How Flawed Was The Principate System?

I've been thinking this over, and I really think the principate system gets a lot of bad rep that it doesn't completely deserve. Yes, it was far from the perfect solution, but it was not that bad.

First, let me address succesion: For all the criticism the succession gets in the principate, it wasn't that bad. As long as there was a living male member of the ruling family alive, it seemed to go smoothly. The soldiers wanted stability, and they liked dynasties.An example would be at the assassination of Caligula, Claudius, deemed a halfwit and socially awkward by his family and the rest of Rome, was proclaimed emperor by the praetorians and accepted without any serious resistance-certainly the army didn't do anything.

We also see this with Marcus Aurelius. When false rumors about his death spread to Syria and a brief rebellion occurred, it is important to remember that Commodus was not even an adult yet. He was younger than even Nero was at his ascension. When Marcus Aurelius died in 180, Commodus had donned the toga virialis by then, and so there was no obstacles to his ascension.

Even when the third century crisis was looming and army discipline had broken down and upkeep was ballooned, the preference for dynasty's was still strong amongst the soldiers. The boy Elagabalus only became important because he was the cousin of Caracalla. Even when he was assassinated, there was no attempt made by the army to do anything when Alexander Severus was proclaimed emperor-all that mattered to them was he was a Severan. Only after he showed his incompetence militarily and was too stingy with the soldiers (more on that in a bit), was he overthrown by Maximinus Thrax. It is interesting to note that out of the barracks emperors, that there was no obstacles to Gallienus succeeding Valentinian after the latters death-even then, the soldiers still favored dynasties.

Furthermore, the Senate was not completely powerless in determining succession. At the death of Nero, it was their support of Galba that encouraged him to accept the emperorship and return to Rome. It was only his complete incompetence at the job and inability to reign in the corruption of his chief advisors, that the crisis exploded into the Year of the 4 Emperors-Otho (who was loyal to him initially anyway) would have no support to seize power, and Vespasian had made sure to make it a point that he remained loyal. The Rhine legions were always a little uppity at the death of emperors, and a peaceful solution such as a small pay raise, would have been likely.

Another example is the assassination of Domitian-the Senate was able to appoint an emperor from one of their own, and keep the army from getting any ideas. Even at the death of Commodus, the army didn't do anything when Pertinax took power, and it was only after his murder and the subsequent auctioning off of the empire by the praetorians that they took any action.

Back to the death of Alexander Severus. It was only after a series of bad emperors that the Roman financial system began to collapse and the soldiers discipline broke down while their pay ballooned. Commodus increased the soldiers' pay and spent lavishly on his court life and games, almost completely ignoring management of the state and leaving it to corrupt officials. Septimius Severus followed the increase in pay of the army, but not brackbeakingly so. He increased the size of the army, and discipline started to break down, but it was not terrible.

Caracalla on the other hand was a disaster. He spent lavishly, massively increased the pay of the army, and let discipline completely break down. During these four reigns (Commodus, Severus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus) the currency was increasingly devalued-again, it wasn't a fault of the system, but of the men leading the system. It is important to stress though, that Caracalla, like all bad emperors before him (save for maybe Commodus) didn't rule long once his rule became bad (in Caracalla's case, his entire rule). The system worked well enough that bad emperors didn't last long.

That brings us to the death of Alexander Severus. It wasn't a matter of the system was flawed, but a series of bad emperors allowed the praetorians and the army to become used to huge pay increases and lax discipline-Alexander Severus and his advisers allowed neither.

But this alone was not really enough to cause the severity of the crisis of the third century. The Sassanians were a totally new and stronger beast than the Parthians, and the Roman eastern defenses were totally inadequate at combating them-they were used to the weaker and less stable Parthians. There was also increasing pressure on the Rhine and Danube frontiers, as new groups like the Franks and Goths pressured the borders.This combined with the plague (which I believe was still around), the devaluation of the currency, and the increase in army size and army pay, along with a break down of discipline, caused the empire to implode and devolve into chaos.

None of these alone, or even none of these in concert with 1 or 2 others would have been enough to cause the 3rd century crisis on the scale it happened. The principate system was more than adequate for most situations, but this proved too much. It is important to note that the principate, with the exception of the mid 3rd century, was far more stable than the dominate, where there was practically a civil war every time a ruler died.

