The Fate of the Republican Institutions

Abstract

The following summary of the fate of the republican institutions in the post-Augustan evolution of the Principate has to be appraised in the light of two general if related observations. One: Custom hallowed by many centuries had impregnated the Roman mind with the overriding importance of preserving forms and rituals in the conduct of public affairs. These continued to control much of public life during the entire Principate. The observance of the traditional forms seemed to the Roman upper class as well as the masses the guarantee of legality. Two: From this carefully preserved habit derived the discrepancy, well known to political scientists and constitutionalists of our own more self-analytical times, between the theory of constitutional law and the actual realities of the political process. The basic facts of life - the rising ascendancy of the imperial dignity and the supersession of the republican by the imperial branch of the government — were never spelled out in legal terms. From the viewpoint of strict constitutional law, the princeps was from the start, and remained so, an extraconstitutional phenomenon, yet one which by far outweighed and overbalanced the republican institutions. Particularly because of its undisputed control of the military potential, imperial power was the substance, the republican institutions merely the shadow and no longer the living reality of the political process.