I INTRODUCTION
As everyone knows, Augustus in the second-to-last chapter of the Res Gestae says that, after transferring the res publica to the discretion of the Roman senate and people and receiving the name Augustus and other honours,Footnote 2
Post id tem[pus a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potest]atis au[tem n]ihilo ampliu[s habu]i quam cet[eri, qui m]ihi quoque in ma[gis]tra[t]u conlegae f[uerunt].
Ἀξιώμ[α]τι πάντων διήνεγκα, ἐξουσίας δὲ οὐδέν τι πλεῖον ἔσχον τῶν συναρξάντων μοι.
After this time I surpassed everyone in auctoritas, but I possessed no more potestas than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy.
The conventional interpretation of this passage holds: (1) that auctoritas, as contrasted with potestas, signifies informal and non-coercive power; (2) that Augustus emphasizes his auctoritas in the Res Gestae in order to make a fundamental claim about the nature of his rule; (3) that Augustus' claim has explanatory value, because he did in large measure rule through informal influence.
This reading, so basic to our conception of Augustus and the principate, is less than a century old. The Latin of the first clause is missing from the Ancyra copy of the Res Gestae, and Mommsen in his edition of the text (1883) had suggested reading, ‘[praestiti omnibus dignitate]’. Then in 1924 Premerstein saw, from the fragments of the Res Gestae from Pisidian Antioch published by Ramsay eight years earlier, that the correct reading was ‘a]uctoritate’. Premerstein wrote, ‘With this weighty expression … Augustus characterized his actual position of power as princeps much more openly and truthfully’ than Mommsen's ‘[dignitate]’ had suggested.Footnote 3 The following year, Heinze articulated what has become the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3, surveying prior usage of auctoritas and paraphrasing the passage:Footnote 4
‘I possessed no more capacity to exercise coercive power than that to which I was entitled in each case by virtue of the office entrusted to me, within the limits established by collegiality; my pre-eminence rested on the influence that was voluntarily accorded to me, more than to any other, as the most authoritative leader in political matters.’ This is Augustus' authentic statement of his conception of the ‘principate’, and it is of great historical significance, for it truly reveals to us the roots of this unique institution.
Today, auctoritas is ubiquitous, above all in the work of Galinsky, who has built an interpretation of all of Augustan culture around auctoritas, which he calls ‘a higher kind of moral leadership’ and compares to the methods advocated by management guru Tom Peters.Footnote 5 Historians, too, routinely use auctoritas as shorthand for all extra-legal aspects of Augustus' rule. In a recent collection of essays on Augustus, for example, we are told that Augustus' auctoritas lay behind candidates' decisions to inform him of their intention to stand for office (Ferrary), Livia's influence (Purcell), and Augustus' control of military promotions (Raaflaub).Footnote 6 A few have questioned the truth of Augustus' claim — Augustus' formal powers, they rightly note, were not negligible — but no one has questioned its transcendental significance.Footnote 7
But what evidence is there for the centrality of auctoritas? For before Premerstein read ‘a]uctoritate’, neither the word nor the passage attracted particular attention. The problem was identified by John Crook in his review of Galinsky's monograph:Footnote 8
Auctoritas is the book's Leitmotiv, and, pliant in G(alinsky)'s hands, it signifies just about all the qualities he would have us attribute to Augustus. Well, Curmudgeon-Reviewer just notes that nobody went on about auctoritas in relation to the Augustan principate before, within C(urmudgeon)-R(eviewer)'s lifetime, in the early 1920s, the Antioch-in-Pisidia copy of the Res Gestae revealed that Augustus had said ‘auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem …’ Hinc illae lacrimae.
Crook might have added that before the copy from Pisidian Antioch was discovered, no one had thought to say that the principate had been founded on Augustus' dignitas, either.
The questions that need to be asked are: What evidence is there outside the Res Gestae for the importance of auctoritas? Did others especially associate auctoritas with Augustus, or Augustus with auctoritas? When auctoritas is attributed to Augustus, is there any echo of the Res Gestae? Is auctoritas associated with the constitutional transactions and honours of 28–27 b.c.? Is Augustus said to be pre-eminent in auctoritas? Is auctoritas contrasted with potestas? Above all, did anyone ever express the idea that the principate had been founded on Augustus' auctoritas? To understand auctoritas, we must look not only to the Republican writers whose usage Augustus would have known, but also to subsequent writers who would have known Augustus' usage.
