercised an independent jurisdiction, which they could delegate to their subordinates—a proceeding of which the mere mandatary is incapable.[2152] Their military command was delegated, but some at least of them exercised the power of life and death over the soldiers in their province.[2153] All the legates wore the military dress and sword,[2154] since all governed provinces in which legions were quartered. But even their military discretion was to some extent limited by the fact that the legions now had their own regular commanders (_legati legionum_), while their civil authority was lessened by the circumstances that the financial affairs of the province were chiefly in the hands of a procurator responsible to the Princeps or to a bureau, and that in many provinces after the time of Hadrian and the Antonines we find a special legate appointed for jurisdiction (_legatus juridicus_),[2155] who, though inferior to the governor in rank, was a delegate not of him but of the Princeps.

One of the secrets of the better administration of Caesar’s provinces was the length of time during which one of these legates might be kept in a single province. Thus in Tiberius’ reign Sabinus governed Moesia for twenty and Silius Gaul for seven years,[2156] while somewhat later Galba was in Spain for eight.[2157] In every case the tenure of such commands depended on the Emperor’s discretion,[2158] and the holders drew fixed salaries from the imperial treasury.[2159] To the higher class of provinces, such as Syria, _consulares_ were sent; those of a lower class, such as Aquitania and Galatia, might be governed by men of praetorian rank.

The sphere of imperial rule included a class of dependencies which had not yet become, or were not thought worthy of being, organised as definite provinces and placed under senatorial legates. They were governed by personal agents of Caesar, who were in this case known as _procuratores Caesaris pro legato_.[2160] Some of these districts, such as the three Alpine provinces, were comparatively small: but others, such as the Mauretanias, Thrace, Judaea,[2161] were of considerable size, and the presence of mere procurators in such countries must be accounted for by the fact that they were not important military stations but defended by some great command in a neighbouring province. The procurator was, indeed, sometimes under the partial control of the neighbouring imperial legate; thus Judaea was in some way attached to the larger province of Syria, and Pilate was deposed from office by Vitellius its governor.[2162] But even in this case the procurator is the delegate, not of the governor, but of the Princeps. Thus, when St. Paul appealed against the jurisdiction of Festus, the appeal was made directly to Caesar.

Anomalous methods of government were adopted for the two greatest military and strategic positions in the Empire—Germany, which was divided into an upper and a lower province, and Egypt. The two strips of land west of the Rhine, which contained the garrisons not merely of the river frontier but of Gaul, were not placed under the ordinary provincial legates. The two consular _legati_, not of the separate legions, but of the armies, were themselves the governors of the districts; they bore the title _pro praetore_,[2163] and, except when the supreme command over Gaul and the Germanies was assumed by a colleague of the Emperor,[2164] were not under the control of any governor of the neighbouring Gallic provinces. Egypt, in a sense a private domain of the Princeps,[2165] and, as the key of land and sea, guarded even from the approach of a man of senatorial rank,[2166] was entrusted to an equestrian praefect (_praefectus Aegypti_), who exercised the reality without the name of the _imperium_,[2167] wielded all the powers of a governor,[2168] and had an army under his control.

The Romanisation of the provinces was still effected by the insensible channels which had been operative during the Republic—social intercourse, commerce, and the forms of the provincial edict. But more conscious efforts in the same direction were made in the Western world. The foundation of municipalities of an Italian type, the encouragement given to a Latin-speaking foreigner to find a career in the imperial service, the state support given to Roman systems of education—all tended to make portions of provinces, such as Gaul and Spain, centres of as pure a Latinity as could be found in Italy itself. Even when the full _civitas_ was not at once conceded, preparation for it was made by the grant of Latin rights which were now conferred on whole provinces, such as Sicily, the Maritime Alps, and Spain,[2169] and made the dwellers in these regions participants in all the private rights of Roman law. The general tendency was to elevate the West at the expense of the East, or rather perhaps to decline the struggle with Hellenic civilisation, and to rest content with Romanising the barbarism of the lands that encircled Italy. In spite of this, the greatest triumphs of the legal genius were to be found in the East; the gift for theory seemed to be still peculiarly a property of the Greek or Oriental mind, and it was Asia, Phoenicia, and Syria that produced the names of Gaius, Ulpian, and Papinian. Such men had the signal advantage of comparing and even practising two perfected systems; for until the beginning of the third century, Graeco-Oriental forms were the common law of the Eastern half of the Empire, and the edict of Caracalla, which by the grant of the _civitas_ implied the future currency of Roman forms, must have created something like a legal revolution in this part of Rome’s dominions.[2170]

