THE AUGUSTAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIUMPH OF OCTAVIAN

 

I.OCTAVIAN IN THE EAST

 

CLEOPATRA died late in August 30 b.c.; she was 39 years old, and had reigned 22 years. Octavian granted her last wish and buried her beside Antony; their tomb is covered by the modern city and will never be disturbed. Before it Octavian set up statues of her brave handmaids, whose names became a proverb for faithfulness unto death. Octavia took her three children and brought them up with her own; the little Sun and Moon walked in Octavian’s triumph. The boys are not heard of again, though legend made one of them the ancestor of Zenobia, but the girl was married to Juba II of Mauretania; she made a little Alexandria on the Moroccan coast, but with the murder of her son Ptolemy by Gaius the known line of the Ptolemies ended. Antony’s memory was formally obliterated; his name was expunged from the Fasti (though Augustus restored it later), his statues were overthrown, the decrees of honour passed for him by Greek cities were destroyed; the Senate passed a decree that the names Marcus and Antonius should not again be conjoined, though it soon became a dead letter. A village in Lydia continued to honour his memory, and a tribe bearing his name remained at Prusias on the Hypius, and perhaps at Ephesus; otherwise the East retained little trace of him, except for Polemon, who afterwards married his granddaughter Pythodoris and named their elder son, the future priest-king of Olba, Marcus Antonius Polemo, and their daughter, who married Cotys of Thrace, Antonia Tryphaena. But we may perhaps recall, as a problem in heredity, that from him and the gentle Octavia were descended the emperors Gaius and Nero.

Octavian set up many monuments of Actium. He ascribed his success to Apollo of Actium, whose temple he enlarged; the local Actian festival was made quinquennial and equal in honour to the Olympian, as the Alexandrian Ptolemaieia had been; and to Apollo he dedicated his unique ‘ten-ship trophy’, a ship from each of the classes of Antony’s fleet, headed by his flagship. Near where his own camp had stood he founded Nicopolis, a Greek city into which he synoecized most of the cities of Acarnania and Epirus, including Pyrrhus’ capital Ambracia, thus degraded to a village by the defeat of the second Pyrrhus. His coins show that he consciously posed as the counterpart of the great Antigonids, who had vanquished the great Ptolemies, Cleopatra’s ancestors, as he had vanquished her—Demetrius who had defeated Ptolemy I at Salamis, and especially Antigonus Gonatas, who had slain Rome’s enemy Pyrrhus and had humbled Ptolemy II at Cos. His coin showing Neptune with one foot on the globe recalls Demetrius’ Poseidon, while Nicopolis was a copy of Demetrius’ unique synoecism of all Magnesia into Demetrias; more important are the coins which show on a ship’s prow a copy of the Victory of Samothrace, the statue set up by Antigonus Gonatas to commemorate Cos, while his ten-ship trophy was the nearest he could get to Gonatas’ dedication of his flagship Isthmia to Apollo, since at Actium he had had no flagship himself. This attitude soon obscured the truth about Actium, for if it were another Cos it must be a great battle, and a great battle it became; the overthrow of the queen who had restored the empire of Ptolemy II must be no less glorious than had been the defeat of her prototype.

From Egypt Octavian travelled back through Syria and Asia Minor, and restored to the cities of Asia most of the works of art carried off by Antony. Before returning to Italy he had to settle the matter of Antony’s client-kings, and the settlement he now made may be treated as a whole, without distinguishing what was done before and what after the occupation of Alexandria; his arrangements in Egypt are described elsewhere, and his colonies in general belong to a later period. The Donations were naturally cancelled, and Cyprus and Cyrene again became Roman provinces; otherwise he made little change in Antony’s arrangements. Only two petty dynasts were executed, and that not for favouring Antony but for murder: Adiatorix of Heraclea for a massacre of Romans in his territory, and Alexander of Emesa for inciting Antony to kill his brother Iamblichus; the tyrant Strato, removed from Amisus, was not Antony’s man.