This paper falls into three parts. In the first part, I argue that subsequent usage of the word gives no support to the idea that auctoritas was, as Galinsky puts it, ‘a principal concept’. Indeed, the word's usage, and its non-usage — its absence from all later expressions of imperial ideology — effectively exclude the possibility that Augustus and other Romans gave the word and the passage anything like the significance they have achieved in modern scholarship. In the second part, I return to Res Gestae 34.3, and ask whether we have been right to read the passage as a definition of Augustus' power. I argue that the passage has been fundamentally misunderstood: the words ‘a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti’ are not emphasized and do not have transcendental significance, but instead allude to a specific event. In the third part, I set out arguments for identifying the event as Octavian's being named princeps senatus in 28 b.c.
II AUCTORITAS
What significance did auctoritas have for Romans in the wake of the Res Gestae? On the terms of the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3, we would expect auctoritas to have become the cornerstone of imperial ideology. We would expect to find the word, and the phrase ‘a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti’, repeated and alluded to on coins, in monumental inscriptions, in literature — as we find, for example, the corona ciuica, the laurel branches, the clipeus uirtutis, and the virtues of clementia, iustitia, and pietas, all of which are mentioned in Res Gestae 34.2, on coins of Augustus and Tiberius.
We may break the question into two parts. First, did Romans especially associate auctoritas with Augustus? It would, of course, be meaningless to enumerate the times Romans used auctoritas without referring to Augustus. But we now have a substantial corpus of loyalist sources from the reign of Tiberius where we would expect to find auctoritas used as it is said to have been used in the Res Gestae: coins; a growing number of long, ideologically-saturated senatorial decrees; the universal history of Velleius Paterculus; and Valerius Maximus' collection of Facta et dicta memorabilia. These sources bring us as close as we might wish to the world of the Res Gestae. Like the Res Gestae, the senatorial decrees commemorating Germanicus and the younger Drusus and the SC de Cn. Pisone patre were composed for epigraphic publication and inscribed in multiple copies in Rome and the provinces.Footnote 9 And Velleius Paterculus, who entered the senate in a.d. 7, was very probably present when Augustus' will was opened and the Res Gestae was read aloud. Velleius records that after his death Augustus was given divine and human honours and the name Diuus, and he recalls that Augustus left instructions for regulating the comitia ‘written in his own hand’.Footnote 10
But the Tiberian loyalists do not use auctoritas in the way the word's supposed significance in the Res Gestae would suggest. Auctoritas never appears on the coinage of Tiberius or any other emperor.Footnote 11 The senate in its decrees attributes auctoritas to itself and to loyal officers, but not to Augustus or Tiberius. Auctoritas senatus (or huius ordinis) is used in the sense of senatorial decree, a usage also found in the Res Gestae: Footnote 12
Duo et octoginta templa deum in urbe consul sex[tu]m ex [auctori]tate senatus refeci nullo praeter misso quod e[o] tempore [refici debeba]t.
I restored eighty-two temples of the gods in the city in keeping with a senatorial decree, neglecting none that required restoration at that time.
In a corrupt passage of the SC de Pisone, the senate instructs soldiers to hold in the greatest auctoritas officers who revere the name of the Caesars, which protects urbs and imperium.Footnote 13 Valerius Maximus uses auctoritas thirty-seven times in all, often in the sense of personal influence. He even names seven men who he says were pre-eminent in auctoritas in their time, sometimes employing wording very close to that of Res Gestae 34.3, as when he says that the Samnite wise man Herennius Pontius ‘surpassed the rest in auctoritas and prudentia’.Footnote 14 Valerius also mentions Augustus eighteen times and Tiberius seven, but he associates auctoritas with the emperors only once, when he says that the jurist Cascellius could not be constrained by the gratia or auctoritas of any man to grant a formula legitimizing the Triumvirs' grants of property.Footnote 15 Only in Velleius Paterculus is auctoritas attributed to Augustus or Tiberius in a positive sense. Velleius uses auctoritas twenty-two times, three times in connection with Augustus and Tiberius: after Naulochus, the army of Sex. Pompeius was under Octavian's auctoritas and fides when Lepidus annexed it (36 b.c.); in Pannonia affairs were conducted with moderation and efficiency under Tiberius' auctoritas (a.d. 6–9); Cappadocia was reduced to stipendiary status not by force of arms but by Tiberius' auctoritas (a.d. 17).Footnote 16
If some of these instances seem vaguely compatible with the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3, the overall pattern of usage is not. One instance is decisive. Velleius devotes several breathless lines to the period after the civil wars, when he says ‘the ancient and pristine form of the republic was recalled’, and he uses the word auctoritas in this context. But Velleius does not attribute auctoritas to the emperor. Instead, Velleius says that auctoritas was restored to the courts (iudicia):Footnote 17
Finita uicesimo anno bella ciuilia, sepulta externa, reuocata pax, sopitus ubique armorum furor, restituta uis legibus, iudiciis auctoritas, senatui maiestas, imperium magistratuum ad pristinum redactum modum; tantummodo octo praetoribus adlecti duo.
