Part II
8
The civil war that brought down the Roman Republic and saw the rise to power of Octavian and his supporters has been dubbed “The Roman Revolution” by Sir Ronald Syme1. Regardless of what Republican titles he assumed, Augustus indeed created an empire with himself at the helm. And yet ironically Syme also described Augustus, the architect of the Roman Empire and the man responsible for laying the foundation of its political and military intelligence structure, as a man with “neither the instincts of a soldier nor the ambition of a conqueror.”2
As the empire grew, an intelligence structure developed slowly and in a piecemeal fashion, but it would grow to become an important link in the functioning of both the political and military arms of the Roman government. While there has been much discussion and disagreement about how each of these component parts functioned or cooperated with each other, there is no doubt that with the creation of the Roman Empire, the new centralized government needed information more than ever to protects its interests, both internal and external. No sooner had Augustus taken over, than he began to set up the organizations required to do the intelligence collecting.
The cursus publicus
The first and most important of these changes was the establishment of a state postal/messenger service called the cursus publicus, which revamped the inadequate Republican system of private messengers.3 By furnishing a network of transport and communications, Augustus built the backbone of what would later become the imperial security service. Local communications was not the problem. Errands within Rome or its suburbs, or communications within the main provincial cities of the empire, could be carried by messengers called cursores or runners. As their name indicates, they carried out their duties on foot. They were organized on a military basis, with a prefect and a special instructor at each station, as can be seen in the numerous Latin inscriptions preserved from the early imperial period.4 But for communications between the provinces and Rome a whole new system would have to be put in place: an official and permanent way to communicate political and military intelligence.
Why had the Romans waited so long to adopt this innovation? Certainly not because of any lack of models for them to copy. Five hundred years earlier the Persians had an efficient postal system, and other Near Eastern states before them had their own networks.5 Greek writers, especially Herodotus, described the wonders of the Persian communications system, and Augustus may have taken the idea for such a service from the East. There are, however, several other possibilities.6 When Rome annexed Egypt in 30 bc, for example, a Ptolemaic system was still in place to serve as a model, and the Augustan system may have been a direct outgrowth of Caesar’s observations of this system.7 We should not rule out the possibility, however, that the idea for a service originated with Augustus’s own observations and imagination. He had far too much political insight not to see that the fall of the Republican government was partially due to the absence of an effective central administration, causing an inadequacy of coordinated action, a lack of consistency of policy, and an inability to control ambitious provincial magistrates. To accomplish all these goals himself, Augustus would need a centrally administered communications system, in order to ensure his own security and to buttress the stability of the empire.8
Augustus first established a relay of messengers to pass information from city to city. This method was an improvement on the Republican practice whereby a single messenger made the entire journey from his province to Rome. The new system afforded greater speed, but it had one major disadvantage – the messenger on the last leg of the relay could not be questioned about the province where the message had originated. What Augustus wanted was a means to forward dispatches and yet to be able to question the carriers as well as to read the papers they brought. Augustus modified the system again and stationed post carriages and animals at each relay point, instead of messengers with mounts.9 Each messenger traveled along the whole route, riding in carriages rather than on horseback. The result was a government information service in which reliability counted more than speed.10 The cursus publicus became an important instrument of government and a contributing factor in centralizing the imperial administration. As the system developed, the couriers were drawn increasingly from the army, especially from the speculatores.11 We have at least one sculptured relief that shows such a courier performing his duties.12 A gravestone, from the second to third century ad, now in Belgrade, shows a speculator in a carriage bearing the insignia of his office.
The speed and efficiency of the imperial post is difficult to assess with any accuracy. We do not know the actual time for normal delivery, because recorded examples of specified distances and times in most cases were associated with exceptional circumstances.13 No doubt in emergencies the couriers did travel at very high speeds. The average speed of a courier, however, is thought to have been about 5 Roman miles per hour and approximately 50 Roman miles (about 47 English miles) a day.14
Good news might be allowed to travel slowly, but the bearer of ill-tidings hurried at top speed. When important military intelligence was sent, a branch of laurel was fastened to the dispatch to signify victory, but a feather, the sign of haste, marked the bearer of disastrous news. The historian Tacitus thought it unusual that his father-in-law Agricola, the governor of Britain, did not follow up his achievements by affixing laurels to his dispatches.15 Intelligence concerning revolts, was, of course, a matter of high priority. The confidence of the Roman imperial system is mirrored in its assumption that victory was the normal state of affairs, and only news of defeat or danger was urgent. Whatever the speed of travel, the system certainly was reliable and it impressed at least one later historian. The Byzantine writer Procopius writes:
For the Roman Emperors of earlier times, by way of making provision that everything should be reported to them speedily and be subject to no delay – such as the damage inflicted by the enemy upon each… country, whatever befell the cities in the course of civil conflict or of some unforeseen calamity, the acts of the magistrates and of all others in every part of the Roman empire – and also, to the end that those who conveyed the annual taxes might reach the capital safely and without either delay or risk, had created a swift public post extending everywhere…16
Procopius is describing a system that operated before his own time, but one that was probably much later than Augustus’s. In Augustus’s time, the post was just being set up and, while not “extending everywhere,” it certainly improved on the previous communications network.
In the Republican period communication with the provinces had always been uncertain. Conveyance of information was totally dependent on private enterprise and was virtually suspended during the winter months.17 Even in summer, a consular army, no more distant than Cisalpine Gaul, could and did make preparations, collect provisions, and start to march into Macedonia, contrary to the wishes of the Senate and without its knowledge. The Senate only learned of the move later, when the frontier colony of Aquileia protested to Rome that the departure of the army had left it open to attack by local barbarian tribes. The colony was new, weak, and had been left unprotected. The Senate found the report unbelievable and sent an investigating committee.18
Because the new postal system was designed to meet the emperor’s intelligence requirements, and was not for the convenience of private citizens, only men carrying dispatches to or from the emperor were entitled to the privileges of the cursus publicus. Private citizens could have access to the state post only with the express permission of the emperor, who issued a special diploma as a permit for a stipulated period. Every user was required to have a post warrant signed by the emperor or, in his absence, his authorized agent. Governors of provinces could also issue them, but in numbers limited by the emperor. A diploma entitling the bearer to travel with the help of government-maintained facilities was a prized possession, and inevitably some of these permits fell into undeserving hands. The diplomas expired after a specified period, and likewise on the death of the authorizing emperor, all diplomas issued by him expired automatically. In ad 69, for example, when the Emperor Otho was defeated in battle, an interested party suppressed the news and spread the false information of a victory in order to extend the validity of the warrants bearing the dead emperor’s name.19
Tight security surrounded the issuance of such permits. In the Consistorium (the ancient equivalent of an imperial chancellery), a secretary in charge of permits oversaw the delivery of the diplomas, a further indication of the high priority of the state post. Some of this importance rubbed off on employees. Couriers who served the state post, the tabellarii, were numerous enough to found their own guild in Rome and also at some principal postal stations in the provinces. They were called Augustus’s or Caesar’s messengers, or else “messengers with the diploma.” These messengers did not carry a special diploma for each trip, but instead were issued a special tessera, an insignia indicating that they were “on duty.” On completion of a mission, the tessera was returned to the proper authority at a given station. The keeper of the tessera at each station ranked second to the chief-of-messengers. In Rome, messengers served in various departments or administrations, and special camp messengers, called tabellarii castrenses, were at the disposal of army commanders.20
There are numerous examples of how the state post functioned in political situations. Aulus Gellius quotes from a volume of letters exchanged between Gaius and Augustus which seem to have been transported by the cursus publicus.21 When Tiberius was suspected of plotting a revolution in 1 bc, he was warned by centurions that they had received curious orders about him. Evidently an official courier had brought Augustus a report that placed Tiberius under suspicion. Tiberius wrote from Rhodes requesting permission to be allowed to return home and resume his political and military career; Augustus rejected his petition. We know nothing about how these letters were delivered, but the diplomatic pouch may have been used, since Tiberius had a military command in the East until 1 bc, and afterwards Augustus bestowed on him the privileges of a legate.22
Augustus’s new courier system was intended for government business only. Intelligence was carried by military couriers. Every 45 miles along the postal roads were resting places (mansiones), furnished to cater to the needs of both the postal messengers and their animals. They also served as state hotels for lodging persons who carried the imperial diploma. Each relay station maintained about forty animals as well as a staff of grooms, veterinarians, wheelwrights, and guards. Located between the relay stations were changing stations for the horses, called mutationes, with stables to provide fresh horses and mules, but no lodging. The passengers changed carriages at each resting place and the vehicles were returned to their home stations.
