Roman Empire - Principate

  General Description   The Roman Principate (31 BCE-284 CE) refers to the first period of the Roman Empire, when the de facto ruler was termed the princeps, or ’leading citizen’. The period begins with the victory of the first emperor, Augustus (then Octavian) over his rival Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE and ends with the accession of Diocletian after the ’crisis’ of the 3rd century CE (235-284 CE). ^[1]
Retaining and solidifying many of the institutions, cultural forms, and economic base that had led to Rome’s hegemonic position during the Republican period, the Empire became one of the largest, most long-lived, and most prosperous imperial states the world has ever known. Augustus established a dynasty lasting until the death of the Emperor Nero in 68 CE, after which followed a brief civil war between different potential successors. Despite repeated bouts of similar warfare during succession crises following the various dynasties that ruled the Principate, the Empire remained remarkably stable throughout this period. Rome was able to unite - and keep together - a huge swathe of territory encompassing all of western Europe, North Africa, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, most of Anatolia, and parts of the Near East. Integrating diverse regions into this single empire facilitated the spread of Roman institutions - notably its legal system, urban infrastructure, cultural forms, and political structure. It also promoted economic development by enabling the safe transport of goods and people to every corner of the empire. ^[2] It was during this period that Rome built some of its greatest structures: the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the imperial fora (market squares) in the heart of Rome, and many others. The Principate overall produced so much wealth and so many cultural achievements that the great 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon proclaimed the Empire at its peak in the 2nd century CE to be ’the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous’. ^[3]
In the late 3rd century CE, beginning after the end of the Severan Dynasty, the Principate nearly collapsed in the face of internal warfare and pressure from external foes, including the Sassanid Persian Empire and nomadic tribes from Germany and eastern Europe. Rome briefly lost control over parts of France, Britain, and southern Spain and suffered several significant losses in battle to the Sassanids. Under first the Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275 CE) then Diocletian (r. 284-305), however, all territory was recovered and a series of administrative and economic reforms inaugurated a second phase of the Roman Empire, which we refer to as the Dominate (denoting the increasing centralization of authority and the development of a large bureaucratic apparatus).
Population and political organization
Nominally, there was no change in political organization between the Republican period and the Principate. The first princeps, Augustus, kept all Republican institutions and offices, including the Senate, intact. There was clear practical change in the power structure, however, as Augustus, and all emperors after him, asserted personal control over almost the entire Roman army and were granted unprecedented legislative, religious, and judicial powers to shape politics and Roman society at large. Whereas a defining principle of Republican governance was that no individual should be able to hold multiple offices simultaneously, amassing power in several domains (military, legislative, religious, and so on), emperors broke this tradition and drew their authority from numerous offices, titles, and the authority they carried. ^[4]
The Roman emperor was also generally one of the wealthiest people in the Principate, controlling huge agriculturally productive estates throughout the Empire, particularly in North Africa and Egypt. ^[5] In this period, state revenues were split between the ’public’ treasury (aerarium) and an imperial treasury (fiscus) under the direct control of the emperor. ^[6] The Principate had a fairly limited reach, particularly outside of Italy, but the state did have some significant expenses which it met by collecting tax from the Empire’s vast territory and large population, taking in rents from the imperial estates. In addition to paying the salaries of imperial officials - a relatively small expense as only limited central authority was exerted in the provinces (mainly the provincial governors and their retinue) - the emperor was responsible for financing a professional citizen army, the major state expense along with public works projects such as roads, aqueducts, and temples. The costs of these public works, though, were split between the personal fortune of the emperors who acted as patrons, particularly in Italy, and that of wealthy patrons in the provinces, who financed much of the urban growth in these regions. Further, beginning in the later Republican period and continuing throughout the Empire, the imperial state provided grain at reduced prices to citizens living in Rome; another considerable expense. ^{[7] [8] [9]}
The Emperor was assisted by his directly appointed consilium (advisory council), which was often made up of freedmen (manumitted slaves) and personal slaves. ^{[10] [11]} The Senate, not the emperor, formally retained ultimate executive power and could override or critique the emperor’s actions, but in practice this was quite rare and could be dangerous to the critic. ^[12] This centralized exercise of power by the Emperor, though, did not extend to the provinces, where the focus of imperial administration was squarely on securing revenue (cash and in-kind tax and rents on imperial properties) and maintaining peace, both internally and against potential external enemies, notably the powerful Persian Empires to the East. Roman provinces were governed by fairly autonomous officials (procurator, curator, praefectus, proconsul, etc.) and priests (flamen, etc.). ^{[13] [14]} Urbanization was also encouraged throughout the Empire; provincial cities were administered as ’mini-Rome’s, with local urban equivalents of the Senate and most administrative, judicial, and religious magistracies. Roman cultural and infrastructural achievements were widely mimicked, with aqueducts, temples, theatres, bathhouses, and material culture (for example, particular ceramic forms, a culture of communal feasting, and the habit of publicizing achievements with inscribed stone tablets) adapted by numerous provincial towns and cities. ^[15] This was true across the Empire, though particularly salient in the west, whereas Roman settlements in the East tended to retain many of their pre-Roman urban forms and cultural traditions. ^{[16] [14]}
By the mid-2nd century CE, the city of Rome had reached over one million inhabitants, a significant feat for an ancient urban settlement. The population of the entire Empire is estimated at between 50 to over 60 million. ^[17] Estimating the number of state employees is an extremely difficult task, but one scholar has supposed that if the imperial government at its largest extent in the 4th century CE ’had somewhat over thirty thousand functionaries’, then before this time a figure of 10,000-12,000 might be reasonable. ^[18]

