After winning the post-Caesar civil war, Octavian wanted to assure the Roman aristocracy and masses of the return of normalcy, meaning peace and republican procedure in rule. He began with gestures in this direction. Octavian disbanded the majority of the mobilized war-era legions, annulled illegal orders, and declared an amnesty for most civil-war actors, with the exception of Mark Antony's chief lieutenants at Actium. Reversing a Caesarian measure, Octavian also reduced the Senate in two phases, from 1000 to 800, and then finally to 600, endearing the older Rome aristocracy in the process. In 28 BCE Octavian and his friend Agrippa were joint consuls. For the first time in twenty years, the consuls stayed at home and engaged in no major military campaigns. AS well, they conducted a census, for the first time in seventy years. All this was in an effort to restore popular confidence in the mechanisms of state; the initial success of these measures is indicated in the rise in interest......
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Approximate Word Count: 2721
Approximate Pages: 11 (260 words per double-spaced page) |