The problem tackled by Nerva and Trajan, and later by Antoninus Pius and Septimius Severus, was the expanding cost of forwarding state intelligence and the conveyance of state officials. The idea was to take over the institution and to organize it as a state service. Something may have been achieved in the way of a further development of this branch of administration along bureaucratic lines. But it seems very doubtful whether a real state service, with masses of men and animals solely and entirely employed for the purpose, was ever organized. The basis of the system remained, as it did for centuries in Russia, the compulsory service of the population that lived near the roads; and even if the cursus publicus was managed by the state, the transmission of goods and the provision of means of transport for the armies were certainly based wholly upon compulsory work.23
The cost of running a state-wide postal/messenger service grew enormously, and the bill seems to have been paid by the communities through which the service ran. A Latin inscription suggests the Emperor Claudius (ad 41–54) attempted to alleviate the burden of providing relay horses not only in the colonies and towns of Italy, but also in the provinces and all their cities.24 The burden eventually grew so heavy that the Emperor Nerva paid directly from the imperial treasury for the animals and posts in Italy. A special issue of coins depicting a carriage with mules grazing behind it commemorated the occasion.25
Nerva’s successor, Trajan (ad 98–117), incorporated the postal/communications system into the civil service and also extended government support of it to the provinces.26 The next emperor, Hadrian (ad 117–138), lightened the burden still by reorganizing the system as a state institution controlled by a central bureau in Rome and by heading it with an equestrian prefect of vehicles. This relieved local magistrates of the personal responsibility for requisitions and put delegated control of the function with local officials directly answerable to the emperor or the praetorian prefect. Each municipal post office was put up for auction in the same way that the Romans farmed out tax collecting. The winner of the bid was responsible for running the post smoothly in his district. This, too, was billed to the provincials.
The road system was not maintained exclusively for intelligence carriers, however, the transport system also moved supplies. In the beginning of the third century ad Septimius Severus added a transport service for purveying provisions to the army. Overnight the organization swelled in dimensions and became more complex. The administrative staff was expanded; there was more intensive utilization of the facilities; post stations increased in size and number; and wagons and heavy-duty draught animals were added to the couriers’ light carriages and fast-stepping teams. The diploma eventually took on two forms, the partial warrant, which authorized transport only, and the full warrant, authorizing transport and subsistence. Septimius also removed the provincial post from private hands and transferred the cost to the imperial treasury. This new financial arrangement made him popular with the provincials but nearly bankrupted the treasury. The antiquity of the concept of a state post is shown by a passage in the Digest of Justinian, which describes the obligation to support the post, known as praetatio angariorum. The Babylonian word for a postal messenger, angaros, had passed into Persian, then to Greek and now it had made its way into Latin.27
When the delivery of confidential intelligence was assigned to the frumentarii in the second century (see Chapter 10), the resting stations were integrated with army guardposts that had from an early time existed at important points along the roads, and soldiers assumed the management of these stations. The cursus publicus became not just a support for intelligence gathering, but also the preserve of the internal security system. The state postal service spread along important rivers, especially in the Po Valley. By the late Empire the cursus was better organized for surveillance, when individual road stations served both the post and the enforcement officials, like the frumentarii, using it. This greater concentration of authority occurred first in Italy and, after the second century, in the rest of the empire as well. The director of this system, the Prefect of Vehicles, might be either a lawyer or an army officer, and had senior status in the imperial palace. At least one praetorian prefect, Macrinus, was later declared emperor, but this was highly unusual and did not give any undue influence to the security services he once worked with.28
Geographical intelligence
Being able to communicate within the Roman Empire was not enough for ambitious emperors. The Augustan peace also became a period of exploration and conquest.29 Contemporaries considered expansion inevitable and without bounds, and this would require geographical intelligence. To the Romans of Augustus’s time, the known and knowable world did not extend very far beyond the Mediterranean basin. The empire itself and the lands beyond it constituted a new world that had to be discovered, explored, and mastered. In order to expand the boundaries of their empire, and to administer the territory that was marked out as theirs, the Romans needed a certain perception of geographical space and the dimensions of the area they occupied.30 At the edge of the known world, where mythical thought prevailed over rational thought, the Romans would have to discover the reality and mark out what was theirs. The history of Roman geography in the Augustan period thus becomes political and military history.31
The frontier between the known and the unknown had to be drawn on the ground. Map-making was thus an activity encouraged under Augustus, which contributed much to the topographical intelligence available to later emperors for the planning of foreign policy. A survey of the empire, begun by Zenodoxus, Theodotus, and Polyclitus, was completed under Augustus. Augustus’s friend, Marcus Agrippa, ordered a new survey of Spain, Gaul (including the Low Countries), and the Danubian provinces.32 He is also the author of commentaries and a map that described the entire orbis terrarum,33 The results were incorporated into the sculptured marble map that hung near the Pantheon at Rome. A 40 × 60-foot marble map of the fourteen quarters of Rome was later commissioned by Vespasian (called the Forma Urbis, parts of which still survive). Maps for military use accurately depicted roads, rest stops, and their distances.34 A fragmentary copy of one such map was discovered on a leather shield at Dura Europus in Mesopotamia. This map outlined the route and rest stops on the Black Sea highway from the mouth of the Danube to Artaxata in Armenia.35 The sketch resembles later itineraries, such as the Peutinger Table. Velleius Paterculus tells us inadvertently that Roman staff officers in ad 6, while preparing their great offensive against Maroboduus, king of the Marcomanni in Bohemia, used maps oriented northward that indicated the distances from the boundaries of Italy.36 It is not coincidental that the most complete geographic work handed down from antiquity, Strabo’s Geography, is from the Augustan period.
