CHAPTER V. The Domestic Policy of Augustus. Returning from Spain to Rome early in B.C. 24, Augustus stayed there till 16, with the exception of the years 22-19, during which he was absent on a tour of inspection and organisation through the Eastern provinces. Many important domestic events fall within this period-Augustus' own dangerous illness, the death of Marcellus, the settlement of the succession, the conspiracy of Murena, Augustus' decision to dissociate the consulship from the Imperial power, his assumption of the responsibility for feeding Rome, his marriage laws, and, generally, his attempt to call back the old Roman and Italian spirit into Rome and Italy. It will be convenient, therefore, to put aside for the present the chief foreign events of the period-such as the already mentioned reduction of the Cantabrians by Agrippa, the dealings with Parthia, the expedition of Ælius Gallus into Arabia Felix, and that of Petronius into Upper Egypt-and to devote the present chapter to a general survey of Augustus' domestic policy. Such a survey cannot be strictly chronological, and events which either preceded or came after this period of eight years will occasionally be included, never, however, without due warning being given by definite mention of the date. But it will not do to place the survey later. After B.C. 16 what may be called the Germanic period of Augustus' reign begins, and though changes were made 1. Supra, pages 134 ff. from time to time in the administration of Rome and Italy, the chief pre-occupation from that year to the end of his life was the settlement of the Germano-Roman frontier. The eight years before B.C. 16, after the settlement of Gaul and Spain and before the beginning of the long and finally unsuccessful struggle to effect a similar settlement of Germany, were in comparison a breathing space, and during them most of the important steps in Augustus' treatment of the domestic problem were taken, or at least fore-shadowed. Augustus' own constitutional position was by this time tolerably defined; but it was a position personal to himself, and the great question of the succession was absolutely unsettled. If Augustus had died suddenly at Tarraco, no one can tell what would have happened. Before leaving Spain, however, he began to think seriously of the future, and his young nephew Marcellus, who was in camp with him at the time, was despatched to Rome to be married to his cousin Julia under the high superintendence of no less a person that Agrippa. Julia was Augustus' daughter by his first wife, Scribonia, and his only child. The whole course of events shows that her husband or her son, if she had one, was destined by Augustus to succeed him. This, however, was not true of her first marriage, and that husband was not to be Marcellus. "Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, nec ultra Augustus himself, no doubt still enfeebled by his long illness at Tarraco, very nearly succumbed to an attack of (apparently) typhoid fever in the year after his return from Spain, and was only saved by the resources of his 1. Eneid, vi. 869-870. |