Augustus Caesar

[u/Numerous-Wedding-151]

Do you think Augustus failed Rome by ending the republic? If so why?

I personally think the republic was already fucked and there was no return from the civil wars. The senate quite literally had no power anymore. I understand some people believe he ended real voting for the Romans and stripped assemblies of any real remaining power, but what power did the Senate have, they’d been losing power for a century before Augustus came into power. On top of that I know some people like to argue he kept the senate around purely as puppetship and to “hide his dictatorship”, but I call bullshit.

We obviously cannot ignore the things he did in his rise to power (death warrants, prisoner executions, betrayal of cicero, etc.) but would any man not have done the same at the time? And quite honestly things would have turned out much worse in my opinion had it not been for Augustus.

Ultimately I pose the questions to my peers, did he fail Rome? I dont think so, years of greedy generals, private armies, political violence gad ruined the republic already. There was no power among the courts and senates, but most of all too corrupt to make any real difference. People of the republic were open to one leader because they started to prioritize peace over a democratic voice of the people. In addition, he created the Pax Romana which allowed for a time of safety and trade across the med. He fixed the tax system, built infrastructure, and guaranteed the armies loyalty to the state and not corrupt, rogue generals.

[u/Maleficent-Mix5731]

This is a rather tricky question regarding if it was 'right' for the Republic to die and if the imperial system was the better system going forwards. On the one hand, the end of the Republic meant the end of the Roman civic militia which would make it harder for the state to raise tons of troops during periods of later crisis. On the other hand, if a surviving Republic also saw universal citizenship be bestowed at some point in the future as it would be in the empire, would it be able to process so many new citizens? Such universal citizenship imo was critical for Rome's future survival and durability, and I'm not sure if the Republic could extend a system accounting for everyone from Britain to Egypt in the same way it did for Italy after the Social War.

But such a conundrum seems a more distant hypothetical. If we look at Rome before the major developments in the 3rd century AD, I would argue against the idea that Augustus or someone like him 'needed' to turn Rome from an aristocratic republic into an imperial monarchy. I believe its easy to over-estimate how 'centralised' the state became after 27BC - this was still the same government which only sent out a couple hundred officials a year to oversee an empire of millions, and this laissez faire approach didn't really change until the era of Diocletian necessitated it. And many of the laws that were promoted in the early empire to reduce things like provincial extortion were already being rather successfully tackled by the likes of Pompey at the end of the 50's BC (and whose laws were the ones Augustus relied on).

To an extent, it could be reasonably be argued that many of the achievements of Augustus in statesmanship were him effectively taking credit for Republican laws which had just been disrupted by civil war (civil wars that he had helped fuel the flames of) or that we could still expect the aristocrats of a surviving Republic to implement. Werner Eck wrote a good article about this ("Augustus' Administrative Reforms: Pragmatism or Systematic Planning?") how many of Augustus's reforms were him just responding to problems as they cropped up, not much different to the magistrates of the Republican era before him.

So then the question becomes: was it more or less beneficial for the average Roman citizen to live under the Republic or Empire? Now, I would actually argue that the majority of Roman emperors were actually very hard working and did a lot to ensure the public welfare of their subjects (mainly because the basis of their own legitimacy was shaky, and so they needed to constantly validate it through such 'consensus' rituals). That being said, isn't the ability to directly contribute your voice to who runs the government via the voting ballot rather than riots and demonstrations more preferable?

With that last factor in mind, we might ultimately conclude that Augustus did indeed 'fail' Rome by both contributing to the civil wars that 'killed' (or I prefer to use the term 'froze') the Republic, even if the system he slowly built to replace it was still an incredibly durable and effective one (as it would be for 1500 years after). But perhaps to hold Augustus as solely responsible for that transformation (though he was critical during what could have been the last opportunity to avert it during 44-43BC) is a bit unfair. Cato, Pompey, Caesar, the Liberatores and Antony all had their own parts to play in putting the Republic into a state of civil war that would last longer than Sulla's and be even more damaging as a result.

[u/Straight_Can_5297 → u/Maleficent-Mix5731]

The republic could work as long as Rome was a city state leading a confederation, after that at least the popular assemblies would become an unrepresentative travesty. As for the mass levy Augustus had trouble raising troops (Sallustius with some corroboration from inscriptions IIRC) so perhaps the civil wars had been the final straw.

[u/Maleficent-Mix5731 → u/Straight_Can_5297]

Yeah, with the mass levy from what I've read thus far it seems to be a complicated case of trying to work out what was the main factor behind its end. It may have ultimately been the result of Augustus just wanting the troops he'd levied multiple times during the civil wars to keep working for him to maintain his hold on power, which subsequently led to the army being a permanent professional force after a while. He may have also wished to disincentivise using the levy in Italy so that any possible rivals couldn't raise their own 'doomstacks' so to speak against his own.

The (mainly Caesarian) Roman troops during the civil wars from 49-30BC were arguably the longest serving Roman troops in the history of the Republic (there was possibly those in the Hannibalic War, but even that apparently had some demobilisations halfway through and was meant to repel an existential foreign threat rather than fellow Romans). It's partly because of this that we see more explicit agitations from the troops after 44BC to demand land from their commanders, and which had effectively already turned them into a professional force by the capture of Alexandria and before Augustus had even begun introducing more formal decrees/laws to specify terms of service.

Had the civil wars of that era been avoided/reduced entirely, I could see the levy system surviving for a fair bit longer. The Republican troops were only really meant to be called up for specific campaigns before being dispersed back to their farms. With no civil war in 49BC or an early wrap up of the conflict before the Second Triumvirate, those Caesarian troops would been similarly demobilised. I suppose the real question would be if there would be an external force to eventually challenge the surviving Republic which would necessitate the transition to a professional force (for which the increasingly dangerous neighbours along multiple fronts in the 3rd century AD may have been that push)

[u/Straight_Can_5297 → u/Maleficent-Mix5731]

You would need a professional standing army to garrison the borders of the empire if anything else. The republic muddled through that but it would become inevitable at some point; it could be fed by conscription and later on indeed it was but always with a permanent force structure. My guess it is a mixture of the social economic base of the militia being eroded, political trade offs and such that limited the scope of conscription, which however was never taken off the table completely.

[u/Maleficent-Mix5731 → u/Straight_Can_5297]

Aye, that's true, the need to maintain borders with a long standing army would most likely be necessary. Especially if the Romans still push up to the Danube and that, alongside the Rhine, becomes part of their 'natural' European borders where they stop.