Geographical research and military conquest often went hand in hand. We learn from Pliny the Elder that generals conducting operations on the borders of the empire were directed to obtain as much geographical intelligence as possible in hostile countries and to forward it to Rome.37 Aelius Gallus was the first Roman to enter Arabia Felix at the head of an army. Although the operation was aborted, it is clear from Pliny’s account that he and his staff kept a record of all they learned in the area.38 Gaius Petronius, while prefect of Egypt under Augustus, penetrated Ethiopia and had use of official records made available to him.39 A campaign deep into the Sahara oases of Fezzan in 21–20 bc was conducted by Cornelius Balbus. The names of the races he encountered, the rivers, and the cities were all new to European geographers of the time.40 When Gaius Caesar was given proconsular power by Augustus to settle the Parthian and Armenian problem, King Juba accompanied him as a geographer and adviser. Isidore of Charax was also involved in this operation and had been sent ahead to gather intelligence about the country through which Gaius was to pass.41 Strabo places the expansion of trade to India within the Augustan period.42
Geographical intelligence could be acquired from the embassies of foreign nations and the hostages of defeated kings and chiefs. Pliny confesses that he diligently exploited all these sources of information to contribute to the Romans’ knowledge of Armenia. Similarly, he provides geographical intelligence from Sri Lanka based on the reports of a visiting embassy, although some of the details are very inaccurate.43 Unfortunately, we still do not know where this information was stored, or who had access to it.44
Traders were another rich source of geographic, ethnographic, and economic intelligence in the imperial period. Evidence of this is given by an unnamed Greek trader who, in the first century ad, published his experiences in a book known as Periplus Maris Erythraei – Navigation of the Erythraean Sea (the Persian Gulf). His description of the coasts of Africa, Arabia, and India contains detailed information about the harbors and trading stations, as well as significant material concerning their exports and imports – all presented with the greatest accuracy – much of which has been verified by modern research.45
The charge has been leveled that insofar as geographical precision is concerned, the Romans lacked a keen sense of observation and the imagination of the Greeks.46 Indeed, it does seem that while explorations were made far and wide by Greek merchants and travelers in the imperial era, the Romans limited themselves in their information service to regions bordering their frontier. Tacitus, for example, when writing of Britain and Scotland, could have learned from the experiences of his father-in-law Agricola, who fought in that country. Instead, he simply follows Strabo in his geographical accounts, as if no progress had been made in the survey of Britain during the century that had elapsed since Strabo’s time. But while it is true that new geographical knowledge was assimilated and transmitted by Greek authors such as Polybius, Artemidorus, Agatharchides, and Posidonius, these explorations were largely made possible by Roman conquest.47 Merchants and Roman armies opened up new routes and took measurements and notes. It is a widespread error to believe that the Romans did little else than explore, measure, and conquer, thereby leaving “science” to the Greeks.48 The Romans did develop an ecumenical geographic vision. They had an interest in geography for its own sake, but also for the needs of Rome. Strabo’s geography is political as well as geographical; it is aimed at rulers in order to allow them to govern better. It is an inventory of the world completed and unified.
The important thing to remember is that it is not so much the geographical accuracy of the information that is important, but the awareness of the world possessed by those who administered the empire. This also included the contents of the empire; its people and their possessions as measured in the census. As the empire progressed there would be an increase in spatial reports, explorations, surveys by land and sea, and cartographic accounts. How well this geographic intelligence was used by the Romans and their adversaries, the ruling classes and their subjects could determine how well the empire was administered and controlled.
By the end of Augustus’s reign, we begin to get a global vision of the world. Augustus tells posterity in his Res Gestae about his accomplishments: foreign wars fought victoriously throughout the world; the pacification of frontier provinces such as Gaul or Germany, and the control of strategic provinces such as the Alpine regions. This is followed by the naval explorations in the Northern Ocean and land explorations in Ethiopia and Arabia, then the annexations or protectorates carried out in the East. Augustus lists the victorious diplomatic relations with traditional enemies such as the Parthians, the Pannonians, and the Dacians, and the flattering embassies that came from foreign peoples, such as the Indians. Veterans’ colonies were sent out to populate the world. In his own words, Augustus shows that this achievement was spatial, as well as temporal and political. And he leaves no doubt that the spatial extension of the conquest to the limits of the known world is directly linked to the new order that he himself had established and guaranteed.49
Internal security
The need to protect the ruler of the new Roman Empire was palpable by the time Augustus declared himself princeps in 27 bc. Augustus used personal spies to follow Maecenas’s alleged advice to employ “persons who are to keep eyes and ears open to anything which affects his supremacy.”50 The extensive use of spies and informers thus began early. Already, during the civil war, the prototypes of a Roman secret service had emerged. The warring factions turned to trusted soldiers in their private military retinues, or to the Praetorian Guard, who ferreted out information and, as officers of arrest or execution, did “the dirty work” expected of a secret police. Before his accession to power, Augustus was fully acquainted with the use of trusted personnel on missions of this kind.51 He had employed such agents during the civil wars to dispatch undesirable persons. He had troublemakers eliminated in such a way that it could never be known what became of them.52 When Octavian suspected Mark Antony of undermining his popularity with the Roman people, he went into action:
Octavian, thus at last openly attacked, sent numerous agents to the towns colonized by his father, to tell how he had been treated and to learn the state of feeling in each. He also sent certain persons in the guise of traders into Antony’s camp to mingle with the soldiers, to work upon the boldest of them and secretly distribute handbills among the rank and file.53
As self-proclaimed restorer of the Republic, Augustus characteristically sought to disguise his imperial absolutism. We know little about his practices for protecting state security; the extent to which he relied on undercover agents after 27 bc is especially obscure. Because Augustus was so broadly popular, he did not need a large-scale spying operation as did rulers like Herod of Judaea.54 The emperor himself was so tightly protected by the Praetorian Guard that only persons familiar with court procedure could have gotten close enough to assault him. Nor did Augustus and his early successors rely on any one agency to detect and expose subversion. There are hints, however, that secret agents were engaged in various tasks. Maecenas, as Augustus’s prefect of the city, probably employed secret agents to uncover the plot against the emperor’s life by Lepidus the Younger. Maecenas quietly and carefully concealed his activity so that he could crush it without disturbance.55
Private spies: the delatores
Augustus’s new communications system enabled him to keep abreast of situations in the far-flung provinces. He was also responsible for the growth of surveillance on Rome’s very own citizens, especially those perceived as being threats to internal security. This was the beginning of a deadly trend that saw the bureaucracy of Rome utilizing newly acquired intelligence capabilities to monitor perceived enemies, which in turn made the empire much safer, but also much less free. Among the leitmotifs of Tacitus’s imperial histories are the conflicts between emperors and nobles, conspiracies real or imagined against the emperor, the persecution and execution of aristocrats believed to be responsible for such plots, and the activities of informers.56
