Roman governor

“ In one important respect in the management of their political affairs, the citizens of the Roman republic occupied a most disadvantageous position in comparison with the citizens of any modern republic. The greatest defect in the political organization of Rome, as of all other ancient republics, lay in the utter absence of representative legislative assemblies. The want of such institutions, in the absence of all the other causes of disruption, might of itself have been sufficient to have caused the downfall of the Roman republic. ”

“ Under the most despotic days of the empire any Roman citizen might rise to any position of power or dignity under the emperor; nay, more than this, any subject of the Roman empire, no matter how low his origin or condition in society, might be thrust, by a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune, into the imperial purple itself. ”

“ The election of consuls, of generals, and of magistrates, however it had been recently usurped by the senate, was the ancient and undoubted right of the Roman people. But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. ”

“ Give yourself to the city, to the senate. Rome flourishes, the whole republic flourishes. Thanks to the Roman army, to an army truly Roman; at length we have recovered our just authority, the end of all our desires. We hear appeals, we appoint proconsuls, we create emperors; perhaps too we may restrain them—to the wise a word is sufficient.” These lofty expectations were, however, soon disappointed; nor, indeed, was it possible that the armies and the provinces should long obey the luxurious and unwarlike nobles of Rome. ”

“ Under a weak, or a careless, or even an absent, Emperor Rome was governed by such men and such methods as we suppose to be peculiar to Sultanates and the East.
The honour, the property, the life of every Roman lay in the hands of eunuchs and valets, and, as these quarrelled or made friends, the fortunes of an old nobility changed with the hour. It had not been so under Augustus, nor was it so under Vespasian, nor under Trajan or his successors; but for the greater part of the first century A.D. Rome was governed by weak or vicious Emperors, and they by their servants. ”

“ Parliamentarism and the narrow policy of a city-state were ill adapted to the government of an empire. The large armies and the long terms of office abroad which Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar had held, had put at their disposal greater resources than the state could command, and the Roman citizens and provincials who had been taught to obey them implicitly in the field maintained their allegiance to their old commanders upon the return of the latter to Italy. ”

“ For five hundred years there was neither anarchy nor military despotism. If every citizen knew how to fight, every citizen also knew how to govern, to submit. No consul dared to exceed his trust; no general, till Caesar, ventured to cross the Rubicon. The Roman Senate never lost its dignity— a supreme body which controlled all public interests. The Romans were sufficiently wise to bend to circumstances. Though proud, the patricians made concessions to plebeians whenever it was necessary. The right of citizenship was gradually extended throughout the Empire. ”

“ If such was the nominal position of the emperor, what then was the real secret of his actual power? It rested, not on the tradition of kingship, but on the simple basis of military leadership. “Imperator,” as has been said, implied “commander of the legions”; and he who controlled the legions, controlled the Roman Empire. That was the whole secret. There is nothing occult or mysterious in it all. Rome’s position as mistress of the world depended solely upon her army; therefore, the man who controlled that army was master of the world. ”

“ The election of Marius to the consulship marks the beginning of the last age of the Roman republic. With Marius began the habitual rule of might rather than of right; rule by armies, instead of rule by majorities. For something over half a century power at Rome was to be shuffled backward and forward between different military commanders, until finally a military despot arose strong enough both to overthrow the oligarchy and to put down the mob. ”

“ Augustus even seized the pontificate, which office, that of Pontifex Maximus, put into his hands all the ecclesiastical courts. As tribune and censor, he also controlled the treasury, so that all the powers of the state were concentrated in him alone—that of consul, tribune, censor, praetor, and high priest. What a power to be exercised by one man in so great an empire! The Roman constitution was subverted when one man usurped the offices which were formerly shared by many. ”

“ There are writers who look with favor upon this establishment of the Roman empire, [280] just as there are those of the same caliber who, if some form of a dictatorship should be substituted for our present republican form of government, would be loudest in their approval of the change. Dr. Hirschfeld, of the University of Berlin, gives us the following roseate picture of the benefits which Rome received from the change:
"The reorganization of the government by Augustus, open to criticism as it is in many respects, was a blessing to the Roman empire. ”

“ The dual government of the prince and the senate which follows develops into the empire, and the emperor in time becomes the autocratic monarch. In this period of a thousand years from the seventh century before our era to the fourth century after it, we may see in the practical experiences of the [Pg 4] Roman people the points of strength and of weakness in an aristocracy, a plutocracy, a parliamentary government, a democratic empire, and an autocracy. We may also trace in the history of Rome the development of a city-state into a world-wide empire. ”

“ The ignoble portion of humanity from time to time got the upper hand. The spirit of frenzy and of cruelty then burst forth and turned Rome into a veritable hell.
The government, which in Rome was so uncertain, was far better in the provinces, and the shocks which disturbed the capital were hardly felt there. In spite of its faults the Roman administration was far superior to the monarchies and republics which had disappeared through conquest. The reign of sovereign municipalities had passed away many centuries before. ”

“ When this point in the development of the empire had been reached, the preëminence of the city of Rome [Pg 46] had gone, the distinction between Italy and the provinces had been obliterated, Roman citizenship had lost its significance, the splendor of the senate and the magistracies had faded, and the municipalities, which had been the pride and glory of the early empire, were plunged in poverty and wretchedness. In their place is an autocrat, kept in power by an army made up largely of barbarians, who carried out his wishes through a bureaucracy ”