So, I don't see why the Principate gets all the bad reputation it does. It was far more stable than the late republic that came before it (with the exception of the mid 3rd century) the Dominate that came after it. It had its flaws, but it was certainly a strong and well designed system.
 
I'm new around here, but I'm surprised to learn that the Principate has a bad reputation. I'd agree with you that it was a flawed system that worked reasonably well for its time.

A point I think you were getting at, and one which your post naturally supports, is that the system depended on who was at the helm, but not so much as it could have. Obviously the empire benefited if a competent Princeps - Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Augustus, etc -were in charge, yet maintained enough of a bureaucracy that the empire could suffer through a semi-competent semi-incompetent emperor - Tiberius springs to mind. And, as you said, it had its way of weeding out the truly incompetent ones.

Even with the problem of succession - the one truly great failing of the system - it wasn't too bad. When an emperor was handed the empire due to a hereditary succession or adoption, he was usually accepted. Even Caligula, Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla were. However, when there was a disputed succession, and those seem to have kept cropping up, then there would be no-holds barred fight for the prize. Those are pretty wasteful, but the question is, was the Principate more prone to those than any other form of government? Considering the Dominate, the early republic, the late republic, the second century AD, and the third century AD, we can conclude that the Principate wasn't the best, but was pretty good.

Which lead to the question, why the bad reputation? Perhaps it was the tendency of the Principate leaders to be a tad more morally degenerate than any other period in Roman history. You wouldn't see Cato, Augustus, or Constantine torturing people for fun, but Caligula wouldn't have minded.
 
I think the primary problem of the Principate is that it was designed to be different things from both what it was and what posterity tends to think it should have been. MOdern writers, naturally encumbered with certain ideas what emperor, empire, and imperial rulership mean, tend to look at the Principate and identify all the instances where it didn't do that and talk about them being 'addressed' or 'remedied' in the third and fourth centuries 'finally'. But of course Augustus didn't actually try to meet our expectations of an ancient empire. WE can't well blame him for not succeeding at that. The real, underlying purpose of the system was to ensure that the volatile, self-destructive power politics within the Roman aristocracy were tamed and controlled. It was, basically, a dictatorship designed to prevent the Republic from destroying itself. It was not supposed to found a dynasty (Augustus himself handed his ring to Agrippa, no relation of his), to drive ambitious expansion or to ensure top-down control over all the resources of the empire. For what it was supposed to do, it did pretty well.

Yes, in an ideal world you'd have both a stronger succession mechanism and greater senatorial oversight. BUt again, that's one of those modern perceptions of parliamentary monarchy to think this was easily possible. Dynastic succession was taboo in Roman political discourse at the time, and the Senate, far from being either a representative body of the poeople or a responsible arm of government, was best seen as the only organised group of people that could truly threaten the princeps. Cooperation between the senate and the augustus for the good of the state is a bit like cooperation between the boxing world champion and his challengers to ensure there are long, entertaining fights. They have different, often opposing interests.

For a cobbled-together interim compromise tailor-made to the needs of one man, it had a pretty impressive two centuries.
 
For a cobbled-together interim compromise tailor-made to the needs of one man, it had a pretty impressive two centuries.

But any "cobbled together interim compromise" is sooner or latter going to collapse, and from the standpoint of what the state needed, it needed something able to handle the events that lead there.

So while it might have been fine for what Augustus intended, to compare to later evolutions/changes of Roman government, how well it met what happened outside his goals is - to me at least - a bit more questionable.

Sly, Hurrah: "The Emperor is forcibly overthrown" is not much of a real "system" for handling bad emperors - it's like saying boiler explosions are a system for venting excessive steam.

Personally I'm not that harsh towards it as being particularly flawed - monarchy has never found a completely satisfactory answer for how to deal with that. But it does reinforce that the system was designed around meeting the needs of the moment rather than the needs of different stresses.

And a system designed so that the autocrat is responsible for all affairs of state is suffering from a structural flaw when we realize that few men are up to heading every department of state.