There was much opposition under Augustus both to the man and to the regime. Some scholars believe that Augustus was under constant threat during his principate from those who wished for the return of the Republic, and see Augustus’s policies as reactions to this opposition.57 Others have seen the opposition as “scattered, isolated, ineffective and, overall, minimal.”58 The fact remains that at no time during his reign could he assume that there was no one trying to kill him. Velleius Paterculus is our oldest source on the opposition to Augustus, and he lists at least three conspiracies against the emperor.59 The imperial biographer, Suetonius, reports the suppression of several conspiracies that were all detected before they became dangerous.60 Dio Cassius, too, makes several general statements on the frequency of plots against Augustus.61 Suetonius reports that during the purge of the Senate in 18 bc, Augustus wore a sword and breastplate under his tunic, and that he was protected by a bodyguard of ten sturdy senators.62
One way to protect oneself was to rely on professional informers called delatores. Highly placed freedmen at court or provincial procurators were employed to gather confidential information. The weakness of state prosecution under ancient law, that is the absence of investigators and prosecutors, made private accusers and informers necessary instruments of the legal process, and thus it became common practice to volunteer information against suspected offenders.63 The Lex Julia Maiestatis, or the law of treason, was the basis for prosecution in those cases. We do not know the actual terms of the law, but the earliest trials and charges demonstrate that the treason law considered verbal abuse or slander of the princeps, and slander of members of his family as well, to be offenses against the state.64 In short, any offense that violated the majesty of the princeps was deemed high treason. Augustus’s principate initiated a rash of informing as these new sentries took their place among the Roman people. Informers were tempted by the rewards they received, which often was the property of any man accused by their testimony and successfully convicted. Seneca tells the story of Rufus, a tipsy senator at a dinner party, who expressed the hope that Augustus should not return from an impending trip. The following day the slave who had stood at the senator’s feet while he was dining quoted to him what he had said, and suggested he go to Augustus and apologize lest other accounts of the incident reach the princeps first. Rufus raced to the forum to beg Augustus’s pardon, and Augustus demonstrated his forgiveness by granting the senator a large gift of money: “it was not yet true that a man’s utterances endangered his life, but they did cause him trouble.”65
While Augustus’s laws first stimulated professional informing, it was the principate of Tiberius that ripened the practice. According to Seneca, “In the reign of Tiberius Caesar, there was such a common and almost universal frenzy for bringing charges of treason that it took a heavier toll of the lives of Roman citizens than any Civil War.”66 Seneca tells of an ex-praetor named Paulus who took a chamberpot into his hands while wearing a ring with the image of Tiberius on it; only a quick-witted slave who ripped the ring off his master’s finger prevented an informer from reporting this event and having him arrested.67 Though Tiberius may not have supported the delatores in the accusations they brought under the law of treason, still, charges were brought against 106 defendants in criminal cases during his reign.68 The nature of the charges varied so greatly that the terms of the law must have been vague, for the informers denounced any action which, however remotely, could be interpreted as a slight to the princeps. The delatores must have had some hope of successful prosecution or they would not have wasted their time, since their fortunes rested on it. In addition to more serious charges under this law, a man was indicted for beating a slave who held in his hand a coin of Tiberius. One Lucius Ennius fell victim to the law because he converted a silver statuette of Tiberius into a silver plate. Dio Cassius reports that an ex-consul was convicted, executed, and his property confiscated because he carried a coin bearing a portrait of Tiberius into a latrine.69 Suetonius adds other cases, such as the murder of a slave at the statue of Augustus, changing one’s clothes beside a statue of Augustus, entrance into a brothel carrying the emperor’s effigy upon one’s person, or criticism of any word or action of the emperor. None of these offenses seriously threatened the state, and it seems clear that such ridiculous accusations were often pretexts to get rid of someone considered dangerous for other reasons. Thus, the number of informers increased, and the profits of their profession increased even more, so much so that the Emperor Claudius finally decided to limit the amount that might be awarded for successful prosecutions to 10,000 sesterces; any person exceeding this limit was liable to prosecution for extortion.70
This tendency toward surveillance worsened through the imperial period. Politically significant persons of wealth, family, or culture had to watch carefully their words and actions. Cassius Dio, two centuries later, expressed the opinion that the Romans never again had complete freedom of speech after the Battle of Philippi.71 Philostratus made an even more graphic observation as much applicable to Augustus’s Rome as it was a century later when Philostratus made it:
To live in a city, where there are so many eyes to see and so many ears to hear things which are and are not, is a serious handicap for anyone who desires to play at revolution, unless he be wholly intent upon his own death. On the contrary, it prompts prudent and sensible people to walk slowly even when engaged in wholly permissible pursuits.72
An emperor opposed to the Senate had only to make his attitude known and the senators would bury each other in mutual accusations trying to protect themselves at someone else’s expense. Tacitus complains frequently about the delatores and agents provocateurs who laid traps for the unwary.73 Under Nero, the great nobles had to endure unceasing scrutiny by their associates and their own household staffs.
Not all emperors were this suspicious, but none of them could afford to ignore information that might save their life. The Emperor Titus distinguished between insults and actual threats to his throne by saying it was “impossible for me to be insulted or abused in any way.”74 And Tiberius made a famous remark about violated oaths that had been sworn in the name of the deified Augustus: “Let the gods take care of their injuries.”75 More enlightened emperors tried to restrict the delatores and their informants; they threatened punishment for lying and exiled the most notorious of the sycophants. No emperor, however, abolished the system of amateur prosecution. Few important officials ever dared to silence a man who claimed, however falsely, that he knew about a plot against the emperor. As one historian has pointed out, the only difference among the Tiberian trials for treason, or the Neronian trials after the Pisonian conspiracy, and the Stalinist purges of 1936–38 was scale.76
The vigiles
Augustus created another new institution dedicated to internal security in Rome, called the vigiles. They started out as the city’s fire brigade, but eventually developed into a city police force to keep the streets secure and to report dangerous movements in the city.77 Later, when a functional security service was set up, the vigiles worked closely with it, and they had adjacent headquarters on the Caelian Hill.78 In situations where the municipal police proved inadequate, their duties were taken over by the Praetorian Guard and the urban cohorts. This set the precedent for military personnel engaging in police work. In the provinces, Roman troops were at first detached to police duty only sparingly. The emperor was not ignorant of the pernicious effects of having men in uniform subject to the whims of a provincial governor.79
Secret police are not discussed much by Roman historians for the obvious reason of the danger to their lives if they were writing under an emperor who did not wish to have such information leaked to the public. The law, however, was clear: the prefect of Rome was “directed to have detachments of soldiers placed so as to keep the people quiet and to bring him news of what is going on.”80 Since even soldiers might wear civilian clothes when performing clandestine duties, one always had to be cautious while speaking to strangers.81 The oft-quoted passage from Epictetus warns:
A soldier, dressed like a civilian, sits down by your side, and begins to speak ill of Caesar, and then you too, just as though you had received from him some guarantee of good faith in the fact that he began the abuse, tell likewise everything you think and the next thing is – you are led off to prison in chains.82
Going out at night sometimes required a special permit and night arrests were frequent.