[1]: (Boatwright et al. 2012) Mary T. Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola, Noel Lenski and Richard J. A. Talbert. 2012. The Romans. From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

[2]: (Bowman and Wilson 2009) Alan K. Bowman and Andrew Wilson. 2009. ’Quantifying the Roman Economy: Integration, Growth, Decline?’, in Quantifying the Roman Economy: Methods and Problems, edited by Alan K. Bowman and Andrew Wilson, 3-86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[3]: (Gibbon [2003] 1869, 53) Edward Gibbon. [2003] 1869. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited by Hans-Friedrich Mueller. New York: Modern Library.

[4]: (Noreña 2010) Carlos Noreña. 2010. ’The Early Imperial Monarchy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies, edited by A. Barchiesi and W. Scheidel, 533-46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[5]: (Kehoe 2007) Dennis P. Kehoe. 2007. Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

[6]: (Adkins and Adkins 1998, 45) Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins. 1998. Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[7]: (Duncan-Jones 1994) Richard Duncan-Jones. 1994. Money and Government in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[8]: (Scheidel 2015) Walter Scheidel. 2015. ’State Revenue and Expenditure in the Han and Roman Empires’, in State Power in Ancient China and Rome, edited by Walter Scheidel, 150-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[9]: (Garnsey and Saller 1987) Peter Garnsey and Richard P. Saller. 1987. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[10]: (Noreña 2010, 538) Carlos Noreña. 2010. ’The Early Imperial Monarchy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies, edited by A. Barchiesi and W. Scheidel, 533-46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[11]: (Harries 2010) Jill Harries. 2010. ’Law’, in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies, edited by Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel, 637-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[12]: (Harris 2010) W. V. Harris. 2010. ’Power’, in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies, edited by Alessandro Barchiesi and Walter Scheidel, 564-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[13]: (Talbert 1996) Richard J. A. Talbert. 1996. ’The Senate and Senatorial and Equestrian Posts’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, edited by Alan K. Bowman, Edward Champlin and Andrew Lintott, 324-43. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[14]: (Ando 2013) Clifford Ando. 2013. Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

[15]: (Wilson 2011) Andrew Wilson. 2011. ’City Sizes and Urbanization in the Roman Empire’, in Settlement, Urbanization, and Population, edited by Alan K. Bowman and Andrew Wilson, 161-95. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[16]: (Boatwright 2000) Mary Taliaferro Boatwright. 2000. Hadrian and the Cities of the Roman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[17]: (Scheidel 2009) Walter Scheidel. 2009. ’Population and Demography’, in A Companion to Ancient History, edited by A. Erskine, 234-45. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

[18]: (Lendon 1997, 3) J. E. Lendon. 1997. Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.