It made sense as some sort of "I hold multiple offices but that's a mouthful" fudge - that's not in question - but the system is what gave a Caracalla the power to do the harm he did by the actions he took.

This is not to say later changes "solved" this - we still see the issue that absolute power means absolute responsibility right up to the end of the Roman emperors as wielding any meaningful power - but it is a weak spot that can lead to collapse under stress.
 
But any "cobbled together interim compromise" is sooner or latter going to collapse, and from the standpoint of what the state needed, it needed something able to handle the events that lead there.

Except I don't think it was a cobbled together internal compromise. The Senate had no choice but to accept what Augustus did. It is important to recognize just how innovative and revolutionary Augustus' system was-It was a dictatorship based on consent. The senators never actually had any real power under the principate. The princeps was essentially given unlimited power (in theory by the Senate) but was supposed to act like he didn't have said unlimited power.

And I think that was the one major flaw in the system. It allowed a Caligula, an Elagabalus, a Nero, a Caracalla, and a Commodus free reign over the state. Once the emperor stopped pretending he needed the Senate's consent to do what he wants, then there was little the Senate could do to stop him and make a safe transition. Caligula was doing nothing illegal when he acted like he had no checks on his power-he didn't.

So I think what the principate needs is the Senate to actually have power. Not power in spirit or in theory, but actual power. That also means limiting the power of the princeps.
 
First of all, let us remember that Augustus did have about 4 decades in which to 'cobble together' this system, with virtually no opposition. It wasn't all that fragile.

Second, its hard to discuss the whole problem with succession without looking *very* closely at the plain bad luck the Julio-Claudians had when it came to heirs getting themselves killed. Augustus's first three heirs died before him. Germanicus' male family all got killed, except for Caligula. Nero axed Britannicus.

4 generations starting off the Principate, and 7 key heirs die before they can do much (6 by the 2nd regime). Nero's death laid bare the fact that an ambitious general could seize the throne, with all the complications that arose then.

So, it certainly got off to a rocky start.

On the other hand, the Principate lucked out in having 4 consecutive emperors that did not happen to have sons. People forget that when discussing the 5 Good Emperors; each one of them would have passed the Empire onto a son if he actually had one. So, there was an extra century of life for that system.
 
So I think what the principate needs is the Senate to actually have power. Not power in spirit or in theory, but actual power. That also means limiting the power of the princeps.

Giving the Senate the power to check a mad or bad emperor is the same as giving the Senate the ability to quarrel and contest with a good or decent emperor.

And I'm not sure such arguments are favorable to the security and stability of the Roman state.
 
I'm curious how you give the Senate more actual power. The power of the Principate was formally derived from the Emperor's monopoly of the various important Magistracies, sure.

In actuality, it came from the loyalty of the legions, and the fact that the Emperor was the richest person in the Empire by far. Which was more important is hard to decide.
 
Giving the Senate the power to check a mad or bad emperor is the same as giving the Senate the ability to quarrel and contest with a good or decent emperor.

And I'm not sure such arguments are favorable to the security and stability of the Roman state.
What I am saying is, you have to keep the princeps from having unliminted power. You have to make his deference to the Senate real and necessary-not just a facade. Essentially, make the princeps more like a sole consul.
 
What I am saying is, you have to keep the princeps from having unliminted power. You have to make his deference to the Senate real and necessary-not just a facade. Essentially, make the princeps more like a sole consul.

Augustus making Egypt a province under his personal control as opposed to Senate control probably had a lot to do with this seeing as Egypt was the main source of grain for the city of Rome and one of THE wealthiest provinces in the Empire. Vespasian's takeover in the wake of Nero's death only reinforces this as the key to victory for him was seizing control of Egypt and her grain supplies. With that he effectively had a knife to Rome's throat without coming within a hundred miles of the Italian peninsula.

Would Augustus have been able to pull off anywhere near as much as he did without that powerful piece of leverage?
 
Would Augustus have been able to pull off anywhere near as much as he did without that powerful piece of leverage?

Yes.

Senators wanted to get rich in peace, and generally didn't have much interest in actually making decisions on an empire-wide level: in any case, it's a fallacy that the Senate as a body was ever decision making, and it was always dominated by a few high-flyers. Senators under Augustus also seem to have broadly been happy with giving up on the idea of competitive elections, and of their status become inheritable by their sons.