The army as police
Roman authorities made use of the highly efficient army on a wide range of police work during the principate. Papyri from Egypt provide us with a unique insight into the utilization of the army to combat crime or detect treason in at least one Roman province, Egypt, and this network was equally adaptable for intelligence duties.83 Soldiers policed and controlled the volatile capital of Alexandria, for example, which could be a dangerous task. A military document shows legionaries employed on road patrols, on policing points inside the capital, on guard at the mint, and as policemen in the countryside.84 They were also seconded to work with the river police in the harbor or on patrol up the Nile. Soldiers were regularly placed on grain ships as security guards, so Rome’s food supply would be safe. They supervised merchants’ caravans crossing the frontier, and we see them frequently at water stops, caravanserais and forts for protective garrisons.85 They arrested smugglers and impounded their contraband.86 They must have had access to a very wide range of information, which they chanced upon in the line of duty, and this source could be tapped by the government.
There is evidence that they conducted plain-clothes police investigations and were involved in security work.87 Centurions and some decurions were seconded to form a criminal investigation department. They were stationed in security areas, on the edge of the cultivated zone in Egypt, for example. Complaints to them included assault, robbery, extortion, arson, and missing persons. Such officers had their own intelligence networks, although we know very little about their sources. Occasionally one is mentioned. For example, a local priest with a strong sense of public duty passed on information about an alleged theft from a warehouse.88 Sources were interrogated and sometimes beaten to extract information. The normal procedure, however, was to make an investigation; if the officer was then convinced that the charges were valid, he referred the accused under guard to a higher authority for sentencing. This same procedure is mentioned by the Church historian, Eusebius, in connection with people charged with being Christians and questioned by a centurion.89
Crowd control was a security function in Rome as well as in Alexandria. Crowds would occasionally lay siege to the residence of the chief of police (the urban prefect), obliging him to hightail it to his suburban villa. In all periods, agents provocateurs, plain-clothes men and secret police circulated in Rome as the latter agents also did in Italy and the provinces to control individual, as opposed to mass, crime. These new police types were not protecting the safety of the population of Rome, but rather the emperor. Proof of this comes in the fourth century, when the Praetorian Guards, vigiles, and urban cohort that had made up the police force for the first three centuries of the empire were dissolved. These guards were meant to detect and suppress any political challenge to the emperor and were only partly adapted to the punishment of ordinary crime. Once they were removed, the power to restrain mob disorder went with them. This is why they were disbanded when the emperor moved to Constantinople. As long as the emperor was safe, his subjects in the old capital were expected to protect themselves against theft or violence.90
Security in the provinces
The seizure and arrest of Flaccus, governor of Egypt, in his own province in ad 37, testifies to the efficiency of the imperial secret police. The Emperor Gaius sent the centurion, Bassus, with a company of soldiers on a fast ship to Alexandria. The centurion arrived safely and tried unsuccessfully to contact the commander of the local legion. Finding that the governor was dining that evening at the house of the commander, Bassus surrounded the house with his guards. He sent in a plain-clothes soldier to survey the grounds, who then made his way into the dining room in the guise of a servant. The arrest was effected quickly and without incident. The skill with which this operation was executed, after a long voyage, in a strange city, demonstrates the ability of the emperor’s agents.91
State security required not only new grounds for convicting traitors but new ways of punishing the victims. If the accused cooperated by committing suicide before being sentenced, he might hope that the emperor would allow his estate to pass to his heirs. Down to Hadrian’s time, only serious cases were then pushed to a conclusion so as to justify the trial in the eyes of the public. A man who stubbornly insisted on awaiting sentence could expect death or exile. In his discourses, Epictetus frequently lists forms of punishment administered under the emperors – beheading, crucifixion, torture, fettering, imprisonment, or exile.92 Exile to an island could mean several possible fates. On some islands life could be reasonably pleasant, often with the exile’s wife and friends to accompany him. But islands such as Gyara, off Attica in the Aegean, and Seriphos, were so small and limited in natural resources that exile on those was a living death – they were the ancient equivalents of Siberia or Devil’s Island,93 and the imperial navy patrolled the seas, so escape was extremely difficult.
Trying to leave the empire involved a long journey, outwitting border guards, and a complete severance with “civilization.” To seek refuge anywhere within the empire was hopeless, and most neighboring states were obliged by treaty to return refugees. It was said that no matter what your lot in life, the world was a “safe and dreary prison.” The accession of a new emperor brought the release of those condemned under the previous emperor, “but the islands in the Mediterranean were never without exiles between the days of Augustus and the fourth century ad.”94
Travel around the empire was also restricted for security reasons. Each citizen had his place of origin, where he belonged.95 If a person left it, he could be expelled from his new residence by police action, and, at any rate, he was required to return to his original home to be counted in the census and sometimes for other reasons. After the time of Claudius, senators needed explicit permission to travel anywhere except for Gaul and Sicily. Departing Egypt by sea was strictly limited, and the Egyptian law codes state that even Roman citizens were liable for evading the rule. Flight across the imperial frontiers was severely punished. Men who ran away or hid had little chance of making good their escape. In the reign of Tiberius, for example, Rubrius Fabatus tried to flee from Rome to the Parthians but got no farther than the Straits of Messina before a centurion caught him and dragged him back for punishment.
Punishment varied according to social status.96 Members of the upper classes were deported or relegated to islands, while for individuals of the lower classes exile took a more drastic form. They might also be condemned to provide a public show, by participating in the games. The imperial mines, which were numerous, always needed new bodies to replace those who had died in the unbearable labor. The courts under later rulers, if indeed not under Augustus himself, supplied some part of the new labor needed. Condemnation to the mines put men in chains and gave them no hope of release except by death. Even those condemned for a specific term of punishment without chains were lucky to survive. Both groups lay under military supervision. Local work crews performed all types of state work, even cleaning public baths. Assignment to these crews would be a punishment inflicted for ordinary crimes, but minority groups such as the Christians might also be sentenced to work crews for their beliefs and for being social misfits. No statistics tell how many men went to labor camps during the Empire.97
Censorship
Augustus had his opponents among the intellectuals of Rome, and censorship became a crucial method in maintaining state security. Thoughts and writings could be perceived as a threat. In a letter by Augustus, Pompeius Macer was debarred from circulating three of Julius Caesar’s early works.98 Titus Labienus was a man known for speaking his mind, but even he censored one of his own public readings, saying that some parts would only be read after his death. In the end, he saw his own writings burned in a way that offended even his personal enemy, Cassius Severus.99 This same Cassius Severus was tried before Augustus in ad 12 for libelous writings of his own and had his works put to the flames.100 Such incidents had precedents. After defeating Sextus Pompey, Augustus had burned the writings containing evidence concerning the civil war.101 The Annals of Tacitus are filled with examples that postdate Augustus. When Cremutius Cordus’s history praised Brutus and called Cassius the last of the Romans, it was one of the last attempts to write history the way Republicans had known it. He was tried in ad 25 and his conviction resulted in the public burning of his writings by the aediles,102
Thus there is ample documentation for political and intellectual opposition under Augustus’s successors, and the result was an increasing amount of censorship, especially in the form of maiestas trials.103 Censorship was extended to any form of communication that challenged the established order. Recent scholarship on first-century poetry has even detected opposition among the Augustan poets.104 Disloyal writings, abusive speeches, unsettling predictions by soothsayers, and maleficent magic were all forbidden by the law. As the scholar Ramsay Macmullen has pointed out: “Their instruments were invisible, ideas, fears, beliefs, beyond the competence of the village constable to repress or even understand. They were not like ordinary crimes, violent; they threatened neither life nor property.”105 Indeed, he continues, “Had Augustus established an un-Roman Activities Committee they would have hunted down these people who expressed active treason, latent disaffection, brigandage, organized protest and cultural deviation.”106 Ronald Syme talks about “stem measures against noxious literature” and “public bonfires.”107 Such documents were considered to have constituted threats to the established order. Augustus stopped the publication of the official minutes of the Senate for reasons that are still unclear.108 Some have suggested it was because he wanted to bar the publication of the antimonarchical outbursts of his opponents in the Senate.109
The Augustan system and the loss of liberty
Augustus’s principate created the physical network of an intelligence system, but what developed from it was not simply an organization for gathering foreign intelligence, but also an internal security apparatus. This was to be expected as empires naturally developed security organizations to protect the ruler and his dynasty. Such organizations should erase, however, any vestige of the idea that spying in general was considered anathema to the Roman mentality. The golden age of Augustus was not very golden from the viewpoint of Republican liberties. Advances in communication, improvements in the armed forces, and tightened security along the borders were accompanied by eroding individual rights and the emergence of an internal security mechanism to monitor the activities of all citizens. What at first seemed like casual abuses of important principles actually foreshadowed later excesses. The Romans had begun looking inward for enemies instead of looking beyond their borders. This abuse would abate under some emperors, but get worse under others. It would never again be entirely absent from Roman life.