In Asia Minor most of the dynasts had come over to Octavian in time. Deiotarus of Paphlagonia, like Rhoemetalces in Thrace, kept his kingdom; Cleon, the one-time brigand chief of Mysia, was made priest-king of Zeus Abrettenios in Aeolis, with Abrettene and Myrene as his domain. The priest-king of Comana Pontica, Lycomedes, although Caesar’s man, was dethroned and his office given either to Adiatorix’ son Duteutus or to one Medeus, who had revolted against Antony in Mysia. Tarcondimotus of the Amanus had fallen fighting for Antony, and had been succeeded by his son Philopator I; Octavian deposed him and administered the Amanus as part of Cilicia till 20, when he restored Tarcondimotus’ line. Of Antony’s three important kings, Amyntas had rendered much service to the victor; his kingdom was enlarged by the addition of Isaura and Cilicia Tracheia, which had once been Roman territory but had been given by Antony to Cleopatra; he also took Derbe and Laranda from a local tyrant, Antipater, and till his death was Augustus’ right hand. Archelaus remained as he was, though his kingdom was enlarged later. How Polemo made his peace is unknown; but Octavian recognized his value and left him Pontus, and though for a special reason he deprived him of Armenia Minor he gave him as compensation an indefinite right of expansion north-eastward, of which he was to make full use.

In Greece, beyond giving freedom to Lappa and Cydonia in Crete, who had declared for him before Actium, and founding Nicopolis, Octavian did little, but that little was significant; he rewarded Sparta, his one ally in Greece itself, by enlarging her territory and giving her the conduct of the Actian games, but he also made Eurycles tyrant, thus imitating Antony, who had also set up one city-tyrant, Boethus, in half-oriental Tarsus.

In Syria, the Phoenician cities regained their freedom, as did Ascalon; Berytus, which had revolted from Cleopatra before Actium, received (probably later) an enormous extension of territory. Emesa, vacant by the death of Iamblichus, was administered as part of Roman Syria till 20, when Augustus restored Iamblichus’ son. In Chalcis, lately Cleopatra’s, Chalcis itself became a free city, but Zenodorus, the son of the former dynast Lysanias, was allowed to rule in Abila and to rent his father’s possessions; subsequently he recovered much of the kingdom, but he governed badly and his dominions ultimately passed to Herod. In Judaea, Hyrcanus had foolishly returned from Parthia, and after Actium Herod killed him lest Octavian should make him king. Herod himself had made no submission after Actium, and Octavian sent for him. Like Cleopatra, he removed his diadem and laid it before Octavian, but he was too wise to make excuses; he said that he had been faithful throughout to his benefactor Antony, and if Octavian would try him he would be equally faithful to him. Octavian replaced his diadem with his own hand, restored to him his balsam gardens, and after Cleopatra’s death gave him her Galatian bodyguard and all of Palestine except Ascalon which had been hers. The philosopher and historian Nicolaus of Damascus, who had been tutor to Cleopatra’s children, now went to Herod and showed with his pen all the zeal of the new convert.

Beyond the Euphrates Octavian did not intend to interfere; he did not even avenge on Artaxes of Armenia his massacre of Roman subjects, beyond detaining his brothers as hostages. Parthia might keep her eagles; when the pretender Tiridates fled to him in 30 he gave him asylum in Syria but refused him support and gave a friendly reception to envoys from King Phraates. But he received Antony’s friend the Median king with kindness, restored to him his daughter Iotape, and gave him Armenia Minor, which he took from Polemon; for the Mede was now Artaxes’ irreconcilable enemy and the right man to guard the frontier.

Apart from the Donations, Antony’s more important dispositions west of the Euphrates had thus stood the test, and Octavian’s gift or confirmation of territory once Roman to Amyntas, Cleon, and Polemon followed his precedents. It has become a common­place that Antony’s arrangements were bad. Octavian did not think so.

 

II. WARS IN THE WEST AND THE BALKANS

 

While men’s eyes had been fixed upon the East and what was happening there, the western half of the Empire had been under the guidance of Maecenas; thanks to his tact and vigilance the administration went smoothly, and such an affair as the conspiracy of young Lepidus was easily suppressed. Some minor wars were necessary upon distant frontiers: in spite of Agrippa’s campaigns in 39 Gaul was not yet completely settled in north and west, so Nonius Gallus had to punish an outbreak of the Treveri, while C. Carrinas put down the Morini and drove back the Suebi who had crossed the Rhine: in 28 b.c. the Aquitanian tribes revolted and apparently invaded the old Provincia, and Messalla Corvinus won successes in this western region that earned him a triumph. Britain was left unmolested, for Octavian had more serious problems to deal with, though rumours were abroad that in time he would renew and complete the enterprise of Caesar. In Spain the beginning of the Provincial Era in 38 b.c. may have recorded the hope of peace, but within ten years there was a revolt of the north-western tribes, Cantabri, Vaccaei and Astures. These were crushed by the efficient Statilius Taurus, and from Spain too C. Calvisius Sabinus and Sextus Appuleius made good their claim to triumphs in 28 and 27. Thus Rome saw a succession of such spectacles, for in addition to Carrinas and Sabinus L. Autronius triumphed in 28 from Africa, and Messalla celebrated his triumph in the following year. The proceeds of the spoils were used on great public works, both on buildings and the repairing of roads. Yet few of these campaigns can have roused more than passing interest in a Rome that was busied with greater issues; one, however, demands longer notice, not only on account of the importance of the operations for the defence of the North-Eastern frontier, but also because of its political consequences in Rome itself.