The omnipresence of Roman law was a fitting consequence and symbol of the even, harmonious, uneventful working of provincial life, and of the uniform machinery which was eliminating national characteristics and reducing all provinces to the same level of excellence or decadence. But, in spite of the highly organised character of provincial administration, it was the city-state (_civitas_) that was still the unit, and the character of its public life remained at all times the test of the effectiveness of the Roman system.

Amidst the brilliant variety of the urban life of the Empire, some uniformity had been secured even during the days of the Republic by Rome’s leaning to aristocratic types of organisation. But a slight modification of existing forms of constitution was all that was needed to bring the local machinery into harmony with that of the central government, and there was no effort made to create a uniform type of administration or to regard the provincial state as a mere municipality adapted only to serve the purposes of the imperial system. The Principate ushers in this latter tendency, but at first it is very gradual. In its initial stages it manifests itself in the light of a paternal interest, whether on the part of governors or Emperors, in the affairs of local corporations, in minute regulations as to the responsibilities of magistrates, the use of public funds, and the care of public property.[2171] Perhaps for a time such measures were beneficial; certainly for nearly two centuries, in spite of the fact that there is here and there observable a tendency to shirk municipal office as a burden,[2172] the vitality of the towns, fostered by peace and the large revenues of commerce, was strong enough to resist the enervating effects of this interference, and hundreds of inscriptions show us a wealth, a splendour, a generosity in endowment, and a thirst for municipal fame, that seem a sufficient reward for the untiring exertions of an anxious government. But this government finally came to lean on what it had fostered. The same tendencies, still very imperfectly understood, which changed professions into corporations, trades into guilds, and made even military service a hereditary burden, fastened on the towns, and the government sought to find in them a class which would be solely responsible for local and imperial duties. This was found ultimately in the local Senate—the order of _decuriones_ or _curiales_—which had always formed the pivot of municipal administration controlled or created by Rome, but which now tended to become sharply severed from the other classes in the communities, and, while solely endowed with the privileges of office, held these privileges at a tenure which it would gladly have surrendered. The legal texts of our period do not yet show the crushed and broken aristocracy of a later date; but they reveal the beginning of the movement which was to lead men to regard membership of the Senate as certain ruin, and to flee from office as though it were the plague. In the first place, the local magistracy was ceasing to be a stepping-stone to the Senate. There is a tendency to recruit the order through an _adlectio_ of otherwise unqualified members,[2173] a tendency which reveals an anxiety to preserve the maximum numbers of the order. This admission is effected by the board itself, and prepares us for the practice of the later Empire by which the order recruits itself from all qualified persons who are bound to serve. In another way also the earlier relation of magistrate to senate was being reversed. The principle of the earlier law, in accordance with which the previous possession of office is a necessary qualification for the _curia_,[2174] has been changed for one in accordance with which none but a decurion can be a magistrate. A definite grade of municipal nobility has been evolved, an official caste has been created, and the decurions are sharply severed from the Plebs.[2175]

Each class has its burdens, and, though the severest of these were ultimately to fall on the _curiales_, the municipal law of the _Digest_ calls on all members of the communes to do their duties to their state and to the Empire. Each class has its appropriate duties; to the decurions belong the higher branches of administration, but every category of citizens has its _munera congruentia_.[2176] The legal writers divide the burdens of public life into two categories. The _munera personalia_ are those that demand the activity of the person; the _munera patrimonii_ those that are incumbent on wealth.[2177] To the former belong the functions of public officials such as those concerned with the finances of the state, with the inspection of the market, roads, buildings and aqueducts, with the maintenance of the peace or the representation of the interests of the city. But municipal duties by no means exhausted the category of such burdens. The state finally saddled the municipalities with the returns for the census and the raising of the revenue in corn or money, and made the collectors responsible for any deficit.[2178] The cost of the imperial transport and post had also become a municipal burden.[2179] These last obligations introduce us to the idea of the patrimonial burdens, which existed wherever by law or custom expense was incurred by the individual undertaking them. There were few in which such expenditure was not incurred, and the policy of the dying Principate was to lay heavy imposts on capital, which increased in proportion to the diminution in number of the wealthier classes. When exertion was met with this reward it tended to relax, and a decaying agriculture and an enfeebled commerce were the results of the oppression of the government. Whatever the primary cause of these evils was, whether military, social, or economic, they were doubtless aggravated by the relentless system of imperial administration, which marshalled citizens as though they were soldiers, treated all classes as the fitting instruments of official life, and regarded the subject as existing for the Empire rather than the Empire for the subject.