The civil wars were ended after twenty years, foreign wars suppressed, peace restored, the frenzy of arms everywhere lulled to rest; validity was restored to the laws, auctoritas to the courts, and dignity to the senate; the power of the magistrates was reduced to its former limits, with the sole exception that two were added to the eight existing praetors.
On the other hand, echoes of the imperial ideology expressed in the Res Gestae — precisely in Res Gestae 34 — are not hard to find in these sources. The senate, for example, repeatedly invokes universal consensus (cf. Res Gestae 34.1), and says that it ‘learned the virtues of clementia and iustitia from its maiores, above all its principes, Augustus and Tiberius’ (cf. Res Gestae 34.2).Footnote 18 No one seems to have told the Tiberian senate, Velleius Paterculus, and Valerius Maximus that the principate had been founded on Augustus' auctoritas.
Let us turn to the second part of the question: When Romans did associate auctoritas with Augustus, did they give the word special significance? Surprisingly, the question seems never to have been asked. No one seems to have collected and evaluated all instances of auctoritas in connection with Augustus. Galinsky, for example, in the thirty-page chapter he devotes to ‘Auctoritas: a Principal Concept’, cites only three instances outside Cicero where the word auctoritas actually occurs. One is from Cassius Dio, who explains that an auctoritas of the senate was an expression of the senate's will that fell short of being a full decree.Footnote 19 One is from Servius' commentary on the Aeneid. Virgil in a famous simile describes an anonymous statesman who is ‘pietate gravem’ (‘respected for his pietas’), which Servius glosses: ‘cuius illis auctoritas ob pietatem est gravis’ (‘whose auctoritas carries weight for them, because of his pietas’).Footnote 20 The third instance is from Quintilian, who says at one point that Polyclitus' sculptures failed to capture the auctoritas of the gods, and at another that the Doryphoros would be equally suited for military service or the palaestra.Footnote 21 From this Galinsky concludes that the Prima Porta Augustus, whose posture derived from that of the Doryphoros, embodies auctoritas: ‘The fact that the statue conveys auctoritas is clear from precedents and comparable works.’
Galinsky represents only an exaggerated example of a general tendency, on the one hand, to distort the significance of auctoritas when it does occur, and on the other, to divine its workings when it does not. No ancient source, for example, uses the word auctoritas in the context of candidates' declarations of intention to stand for office, or Livia's influence, or military promotions. Even the most rigorous discussions, such as those of Heinze and Béranger, have been selective rather than systematic.Footnote 22 They have presumed rather than tested the significance of auctoritas.
What follows is a survey of what I believe to be all the instances in classical Latin when auctor or auctoritas is associated with Augustus.Footnote 23 We find that the words are used in four broad senses. Three have nothing to do with the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3: auctoritas is used in the sense of military leadership and legislative initiative, and Augustus is called the auctor of peace and prosperity. In the fourth usage, auctoritas does designate informal moral authority, but none of the instances offer any real support for the conventional interpretation.
(1) Cicero in his Philippics and final letters repeatedly invoked Octavian's auctoritas, his military leadership, telling the senate by turns in Philippics 3 that Octavian should be given auctoritas (legitimate command, imperium), and that Caesar's veterans and the defectors from M. Antony were already following Octavian's auctoritas (private initiative, unsanctioned command), then continuing to speak of Octavian's auctoritas after he had received imperium. Footnote 24 As we have seen, Velleius Paterculus says that after Naulochus Sex. Pompeius' army was under Octavian's auctoritas.Footnote 25 And Augustus himself may have used auctoritas in the sense of military leadership in the Res Gestae, when he says that colonies were founded either ‘m[ea auctoritate]’ or ‘m[eis auspiciis]’.Footnote 26
Italia autem XXVIII colonias, quae uiuo me celeberrimae et frequentissimae fuerunt, me[a auctoritate? –is auspiciis?] deductas habet.
Italy too has twenty-eight colonies founded by my authority (or under my auspices), which were densely populated in my lifetime.
Both expressions are equivalent to colonias deduxi. Neither the illegal Triumviral commands nor formal imperium — which was synonymous with potestas — can be what Augustus had in mind when he invoked his auctoritas at Res Gestae 34.3.
(2) The most common usage of auctoritas in connection with Augustus was in the technical sense of legislative or administrative initiative. Thus, in the only two epigraphic instances outside the Res Gestae conjoining auctoritas and Augustus, a college of symphoniaci is permitted by the senate to assemble for the sake of ludi by the terms of a lex Iulia passed ‘ex auctoritate Aug(usti)’; and the senator P. Paquius Scaeva of Histonium is dispatched as proconsul to Cyprus outside the lot by senatorial decree and ‘auctoritate Aug(usti) Caesaris’.Footnote 27 Ovid and Manilius call Augustus iustissimus auctor and maximus auctor of laws, respectively.Footnote 28 And in the Res Gestae Augustus may well call himself auctor of laws.Footnote 29
Legibus noui[s] m[e auctore l]atis m[ulta e]xempla maiorum exolescentia iam ex nostro [saecul]o red[uxi et ipse] multarum rer[um exe]mpla imitanda pos[teris tradidi.]
