ABSTRACT
With Rome under Flavian occupation, the senate met on 21 December, the day after Vitellius died, to legalize Vespasian’s position. Their conferment, on the motion of the consul designate Valerius Asiaticus, of tribunician power, maius imperium, and customary prerogatives such as membership of the four leading priesthoods would then be ratified by the people. There also had to be consulships for Vespasian and Titus, and a praetorship with imperium equal to a consul’s for Domitian. The young men were each honoured with the designation ‘Caesar’ and ‘Leaders of the Youth’ (Principes Iuventutis), a title devised for Augustus’ adopted sons and picked up for Nero as first in the younger generation of the imperial family. Then a delegation had to be appointed to present the senate’s respects to Vespasian, as they had done to Galba in 68.1
Augustus had taken decades to perfect the cocktail. His first attempt was in 27 bc, but an upheaval followed in 24-3 bc, and there was a major adjustment in 19 bc, when imperium within the city lost when Augustus had given up the consulship in 23 bc was added to his tribunician power. He did not become Pontifex Maximus until 12 bc or receive the honorific title of Father of His Country (Pater Patriae) until 2 bc. Tiberius too came into his powers gradually, and with a lacuna in the period between his first grant of tribunician power in 6 bc, combined with imperium in the East, and ad 13, when his imperium was made equal to that of Augustus; it was only in March 15, the year after Augustus’ death, that he became Pontifex Maximus, and he steadfastly refused nomination as Father of his Country. At the moment of his ‘accession’ there was embarrassingly little more to offer him than the name Augustus itself (that was Augustus’ plan). It was quite different with the youthful Gaius Caligula in 37, who received the powers in a bunch on accession. Claudius too was a private individual at the time of Caligula’s assassination in 41, and took them en bloc; Nero on the other hand had been invested at least with proconsular power outside the city three years before his accession. There were no such preparations in 68. Each claimant of that and the following year took his essential powers, except the supreme pontificate, all at once.2
