Succession
The position of princeps was not an established post, it merely described the accumulation of powers, derived from several public offices, in a single person. It was therefore not transferable by the holder to a chosen successor. Nevertheless, by sheer necessity, the Principate became the monopoly of certain high-ranking families.
The primary condition for succeeding Augustus was to be the princeps’ son, but Augustus had no male descendants. The solution was adoption, which Augustus resorted to several times. In 17 BC he adopted Gaius 09Julius Caesar (24; fl: 17-00-04) and Lucius 08Julius Caesar (19; fl. 17-00-02), the two sons of his daughter 03Julia the Elder (53; fl.37-00-14) and Vipsanius Agrippa, but after their early deaths he adopted his stepson Tiberius (78; fl.29-00-37) who in turn adopted Germanicus 12Julius Caesar (34; fl.14-19), the son of Tiberius’ brother 27Claudius Drusus (29; fl.12-09 BC).
Reforms
Augustus addressed two major problems that the Republic had never satisfactorily dealt with – the control of the army and the integration of the provinces into the Roman world. To reduce expenses he reduced the army from the sixty legions active after the Battle of Actium (31 BC) to twenty-eight legions. He moved it out of Italy, where there would be a temptation to meddle in civilian affairs, and kept it in the provinces overseeing thousands of miles of frontier.
For the defence of Rome and the princeps he created a special army of over nine thousand soldiers, the praetorians, who were paid higher wages than normal legionaries. During the reign of Augustus this worked well but in the decades and centuries that followed, the leaders of the Praetorian Guard had the power to make or break the power of the emperor.
He also reformed the old Roman religion, which included building temples on the Capitoline and restoring the college of the Vestal Virgins; buttressed old Roman family values by creating laws dealing with excessive luxury, adultery and marriage; constructed the Forum of Augustus; established a massive road programme throughout the Empire; assembled a commercial and military fleet to patrol the Mediterranean; divided the city into fourteen wards with each ward controlled by a magistrate; established a fire department that used slaves to fight fires; provided police force to control a growing crime problem in the city streets; widened part of Tiber to prevent the river from flooding the city; ensured the monthly distribution of free corn to the city’s poorer citizens; built new aqueducts and repaired old ones; and created ‘civil service’ roles for the equites and freedmen in the routines of government.
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