By new laws passed on my initiative I brought back into use many exemplary practices of our ancestors which were disappearing in our time, and in many ways I myself transmitted exemplary practices to posterity for their imitation.
Augustus is also identified as the auctor of various specific measures: dividing Italy into regiones; splitting a Thracian kingdom between two kings; stopping publication of the acta senatus; a senator's deciding to have four children; and constructing the Portus Iulius.Footnote 30 This technical usage of auctor and auctoritas was never exclusive to emperors.Footnote 31 Furthermore, inasmuch as Augustus was acting as auctor of a measure by bringing it before the senate or people, he was exercising formal potestas, as the Res Gestae itself shows.Footnote 32 So this usage offers no support for the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3, either.
(3) Augustus was praised as the auctor, the source, of peace and prosperity. Auctoritas would be meaningless in this context and is never used. Thus Virgil in Georgics 1 (29 b.c.) calls Augustus auctor frugum, and Ovid in Ex Ponto 1 (a.d. 13) calls him auctor pacis. Footnote 33 At an unknown date Augustus issued an edict saying that he hoped to be remembered as optimi status auctor:Footnote 34
Ita mihi saluam ac sospitem rem p. sistere in sua sede liceat atque eius rei fructum percipere, quem peto, ut optimi status auctor dicar et moriens ut feram mecum spem, mansura in uestigio suo fundamenta rei p. quae iecero.
May I be allowed to stand the republic safe and sound on its base, and from this to reap the fruit that I seek: that I may be called the auctor of the best status, and that when I die I may take with me the hope that the foundations of the republic that I have laid will remain in place.
Because this edict is often invoked in discussions of Res Gestae 34.3, two points should be emphasized. First, Augustus' wish was only partly fulfilled. Others repeated the ideology of the best possible status, but after Augustus' death they gave credit for it to Tiberius, and never called either Augustus or Tiberius its auctor. Thus a denarius of 16 b.c. records vows of the senate and people on Augustus' behalf because it was ‘through him that the republic was in a greater and more peaceful status’.Footnote 35 In the SC de Pisone (a.d. 20), the senate says that it ‘enjoys the present status of the republic, than which no better could be hoped for, by favour of its princeps’, Tiberius.Footnote 36 Second, as these other items of evidence make clear, status refers to a state of peace and tranquillity, not a form of government. So there is no connection between Augustus' wishing to be called auctor of the best status and his saying that he surpassed all in auctoritas.
The conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3, though, holds that auctoritas signifies informal moral authority, and others did in fact credit Augustus with auctoritas in this sense. Let us examine the specific instances.
(4) Cicero, in the earliest surviving association of auctoritas with the future emperor, tells Atticus in a letter from November 44 b.c. that Octavian has spirit enough, but lacks auctoritas. Footnote 37 As we have seen, Valerius Maximus records that the jurist Cascellius would not bow to Octavian's auctoritas (28 b.c.?).Footnote 38 And Seneca in the De clementia recalls a sordid episode when Augustus' auctoritas barely saved a knight from a mob:Footnote 39
Trichonem equitem Romanum memoria nostra, quia filium suum flagellis occiderat, populus graphiis in foro confodit; uix illum Augusti Caesaris auctoritas infestis tam patrum quam filiorum manibus eripuit.
Within my memory the people in the Forum stabbed Tricho, a Roman knight, with their writing-styluses because he had flogged his son to death; Augustus Caesar's auctoritas barely rescued him from the indignant hands of fathers no less than of sons.
