The Principate of Augustus was preceded by two decades of civil war, in
which armies of a size not previously seen in Roman history fought for the
supremacy of their generals. The confusion of traditional social distinctions
that accompanied the collapse of Republican political institutions is illustrated
by two anecdotes relating to the fi rst of the civil- war victors, Julius Caesar.
Caesar was said to have admitted to the Roman senate ‘men of foreign birth,
including semi- civilized Gauls who had been granted Roman citizenship’,
and who now discarded trousers for togas. A stage performance before
Caesar won for the actor Decimus Laberius equestrian rank, which he had
lost because of his lowly profession, ‘so that he could walk straight from
stage to orchestra, where fourteen rows of seats were reserved for his order’.^1
The social disruption penetrated to the household and family. Appian
claimed that the pressure of the triumviral proscriptions, supervised by the
second of the civil- war victors, Caesar’s heir Octavian (later Augustus),
caused men to fear betrayal even by their wives, children, freedmen and
slaves. The result was ‘a shocking change in the condition of senators,
consulars, praetors, tribunes... who threw themselves with lamentations at
the feet of their own slaves, giving to the servant the character of saviour
and master. But the most lamentable thing was that even after this
humiliation, they did not win pity’ ( BC 4.13).
Against this background of social turmoil, Augustus established his
military supremacy and restored peace and constitutional government.
Augustus’ policy went beyond simple social conservatism: the pattern of
social inequality and differentiation continued from the Republic, but
innovations now gave distinctions of rank sharper defi nition. The social
order that he established was stable and enduring. Under the Principate as a
whole, the divisions and tensions deriving from the unequal distribution of
wealth, rank and status were counterbalanced by forces of cohesion such as
family and household, structured vertical and horizontal relationships
between individuals and households, and the ideological apparatus of
the state.
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The social hierarchy
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