Notes
1. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), p. vii.
2. R. Syme, “The Northern Frontiers Under Augustus,” CAH, vol. 10, p. 339.
3. On Augustus extending the messenger service to the provinces, see Suetonius, Aug., 49–50. The major studies on the cursus publicus are: E.J. Holmberg, Zur Geschichte des Cursus Publicus (Uppsala: A. b. Lundequistska bok., 1933); H.G. Pflaum, “Essai sur le ‘cursus publicus’ sous le haut-empire romaine,” Memoires de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 14 (1940), pp. 22–48; E.E. Hudeman, Geschichte des römischen Postwesens während des Kaiserzeit (Wiesbaden: Sändig, 1966); G. Brizzi, “Cursus Publicus e trasmissione della notizia: l’esempio di Augusto,” in Studi Militari Romani (Bologna: CLUEB, 1983); L. Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire (New York: Arno Press, 1979), pp. 278–80; M. Clauss, Die magister officiorum (Munich: Beck, 1980), pp. 45–7. See most recently L. di Paola, Viaggi, Trasporti e Istituzioni. Studi sul Cursus Publicus (Messina: D.Sc.A.M., 1999); C. Corsini, Le strutture di servizio del Cursus Publicus in Italia: ricerche topografiche ed evidenze archeologiche (Oxford: BAR, 2000); H. Bender, Römischer Reiseverkehr: cursus publicus und Privatreisen (Stuttgart: Würtemberisches Landesmuseum, 1978); E.W. Black, Cursus publicus: The Infrastructure of Government in Roman Britain (Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 1995).
4. CIL 3.2007; CIL 6.8800, 8801, 9316, 10165, 33944; CIL 8.12904, 12905, 24686; CIL 13.3690, 5702.
5. On the Persian post: Herodotus 5.52–53; Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, Ch. 1; Pflaum, Essai, pp. 4–17; L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 182–90. The first recorded postal system was at Ur c. 2100–2050 bc: see J. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), pp. 584–6. In the same era there was a system functioning at Lagash: see T. Jones and J. Snyder, Sumerian Economic Texts from the Third Ur Dynasty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1961), pp. 293–302; Casson, Travel, pp. 25–6.
6. Hudeman, Geschichte, pp. 1–5 and Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners, vol. 1, p. 279 think the courier system of Rome was taken from the Persian empire. Cf. Suetonius, Aug. 49.
7. Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, p. 92. For the unresolved argument over exactly what Hellenistic influences can be seen in Augustus’s reign, see A. von Premerstein, Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats (Munich: Beck, 1937), who discounts the influence of Greek thought on Augustus. For the opposite point of view see M. Hammond, “Hellenistic Influences on the Structure of the Augustan Principate,” MAAR 17 (1940) and his review of von Premerstein in AJPh 59 (1938), pp. 481–7.
8. The development of adequate means of communication was essential for the growth and survival of supranational empires. See R.J. Forbes, Studies in Ancient Technology (Leiden: Brill, 1967), vol. 2, p. 171; Casson, Travel, p. 182.
9. On Augustus extending the messenger service to the provinces, see Suetonius, Aug. 49–50. That the relay system was permanently replaced by one in which the whole journey was made by the same messenger is proven by passages in Procopius, Anecdota 30 and Tacitus, Histories 2.73, where it is mentioned that couriers from Syria and Judaea brought Vitellius the news that the legions of the East had sworn allegiance to him.
10. A.W. Ramsay, “The Speed of the Imperial Post,” Journal of Roman Studies 15 (1925), pp. 60–74; C.W.J. Elliot, “New Evidence for the Speed of the Roman Imperial Post,” Phoenix 9 (1955), pp. 76–80.
11. Brizzi, “Cursus Publiais,” pp. 47–8; Casson, Travel, p. 148.
12. CIL 3.1650. This gravestone of a speculator bears a relief picturing the deceased in the course of his duties. There is a reda, an open four-wheeled carriage, drawn by three horses, two in the yoke and a trace horse. On the box is the driver who, plying the whip, keeps the team stepping smartly along. On a bench behind is the courier wearing a hooded traveling cloak and holding what seems to be a riding crop. Behind him, facing rearward, is his servant, who sits on the baggage and clutches a lance with a distinctive head, a special insignia of office showing that his master was attached to the staff of the local government. The relief was first published in M. Rostovtzeff, “Ein Speculator auf der Reise. Ein Geschaftsmann bei der Abrechnung,” Röm Mitt. (1911), vol. 26, pp. 267–83; also in Casson, Travel, fig. 13 and Ramsay, “Speed of the Imperial Post,” p. 61, fig. 58.
13. Ramsay, “Speed of the Imperial Post,” p. 62; Pflaum, Essai, pp. 192–200; Elliot, “New Evidence,” pp. 76–80. Tacitus’s account of the outbreak of the mutiny against Galba in the army of Upper Germany in ad 69 is the most fully recorded description of such a journey.
14. W. Riepl, Das Nachrichtenwesen des Altertums (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), pp. 180–3 is substantially in agreement with Ramsay. He considers that there were two rates of speed in customary use: (1) the ordinary rate, at which the regular dispatches passing between the Emperor and his subordinates would travel; and (2) an accelerated or express speed, for which a special diploma was required, and which was reserved for dispatches of high political or military importance.