Then there are a number of miscellaneous instances where auctoritas denotes one sort of moral authority or another: the Elder Pliny says that the doctor Antonius Musa had Augustus' auctoritas (support) when he prescribed a regime of cold baths and saved Augustus' life; Frontinus cites the auctoritas of Augustus' commentarii on ajutages (moduli); in Tacitus' Annals, Nero tells Seneca that when Augustus allowed Agrippa and Maecenas to retire from public life, Augustus' auctoritas was sufficient to put him beyond suspicion of envy; Suetonius says that, while on Rhodes, Tiberius learned that notice of divorce had been sent to Julia in his own name ‘ex auctoritate Augusti’.Footnote 40 Lastly, the Hadrianic jurist Pomponius says that inasmuch as Augustus had greater auctoritas in law, he was the first to establish that jurists could give responses in keeping with his auctoritas. Footnote 41
Of these isolated, and mostly trivial, examples, only the passage from Seneca's De clementia might be said to offer any support for the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3. For Seneca, auctoritas is apparently a moral quality rather than a formal power. It is something in which Augustus is implicitly supreme, and something that Augustus actively exercises. On the other hand, the passage does not recall Res Gestae 34.3 in any specific way. In this sense it is worth remembering that De clementia is an extended and explicit meditation on the corona ciuica and the virtue of clementia, both mentioned in Res Gestae 34.2. Footnote 42 None of the other instances recall Res Gestae 34.3 or emphasize auctoritas, either — still less do they suggest that the principate had been founded on Augustus' auctoritas. In effect, the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3 rests on only the passage itself. So it is to the passage that we now turn.
III RES GESTAE 34.3
In fact, the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3 is based on two misconceptions. The first concerns emphasis. The emphasis at Res Gestae 34.3 is not on the first clause, but on the second: not on surpassing all in auctoritas, but on possessing no more potestas. It is true that Augustus sets his account of the constitutional changes and honours of 28–27 and 2 b.c. (Res Gestae 34–5) apart from his account of his other honours (Res Gestae 1–14) and places it at the close of the document. But the rhetorical principle that the final position is emphatic holds for Res Gestae 34.3 as well. Indeed, the principle has been inadvertently acknowledged by scholars beginning with Heinze, who have instinctively switched the clauses when paraphrasing the sentence. Even the scrupulous Scheid writes, ‘Même si Auguste ne possédait pas formellement un pouvoir supérieur à celui de ses collègues dans l'une de ces fonctions, il l'emportait sur eux en prestige’ (‘Even if Augustus did not formally possess a power superior to that of his colleagues in one of these offices, he surpassed them in prestige’).Footnote 43 Nor is it legitimate to give the adversative particle autem concessive force (‘même si’).Footnote 44 Instead, the emphasis is on possessing no more potestas, and potestas is in fact the running theme of the whole chapter, as the new reading of ‘[po]tens’ at Res Gestae 34.1 in place of Mommsen's ‘[potitus]’ makes clearer than ever.Footnote 45Res Gestae 34 unfolds in three chronological phases and carefully situates Octavian/Augustus' potestas with respect to the Roman senate, people, and magistrates:
(1) After the civil wars (31/30 b.c.), Octavian was by universal consent powerful over all things (‘[po]tens re[ru]m om[n]ium’).
(2) In his sixth and seventh consulships (28–27 b.c.), Octavian transferred the res publica from his power (‘ex mea potestate’) to the discretion of the Roman senate and people.
(3) After this time, Augustus had no more power (‘[potest]atis … [n]ihilo ampliu[s’) than his colleagues in each magistracy.
In other words, the sense of Res Gestae 34.3 is surely the opposite of the conventional reading.Footnote 46 Augustus is not emphasizing the fact that he surpassed all in auctoritas. He is saying,
I surpassed all in auctoritas — but it did not matter, because — I possessed no more potestas.
This is the plain meaning of the Latin, and the logical conclusion of the chapter, in which Augustus describes relinquishing the potestas he was acknowledged to have had after defeating Antony.Footnote 47
The second misconception concerns the referent of Res Gestae 34.3. It is unlikely that in Res Gestae 34.3 Augustus is making a transcendental claim about the nature of his rule, for two reasons. The first is that this reading rests on a distortion of Augustus' words. Augustus says, ‘a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti’, ‘I surpassed all in auctoritas’. But Heinze in his paraphrase has changed the verb into a noun: ‘meine Vorrangstellung beruhte auf dem Einfluß …’ (‘my pre-eminence rested on the influence …’). The difference is subtle but all-important, and emerges clearly if we replace auctoritas by another word. It is the difference between saying (for example), ‘I surpassed all in pietas’, and saying, ‘my pre-eminence was based on pietas’. By the time we arrive at a typical formulation like Béranger's ‘Auguste déclare sans ambages que son pouvoir repose sur une prééminence personnelle’ (‘Augustus declares unambiguously that his power rests on a personal pre-eminence’) the original Latin — including the word auctoritas itself — has been completely effaced.Footnote 48
The second reason that Res Gestae 34.3 is unlikely to embody a transcendental claim is that every other clause of the Res Gestae refers to a specific, datable event or set of events. Literally every other clause: the title means what it says; the document is a catalogue of Augustus' honours, benefactions, and deeds. Even when Augustus makes a broader claim, he refers to specific events: to specific instances of mercy, when he says that as victor he spared the lives of all citizens who asked for mercy, and preserved foreign peoples who could safely be pardoned (Res Gestae 3.1–2); to specific laws and exemplary practices, when he says that by new laws he restored many exemplary practices of the ancestors, and himself transmitted exemplary practices to posterity (8.5); to specific conquests, when he says that he extended the territory of all provinces bordering on peoples not subject to Roman imperium (26.1).