As for the Principate, I don't think it was a particularly flawed system, no more so than any phase of the Republic was, or more so than the Dominate, middle Byzantine, or late Byzantine phase of the Empire. If I had to pick out an obvious problem it was that the structures of the early Empire proved to be pretty damn inadequate when serious military challenges arose in the third century, but one can hardly blame Augustus for failing to foresee that.
 
What I am saying is, you have to keep the princeps from having unliminted power. You have to make his deference to the Senate real and necessary-not just a facade. Essentially, make the princeps more like a sole consul.

I know what you're saying, but that doesn't change that the princeps and Senate are unlikely to operate in perfect harmony.- which isn't going to end well.
 
Elagabalus probably wasn't related to the Severans, but his grandmother - an aunt of Caracalla - claimed he was Caracalla's illegitimate son.

On the other hand, the Principate lucked out in having 4 consecutive emperors that did not happen to have sons.

Nerva did have sons, or relatives at least. But he decided consciously against making a relative his successor - fortunately.
 
Elagabalus probably wasn't related to the Severans, but his grandmother - an aunt of Caracalla - claimed he was Caracalla's illegitimate son.
Yes, Wikipedia seems to be wrong about that. I don't know why I had to look at Wikipedia though, I am reading How Rome Fell by Goldsworthy, and I just got past that point (which prompted me to make this thread)

Nerva did have sons, or relatives at least. But he decided consciously against making a relative his successor - fortunately.

I don't believe Trajan (or a family member) was his first option, but pressure from the military forced his hand to avoid conflict.
 
Elagabalus probably wasn't related to the Severans, but his grandmother - an aunt of Caracalla - claimed he was Caracalla's illegitimate son.



Nerva did have sons, or relatives at least. But he decided consciously against making a relative his successor - fortunately.

No sons. Relatives, certainly, but no brothers. But he was the only one who really stepped away from the family, when you get right down to it:

- Hadrian was the son of Trajan's cousin.
- Antoninus was the husband of the granddaughter of Trajan's niece.
- Marcus Aurelius was the great-grandson of that same niece.

The only odd ones out were Verus and his dad, but they never were intended to rule on their own anyway, and, regardless, married into the family.
 
Part of me doubts Hadrian was going to be tranqns first pick. He seemed to be grooming quietus at least in the military realm and couldn't have expected to die when he did so its possible he intended to also prepare him politically.
 
The Principate worked generally well for a bit more than 200 years, and it took a while then to collapse. (How long do modern German or French political systems last?) I would deem that successful, especially when compared to the extent of civil wars fought in the late Republic. During the Principate, the Romans at least got a break.

The main point is that we see a different system in the "adoptive empire", wheras the contemporaries did not. Adoption as a means to regulate the dynasty had been commonplace beforehands, only during the 2nd century AD it worked unexpectedly well. The adoptive emperors, though, saw their era principally as a dynasty. One should note that Marcus Aurelius was the first of them who actually had a son reaching adult age at the time of his death. There was no need to question Commodus' ascension to the throne.

The wishful thinking we today have concerning the issue is well-exemplified in the storyline of "Gladiator" which pretends that Marcus Aurelius would have given the order to turn SPQR back into a Republic. Had a personality such as the protagonist existed, and had Marcus Aurelius realized that his son would screw his legacy and a Commodian reign needs to be prevented - M.A. would most probably have needed to commit filicide in order to give an adopted (!) Maximus the legitimacy to act as the heir of the Antonine dynasty.

Even in this case, attempts at restoring "chaotic Republican rule" (not in the sense of allowing the Senate influence and listening to its counsel) replacing the Golden Age of the Antonines would be regarded as a folly. Imagine a newly elected US president going to London and negotiating a re-integration into the United Kingdom. (That compares apples with pears, but illustrates the timeframe at hand).
 
I fully agree, that the principate was the most stable system the romans ever had, but nevertheless it was flawed. I also agree, that it needed multiple threats at once to make the principate fail in the mid of the 3rd century. Even if the romans were sometimes unlucky, some of these threats were more or less homemade.