When Octavian in 30 b.c. entered upon his fourth consulship he had as his colleague M. Licinius Crassus, who tempered by prudence the ancient Republican tradition of his family: originally attached to Sextus Pompeius, he had joined Antony after Naulochus, and then deserted him to serve Octavian before Actium was fought. He was undoubtedly a capable commander, and in the summer of 30 he was dispatched with an army of at least four legions to Macedonia, a province that badly needed a general. Its northern boundaries were always exposed to attack, and though the threat of a united Dacia had faded away, there still remained the possibility of raids by the various petty Thracian and Getic chieftains; graver still was the threat from a migrating Gallic tribe, the Bastarnae, who some thirty years back had appeared in the region of the lower Danube and had inflicted near Istros a serious defeat (involving the loss of some Roman eagles) upon the unlucky C. Antonius. The province offered obvious opportunities to an ambitious governor which Crassus was not slow to seize: so long as the Bastarnae crossed the Danube merely to harry Moesi, Triballi or Dardani, barbarian might kill barbarian, but when their masses broke over the Haemus range and attacked the Denthelete Thracians (in the valley of the Upper Struma), whose blind King Sitas was an ally of the Roman People, he had justification for interference. Early in 29 he drove them out of Sitas’ territory towards the north-west and then—taking a leaf out of Caesar’s diaries—when they sent him an embassy he made it drunk and so succeeded in entrapping the main body near the river Cebrus. A fearful slaughter followed, in which Crassus had the distinction of killing the Bastarnian king, Deldo, with his own hand. Helped by a Getic chieftain, Roles, he next stormed a strong place occupied by some fugitive Bastarnae; the remainder of the year was spent in savage fighting against various tribes of the Moesi and in repelling attacks from Thracians who were supposed to be friendly. Enough had been done for the year, and he disposed his troops in winter-quarters: Octavian, perhaps in the late spring at Corinth, bestowed upon Roles the title of socius et amicus; the Senate awarded Crassus the honour of a triumph, and cities such as Athens offered him thanks and dedications. In the next year he displayed as great activity: he drove back fresh bands of the Bastarnae who ventured to attack Sitas and his Dentheletae, routed the tribes of the Maedi and Serdi in the north-west, overran nearly all Thrace, helped Roles to counter the attack of a Getic chief, Dapyx, capturing finally the fort to which he had fled for refuge, and, advancing farther north into the realm of a chieftain Zyraxes, he fell on a strong place called Genucla; the fall of this brought with it the recovery of the standards that C. Antonius had lost. Finally he turned westward and broke the power of the remnants of the Moesi.

The Triumphal Fasti record the celebration of a triumph by Crassus on July 4, 27 b.c. ‘ex Thracia et Geteis’. He had shown great energy and rapidity and done much to restore the prestige of the Roman name. In two years he had repulsed the Bastarnae, broken the power of the Getae, and taught the wild tribes of the North-West that Rome would punish those who attacked her allies. Though the boundaries of Macedonia were not advanced and though a province of Moesia was not to be created for some years yet, the frontiers were protected by various client­kingdoms, such as those of Sitas and Roles, and Crassus had increased the power of the kingdom of the Odrysian Thracians by giving it charge of the holy place of Dionysus, which had formerly belonged to the rival tribe of the Bessi: the Greek cities of the Black Sea, now that the dreaded Getic power was humbled, would look to the Romans or their allies as protectors. Crassus had every reason to be satisfied with his achievements and the triumph that he claimed and obtained was well deserved. But his request for another and a rarer honour met with a different fate; to understand why this was we must retrace our steps and see what had been happening in Rome since the year 30.