§ 3. _The Worship of the Emperor_

One result of the discipline which we have described was doubtless to create a strong, though not a warm, imperial sentiment. A gentler bond of union amongst the provinces and of attachment to the imperial house was to be found in the carefully cultivated world-religion which expressed itself in the form of Caesar-worship.

The cult of the Emperor, although stimulated and encouraged by the imperial government, was by no means a purely artificial product. Had it offended against Roman or Italian sentiment, it would have been strangled in its birth; and had it met with no genuine response from the subject nations, coercion[2180] and rewards would probably have given it merely a precarious and transitory existence. The worship assumed two forms, neither of which was a strain on the religious beliefs of the age. In its application to the living Emperor, it was merely a reverence permitted to his spiritual personality, that _numen_ or _genius_, the abstract duplicate of man, the ever-present guardian-angel to whom, as realised in the self, the Roman had often drunk or prayed. If to the mind of the barbarian the genius and the self were still more truly one, the conception of the new worship was simpler but by no means less strong. The reverence paid to the dead Caesar was a still more natural effort of grateful piety, not unwelcome to a cultured society which accepted Euhemeristic explanations of the gods, and indigenous at least amongst the Greek-speaking and oriental portions of the Empire. In the provinces, too, all the sordid aspects of imperial humanity were removed; to the provincial mind Caesar was a potent and unseen power, a distant incarnation of wisdom and order, a being whose sway was far wider than that of any local god, whose ordinances penetrated to the ends of the earth, and in whose hands the safety and happiness of the human race were set.[2181] The idealism which to-day makes of a king something more than a man, had, in a less fastidious religious environment, made of the Roman Emperor a god, and even in the more prosaic West, in countries such as Gaul or Spain or Britain, where Caesar-worship required a certain amount of cultivation, we must suppose an undercurrent of genuine belief.

The first step taken in the inauguration of the new worship was a happy one. It was a graceful act to honour a predecessor, who had been the ruler of the Roman world, and might be regarded as a martyr in its cause, and Octavian permitted the consecration of a temple to _divus Julius_,[2182] who was regarded, from a sentimental if not from a legal point of view, as the founder of the new dynasty. His own worship the Emperor prohibited in Italy, and he declined an altar in the _curia_.[2183] But in the year 20 B.C. a temple dedicated to him under the name of Augustus rose at Panium in Palestine,[2184] and in the next year the form of dedication to “Roma and Augustus,” which associated his _numen_ with that of the city, and whose modesty secured his consent,[2185] began to spread through the provinces. A temple with this rite sprang up at Pergamum,[2186] and in 12 B.C. a similar worship, which replaced that of the native sun-god Lug, was established for the Gallic nobles at Lugdunum.[2187] An attempt was also made to consolidate the infant organisation of the new province of Germany by establishing an altar at the Oppidum Ubiorum (Köln) as the centre of its religious life.[2188] Rome itself could not wholly be deprived of a cult that was becoming universal, and in 8 B.C. a recognition of the divinity of Augustus was permitted in the only form which he would allow during his lifetime. His _genius_ was associated with the household gods or _Lares_ in the worship of the _vici_ of the capital.[2189] The movement spread through Italy. The old _magistri vicorum_ become the _magistri Larum_, and soon gain the title _magistri Augustales_. They are found in every part of Italy, and beyond it in Sardinia, Narbonensis, Spain, Dacia, and even Egypt.[2190] On the death of the first Princeps his complete deification was accorded by the Senate,[2191] and the recognition was followed by the permission to erect temples in the provinces,[2192] while private as well as public initiative fostered the cult of _divus Augustus_. The precedent set in the cases of the first two emperors had firmly established the practice of posthumous deification, and its denial to a Princeps was almost equivalent to the condemnation of his reign.[2193] Although the merits of Claudius as a divinity might be questioned, and Vespasian, with sceptical tolerance, regarded his own deification as an inevitable consequence of his position,[2194] yet by the close of the second century the virtues of the Antonines had made the worship of the deified Emperor a more genuine cult than ever, and a man was regarded as impious who had not some image of Marcus Aurelius in his house.[2195] This worship of the Caesars had two lasting effects on the social and political life of the Roman, Italian, and provincial worlds.