15. Tacitus, Agricola 18. Also the lines in Juvenal, Sat. 4.147–149: “as though to give them news of the Chatti/or the savage Sycambri or as though/an alarming dispatch had arrived/on wings of speed from some remote comer of the earth.” Although the scholiasts and Ramsay, “Speed of the Imperial Post,” p. 66 see reference in this to the custom of attaching feathers to letters announcing defeats, E. Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London: Athlone, 1980), p. 128 does not agree. According to Ramsay, the feather was attached to the spear the messenger carried, not the letter, and quotes Statius, Silvae 5.1.92: “For every spear raises joyous leaves on high/and no lance is marked with the feather of ill report.”
16. Procopius, Secret History 30, H.B. Dewing translation, Loeb Classical Library edition.
17. Cicero, ad. Fam. 2.14: “The winter has been so severe that it is now ever so long since we had any news at all,” W. Glynn Williams translation, Loeb Classical Library.
18. Livy 43.1. The Senate was also incensed that the Consul had the effrontery to leave his own district, trespass upon his colleague’s territory, lead his army by a dangerous, untried route among foreign peoples, and leave open to so many tribes the way into Italy.
19. Tacitus, Histories 2.54.
20. Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, pp. 99–100. On the members of the Consistory, see OCD, vol. 2, p. 279.
21. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 15.7.3.
22. F. Romer, “A Case of Client Kingship,” AJPh 106 (1985), p. 93, argues that the diplomatic pouch was being used here to fabricate charges against Tiberius. Cf. F. Romer, “Gaius Caesar’s Military Diplomacy in the East,” TAPA 109 (1979), p. 210, n. 33, on Lollius’s treasonous intentions.
23. Rostovtzeff, SEHRE, p. 338, believed it was very probable that the “management of the messenger service by the state involved the organization of some state depots of horse and other draught animals at the stations. The animals were brought from the imperial estates and were state property.” He cites an inscription from Dacibyza in Bithynia IGRR 3, 2 which was explained by J. Keil in Jahresheft 21 (1921), pp. 261ff. The inscription belongs to the third century. It enumerates the officers of a poststation: two actarii er numerarii stationum, cavalry soldiers, a certain number of drivers, and the manager of the imperial herds, whose duty it was to provide the stations with draught animals. Although Rostovtzeff finds it very tempting to refer this organization to Septimius Severus, he suggests its beginnings may have been earlier, its first introduction into Italy being Nerva and its gradual extension to the provinces to Hadrian, Antoninus and Severus. By gradual, he means an increase in the number of roads and stations provided with a supply of draught animals and drivers. There is no doubt that the provisions of the government never met all the needs and that the state stations remained an exception. Most recently on the cursus pubicus, see L. di Paola, Viaggi, trasporti e istituzioni. Studi sul cursus publicus (Messina: Di.Sc.A.M., 1999), pp. 13–20.
24. ILS 214; CIL 3.7521; Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, p. 94; R. Chevallier, Roman Roads (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), p. 182, n. 25.
25. The inscription reads “ vehicul atione italiae remis sa” (the postal tax remitted in Italy). Sestertius of Nerva, obverse, head of the Emperor Nerva. Reverse, mules grazing before a carriage, with the above inscription. American Numismatic Society. Cf. Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, p. 95; Chevallier, Roman Roads, p. 183.
26. Aurelius Victor, de Caes. 13.5 for the reform under Trajan; for the introduction of a regular cursus under the control of the treasury, see SHA Hadrian 7.5. E.W. Black, Cursus publicus: the infrastructure of government in Roman Britain (Oxford: Tempus Reparaum, 1995), p. 8.
27. Cf. St. Matthew 5:41; 27:32.
28. Opellius Macrinus was the first Roman emperor not to be a senator. The Praetorian Prefect was over the Equestrian Prefect, who was in charge of the vigiles. See R.W. Davies, “Augustus Caesar. A Police System in the Ancient World,” in Philip John Stead, Pioneers in Policing (Montclair, NJ: Patterson-Smith, 1977), pp. 1–32. See Dio Cassius 79.14–15 on Macrinus appointing Adventus, a frumentarius, as City Prefect. He also appointed the prefects Ulpius Julianus and Julianus Nestor, in charge of his frumentarii. Most recently on the cursus pubicus, see L. di Paola, Viaggi, trasporti e istituzioni. Studi sul cursus publicus (Messina: Di.Sc.A.M., 1999), pp. 13–20.
29. C. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), p. 30.
30. Website: Ibid., p. 2.
31. Website: Ibid., p. 5.
32. Pliny, NH 3.16–17. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics, pp. 98–114.
33. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics, pp. 98–114.
34. Vegetius 3.6.
35. O.A.W. Dilke, Greek and Roman Maps (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 120–2. R.K. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration and Military Maps,” in ANRW, vol. 2, 1, p. 538.
36. Velleius Paterculus 2.109. See Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics, p. 9; and Cl. Jodry, “L’Utilisation des documents militaires chez Velleius Paterculus,” REL (1951), pp. 265–84.
37. Pliny, HN 6.15.40. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration,” p. 539.
38. 38 HN 6.160. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration”, p. 539.
39. HN 6.181. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration”, p. 539.
40. HN 5.36–38. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration”, p. 539.
41. Pliny HN 6.141 and Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration”, p. 539, n. 14.
42. Strabo, Geography 2.5.12; 17.1.13.
43. Pliny HN 6.24.84ff. See the comments of Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, pp. 113–14.
44. P. Culham, “Archives and Alternatives in Republican Rome,” Classical Philology 84 (1989), pp. 100, 115.
45. L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
46. E. Rawson, Intellectual Life of the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 257.
47. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics, p. 64; A. Berthelot, “Les Donnés numériques fondamentales de la géographie antique d’Eratosthène à Ptolémée,” Rev. Arch (1932), pp. 1–34.
48. Nicolet, Space, Geography and Politics, pp. 66–74 basically explodes this idea.
49. Website: Ibid., p. 74.
50. Dio 52.37.2.
51. Appian, Civil Wars, 3.44, 4.7ff. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 73.
52. Appian, Civil Wars, 5.128, who says it of the tribune Offilius, who stirred up soldiers after the battle of Mylae in 36 bc and disappeared. Another opponent, Q. Gallius, disappeared in 43 bc on his way to Antony. According to the rumor, he never made it to the ship.
53. Appian, Civil Wars, 3.31. Cf. 40: “news was brought to Octavian by his secret emissaries,” and 43: “He blamed them because they had not arrested and delivered to him the emissaries of a rash boy… who had been sent among them to stir up discord.” Horace White translation, Loeb Classical Library.
54. Website: Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 73.
55. Velleius Paterculus 2.88.3; Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 73.
56. See Hopkins, Death and Renewal, p. 121.
57. See K.A. Raaflaub and L.J. Samons II, “Opposition to Augustus,” in K.A. Raaflaub and M. Toher, Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and his Principate (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 417–18, n. 2, who list the bibliography pros and cons.
58. Website: Ibid., p. 454.
59. Velleius Paterculus 2.88, the conspiracy of M. Aemilius Lepidus in 30 bc; 2.91.2, the conspiracy of L. Murena and Fannius Caepio in 22 bc; 91.3–4, the conspiracy of Egnatius Rufus in 19 bc. Seneca, Clem. 1.9.6 mentions the same conspiracies.
