ABSTRACT
The political landscape which greeted Tiberius Claudius Nero when he succeeded Claudius in AD 54, and in which he had to work, had moved a great deal since Augustus' victory at Actium. Although it is true that, by AD 54, the Emperor no longer had to deal with men whose careers had been fashioned during the Old Republic, many of their descendants, who still constituted a sizeable portion of the senatorial aristocracy, remained acutely sensitive to the traditions that they and their families had inherited. However, Augustus' position as a holder of tribunician power made him the heir to the patronage and protection of the plebeian people that had been an original role of the tribunes of the plebeians in the Old Republic. Augustus effectively brought to an end the governmental system that we call the Republic, formed from the Latin words, Res Publica. Politics and personal inclination demanded reform, but reform that was firmly embedded in Rome's traditions.
