administrative revolution consisted in the creation of boards of senior magistrates in departments (curae) responsible for the management of the aqueducts,
the roads of the city, the banks of the Tiber, and so on; in the systematization of responsibility by means of artificial compartments, such as the fourteen
regions of Rome or the eleven of Italy; and in the appointment of senior assistants responsible to the princeps who would control military or paramilitary
bodies permanently stationed in Rome or very near by, for political and civil security.
The creation of the curae did away with the ancient principle of annual tenure, and provided something of a permanent staff in place of sole reliance on
contract labour. The formal systems of administrative units diminished competitiveness between patrons and helped ensure uniformity, stability, and
comparison of results of administrative activity. And in the creation of the much more powerful posts of prefect of the praetorian guard, prefect of the city,
and prefect of the fire-brigade, Augustus equipped future principes with three great ministers, as well as judges whose courts would acquire an importance
which helped to centralize large areas of Italy on Rome and relieve other magistrates of much of their jurisdiction. We happen to know that already by the
reign of Nero the prefect of the city had acquired jurisdiction comparable to that of the urban praetor. This centralization of Italian administration in turn
provided an example for the management of the provinces; it is significant that the curatores of Rome lent their name to the functionaries described above
whose financial supervision came to infringe the cities' autonomy.
This Augustan administrative revolution, for which Greek theoretical and practical precedents are perhaps to be sought, was, however, unique. Moreover,
the senatorial curae were in part created not for administrative excellence but to subordinate these potentially prestigious activities of great senators to
Augustus' regime, and they flourished as status symbols for the successful senator, to be held often by corrupt, lazy, or incompetent men. Above all,
despite all the innovation, and all the extra posts and increase in personnel, the main activities remained the letting of contracts, the giving of permissions,
and the business of arbitration- new posts, more subtle hierarchies, but the same old jobs.
The Army
The second general group of associations which political authority had for the governed is connected with war. Even when mercenary troops had been
important, fighting had, in the classical polis and its heirs, remained to a large extent the preserve of a citizen militia. Until the second century B.C. this
had been true of Rome too. It followed that a city's magistracies were often very closely associated with military command, from which derived the vital
Roman concept of imperium, which underlay the whole governmental activity of the Empire and actually gave it its very name.