Legal Formalization of Imperial Authority in Ancient Rome (28-23 B.C.)

The paper is devoted to the issue of the legal formalization of the Roman emperor’s power and its reflection in the perception of contemporaries. Having risen to the pinnacle of power after the final victory over Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C., Octavian had to develop a legal justification for his exceptional position in the Roman state. Public opinion, particularly the stance of the old Roman aristocracy (the nobility), prevented him from assuming triumviral, dictatorial, or royal powers. Therefore, the politician chose the path of gradual concentration of traditional republican institutions in his hands, which ultimately formed the unique institution of imperial authority in Ancient Rome. By 23 B.C., the main legal contours of the emperor’s institution had been determined: it was based on the power of the tribune of the people (tribunicia potestas) and the supreme proconsular imperium (imperium proconsulare maius). The source of Augustus’s power, who preferred to call himself princeps («first among equals»), was designated as the civic collective, vividly expressed in the preservation of legislative authority by the popular assemblies (comitia). However, the study suggests that, despite all the legal intricacies of the princeps, many Romans still perceived him as an absolute monarch, possessing legislative and «moral» authority that stemmed not from civil society but from divine sanction. It is quite likely that such collective representations served as an additional, if not key, factor in the further strengthening of the «monarchical» element in the development of the principate system under subsequent emperors.

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