This is an important clue. It suggests that at Res Gestae 34.3 it is not the word auctoritas that matters so much as the event the clause refers to. Instead of seeking a transcendental sense for the passage, we should ask: What specific event or events occurred during Augustus' sixth and seventh consulships, such that he could claim that from then on he had supreme auctoritas, but equal potestas?
IV PRINCEPS SENATUS
I think that this question can be answered, and that both clauses of Res Gestae 34.3 allude to identifiable events and express their significance. The first clause alludes to Octavian's becoming princeps senatus in 28 b.c., and the second clause alludes to his reviving the practice of alternating the fasces with his fellow consul Agrippa the same year.
The supporting evidence comes from the Res Gestae itself and from Cassius Dio. Everyone has always seen that the Greek of Res Gestae 34.3 is equivalent to the Greek of 7.2, with the single difference that at 7.2 Augustus specifies that he held the first place of axioma in the senate. The Greek reads,
Res Gestae 34.3: Ἀξιώμ[α]τι πάντων διήνεγκα, ἐξουσίας δὲ οὐδέν τι πλεῖον ἔσχον τῶν συναρξάντων μοι.
Res Gestae 7.2: Πρῶτον ἀξιώματος τόπον ἔσχον τῆς συνκλήτου ἄχρι ταύτης τῆς ἡμέρας, ἧς ταῦτα ἔγραφον, ἐπὶ ἔτη τεσσαράκοντα. (‘I held first place of axioma in the senate up until the day when I wrote this for forty years.’)
But no one so far as I am aware has drawn the simple conclusion that the Latin of Res Gestae 34.3 is also synonymous with the Latin of 7.2:
Res Gestae 34.3: Post id tem[pus a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potest]atis au[tem n]ihilo ampliu[s habu]i quam cet[eri, qui m]ihi quoque in ma[gis]tra[t]u conlegae f[uerunt].
Res Gestae 7.2: P]rinceps s[enatus fui usque ad e]um d[iem, quo scrip]seram [haec, per annos] quadra[ginta.Footnote 49 (‘I was princeps senatus up until the day when I wrote this for forty years.’)
Yet Dio as transmitted by Zonaras defines princeps senatus precisely as the one who surpassed others in axioma:Footnote 50
Τῶν δὲ προσκαίρως ἀρχόντων πρεσβεῖα μὲν ἐδέδοτο τοῖς δικτάτορσι, δευτερεῖα δέ γε τοῖς τιμηταῖς, ἡ δὲ τρίτη τάξις τοῖς ἱππάρχοις νενέμητο· καὶ οὕτω ταῦτα ἐτέτακτο, κἂν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἦσαν κἂν ἀπηλλάγησαν. εἰ γάρ τις ἐκ μείζονος ἀρχῆς εἰς ὑποδεεστέραν κατέστη, τὸ τῆς προτέρας ἀξίωμα εἶχεν ἀκέραιον. εἷς δέ τις, ὃν πρίγκιπα μὲν τῆς γερουσίας ὠνόμαζον, (λέγοιτο δ’ ἂν καθ’ Ἕλληνας πρόκριτος), συμπάντων προεῖχε τὸν χρόνον ὃν προεκρίνετο, (οὐ γὰρ διὰ βίου τις ἐς τοῦτο προεχειρίζετο), καὶ προέφερε τῶν ἄλλων τῷ ἀξιώματι, οὐ μὴν καὶ δυνάμει ἐχρῆτό τινι.
Of the occasional magistrates dictators were given the first rank of seniority, censors second, while masters of the horse had third place. This same principle was followed, whether they were still in office or had retired; for if one descended from a higher office to a lower one, he still retained the rank of his former position undiminished. There was, however, one man, styled princeps of the senate (he would be called prokritos by the Greeks), who was superior to all for the time that he was thus honoured (a person was not chosen to this position for life) and surpassed the rest in axioma, without, however, wielding any power (dynamis).