 

III. THE FIRST CITIZEN

 

On January 1, 29 b.c., Octavian entered on his fifth consulship at his winter-quarters in Samos, where he was completing his reorganization of the East; that done, he set out for home. He passed through Corinth, and landed in early summer at Brundisium; ill-health compelled him to rest for some days in Campania, and at Atelia Virgil recited the Georgies to him. Arrived in Rome he was at length able to celebrate—on August 13, 14 and 15— amid all the pomp and pageantry that the mind of Rome could devise, a triple triumph for Illyricum, Actium and Egypt.

A few days later came the solemn dedication of the temple of Divus Julius and the opening of the Curia Julia. The treasures of Egypt and the spoils of war were used, in accordance with tradition, upon great public works, which were carried out during the ensuing years in the capital and in Italy: the Via Flaminia was reconditioned as far as Ariminum, eighty-two temples were rebuilt, and on the Palatine the white marble temple of Apollo, Octavian’s guardian deity, with its adjoining libraries for Greek and Latin books, could be hurried to completion and was dedicated on October 9, 28 b.c. Apart from the adornment of Rome Octavian was able to put his enormous riches to even more popular uses: towards his triumph the thirty-five tribes of the city , had offered him a thousand pounds of gold each as aurum coronarium (a usage which had apparently begun with the triumph of L. Antonius in 41); Octavian not only refused to take it, but distributed a handsome donative to the people, and during this and the following year lavished games and shows and made a fourfold distribution of corn. He paid in full all debts that he owed, and forgave all arrears of taxation; a year later all evidence for such arrears was publicly destroyed. Money was plentiful, interest dropped to one-third of the usual rate, impoverished Senators were helped by generous presents, and those who had formerly supported Antony were reassured by Octavian’s declaration that all incriminating correspondence had been burnt: confidence began slowly to return to a world shaken by twenty years of civil war.

Among the many tasks facing the victor one had already been taken in hand, the reduction of the immense number of legions— some sixty—of which he had become master. In the years immediately following 30 b.c. over one hundred thousand veterans, with full bounties paid, were disbanded and either sent to older foundations or settled in new colonies, both in Italy and the provinces. The sites were selected with care: thus some veterans of Antony were settled at Bononia, a town of which he had been patron and which remained loyal to his memory; Carthage, which had suffered at the hands of Lepidus, was repeopled; twenty-eight colonies in Italy owed their existence to Octavian, and in the provinces such towns as Acci Gemella in Spain, Parium in Mysia, Antioch by Pisidia and Berytus in Syrfa also received veterans as settlers. And these were only the first few of a carefully planned scheme, whereby not only were the claims of the soldiers met but mountainous and wilder regions, such as Western Spain or Pisidia, could be guarded and held in check. Fair payment, as after Naulochus, for the land required was made to the municipalities concerned; the total cost of the settlement over a long period of years ran into hundreds of millions of sesterces. Those soldiers who were retained in service—certainly not more than twenty-eigh legions—received gratuities after Octavian’s triumph and were employed upon works of public utility, such as cleansing and deepening the canals in Egypt or making levees and embankments to curb the turbulent course of the Adige near Este.

But disbandment was comparatively simple, granted the politic vision of Octavian: it was a question of time and money only, and he now had plenty of both. Far more complicated was the problem of his future position in the State; his victory, like that of Sulla or Caesar before him, had effectively placed the State within his control, and the honours and privileges that Senate and people crowded upon him at the slightest provocation had placed him on an eminence over-topping even theirs. We may agree with Dio that there is no need to dwell upon the decreeing of triumphal arches, images, games and holidays, but two honours of greater significance, belonging to the year 30, must be noticed here. The Senate enacted that in future priests and people should offer prayers for the saviour of the State and that libations should be poured to him at all banquets, an act that set him apart from other men, and the tribunician sacrosanctity granted him six years previously, and which he had had bestowed upon Livia and Octavia, was now transformed into something more positive. Octavian was given a power and competence equal to the tribunes in auxilii latio (and presumably in coercitio and intercession and indeed more than equal, since his auxilii latio was extended to one mile beyond the city boundary and he received some form of appellate jurisdiction. The full possibilities and significance of this tribunicia potestas were only to become apparent later, here we need only admire the sure instinct that Octavian displayed in this new constitutional expedient. The tribunician board had been the only body to offer effective opposition to Caesar; as early as 44 Octavian may have sought to be elected tribune, and as late as 32 it was the veto of Nonius Balbus that saved him from the attack of the Antonian consuls; now at one stroke he placed himself at the head, as it were, of the tribunes and beyond their reach, and also established the principle that the powers of an office could be separated from the title and conferred upon a person not holding that office, just as two years later censorial power was conferred on two men who were not censors.

