Augustus - The Third Settlement (1 Viewer)

[Paroissien]

Augustus - The Third Settlement?

Reading through SmokedSalmon's notes today I came across this:
3rd settlement 19/18BC:
Allows Augustus to name a successor
Given the title “Augstus” revered one

Is this the case, because until now I was under the opinion that he received the title of Augustus as part of the First Settlement in 27BC. Also I have never heard of the third settlement as my teacher never touched on it, just the first two.
Bottom line is now I'm damn confused, and worried as my trials are in a few days.

 

[launcher169]

There is no third settlement. there was only two
1. in 27BC where Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus was given the title Augustus and he handed down his powers 'to the senate and the people of Rome' he had proconsular imperium which was renewed every year, and he it was his personal auctoritas (authority) that gave him superiority over his equals
2. in 23 BC where Augustus nearly died and there was a serious consipiracy against him. Augustus then gave up the consulship that he held ever since 27BC and was granted the tribunician potestas (tribunician power i.e. the power of veto, tribunician sacrosanctity, right to convene the senate, the right to propose laws etc.) he also was granted imperium maius - his imperium was more powerful than anyothers.

what might be referred to here is that Augustus was granted the title ponitfex maximus in 12 BC and in 2BC when he was granted pater patriae.

i hope this has cleared your confusion

 

[Caratacus]

Octavian was granted the name "Augustus" in January 27 BC, almost certainly on the 16th - see Pat Southern's discussion in "Augustus", p114 based on Res Gestae, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Syme is good on the connotations of the name (Roman Revolution).

There is a debate about what happened in 19/18 AD after Augustus' return from the East (where he had been since 22). He was granted proconsular imperium in 18 for another 5 years. The debate concerns a statement of Dio's that Augustus was granted 'a kind of consular power for life' in 19. This has been interpreted in two ways:

1. that he took on the honorary insignia of consul (eg lictors) but not the powers
2. he took on the full powers of a consul, thought the consuls were elected as usual

Dio is the only ancient writer that says this & we don't know his source. In the RG Augustus said he was offered consular powers for life in 22 but refused the offer. There is an interesting discussion of this in Southern pp 131ff, who concludes that it is impossible to resolve, though Augustus does appear to have some sort of consular powers which he used in 8. BC & AD 14 to hold censuses.

I think you are pretty safe with knowing the usual First and Second Settlements, with perhaps a passing mention of this issue.

 

[Paroissien]

That's what I thought. Thankyou very much

 

[Caratacus]

Here's a quote from Southern: "...it is usually pointed out that he had relinquished far too much in 23 by giving up the consulship because because the tribunicia potestas and proconsular imperium could not compensate for all that he had lost, so it was merely the logical outcome that he should take up the consular powers again in an altered form without holding the actual office. If it is accepted that Augustus haeld imperium consulare from 19 onwards then it simplifies very considerably the problems relating to certain of his enactments and actions which cannot be attributed soley to any of his other powers" [eg the censuses of 8 BC & AD 14] (p132).

 

[Paroissien]

Ok, I'm following now. I found a small section in my textbook (Antiquity 2) quoting Dio on Augustus receiving the imperium of consuls for life. This power was demonstrated when he received the names of candidates for the elections.
However, I've got nothing on the cenuses. And I might be wrong but wasn't that the duty of the censors?

 

[Caratacus]

You're quite right: normally it was the power of a censor that was used to hold a census. The issue arises over the wording of Res Gestae 8:

8. When I was consul the fifth time (29 B.C.E.), I increased the number of patricians by order of the people and senate. I read the roll of the senate three times, and in my sixth consulate (28 B.C.E.) I made a census of the people with Marcus Agrippa as my colleague. I conducted a lustrum, after a forty-one year gap, in which lustrum were counted 4,063,000 heads of Roman citizens. Then again, with consular imperium I conducted a lustrum alone when Gaius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius were consuls (8 B.C.E.), in which lustrum were counted 4,233,000 heads of Roman citizens. And the third time, with consular imperium, I conducted a lustrum with my son Tiberius Caesar as colleague, when Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius were consuls (14 A.C.E.), in which lustrum were cunted 4,937,000 of the heads of Roman citizens. By new laws passed with my sponsorship, I restored many traditions of the ancestors, which were falling into disuse in our age, and myself I handed on precedents of many things to be imitated in later generations.

http://classics.mit.edu/Augustus/deeds.html

This is one of the main issues that Southern refers to as being "simplified" if Augustus had the powers of a consul during this period - though she does discuss alternative explanations of the situation.

Ask your teacher to get the librarian to order the book for the library, then read it up. Your library needs it anyway .

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...187/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-9952270-8206826

 

[Caratacus]

Add this, from E.T. Salmon The Roman World: 30 BC to AD 138 (though he does not refer to it as a "Third Settlement"):

In the year 18 BC Augustus for the first time specifically named a successor by making Agrippa his partner in the Tribunician Power. The Imperium Proconsulare probably explains why Augustus waited until this year… never desirous of attracting attention to his possession of this supreme imperium, Augustus had never hitherto shared it with a colleague, for it would have been a constitutionally dubious procedure for him to delegate to an individual the sovereign power which was supposed to be conferred only by the People. Moreover if he nevertheless did so he would openly advertise that though he paraded the Tribunician Power, what he really valued was the Imperium Proconsulare. Yet his successor if he was called to office suddenly would urgently need the imperium: the Tribunician Power by itself without the backing of armed forces was not enough. Augustus therefore waited until his own tenure of the Imperium Proconsulare expired in 18, It was conferred afresh of course in the same year (as he knew it inevitably would be); but this time it was almost certainly conferred on Agrippa as well for a period of five years. This measure was put through quietly and inconspicuously, so inconspicuously indeed that the ancient sources do not explicitly mention it (footnote: Dio merely says that Augustus conferred upon Agrippa “other privileges almost equal to his own, including the Tribunician Power”. But in 17 BC Agrippa was exercising powers over both imperial and senatorial provinces: in other words he possessed imperium maius): the ostentation was reserved for Agrippa’s assumption of the Tribunician Power. Fundamentally, however, Agrippa’s Imperium Proconsulare was the more important, and it was to get him invested with it that Augustus had any constitutional arrangements at all made in the year 18….

Thus in 18 BC Agrippa became a co-regent with Augustus. If the latter were suddenly to die, Agrippa would automatically become Princeps. But the Principate did not now become a dual one with two equal rulers. Of the co-regents Augustus clearly enjoyed priority, for although Agrippa’s Tribunician Power, like Augustus’, was annually numbered, it had a five-year limit: Augustus’ was annual and perpetual.

Concurrently with these succession arrangements in 18 BC Augustus seized the occasion for a general reorganisation of the state. He conducted another revision of the Senate, with the intention of reducing its membership to three hundred… [but ended up naming] six hundred senators instead…

…[he] discharged other censorial functions in 18 BC. He refused to become a curator morum, but he did exercise a general supervision of public morals and conduct, and promulgated the Julian Laws. In effect these laws constituted a new code, for they made provision for criminal law and legal procedure as well as for moral reform…

The Emperor in fact became a High Court….

[Salmon goes on to describe the reform of the legal system and the introduction of the morality legislation that took place around 18 BC.]

Augustus could now claim that the wounds of the State, moral as well as political, had been healed. A new era of general prosperity and well-being could be anticipated. Therefore he had no hesitation in announcing that the Golden Age, which Virgil had so confidently predicted in 40 when the youthful Octavian was first emerging into power, had at last arrived. Nothing short of a magnificent celebration was worthy of the occasion, and such a celebration was duly solemnised in 17 BC at the Secular Games.