“ We note the decay of central power, and the growth of political anarchy; we observe the process by which Roman nobles, the Senatorial Order when a Senate lingers only in name, are becoming the turbulent lords of the Middle Ages, each a power in his own territory, levying private war, scornful of public interests. The city of Rome has little part in this turbid history, yet her name is never mentioned without reverence, and in theory she is still the centre of the world. ”

“ Each has its own government and administers its own law, but places all its military resources at the disposal of the Roman government. The fighting power of the future was to be Italy under Roman leadership, and all questions of foreign policy were decided by Rome alone. There was no general council of the whole confederacy. The Roman Senate controlled an ever-increasing mass of detailed and varied business, having to deal with Latins, Italians of the old stocks, Etruscans, Greeks and Gauls. ”

“ The traditional ideas of government survived for several generations, even as the mechanism of the army made it powerful after all real spirit had fled. The Roman still regarded himself as the favorite of the gods, destined to achieve a vast mission, even the reduction of the world to political unity. Augustus made every effort, while he reigned, in the ruin of political institutions, to revive the forms and traditions of other days. ”

“ The ancient provision that the dictator could be nominated only on Roman soil was found impossible of observance, since the consul, when he received the Senate’s message, was often far distant from the city, and ager Romanus was, in true Roman fashion, liberally interpreted to include the whole of Italy. [849] After the nomination of the new magistrate his imperium was confirmed by a lex curiata. [850] The insignia of the dictator were in one respect greater even than those of the king. ”

“ Secret societies have swarmed in Rome during his reign. What remonstrances from without has he silenced? Europe continues to complain unanimously, and day by day lifts up its voice a tone or two higher. He has failed to reconcile one single party or one single power to the Holy father. During his ten years' dictatorship, he has neither gained the esteem of one foreigner nor the confidence of one Roman. All he has gained is time. ”

“ It is true that necessity required that some one must always be selected to fill the position first given to Augustus; that accidents, such as kinship by blood or adoption to the last emperor, military ability, popularity with the soldiers or the senate, determined the selection; and that usage decided that the powers conferred upon the selected person should be in the main those conferred upon Augustus. But to the last the Roman emperor was legally merely a citizen whom the senate and people had freely invested with an exceptional authority for special reasons. ”

“ Let us turn to trace the progress of those ideas in the life of the city-state of Rome.
When we first begin to see clearly into the working of the Roman State, what chiefly strikes us is the unlimited power of the magistrate in all the departments of government. Just as the head of the family had an absolute power over its members, so had the king (rex) an unlimited power over the citizens. In the family the word for this power was potestas, but in the State it was called imperium—one 67 of the greatest words ever coined, surviving to the present day in many familiar forms. ”

“ He tells us that most Romans are of opinion that people may be happy or miserable under any form of government, according to the way in which it is administered; that a government of some kind there must be; or disorder would be universal; and that the Pope being at the head of the Roman government, is the cause of many advantages: it attracts princes and other wealthy foreigners to Rome; sometimes seventy, eighty, or even ninety thousand strangers at a time; it saves them from the scourge of war ”

“ Whoever fancies the government of Rome modelled after the type of modern governments, invading, omnipotent, omnipresent, deceives himself. There were sent into the provinces nobles belonging to rich and noted families, who had therefore no need to rob the subjects too much; and these men ruled, making use of the laws, customs, institutions, families of nobles, of each place, exactly as England now does in many parts of its Empire. ”

“ But every educated Roman knew that the Roman monarchy had been nothing else than the unlimited imperium, and many may have believed that dictator or “master of the people” was the most significant of the titles of the king. It was, therefore, a regnum under which Rome was living, [1568] and there was no concealment of its military character, for the title imperator was now borne by the regent within the walls. [1569] This designation was a mere symbol of military command and the fullest jurisdiction ”

“ The nebulous atmosphere of this mockery of a magistracy was as well suited to the despot as to the constitutional ruler. In the actual position of the Princeps within Rome we find traces of all these theories. As a provincial ruler he governs from the capital; as commander-in-chief he keeps his praetorian guards in Italy and his fleets at Ravenna and Misenum; while as the wielder of an undefined but civic imperium he gives justice, as a court of first instance or a court of appeal, and issues edicts to supplement the laws. ”

“ At the very outset of Roman history we see the Senate existing as an aristocratic body, embodying in itself both the oligarchical principles upon which the Roman government was based, and also the patriarchal basis upon which the Roman family organization and later the organization of the Roman state itself had been built. ”

“ A modern historian finds in the unlicensed discretion reposed by the Roman Senate in the general, the most efficient aid to the extent of Rome’s early conquests, and he points by way of contrast, to the modern republics of Italy, as denying themselves scope for larger conquests by their extreme jealousy of their commanders. ”

“ During a long period, however, the remains of the ancient constitution, and the influence of custom, preserved the dignity of Rome. The emperors, though perhaps of African or Illyrian extraction, respected their adopted country, as the seat of their power, and the centre of their extensive dominions. The emergencies of war very frequently required their presence on the frontiers; but Diocletian and Maximian were the first Roman princes who fixed, in time of peace, their ordinary residence in the provinces ”