city now approaching a million inhabitants, a Tiber Conservancy Board to dredge and embank the river, and proper provision and supervision of the corn supply are only the most
noticeable of the benefits which could come from a stable and effective government. Much of this spirit and achievement of regeneration and progress is reflected in the poetry of the
period as well as in public architecture, statuary, and inscriptions. Cicero had ruefully observed how most men at all levels of society cared little about fighting despotism and valued
above all else peace and stability in their lives; it is not surprising then to read in Tacitus (Annals 1. 2) how Augustus contrived to seduce all and sundry with the sweet lure of
tranquil security, and lead them to prefer the present and visible prosperity and security to the uncertain dangers of the old Republic, while the provinces too, where the power-
struggle of the great at Rome and the greed of governors had destroyed any confidence in the institutions of the Republic, were no less ready to accept the tangible benefits of the
new order.
The Problem of the Succession
A major question for Augustus to answer was how to provide for the continuity of his new order; for, as the event showed, he was concerned to do so, whether from altruistic
motives or out of a sense of pride in his achievement or following the instinctive dynastic principles of a Roman noble. A formal hereditary succession was impossible, but it was not
hard to associate a destined successor as a virtual vice-regent and 'heir-presumptive' by having him voted the requisite offices and appointments, powers and dignities. His earliest
choice seems to have lighted on M. Claudius Marcellus, only son of his sister Octavia, who was married in 25 B.C. to his only child, his daughter Julia, and in 24 marked out for
more rapid acceleration up the ladder of office than Augustus' stepson Tiberius, who had been born in the same year (42 B.C.) as Marcellus. The obvious favour shown to his nephew/
son-in-law may have occasioned some serious reactions, especially from his old and indispensable friend and general, M. Vipsanius Agrippa; but Marcellus' premature death in 23
removed that piece from the board. The immensely capable Agrippa now emerged as the obvious candidate; Augustus had handed him his personal signet-ring during his own grave
illness in 23, and two years later he was married to the widowed Julia, who bore him three sons (Gaius and Lucius Caesar and Agrippa Postumus) and two daughters (Julia and
Agrippina). Entrusted in the same year with overall control of the eastern half of the Empire, he moved subsequently to Gaul and then to Spain, where he finally subdued the
Cantabri. In 18 B.C. came the grant of tribunician power for five years, followed by a renewal for a further five years in 13, and his imperium was made either superior (mains) like
that of Augustus himself or at least equipotent (aequum) with that of all other provincial governors in whichever part of the Empire his public duties might require him to be.
Agrippa's death in 12 B.C. came as a surprise: he was only fifty, and had been expected to outlive his exact coeval Augustus by some years, for his robust health contrasted with
Augustus' somewhat delicate physique. His sons by Julia, Gaius and Lucius, born in 20 and 17, had been adopted by their grandfather in the latter year, but were still only children.
So Augustus had to turn to his thirty-year-old stepson Tiberius, requiring him to put away his wife Vipsania (daughter of Agrippa by an earlier marriage) and marry the widowed
Julia. In 6 B.C. Tiberius in turn was granted tribunician power. But his marriage to the wayward and imperious Julia was singularly loveless, and the one child of their union, a boy,
died in infancy; on top of that, it was clear that Tiberius was cast as a stop-gap until Gaius and Lucius Caesar should reach maturity. Whether through pride or apprehension or
calculation, Tiberius withdrew from public life to Rhodes- a potentially risky move, but he probably counted on his formidable mother Livia, Augustus' wife, to keep him from
serious harm. Ill luck continued to dog Augustus: Lucius died at Marseilles in A.D. 2; and Gaius, consul for the whole year in A.D. 1 at the age of nineteen and then sent on an
important mission to the East with experienced advisers to guide his early steps in high responsibility, fell fatally ill in Lycia on his way home in February A.D. 4. Two years before
that, Tiberius had returned to Italy, though not to public life. Now Augustus had to turn to him again: there was no alternative, and he was himself already in his middle sixties.
Tiberius became Augustus' adopted son, and received the tribunician power for ten years and an imperium matching that of the princeps himself, both grants being subsequently
renewed in AD 13.
Julia meanwhile had finally tried her father's patience too far and too often with her scandalous liaisons, and probably constituted a focus of attention for men with aspirations to
become the -ward and guardian of her young sons: expelled to the tiny island of Pandateria in 2 B.C., she was allowed to return five years later only to the very tip of Italy at
Rhegium, where she remained until her death in the early months of Tiberius' principate in an exile voluntarily shared by her mother, Augustus' first wife Scribonia. Still Augustus
refused to relax his determination to secure the eventual succession of his own blood-line. Tiberius, who had a sixteen-year-old son, Drusus, by his first marriage, was required to
adopt his eighteen-year-old nephew. Germanicus was the elder son of Tiberius' dead brother Drusus and Antonia Minor, younger daughter of Augustus' sister Octavia; and
Germanicus' children by his wife Agrippina were Augustus' great-grandchildren, since Agrippina "was the daughter of Julia.
Tiberius
Some ancient writers were apparently puzzled by a certain vagueness about the precise moment of Tiberius' assumption of the office of princeps in AD 14. In part that was due to the
uniqueness of the occasion: no precedents existed, there was no time-honoured sequence of a 'The King is dead-long live the King' kind. Further, unlike his successors in the purple,
Tiberius already shared the central powers of his adoptive father: ever since AD 4 he had been his 'partner in the imperium and the tribunician power'; these prerogatives were his by
law and in his own right and not held by delegation, so that there could be no question of their lapsing with Augustus' death, though in theory they could have been revoked by
Senate and People-but not in the teeth of a veto from Tiberius himself.