Dio also accounts for the conjunction of auctoritas and potestas when he associates alternating the fasces and becoming princeps senatus in his account of the year 28 b.c.Footnote 51
1. Τότε μὲν ταῦτ’ ἐγένετο, τῷ δὲ ἑξῆς ἔτει ἕκτον ὁ Καῖσαρ ἦρξε, καὶ τά τε ἄλλα κατὰ τὸ νομιζόμενον ἀπὸ τοῦ πάνυ ἀρχαίου ἐποίησε, καὶ τοὺς φακέλους τῶν ῥάβδων τῷ Ἀγρίππᾳ συνάρχοντί οἱ κατὰ τὸ ἐπιβάλλον παρέδωκεν, αὐτός τε ταῖς ἑτέραις ἐχρήσατο, καὶ διάρξας τὸν ὅρκον κατὰ τὰ πάτρια ἐπήγαγε. … 3. ἐν δ’ οὖν τῷ τότε παρόντι τά τε ἄλλα ὥσπερ εἴθιστο ἔπραξε, καὶ τὰς ἀπογραφὰς ἐξετέλεσε, καὶ ἐν αὐταῖς πρόκριτος τῆς γερουσίας ἐπεκλήθη, ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ ἀκριβεῖ δημοκρατίᾳ ἐνενόμιστο.
1. The following year Caesar held office for the sixth time and conformed in all other respects to the usages handed down from the earliest times, and, in particular, he delivered to Agrippa, his colleague, the bundles of rods as it was incumbent upon him to do, while he himself used the other set, and on completing his term of office he took the oath according to ancestral custom. … 3. At this particular time, now, besides attending to his other duties as usual, he completed the taking of the census, in connection with which his title was princeps senatus, as had been the practice when Rome was truly a republic.
In short, ‘a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti’ means, ‘I was princeps senatus’, and Augustus' point is that despite holding this pre-eminent position, he had no more potestas than his fellow magistrates — as demonstrated by his alternating the fasces with Agrippa.Footnote 52
Dio has more to tell us about princeps senatus and its significance for Augustus. First, Dio emphasizes that naming the princeps senatus at the conclusion of the census had been Republican practice.Footnote 53 Varro said in the manual of senatorial procedure he prepared for Pompey that formerly the first senator to give his opinion was the one enrolled as princeps senatus by the censors, but in his day the first speaker was chosen ad hoc from among consular senators by the presiding magistrate; Cicero's evidence confirms this.Footnote 54 So princeps senatus takes its place among the Republican revivals of Augustus' sixth and seventh consulships. Second, Dio explains that the princeps senatus was the senator who had seniority in office-holding (presbeia), as Octavian undoubtedly did in 28 b.c., when he was consul for the sixth time. Third, Dio specifies that princeps senatus was not a lifelong position, which explains Augustus' emphasis on his continuous tenure of the position, both at Res Gestae 7.2 (‘per annos] quadra[ginta’) and at 34.3 (‘post id tem[pus’).Footnote 55
Dio also clarifies the relationship between Res Gestae 34.3 and the rest of the text. As we saw above, Augustus says that he held ‘first place of axioma in the senate’ at Res Gestae 7.2, but that he ‘surpassed all in axioma’ at 34.3. On the face of it, the difference between the two passages would seem to reflect the difference between princeps senatus and princeps tout court.Footnote 56 Thus Magdelain paraphrased the first clause of Res Gestae 34.3, ‘princeps omnium fui’.Footnote 57 But Dio in his explanation of princeps senatus employs the same sequence of phrases as the Res Gestae: the princeps senatus (πρίγκιπα μὲν τῆς γερουσίας) was the one who excelled all (συμπάντων προεῖχε) and who surpassed others in axioma (προέφερε τῶν ἄλλων τῷ ἀξιώματι).Footnote 58 It follows that ‘[omnibus]’/πάντων in the first clause of Res Gestae 34.3 is to be construed closely with ‘cet[eri]’/ τῶν συναρξάντων in the second clause: ‘I surpassed all of them in auctoritas, but I had no more potestas than the others who were my fellow magistrates’. In other words, ‘[omnibus]’ refers to the set of all past and present magistrates, and is synonymous with senatus.Footnote 59 In fact, Dio equates princeps senatus and princeps ‘of the rest’ in another passage. Speaking of Tiberius, Dio says:Footnote 60
Τὸ δ’ ὅλον Καῖσαρ, ἔστι δ’ ὅτε καὶ Γερμανικὸς ἐκ τῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ Γερμανικοῦ πραχθέντων, πρόκριτός τε τῆς γερουσίας κατὰ τὸ ἀρχαῖον καὶ ὑφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ὠνομάζετο, καὶ πολλάκις γε ἔλεγεν ὅτι ‘δεσπότης μὲν τῶν δούλων, αὐτοκράτωρ δὲ τῶν στρατιωτῶν, τῶν δὲ δὴ λοιπῶν πρόκριτός εἰμι.’
In general he was called Caesar, sometimes Germanicus (from the deeds of Germanicus), and princeps (prokritos) senatus, the last in accordance with ancient usage and even by himself. He would often declare: ‘I am master of the slaves, imperator of the soldiers, and princeps (prokritos) of the rest.’
