18 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Principate, and strengthened the claim of the Princeps to be carrying on the
great traditions of conquest of Republican Rome. Augustus was, as Tacitus
notes, ‘the last of the military dynasts’ (‘dux reliquus’, Tac. Ann. 1.2). It fell
to his successors to preside over the consolidation of his conquests, the work
of pacifi cation and assimilation of the conquered peoples, and the
exploitation of their resources at the relatively low level that was suffi cient
to pay for a sizeable army stationed for the most part on the frontiers, the
expenses of the emperor and his court, the cost of free grain, handouts,
entertainments, buildings and amenities for the city of Rome and its
inhabitants, and the salaries and profi ts from offi ce of a relatively small but
steadily growing number of administrators and offi cials.^45
The Principate was the most stable and prosperous period in the history
of Rome.^46
Further reading
A detailed narrative of the period – in so far as this can be provided, given
the unevenness of the historical sources – is available in the Cambridge
Ancient History (revised edition), volumes 10–12 [ed. Bowman et al. , eds.
(1996) (2000) (2005)]. Potter (2006), a Companion volume, is useful, and
among general monographs, see Goodman (1997, up to 180) and Potter
(2004, from 180). Woolf (2012) is a particularly informative and entertaining
history of the Roman empire as a whole. For background on the Republic,
general introductions include Crawford (1992), Beard and Crawford (1999)
and Patterson (2000). For the reign of Augustus, one might profi tably
consult, among other volumes, Millar and Segal (1984), Raafl aub and Toher
(1990), Wallace-Hadrill (1993), Eck (2003), Galinsky (2005), and
Richardson (2012). The pick of the biographies of emperors are Levick
(1999a) and Seager (2005) on Tiberius, Levick (1990) on Claudius, Griffi n
(1984) on Nero, and Levick (1999b) on Vespasian. Good on the primary
sources are Syme (1958) on Tacitus, Millar (1964) on Cassius Dio, Wallace-
Hadrill (1983) on Suetonius, and Cooley (2009) on the Res Gestae. Still
useful for its collection of epigraphic and papyrological material is Lewis
and Reinhold (1990).