School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemImperium et libertas: the Roman opposition under the Flavian Principate 69-96 A.D.( 1959)The Roman Republic fell because of an overwhelming need for a centralised, powerful, and stable authority, which the existing rule of Senate and People could never satisfy; because it was no longer adequate to the demands made on it by the administration of a great empire. It had become the tool, in its constitution, of the powerful and the ambitious. Yet Caesar, who tried to fulfill this need, also fell, because he could not reconcile in himself the problem created by the conflict between this need for strong government by one man, and the traditional sentiments of Roman patriotism, which presented the problem of the Republic's decay to the Roman senator only in terms of emotion, and loyalty to established usage and institutions. Whether Caesar's aim was monarchy or not, his solution of the Republic’s inefficiency and lack of responsibility by autocratic rule, embodied in a life dictatorship, was a negation of all that was dearest in the political tradition of Rome. For this he died, not for any vague possibility of the establishment of monarchical rule on his return from the proposed Parthian campaign. It remained for his nephew and heir, Octavian, later Augustus, to reconcile these two needs, and end the rivalry and struggle for aggrandisemant among the nobiles which destroyed the Republic. For his establishment of what is known as the Augustan Principate gave to one man the direction of the state and control of all its important departments, without offending Republican tradition; even using it and the Republican institutions to add strength to the new creation. It is the opposition to this new creation, the Principate, which forms the subject of this essay. Not the opposition of her subject peoples in the provinces to foreign domination, but that which springs from the Romans themselves, and is found in Rome, directed against its rulers and their system of government. It is an opposition reflected not only in the sphere of politics, but also in philosophy and literature. Since our own century has shown that Tacitus did not exaggerate, or misinterpret mankind, in his picture of the horror, and crippling spiritual effects of despotic absolute power, the problem of the preservation of political liberty, of freedom of thought and expression, and even of human dignity, in the face of the demands of the state, has become very real, and one of vital interest. Though the danger to individual liberty is inherent in almost any powerful state, as Abraham Lincoln recognised when he said, It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. Liberty, and human rights, have become in the modern world, often mere political catchwords of emotional content, but this does not lessen their essential importance, and so it will perhaps not be without interest to look at the efforts of the Roman opposition against the Principate, the answer to the administrative inadequacy of the Republican government. I have limited this study to the opposition under the Flavian Principate, a period of only twenty-seven years, from 69 A.D. to 96, but one of intense interest, forming, as it were, a transition between the Principate as established by Augustus and developed by the Julio-Claudian principes, and the virtual monarchy of the Antonines. An age that is characterised by conflicting trends and convictions in politics and literature. But if we are to look for the nature and aims of the opposition, we must first look at the government against which it is directed, for its nature will to a large extent condition that of the opposition.