The scholarly consensus is that Dio here misunderstood Tiberius, who was talking about princeps tout court, not princeps senatus, and that in translating Tiberius' formula Dio should have used the standard Greek translation of princeps, hegemon, rather than prokritos. But the phrase ‘hegemon of the rest’ is unexampled. Dio appears to have had it right after all.Footnote 61
Augustus' own interest in princeps senatus is reflected in the elogia he composed for the Forum Augustum, where he records that M'. Valerius Maximus (dict. 494 b.c.) and Q. Fabius Maximus (dict. 221, 217 b.c.) were each ‘princeps in senatum lectus’ (‘enrolled in the senate as princeps’).Footnote 62 More importantly, Augustus' concern for his own position in the senate is signalled in the first chapter of the Res Gestae:Footnote 63
Eo [nomi]ne senatus decretis honorif[i]cis in ordinem suum m[e adlegit C. Pansa et A. Hirti]o consulibus, con[sula]rem locum s[ententiae dicendae simul dans, et i]mperium mihi dedit.
For that reason the senate by honorific decrees enrolled me in its order in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, at the same time assigning me a consular place for giving my opinion, and gave me imperium.
In the same way, Augustus records that Gaius and Lucius, on achieving manhood, had been allowed to attend sessions of the senate (consilia publica). The chapter closes the honores section of the text:Footnote 64
Et ex eo die, quo deducti [s]unt in forum, ut interessent consiliis publicis decrevit sena[t]us.
And the senate decreed that from the day when they were led into the Forum they should take part in the councils of state.
So this reading reveals something new about the architecture of the Res Gestae and about Augustus' conception of his and his successors' careers.
That leaves auctoritas. If ‘a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti’ alludes to princeps senatus, what does auctoritas mean, precisely? Dio says that axioma was a function of seniority.Footnote 65 Cicero also links auctoritas to a speaker's rank:Footnote 66
Primum igitur scito primum me non esse rogatum sententiam praepositumque esse nobis pacificatorem Allobrogum, idque admurmurante senatu neque me invito esse factum. sum enim et ab observando homine perverso liber et ad dignitatem in re publica retinendam contra illius voluntatem solutus, et ille secundus in dicendo locus habet auctoritatem paene principis, voluntatem non nimis devinctam beneficio consulis. tertius est Catulus, quartus, si etiam hoc quaeris, Hortensius.
First then you may care to know that I have not been given first voice in the senate, the pacifier of the Allobroges [i.e. C. Calpurnius Piso, cos. 67 b.c.] being put in front of me — at which the house murmured but I myself was not sorry. I am thereby relieved of any obligation to be civil to a cross-grained individual and left free to maintain my political standing in opposition to his wishes. Moreover the second place carries almost as much auctoritas as the first (princeps), while one's inclinations are not too much fettered by one's sense of the consular favour. Catulus comes third, Hortensius, if you are still interested, fourth.
It is in this sense that I think we need to understand auctoritas at Res Gestae 34.3: as a function of Augustus' formal rank, and so as metonymy for princeps senatus.Footnote 67 It is true that this precise usage is not attested in relation to Augustus — and that the absence of parallels was the first of my charges against the conventional interpretation — but I do not think that this represents a problem for my interpretation. The point of the passage is that Augustus' superior auctoritas was immaterial, because he had no greater potestas than his fellow magistrates. Res Gestae 34.3 is not a declaration that Augustus' real power was extra-constitutional; it is an affirmation that he conformed to collegiality. On this reading, there is no reason to expect auctoritas to have been repeated.Footnote 68
V CONCLUSION
On this basis, I propose the following paraphrase of Res Gestae 34.3:
Post id tem[pus a]uctoritate [omnibus praestiti, potest]atis au[tem n]ihilo ampliu[s habu]i quam cet[eri, qui m]ihi quoque in ma[gis]tra[t]u conlegae f[uerunt].
From the time of my sixth and seventh consulships on, I surpassed all of them in auctoritas (as recognized by my being named princeps senatus during my sixth consulship), but I had no more potestas than my colleagues in each magistracy (as demonstrated by my reviving the practice of alternating the fasces the same year).
To be clear: I concur that auctoritas connoted prestige and influence. I wish only to dispell the numinous haze that has surrounded the word, and to tie auctoritas concretely to a particular event and a particular institution. At a minimum, I hope to have shown that the conventional interpretation of Res Gestae 34.3 — that the word auctoritas itself is significant, that Augustus emphasizes it, and that Augustus' claim has a transcendental sense and explanatory power — is wholly untenable.
Fergus Millar once called Syme's Roman Revolution ‘the first great step in a long campaign to free Roman history from the domination of a faction of abstract nouns’.Footnote 69 Yet even Syme was not immune to the charms of auctoritas. Footnote 70 The campaign continues.