- The rising german power was among other things caused by the massive development aid by the big roman neighbour. I doubt, this is avoidable, but the flaw was, to underestimate the german threat for centuries. Well, not really a flaw of the principate. This mistake could have happened to every government.

- I am not sure, if there was still a plague in the 3rd century, but the antonian plague in the 2nd century was a big hit to roman economy and society and the beginning of some very detrimental processes, due to wrong decisions by the emperors.

- But some of the multiple internal issues of the roman economy and society and the often unmanaged change of economy and society could be called a consequence of the political system.

The roman principate could finally not avoid the desastrous civil wars, when it came under pressure . And it was not able to avoid bad or selfish emperors making wrong decisions, even if they themselves or their advisors should have known it better. So in my opinion the major flaws of the principate were succession and control of the princeps.

I agree, that a hereditary monarchy is the most natural way for the majority of the empires people. Not necessarily for the romans in Rome and Italy, but for the majority in the larger rest of the empire, especially in the East. However, the roman principate was no hereditary monarchy officially, even if it worked best, with an undisputed heir available before an emperor died. And close relatives were the most undisputed heirs usually. Thus the hereditary monarchy looks so appealing at a first glance. On the other hand, hereditary monarchies trend to die out and promote idiots on the throne, best case harmless idiots. Actually the issue of succession and control has multiple aspects:

- the romans had no clear, widely accepted and undisputed process and/or council to elect a new emperor, if the dynasty dies out.

- or to reject an obviously incapable heir to become the new emperor automatically

- they also missed any process to dethrone an emperor who turned into an incapable idiot, by whatever reasons

- they also had no instruments to prevent the emperor from making single decisions which are seen wrong by most of his advisors.

- the principate also abandoned every democratic element of the former mixed constitution. Such elements could have helped to avoid the biggest excesses. And they never introduced democratic elements as an antipole of the sometimes exploitive new centralised imperial administration of the principate, at least in the well romanized provinces.

Now you can say, that we expect perhaps too much from the romans, because this was and is the case with most monarchies and even some other political systems up to the 21st century.

Finally, let me hint at some decisions emperors starting with Augustus did, more or less just in order to save their own life and power in the principate. But these decisons were finally harmful to the empire:

1. one of the worst mistakes ever was probably the emperor-cult. The emperors implemented it, to become divine and untouchable. And the imperial propaganda was that good, that most inhabitants of the empire had to believe, that the emperor was able to solve every problem. And just he! Actually he was that powerful, and he proved that more than once. Unfortunately the emperor can be just at one place at a given point of time. So in the 3rd century with multiple fronts the local people and soldiers had no other chance, than to elect their own emperor.

A solution could have been, to establish strong military commanders at the main fronts of the empire and to give up the empire cult. But that was feared by the emperors like the plague, due to a high risk for usurpations. Actually latest with Domitian the roman emperors started to decentralize their field armies into single legion camps and reduced the responsibilities of the military high command in the regions as much as possible. They feared usurpation in the system of the principate, but they took the wrong action.

2. The roman emperors were roman aristocrats. And therefore they basically supported the senatorial class over centuries. Actually princeps means the first amongst equal senators/aristocrats. They established a lot of laws, which were beneficial for the rich. So the rich became richer and the poor became poorer. They even destroyed the middle-class, if we like to label the decurions of the cities this way with their measures in the 3rd and 4th century, bcause they rejected to touch the rich.

At least they did nothing to avoid the ongoing process of property and land concentration. At the end we have a lot of very independent and self sufficient landlords at least in the western part of the empire. These landlords, if not part of the imperial high administration by accident, had no politial power and therfeore just one reason to be loyal to the emperor: security. And this reason started to cease dramatically latest in the 5th century. And so the western roman state desintegrated decades before Romulus Augsutulus. One reason amongst others, why the East did survive was, that the structure of property, the structure of the senatorial class and the participation of the rich in the political process was very different.

Just two examples of many system immanent flaws of the principate: paranoia and the unwavering persuasion, that the aristocrats/rich are the backbone of the roman state. But the roman principate has no bad reputation to my mind, it is just in need of improvement.
 
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