The process by which all authority became centralized in the hands of the princeps and in practice exercised by an organized bureaucracy was of necessity gradual ; but it had its beginnings under Augustus, who formed the equestrian order (admission to which was henceforth granted only by him) into an imperial service, partly civil and partly military, whose members, being immediately dependent on the emperor, could be employed on tasks which it would have been impossible to assign to senators (see EQUITES). From this order were drawn the armies of "pro curators"—the term was derived from the practice of the great business houses of Rome—who administered the imperial revenues and properties in all parts of the empire. Merit was rewarded by independent governorships such as those of Raetia and Noricum, or the command of the naval squadrons at Misenum and Ravenna; and the prizes of the knight's career were the prefectures of the praetorian guard, the corn-supply and the city police, and the governorship of Egypt. The household offices and imperial sec retaryships were held by freedmen, almost always of Greek origin, whose influence became all-powerful under such emperors as Claudius. The financial secretary (a rationibus) and those who dealt with the emperor's correspondence (ab epistulis) and with petitions (a libellis) were the most important of these.
These honours culminate in the "imperial cult" which most definitely marks the vast distance between republican and imperial Rome. Julius Caesar, for policy's sake, had been enticed by Alexander's example to attempt the introduction of autocracy in the only form known in the ancient world. The East was ac customed to accepting commands from the semi-divine king and made no objection, and since half the population of Rome now consisted of the stock of slaves and captives the plan met with noisy applause by the lowest classes at Rome. But Brutus's dagger was the senate's answer to the proposal. Octavian, who rested his hopes of succession on the favour of Caesar's devout soldiers and on the sacred character of Caesar's last will and testament, did all in his power to canonize Julius, and built a temple to Divus Julius in the Forum. This sufficed for his im mediate purpose, and when he consolidated his position after Antony's defeat he wisely forbade the bestowal of divine honours upon himself within Italy while welcoming deification in Asia and Egypt where the populace could not understand why the successor of Ptolemies and Seleucid kings should not be a god. However, even in Italy the Oriental ex-slave population, very numerous everywhere, would revert to non-Roman mysticism.
Here and there in Italy shrines arose and were permitted, not to Augustus, but to the "genius" of Augustus', and in 12 B.C. the court devised an organization of ex-slaves in the towns of Italy for devotions to the Augustan lares. Thus the Oriental cult crept in gradually. And as the worship of Augustus by the
eastern provincial communes seemed to the court to be a pleas ing token of loyalty, attempts were also made officially to intro duce the worship at the meetings of the provincial gatherings in Gaul, Spain and Africa. But it must be said that, except so far as Orientals took part in the worship, in the West it was and remained to the end merely lip service. As the cult was worked out for Italy after Augustus's death the emperors were deified only after death and the worship was directed to the Divi. But in the provinces the worship of the living ruler continued. The image of the living emperor was on the army standards and was made the object of devotion, and refusal to perform libations to it became the ugly test of treason and of heterodoxy. A few emperors, like Caligula and Domitian, attempted to invite, while living, the honours of Divi even in Rome, but with little success. Diocletian was the first emperor who actually brought into the very senate the worship of the emperor as it was practised all through the empire in Asiatic cities, and he had his capital in Asia.