The Principate – Lifebelt, or millstone around the neck of the empire?

Abstract

The Augustan Principate was the product of crisis -a response to the challenges that precipitated the fall of the Republic.The Principate worked because it met the political needs of its day.There is no doubt that it saved the Roman state and the Roman Empire: it was a lifebelt.But it was not perfect.In its turn it precipitated more challenges that had to be responded to -more crises -in particular that known as the 'third century Crisis'.In the long run it was a problem as much as a solution: a millstone as much as a lifebelt.In the end, it had to go.I will brieÁ y deal with the Principate as a problem, and then suggest a new way of discerning the strains that brought about its demise.The Principate was created by Augustus and continued by the Julio-Claudians.However, there is a case for arguing that the Principate had still to establish itself as 'the ofÀ ce of emperor' as late as the death of Nero.The continuing challenges and responses that created and developed the Principate sometimes also broke it open to show its workings, and what contemporaries made of it.Thus Plutarch reports that in A.D. 68, Galba, on his way from Spain to take up power in Rome, entertained a group of senators in southern Gaul.Though he could have used the imperial furniture and servants sent to him by the Praetorian Prefect, Nymphidius Sabinus, initially he chose not to, which was remarked upon favourably by his guests. 1 Galba's modesty is explicable in various ways but, following Wiedemann's appreciation of Galba's family pride, I believe that he rejected this 'family silver' basically because it was the silver of an alien family. 2 Galba, born in 3 B.C., had lived under all the Julio-Claudian rulers.His view of the Principate is therefore likely to have been shaped by how it was seen by the high Roman aristocracy at its inception: not as * I am very grateful to Wolf Liebeschuetz for commenting on a preliminary draft of this paper.1 Plutarch,

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