ABSTRACT
The Republic was over. Brutus and Cassius had attempted to restore it in 44 by murdering Caesar, but instead the state had collapsed into anarchy; this had been brought to an end by Caesar Octavian’s defeat of all his rivals. Although the Romans of this time did not themselves use the term, the period that followed is today known as the Principate, which indicates the rule of the leading man or Princeps. There had been leading men (principes) in the Republic; in fact, Caesar Octavian liked to call himself Princeps because the word sounded Republican, unlike ‘king’ or ‘dictator’, a respectable word in earlier times but not after Sulla and Caesar. But now there was one leading man. Later in his life, in the Res Gestae (34.1), Caesar Octavian claimed that he had transferred the state (rem publicam … transtuli) back to the control of the Senate and the People. He did not wish to be seen as someone who had introduced a new kind of government. He did not, however, claim that he had ‘restored the Republic’. The Latin words that he used, res publica, do not mean ‘Republic’ in the modern sense of a state without a monarch, but simply ‘the state’ or, even more generally, ‘public affairs’. Caesar Octavian’s position in 30 can be seen as much stronger than that
of Julius Caesar in 45. This is partly because the wealth of Egypt led Rome to enjoy much greater and more immediate benefits at the end of this civil war: ‘by bringing the royal treasures to Rome in his Alexandrian triumph he made ready money so abundant, that the rate of interest fell, and the value of real estate rose greatly’ (Suetonius, Augustus 41). Above all, however, his position was strong because the Romans themselves and all the peoples of the empire had had another fifteen years in which to become absolutely sick of war. Terror of civil war breaking out again was, among most people, now stronger than any discontent with Caesar Octavian or the desire for freedom from the domination of one man. Velleius (2.89) gives the official line, but must reflect what many were thinking: ‘Fields were cultivated once again … ; men felt safe at last, with their property rights secured’.