(1) It established a priestly aristocracy. On the death and deification of Augustus a college of _Sodales Augustales_ was created for Rome, consisting of twenty-one nobles, and containing in its list members of the imperial house.[2196] _Flamines Augustales_ held the same dignified position in their provinces or in their native towns, and were drawn from the aristocracies of the states. The _Flamen_ of the worship of Roma and Augustus, that had its centre at Narbo, wore the _praetexta_, was attended by a lictor, had a front seat at games, and the right of taking part in the deliberations of the local Senate. His wife, the _Flaminica_, was clothed on festal days in white or purple, and, like the _Flaminica Dialis_ at Rome, might not be compelled to take an oath.[2197] The lower and middle classes were not forgotten in the distribution of these religious honours. From the _magistri Augustales_, whom we have already mentioned, developed an _ordo Augustalium_, which existed before the death of Augustus both in Italy and the provinces, and the cult with which it was associated was partly of spontaneous origin, partly cultivated by the imperial government, and may in some cases have been founded by the municipal towns themselves. The _Augustales_ were not priests, like the _Flamines_ and _Sacerdotes_, but merely an order with certain _insignia_—the _praetexta_, the _fasces_, the _tribunal_—which they displayed in the performance of their official duties, and they have been compared to magistrates without secular magisterial functions.[2198] The form which the organisation assumed was the appointment of _sexviri_ or _seviri_, probably by the senate of the municipal town; after the year of service they pass into the order of _Augustales_.[2199] The order was composed mainly of freedmen—of a class, that is, whose birth excluded them from the public offices of their states, but who, forming as they did a large portion of the trading population, contributed, perhaps more than any other, to the economic vitality of the towns. The worship of Augustus, by giving them _insignia_ and certain proud moments in which they appeared to dazzling effect before the public eye, compensated to some extent for the loss of privileges which the law withheld.

(2) Caesar-worship was the only force that gave a kind of representative life to the provinces. Great provincial diets (_concilia_, _communia_, κοινά) made their appearance both in the Eastern and Western world. Asia had already dedicated temples to kings, proconsuls, and to the city of Rome;[2200] and in the Hellenic world the national assemblies which survived the Roman conquest may have suggested, or may even at times have been continued in, these new amphictyonic gatherings. The favour shown by the imperial government to this proof of loyalty soon led the West to follow the example of the East, and the establishment of the worship of Roma and Augustus at Lugdunum, by creating a _concilium_ for the three Gauls, was the prototype of a similar organisation in other European provinces. Eventually every province of the Empire seems to have evolved a diet of some kind, and even Britain, the least organised of Roman dependencies, possessed at Colchester a temple to the deified Claudius.[2201] The high-priests of the cult (_sacerdotes provinciae_, ἀρχιερεῖς) were chosen annually from the most distinguished families, and delegates (_legati_, σύνεδροι) from the various districts or states, which made up the province, were despatched to the yearly meetings (_concilia_, κοινά). These delegates elected the high-priests and voted the sums required for the purposes of the cult. But they felt themselves to be representatives of the province; they voiced its nationality and represented its collective interests as no other power did, and it would have been impossible except by force to limit their utterances to purely religious questions. This compulsion the government did not attempt. It permitted, perhaps encouraged, these delegates to make representations about the condition of the province,[2202] and even to utter complaints about the conduct of Roman officials.[2203] It is a pity that the imperial government did not do even more to preserve the fast-waning sense of nationality; but the value of what it did is proved by the fact that these assemblies and the dignified orders which they created survived into the Christian Empire. Titles such as Asiarch, Syriarch, Phoenicarch, derived from the high-priesthood of Caesar’s cult, were respected by Constantine’s legislation,[2204] and survived like ghosts of the pagan past to haunt for a time the life of a new œcumenical church which, through a fuller faith and a higher allegiance, had effected its triumph over the old.