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1 AugusTus’s RhETORICAL sITuATIOn The principate, the era marked by the sole rule of Augustus, spans from 31 b.c.e. to 14 c.e., standing as the transitional period between the Roman republic and empire.1 By the end of 31 b.c.e., the often romanticized chaos that inspired Shakespeare and still captivates modern audiences through television shows such as HBO’s Rome—the assassination of Julius Caesar, the rise of a young Octavian, the proscription of Cicero by the Second Triumvirate, the vanquishing of the conspirators, several civil wars, and Antonius and Cleopatra’s dalliance and defeat—was the stuff of history, even if that history was still being written. There is a tendency to believe that by 31 b.c.e., and certainly no later than 23 b.c.e., Augustus had gained “real” power and that what followed was little more than window dressing. Octavian’s struggle was over by 31 b.c.e., but the would-be Augustus’s struggle for power was only just beginning. He was left in precisely the same position that ended in the demise of Julius Caesar: ruling Rome when it was forbidden for a single man to do so. Yet, to define Augustus’s rhetorical exigence simply as legitimizing his rule is to classify it too narrowly. More broadly,Augustus had to create a new system of government to replace the failed republic, to define practices of citizenship, and to do so in a way that was not only acceptable to but popular with the people. While Augustan rhetoric can be viewed as a response to developing exigencies over the period of his rule, the most significant of which occurred upon Augustus gaining sole power in 31 b.c.e., Augustus’s rhetorical situation must be Augustus’s Rhetorical Situation 11 clarified in light of the historical, political, social, and mythic history of the city of Rome before the situation of rhetoric in the principate can be examined. sOCIAL And POLITICAL COnTExTs A complex tangle of conditions contributed to the fall of the Roman republic: the economic practices of the few created a situation characterized by expansionist warfare, the lack of a landed middle-class, the rise of urban poor, a large slave population, a populace without representation, the need for a standing military that in turn became loyal only to their leader and required land as payment for service, not to mention problems with the grain supply and pirates. Though there were probably other ways out of these problems, the continuation of the republic in its existing form was likely not one of them. Divergence between the two parties, the optimates, or “constitutional party,” and the populares, sometimes referred to as the “democratic party,” who claimed to hold the people’s interest, led to what amounted to (pseudo) class conflicts that were easily and inevitably wielded for political purposes.2 Conflicts began in earnest shortly after the Punic Wars ended (around 125 b.c.e.) among powerful, seemingly charismatic men who harnessed, more often than not, enormous resources, financial and military; the support of their parties; and, often, rhetorical skill, which eventually led to the civil wars. It was Octavian, for better or worse, who finally ended the conflict (though he caused much of it as well) after he defeated Antonius at Actium in 31 b.c.e. Syme’s foundational work The Roman Revolution is dedicated to the principate and characterizes Augustus’s rise to sole power in the context of party politics: “However talented and powerful in himself, the Roman statesman cannot stand alone, without allies, without a following. . . . The rule of Augustus was the rule of a party, and in certain aspects his principate was a syndicate.”3 Though Augustus ’s rule was very much the product of the political parties at Rome, the title of Syme’s book indicates that Augustus’s rise to power was revolutionary: “in the Revolution the power of the old governing class was broken, its composition transformed. Italy and the nonpolitical orders in society triumphed over Rome and the Roman aristocracy.”4 Still, this “revolution,” such as it was, should not be seen as the end of Roman democracy, for to see it that way implies there was democracy in the first place. The Roman republic was not a glorious and free age where all a great statesman needed was the power of his voice.5 Significantly, the voices of Roman statesman often did more harm than...

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