chosting around at the speed of sound


numberonebug
@numberonebug

It's interesting to see how Rome's first Emperor, Gaius Octavian Ceaser Augustus (yes that's one name lol), legally justified his power. he didn't come out and say "hi I'm Rome's first emperor". He used already existing political and constitutional vehicles to knit together complete autocracy out of republic democracy

He was "elected" Tribune for Life (the tribunate of the plebs was an elected office of ten created to protect the working class from nobility and gave him the ability to join the Senate and propose/veto legislation)

And assigned proconsul to the seven specific territories where troops were stationed (making him the head magistrate of the border provinces and bringing the military under his direct control

With at-large proconsular authority (so whatever provence he was in fell under his imperium while he was there)

It's much how the US will bend and stretch already existing tools and precedent in order to accomplish things that the people making those tools could never have imagined. it's really fascinating to see that same kind of legalistic "oh but how can we make this work" happening thousands of years ago to justify an Emperor

Because yeah, you put all that together and you have Emperor in all but name. But men could still serve as Consul every year, the Senate still met and voted (the way he singled they should vote, but he signaled not commanded), and he had himself called simply Princeps, First Citizen.

People rioted. Not because he had seized complete control but because he had not gone far enough, they rioted calling on him to declare himself king, but he saw what happened to his adopted father and uh didn't do that haha

It's so interesting!


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in reply to @numberonebug's post:

So uh just curious (I am not a subject expert). Did people actually riot calling on him to declare himself king. Or did he/his supporters just orchestrate a Jan 6 style mob so he could then go to the Senate and go, oh wow there was a riot, I guess the people really want me to have absolute power, why don't I help you by setting on this "compromise" approach where you maintain the formal appearance of power

And/or none of this happened at all and when the histories got written down Augustus required them to write down the story of a nonexistent or wildly exaggerated "riot"

Like how would we tell the difference between any of these scenarios from the sources we have

he seems to have been enormously popular in rome, and was scrupulous about republican forms. there was never any question after mark antony's defeat who was going to run the place, but he spent a lot of time and energy trying to keep a republican veneer on everything he did.

edit: like maybe it's hard to get completely accurate sourcing, but replacing augustus would have meant more war.

There's a lot actually since Rome was highly centralized and very much so still basically just an overgrown city state. "Rome" as a city was more or less the only city that mattered whereas DC is just a capital in a decentralized federation, so a sizable amount of the population rioting hits a bit different

Also, they were calling on him to take on the title of dictator in light of a crises, which is a thing that had been done with regularity since the start of the republic hundreds of years prior. The ramifications of doing so were new since he would have taken that title and ran with it, but the office itself wasn't. So it wasn't as unprecedented as Jan 6

I'm really curious if the US executive branch was deliberately modeled after the role Augustus held before fully becoming emperor, given that the two main powers of the president are veto rights on legislation and direct control of the military

so!!!! actually the US executive office is designed explicitly off of the consulship of the Roman republic but with some changes that I do genuinely think make it more stable

The Consul was the highest elected office one could hold at the time and was held by two men with a term of only one year (and you couldn't run for reelection without ten+ year break, tho near the end people flaunted that rule). During that year one could propose and veto legislation, lead an army, and hold court. the Fun caveat is that both people in office had equal powers so one consul could veto another, or veto his veto of a law

It's very similar to the president, except having 4-8 years allows for continuity and stability, and I think a huge reason why people pushed for dictatorships was because one year just flat out isn't enough. Also president vs VP aren't nearly as pvp as the two consul setup was

The similarities you pick up on are more that Octavian was trying to cobble together consul powers without holding that title so that office could still exist and function so that ambitious men had something to aim for other than the crown

ohh that makes sense! also this sent me down a whole rabbit hole of reading about Octavian's rise to power. the triumvirate was such an interesting example of like. the writing was very much on the wall that power in Rome belonged to whoever had the loyalty of the military, not to the Senate, but it took so long for that to become official. & like it was clear that someone would take all that power for themself, but seeing which one got it was the result of years of political maneuvering and civil wars

This is why I continue to think Prime Ministers are so much better than Presidents/Kings/Emperors/etc. You still have a single person who does the decisions, BUT when they go bad (and let's face it, they often do) they are much easier to replace.

The difference is that the PM is appointed by their party, NOT by the public. And it's in the party's interest to have someone who won't bring them shame and disgrace and get them de-elected next time. And the party can replace them WITHOUT the risk of letting the other side win power, so you still have considerable continuity. And indeed the threat of that "easy" replacement has a moderating effect on the PMs and helps keep them on the rails. "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal"

Whereas when you have direct election of a single person by the public, to replace that single person, the party has to go back to the public and say "hey - we screwed up - this guy's a dick" and then the public might agree and vote in the other party!

Obvious comparisons are the way the UK cycled through a bunch of PMs recently with only minor fuss, while the US just couldn't get rid of its problem child.

On the other hand, the US has this exciting problem that the President is the only one elected by anything close to direct public representation. All the other houses suffer hugely from various bizarre forms of gerrymandering. So that needs fixing first.

And then some countries do the worst option, which is have both a PM and a President. Never understood where even the theoretical benefit of that was, and the practice seems to be pretty awful.