The Augustan Legacy of The Civilis Princeps

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국서양고대역사문화학회
· 수록지 정보 : 서양고대사연구 / 58호 / 163 ~ 202페이지
· 저자명 : 배소연

초록

This paper examines the historical context that caused the first Roman emperor Augustus to craft his public image as the civilis princeps and the burden that Augustus’ legacy of the civilis princeps created for his successors. Romans carried a deep hatred of monarchy since the establishment of the Republic. This hatred culminated in the murder of Julius Caesar by the senators, who accused him of having aspired to kingship. Fully aware of such tendencies, Augustus contended that there was no rupture between the Principate, which was without doubt a monarchy, and the Republic. By extinguishing the flames of a tedious civil war, Augustus argued that he had saved innumerable lives of fellow Romans and restored the Republic. Seeking the collaboration of the Senate (the former oligarchs of the Republic), Augustus devised the polite fiction of the civilis princeps—the first man who acts with civility among the equal senators. He was always accessible to his fellow senators, and he refused any excessive honors only appropriate for a monarch. This polite fiction of the civilis princeps was conducive to obscuring the image of Augustus as a monarch and maintaining the illusion that the Senate still held some political power under the civil emperor. Augustus’ political acumen and personal charisma enabled him to temporarily mix two incompatible concepts: the monarchy and the civilis princeps. This allowed Augustus to become the an exemplary civil emperor in Roman imperial history. However, Augustus’ immediate successor Tiberius, who strictly followed the precedents of his predecessor and tried to respect the Senate in the early phase of his reign, failed to achieve the designate of the second civilis princeps. Tiberius was not alone in his failure—almost all later emperors inherited the contradiction of the pretending that their rule was not a monarchy, while they were, in fact, monarchs. Only Trajan, who maintained a rapport with the senatorial aristocracy, was admired as the best emperor eight decades after the reign of Augustus. The senatorial literary custom of assessing each emperor’s reign as good or bad based on the latter’s treatment of the Senate was a corollary to the legacy of the civilis princeps that Augustus might not have anticipated.

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