On January 1, 29 b.c. the Senate confirmed all Octavian’s acta, and a few weeks later the news of the successful negotiations with Parthia produced a fresh crop of decrees: the temple of Janus was to be closed and the long-neglected ceremony of the Augurium Salutis revived. The meaning of these resolutions was unmistakable. Octavian had saved the Roman State, hence the dedication to him by Senate and People in this year of an arch republica conservata: his final victory had put an end to all wars at home and abroad, an end which was symbolized by the closing of Janus; lastly, Octavian was himself an augur so that it was fitting that the college of augurs should ordain prayers for salvation for the State in the year in which its saviour returned to Italy. There were not lacking other marks of his pre-eminence: the Senate voted that his name should be included in the litany of the Salii, the consul Valerius Potitus offered public sacrifices and vows on his behalf—a thing unprecedented—and at the triumph in August the magistrates and officials instead of guiding the triumphator into the city, as heretofore, followed behind his chariot. The praenomen of Imperator which Octavian (originally perhaps in answer to Sextus Pompeius’ arrogation of the praenomen Magnus to himself) had been employing unofficially for some ten years he now assumed officially; at the request of the Senate he was empowered not only to add as many members as he pleased to the priestly colleges, but also (under a Lex Saenia late in 30 b.c.) to create at his own choice new patrician families—for the ranks of those had been terribly thinned by years of civil war and proscriptions— and so aid in keeping alive the ceremonies and rites upon which the well-being of Rome depended.

Yet this accumulation of honours, which might have glutted the vanity of a Pompey, was a danger-signal to the more sober mind of Octavian, for he could not but remember that it was up this same dizzy path that Caesar had been led, to fall more fatally. However absolute his power—and it was no untruth when he claimed later that the State had been in his hand—it was essential to its continuance that he should not shock Republican tradition or sentiment; there must be nothing to point to a second Ides of March. On the contrary, all appearances indicated a gradual return to stability and the customary forms of government. In the year 28 he entered upon his sixth consulship, with the faithful Agrippa as his colleague; for the first time in twenty years two consuls held office together in the capital for the full twelve months, and Octavian shared the twenty-four lictors that accompanied him with his colleague so that each possessed the traditional twelve; at the end of his term of office he could take the customary oath that he had preserved the laws, a claim that was echoed by coins of the year with the legend libertatis p. r. vindex. With Agrippa he held a census of the whole people (a ceremony neglected since 70 b.c.), and carried out a revision of the list of the Senate, which had been swollen to an unwieldy number; it was now purged of its less worthy members, reduced from a body of 1000 to some 800, and Octavian himself was enrolled as Princeps Senatus.

Yet while a return to constitutional correctness was foreshadowed by these proceedings there were signs of innovation. When Octavian and Agrippa carried out the census they had not been elected censors, nor did they act by virtue of any power originally inherent in the consulship; they received something new, a special grant of censoria potestas-—that is the conferment of the powers of the censorship upon persons not holding the office—and this development of the conception of potestas was soon to be put to important uses. And whereas formerly the lectio Senatus had always preceded the holding of a census, on this occasion it was performed while the census was already in progress. And though Octavian was nominally consul, coupled with a colleague of equal authority, the honours and privileges heaped upon him and the enormous prestige that he enjoyed proclaimed him something far higher than the ordinary Republican magistrate. The praenomen of Imperator was a perpetual reminder of the victories he had won, his tenure of the augurate and other priesthoods pointed to him as upholder and honourer of the old Roman religion, and the inclusion of his name in the Salian litany suggested something more than mortal. Like Romulus he had been favoured by the sight of twelve vultures when taking his first auspices, like Romulus he had chosen and created patrician families, the very stars that presided over his birth—so it began to be rumoured—were the same as those that had heralded Romulus’ greatness; he was the heaven-sent restorer and second founder of Rome. “Quis populo Romano obtulit hunc divinum adulescentem deus?” Though he was nominally a consul and no more, in reality the State was his to remould as he wished.

