Augustus Becomes First Emperor
On 13 January 27 BCE, Octavian staged a carefully managed transfer of power before the Senate, offering to resign his extraordinary powers and restore the Republic; the Senate responded by showering him with honors, including the new honorific 'Augustus' (the revered one), and assigning him command of all militarized provinces — which meant control of almost every army in the empire. Augustus retained the outward forms of Republican government: the Senate deliberated, consuls were elected, laws were passed through assemblies. But ultimate power rested with Augustus through his control of the army, his personal wealth, his tribunician power (giving him veto over all legislation and inviolability of person), and his unrivaled prestige. This constitutional fiction, which Augustus himself called the 'restoration of the Republic,' was so successful that the system he created, the Principate, endured for three centuries. Augustus died in 14 CE after a reign of forty-one years, the longest in Roman imperial history.
- Category: Political
