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The Principate

The Principate system established by Augustus provided stability to the Roman Empire for centuries but also contributed to problems later on. It worked well initially by meeting the political needs after the fall of the Republic (1). However, in the long run, the Principate became a millstone as much as a lifebelt by stagnating and preventing innovation due to its rigid structure centered around the Julio-Claudian dynasty (2). Emperors not descended from the Caesars still had to associate themselves with the Augustan message perpetuated in the city's monuments, further cementing the traditions but limiting development (3).

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70 views2 pages

The Principate

The Principate system established by Augustus provided stability to the Roman Empire for centuries but also contributed to problems later on. It worked well initially by meeting the political needs after the fall of the Republic (1). However, in the long run, the Principate became a millstone as much as a lifebelt by stagnating and preventing innovation due to its rigid structure centered around the Julio-Claudian dynasty (2). Emperors not descended from the Caesars still had to associate themselves with the Augustan message perpetuated in the city's monuments, further cementing the traditions but limiting development (3).

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THE PRINCIPATE – LIFEBELT, OR MILLSTONE AROUND THE NECK OF THE EMPIRE?

- The Principate was created by Augustus and continued by the Julio-Claudians.


- The Augustan Principate was the product of crisis ( fall of the republic)
- a response to the challenges that precipitated the fall of the Republic.
- it was a lifebelt. The Principate worked because it met the political needs of its day.
- It precipitated the ‘third century Crisis’- what is the crises-
- In the long run it was a problem as much as a solution: a millstone as much as a lifebelt.
- in A.D. 68, Galba (3BC)
- The Principate was based on the brilliant devising and marketing of the Augustan ‘message’:
the dominance of the Julian clan was the end of history.
- So, how was this handled by emperors who were not descended from or
- adopted into the Caesars – beginning with Galba? Ans : The practical solution was, as we
have seen, that they were compelled to adopt the Augustan message, associating
themselves with prophecy by calling themselves Caesar . we have no text indicating that this
was ever directly taken up and thrashed out by contemporaries. However according to
wash window, we may be able to find an indirect answer to these questions in the great
structures of imperial Rome: on the Capitol and the Palatine and in the Forum and the
Campus Martius.
- As is now widely accepted, Augustus hammered home his message in buildings and
monuments, in what was the culmination of a battle for prestige between the leaders of
great domus that began with Marius and Sulla
- Augustus used these monuments and buildings to tell the particular story of a particular
family. Central Rome was re-cast as a narrative in stone of the inevitability and rightness of
the Julian protectorate.
- What was it like for such men-a Flavian, Antonine or Severan ruler-to move in the townscape
of Julio-Claudian Rome? There can be no doubt that they would have felt at ease because
they were magistrates of the City. However, we can see successive dynasties also using
buildings and monuments to express their own message to the City and to theWorld, and a
fundamental element of this was: “We too are part of the Augustan tradition.”
- a) Sedulously conserving the existing buildings of the tradition: maintaining them, and
restoring them if they became damaged through old age, damages
- b) Adding to them in the same architectural tradition , i.e. with fora
- and temples, beginning with Vespasian and his Forum/Temple of
- Peace.24
- c) Crucially, respecting and continuing their religious tradition. As
- Zanker says, Rome was a city whose heart was unusually dominated
- by temples
- the same deities figure prominently in the Homeric poems and the stories of early Italy, the
rulers who worshipped them could link themselves to the Troy story and the Romulus-
foundation myth. It would therefore not have seemed out of place for later non-Julian to
claim their own association with it, and so attach themselves to prophecy-become-history.
Like Augustus, they too were connected to the founders and foundation of Rome.
- The central monuments and building and may even be seen as a paradigm of, the Principate
as ‘lifebelt’. They are a concrete manifestation of the cultural continuity and relative political
stability that for almost three centuries, the Augustan system gave the Empire.
- But they may also be seen as a paradigm of the Principate as ‘millstone’.
- Rulers’ boastful adornment of ‘downtown’ Rome was just another aspect of narrow
aristocratic aemulatio.
- The convention of maintaining the Augustan architectural and religious heritage was
politically necessary but practically difficult (through expense and shortage of space)and
intellectually stultifying (because it allowed little or no room for experiment or change).
- Unable to move forwards, the Augustan architectural and religious heritage was incapable of
further development: just like the Augustan Principate, it was of cially stranded at ‘the end
of history’.

- Innovation – in the form of Hadrian’s Pantheon or, perhaps even more signifcant in the context
of the last great round of challenge and response, Aurelian’s Temple of the Sun – was restricted
to the periphery.

- The central monuments and buildings also re ect the con-


- tinuing ideological importance of the city of Rome – as the seat of the Republic which was
the only institution which could formally
- grant a princeps his power. This is why, in the challenges and responses
- of the third century, rulers must constantly seek the city – to con rm
- their rule or prevent rivals from doing the same. This distracted them
- from dealing with problems elsewhere, and made Italy the cockpit
- of civil war.37
- Diocletian restored the Julianic
- Senate House; and his promotion of himself as the directive ‘Jovius’
- to Maximian’s executive ‘Herculius’
- Maxentius seized Rome, forced Constantine to fight before his downfall, as Hekster has
shown,
- returned enthusiastically to the Augustan tradition, including building.
- He restored old structures and squeezed his Basilica Nova into the last
- available piece of space in the city centre.
- The third-century Crisis did not end in 284/5: it took a break,
- and recommenced in 306! And, likewise, the Principate was not yet
- destroyed, only changed.
- So, Constantine, like a challenger of an earlier generation, having
- taken Rome, found himself powerless before the forces of tradition.
- This is again re ected in his buildings. He could do little in the centre.
- “Only by fully renouncing Rome and her traditions could Constantine throw
- off the millstone of the Principate, and so nally put an end to the
- third century ‘Crisis’.”

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