60. Suetonius, Aug. 19.1.
61. Dio Cassius 54.15.1–4; 54.12.3; 55.4.3; See the comments of Raaflaub and Samons, “Opposition to Augustus,” pp. 420–1 on the historicity of these passages. They list and discuss all the conspiracies individually.
62. Suetonius, Aug. 35.1.
63. Website: Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 72; On delatores see G. Boissière, L’accusation publique et les délateurs chez les romains (Niort: G. Clouzot, 1911); see also R.S. Rogers, Criminal Trials and Criminal Legislation under Tiberius (Philological Monographs no. 6, 1935).
64. Digest 48.4. See also W.J. O’Neal, “Delation in the Early Empire,” CB 55 (1978), pp. 24–8; Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 75.
65. Seneca, On Benefits 3.27.1, J.W. Basore translation, Loeb Classical Library; Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 72.
66. Seneca, On Benefits 3.26.1, J. W. Basore translation, Loeb Classical Library.
67. Website: Ibid., 3.26.
68. Rogers, Criminal Trials, p. 190, identifies 24 cases of maiestas but shows only six convictions. He does not believe the prosecutions under Tiberius were excessive or frivolous.
69. Dio Cassius, 2nd fragment after book 58.
70. Tacitus, Annals 13.23.
71. Appian, Floras, Dio Cassius, and Plutarch all speak of Philippi as a contest of democracy versus monarchy. See Appian, Civil Wars 4.127, 138, 4.69, 91, 97–98, 133; Dio Cassius 47.39, 47.42.3–5, 47.32.2; Floras 2.14; Plutarch, Ant. 1.1–2.
72. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 8.7.
73. Tacitus, Histories 1.2. The rewards of the informers were no less hateful than their crimes; for some, gaining priesthoods and consulships as spoils, others obtaining positions as imperial agents and secret influence at court, made havoc and turmoil everywhere, inspiring hatred and terror. Cf. Histories 2.10, 4.6.
74. Tacitus, Annals, 3.25: “There was an ever-increasing multitude of persons liable to prosecution, since every household was threatened with subversion by the arts of the informers.” C.H. Moore and J. Jackson translation, Loeb Classical Library. Cf. 3.49, 2.50, 4.30, 12.59, 13.21.
75. Website: Ibid., 1.73.5.
76. Website: Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 161.
77. Dio 55.26.4; Strabo 5.3.7; Suetonius, Aug. 25.2; P.K. Baillie Reynolds, The Vigiles of Imperial Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 13–16; Dvornik, Origins of Intelligence Services, pp. 93–4; Philo, In Flaccum 14 (120); E. Echols, “The Roman City Police: Origins and Development,” CJ 53 (1957/58), pp. 377–85; Keppie, “Army and the Navy,” p. 385.
78. P.K. Baillie Reynolds, “The Troops Quartered in the Castra Peregrinoram,” Journal of Roman Studies 13 (1923), pp. 168–89; F. Coarelli, Guida Archeologica di Roma (Milan: Mondadori, 1974), p. 180.
79. R. Macmullen, Soldier and Civilian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 50, n. 4.
80. Ulpian, Digest 1.12.1.12.
81. A. von Premerstein, “Die Buchführung einer aegyptischen Legionsabteilung,” Klio 3 (1903), p. 41 with a papyrus duty roster showing a soldier in civilian dress acting as a secret service agent.
82. Website: Epictetus, Discourses 4.13.5; Tacitus, Histories 1.35.
83. R.W. Davies, “The Investigation of Some Crimes in Roman Egypt,” Ancient Society 3 (1973), pp. 199–212. See his notes for references to specific papyri.
84. P. Gen. Lat. 1 quoted ibid.
85. Website: Ibid. River police here would be the Alexandrian fleet. Davies cites P. Gen. Lat. 1 = CIA 7 = Fink 1971 nos. 9 and 10.
86. Isaac, Limits of Empire, p. 175.
87. Macmullen, Soldier and Civilian, pp. 52–3. For local policing in Roman Egypt, see O. Hirschfeld, “Die aegyptische Polizei der römischen Kaiserzeit nach Papyruskunden”, Sitz. Berlin Akad (1892), p. 3; N. Hohlwein, “La Police des villages égyptiens à l’époque romaine: ‘Hoi phulakes’,” Musée Belge 9 (1905), pp. 394–9; N. Hohlwein, “La Police des villages égyptiens à l’époque romaine; demosioi tes homes,” Musée Belge 9 (1905), pp. 189–95.
88. Davies, “Investigation of Some Crimes”.
89. Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 4.17; 6.41.
90. R. Macmullen, Enemies of the Roman Order (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 165–6.
91. Philo, In Flaccum 109ff.; Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 159.
92. Website: Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.18–24; 4.24, 11.33, 18.17, 19.7–9, 29.5–6, 30.2; 2.6.18–19, 13.22, 19.18; 3.8.2, 24, 29; 4.1.60 and 132–137.
93. Epictetus describes Gyara as a place where “men have no means of living in accordance with nature.” Discourses 1.25.20; 2.6.22; 3.24.100ff.; 4.4.34.
94. Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, p. 161.
95. Website: Ibid., p. 74.
96. Website: Ibid., pp. 77–9.
97. F. Millar, “Condemnation to Hard Labor in the Roman Empire from the Julio-Claudians to Constantine,” PBSR 52 (1984), pp. 128–47, points out that the development of custodial penalties involving the subjection of free people to beatings, fettering, and hard labor represents a radical innovation both in the coercive capacities of the state and in the attitude toward individuals.
98. Suetonius, Div. Jul. 56.7. Cf. F. Romer, CJ 75 (1980), p. 360; M. Reinhold (ed.), The Golden Age of Augustus (Toronto: Samuel Stevens, 1978), pp. 66–8, “From Freedom of Speech to Censorship.”
99. Seneca, Rhet. Contr. 10, praef. 4–5, 8. F. Romer, AJPh 103 (1982), p. 353; Starr, Civilization and the Caesars, pp. 216–17; Raaflaub and Samons, “Opposition to Augustus,” pp. 439–40.
100. Tacitus, Annals 1.72. F. Romer, AJPh 103 (1982), p. 353; Raaflaub and Samons, “Opposition to Augustus,” p. 441.
101. Appian, Civil Wars 5.132.
102. Tacitus, Annals 4.34–35. Cf. F. Romer AJPh 103 (1982), p. 353; Raaflaub and Samons, “Opposition to Augustus,” p. 438.
103. See K. Raaflaub (ed.), Opposition et résistances à l’empire l’Auguste à Trajan (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1987), pp. 46–55.
104. See ibid., p. 436, n. 84 with references.
105. MacMullen, Enemies of Roman Order, p. 163.
106. Website: Ibid., pp. v-vi.
107. Syme, Roman Revolution, p. 486; “Livy and Augustus,” HSCP 64 (1959), p. 72.
108. Suetonius, Julius 20; Aug. 36, 54.
109. Raaflaub and Samons, “Opposition to Augustus,” p. 443, n. 110.