The need for some remoulding was obvious from the tragical history of the past hundred years. For such a task Octavian had the advantage of a prestige greater than all his predecessors save only Caesar, and unlike Caesar he had now no active opposition to fear. Civil war and proscription had decimated the older Optimate families, the rest of Italy yearned for peace and stability, it mattered little under what name. But that was the negative side merely: no man can win and retain supreme power in a nation by the simple slaughtering of all opponents; he must be able to con­vince a majority of supporters that he has something definite and acceptable to offer them. This is what Octavian had done. Though his adoption by Caesar linked him to the noblest and oldest families in Rome, he had none of the narrowness that marred many a Roman aristocrat. By birth, upbringing and sentiment he was Italian, and had appealed to the deepest instincts and traditions of the population of Italy, which had stood steadfast for Caesar; that had brought him first the co-operation and fidelity of a band of able and devoted friends, and finally the overwhelming response of the coniuratio totius Italiae. But the very success of his appeal and the conscious sentiment it had aroused fettered him and circumscribed the area of political conceptions in which he could move; powerful though he might be he could not impose his will except in so far as his will interpreted the desires of the Italian people. In consequence it might be not unfairly urged against him that he was compelled to adopt a programme that was too definitely ‘Western’ in its outlook, and which placed Italy and things Italian too much in the centre of the stage.

For the time being, however, he had made no public decision as to the future form of the government, content with holding the consulship yearly and with the prestige and powers he possessed. How long this might have continued cannot be said, but an incident arising out of the victorious campaigns of Crassus almost certainly forced him to declare himself and accelerated a settlement. For his prowess in killing the Bastarnian king Deldo Crassus had claimed the right to deposit spolia opima in the temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol, the restoration of which had been begun by Octavian in 32 b.c. It was an honour that tradition granted to three Romans only, Romulus, A. Cornelius Cossus and M. Claudius Marcellus, the hero of Clastidium, for though an ordinary soldier might be awarded spolia opima for killing an enemy leader the privilege of dedicating the spoils in the temple of Feretrius had been by custom reserved for those generals who were fighting under their own auspices. But the awkwardness for Octavian of such a claim at such a moment needs no underlining; the new Romulus could ill afford to have a rival in military glory. To the objection, however, that the victory had been gained, not under Crassus’ auspices but under Octavian’s, Crassus was able to find an answer in the precedent of Cossus, who according to accepted tradition had been simply a tribunus militum and no inde­pendent commander when he was granted the privilege. It was therefore fortunate for Octavian that during the restoration of the temple of Feretrius, the actual spoils dedicated by Cossus were discovered, together with an inscription showing that at the time he was consul and not tribunus militum, and this new evidence was enough to bar Crassus’ claim. Though he was allowed to celebrate a well-merited triumph on July 4, 27 B.C., the title of Imperator was withheld; in the ensuing years his services were no longer required.

But this occurrence and the negotiations in connection with it, revealed clearly that some form of settlement was pressing, and that it was essential that in any such settlement the legions and their commanders (or the greater part of them) should be under the acknowledged control of Octavian. In the next year, 27 b.c., he was to be consul for the seventh time, with Agrippa again as his colleague; there is some slight evidence that the work of reform had already been begun and that laws encouraging marriage and penalizing celibacy, fore-runners in fact of his later social legislation, were passed in this year, only to meet with such opposition that they had to be rescinded. But their date and content, if indeed they happened, cannot be determined with any certainty, whereas Dio does record for us an important decree that met with universal favour: “since Octavian had given many illegal and unjust orders during the strife of the civil wars, and especially during the triumvirate with Antony and Lepidus, he annulled all these in one edict, fixing his sixth consulship as the limit of their validity (liii, 2, 5)”. Details of this comprehensive measure are unfortunately lacking; it is possible that some grants already made had to be iterated in order to secure their validity, and we can safely infer that all disabilities attaching to the children of the proscribed and similar inequities were removed. But its general intent and effect cannot be doubtful; it was a fresh step towards that restoration of constitutional government that Octavian had promised after the victory at Naulochus. In sixteen years he had avenged his father’s death and attained to more than his honours, he had surmounted all opposition and made himself master of the Mediterranean world. If he was to bring lasting peace, if he was to be called (as he longed to be called) ‘the creator of the best constitution’, he must attack soon a problem that had baffled Sulla and Caesar. The wars were over; the period of constructive statesmanship could begin.