For a moment, in spite of the menacing attitude of Caesar's self-constituted representative Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), it seemed to one man at least as if the restoration of republican government was possible. With indefatigable energy Cicero strove to enlist the senate, the people, and above all the provincial governors in support of the old constitution. But, though his eloquence now and again carried all before it in senate house and forum, it was powerless to alter the course of events. By the beginning of 43 civil war had recommenced ; in the autumn An tony was already threatening an invasion of Italy at the head of i7 legions. Towards the end of October Antony and his ally M.
Aemilius Lepidus coalesced with the young Octavian, who had been recently elected consul at the age of 20, in spite of sena torial opposition ; and the coalition was legalized by the creation of the extraordinary commission for the "reorganization of the commonwealth" known as the Second Triumvirate. It was ap pointed for a period of five years, and was continued in 37 for five years more. The rule of the triumvirs was inaugurated in the Sullan fashion by a proscription, foremost among the victims of which was Cicero himself. In the next year the defeat of M.
Iunius Brutus and C. Cassius Longinus at Philippi, by the com bined forces of Octavian and Antony, destroyed the last hopes of the republican party. In 4o a threatened rupture between the two victors was avoided by the treaty concluded at Brundisium. Antony married Octavian's sister Octavia, and took command of the eastern half of the empire; Octavian appropriated Italy and the West; while Lepidus was forced to content himself with Africa. For the next 12 years, while Antony was indulging in dreams of founding for himself and Cleopatra an empire in the East, and shocking Roman feeling by his wild excesses and his affectation of Oriental magnificence, Octavian was patiently con solidating his power. Lepidus, his fellow-triumvir, was in 36 ejected from Africa and banished to Circeii, while Sextus Porn peius, who had since his defeat at Munda maintained a semi piratical ascendancy in the western Mediterranean, was de cisively defeated in the same year, and his death in 35 left Octavian sole master of the West. The inevitable trial of strength between himself and Antony was not long delayed. In 32 Antony openly challenged the hostility of Octavian by divorcing Octavia in favour of the beautiful and daring Egyptian princess, with whom, as the heiress of the Ptolemies, he aspired to share the empire of the eastern world. By a decree of the senate Antony was declared deposed from his command, and war was declared against Queen Cleopatra. On Sept. 2, 31, was fought
the battle of Actium. Octavian's victory was complete. Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide (3o), and the eastern provinces submitted in 29. Octavian returned to Rome to celebrate his triumph and mark the end of the long-continued anarchy by clos ing the temple of Janus; at the end of the next year he formally laid down the extraordinary powers which he had held since 43, and a regular Government was established.
Period I.: The Principate, 27 B.C.–A.D. 284—The Con stitution of the Principate.—The conqueror of Antonius at Actium, the great-nephew and heir of the dictator Caesar, was now summoned, by the general consent of a world wearied out with 20 years of war and anarchy, to the task of establishing a Government which should as far as possible respect the forms and traditions of the republic, without sacrificing that centraliza tion of authority which experience had shown to be necessary for the integrity and stability of the empire.
The new system which was formally inaugurated by Octavian in 28-27 B.C. assumed the shape of a restoration of the republic under the leadership of a princeps. Octavian voluntarily resigned the extraordinary powers which he had held since 43, and, to quote his own words, "handed over the republic to the control of the senate and people of Rome." The old constitutional machinery was once more set in motion ; the senate, assembly and magistrates resumed their functions; and Octavian himself was hailed as the "restorer of the commonwealth and the cham pion of freedom." But his abdication, in any real sense of the word, would have simply thrown everything back into confusion. Any revival of the kingly title was out of the question, and Octavian himself expressly refused the dictatorship. Nor was any new office created or any new official title invented for his benefit. But by senate and people he was invested according to the old constitutional forms with certain powers, as many citizens had been before him, and so took his place by the side of the lawfully appointed magistrates of the republic—only, to mark his pre-eminent dignity, as the first of them all, the senate decreed that he should take as an additional cognomen that of "Augustus," while in common parlance he was henceforth styled princeps, a simple title of courtesy, familiar to republican usage, and convey ing no other idea than that of a recognized primacy and prece dence over his fellow-citizens. The ideal sketched by Cicero in his De Republica, of a constitutional president of a free republic, was apparently realized ; but it was only in appearance. For in fact the special prerogatives conferred upon Octavian gave him back in substance the autocratic authority he had resigned, and as between the restored republic and its new princeps the balance of power was overwhelmingly on the side of the latter.