Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [135]
Sometime between 27 and 18 B.C., the princeps took a step aimed at expediting decision-making, which recognized the difficulty that any deliberative body has in agreeing on clear-cut actions. He set up a senatorial standing committee, which consisted of himself, one or both consuls, one each from the quaestors, aediles, and praetors, and fifteen other senators chosen by lot. Some members changed every six months and the whole committee once a year, except for the princeps. Its task was to prepare business for full sessions of the Senate.
A group of twenty-one is still rather too large to be efficiently executive, and the rapid turnover must have prevented it from building a collective esprit de corps or devising long-term policies. This was probably as the princeps intended, for he reserved strategic planning to himself and a small, informal group of advisers, the amici Caesaris, “Caesar’s friends.” The standing committee’s job must mainly have been to receive and discuss already prepared positions, and to act as a sounding board of senatorial opinion. It probably worked by consensus and guided discussion in the full Senate.
The Senate’s powers remained advisory in principle, and bills were still laid before popular assemblies for approval. However, its decrees or senatusconsulta were increasingly regarded as binding, especially when specifically supported or initiated by the princeps.
Both the Senate and the princeps acquired new legal powers. The old republican courts of law, the iudicia publica, remained in being, presided over by praetors. But cases of treason or otherwise high political importance could be brought to one of two new courts, the princeps in council or the consuls in the Senate, against which there was no appeal. The ever growing number of citizens made it impractical to remit all criminal prosecutions to Rome, so proconsuls were given the authority to carry out judicial functions.
Under the Republic, any citizen found guilty of an offense had the right to appeal to the people. However, Augustus was given the authority to overturn a sentence of death by the use of his imperium. So provocatio ad populum gave way to appellatio ad Caesarem, an appeal to Caesar.
Augustus sought to improve the honesty and efficiency of imperial administration. Without interfering excessively in local ways of doing things, he and Agrippa introduced orderly governance throughout the empire and, in the Gallic and Spanish provinces and Africa where they were missing, the benefits of urban living. Regular censuses were held to enable a fair assessment of the provincial tax burden, and tax collection was made fairer.
In Rome itself, the princeps borrowed Egnatius Rufus’ idea of maintaining a troop of six hundred slave firefighters (in A.D. 6, this was expanded into seven cohorts of firemen, each cohort being responsible for two of the fourteen districts into which Augustus divided the city). Three cohortes urbanae, or urban cohorts, were established to police the city.
Augustus did not interfere in the local government of Italy. He left its four hundred or so towns and cities to manage their own affairs as they had always done, except in two respects. He divided the peninsula into eleven departments for the purpose of the census of citizens and of the registration of public land. And, more important, he recognized the need for speedy communications. He tried to persuade senators to invest some of the spoils of successful military campaigns in improving and extending the Italian road network. When that failed, he himself took over the cura viarum, the responsibility for roads, and made large donations from his own pocket for road construction.
Regular relay stations were established, where state couriers and government officials could change horses and chariots and spend the night at the station’s hostel. Local authorities provided