Principate
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| Topics in Roman government | |
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| Roman Kingdom | |
| Roman Republic | |
| Roman Empire | |
| Principate | Dominate |
| Western Empire | Byzantine Empire>Eastern Empire |
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| Extraordinary magistrates: | |
| Offices, titles, and honorifics: | |
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The Principate is, according to its etymological derivation from the Latin word princeps, meaning chief or first, the political regime dominated by such a political leader, whether or not he is formally head of state and/or head of government.
The title, in full princeps senatus / princeps civitatis, was first adopted by Octavian Caesar Augustus (r. 27 BC-AD 14), the first Roman 'Emperor', who chose - like the assassinated dictator for life, Julius Caesar, who had formally refused the crown - not to (re)introduce a legal monarchy, but to establish the political stability desperately needed after the exhausting civil wars by a de facto regime within the constitutional framework of the republic, which had been devised precisely as an alternative to the hated early kingdom. Although dynastic pretences crept in from the start, formalising this in a monarchic style remained constitutionally unthinkable.
Often, in a more limited and precise chronological sense, the term is specifically applied the earlier of the two phases of 'imperial' government in the ancient Roman Empire since Augustus claimed auctoritas for him, as princeps, until Rome's military collapse in the West (fall of Rome) in 476, leaving the Byzantine empire sole heir.
Under this 'Principate stricto sensu', the political reality of autocratic rule by the Emperor was still scrupulously masked by forms and conventions of oligarchic self-rule inherited from the political period of the 'uncrowned' Roman Republic (509 BC-27 BC) under the motto SPQR. As the theory implied the 'first citizen' had to earn his in law extraordinary position -de facto evolving to nearly absolute monarchy- by similar merit, the imperial propaganda developed a 'paternalistic' ideology, trying to present the Princeps as the very incarnation of all virtues attributed to the ideal ruler, much like a Greek tyrannos earlier, such as clemency and justice. It was a political insurance as well as a moral duty for the emperor to be seen to be generous, not just as a good ruler but also from his personal fortune, as in the proverbial panem et circenses (largely using various public games -not just gladiators and horse races, also artistic- and distributions of food, charitable institutions, de facto public works etcetera as popularity boosters, in the way of the Greek leitourgia -called munera in Latin- and the republican election campaigns).
This first phase was to be followed by, or rather evolved into, the so-called dominate, in which the emperor became styled dominus ('master'), so the constitutionally sovereignty-sharing citizens became regarded as his subjects, more like the oriental tradition within hellenism. This process is often seen as starting with the emperor Domitian, when oriental type of styles like dominus (Lord, Master) became current (though not legal), but there could by definition never be a clear, constitutional turning point, so this appreciation remains subjective, the reality is gradual development. After the Crisis of the Third Century almost resulted in the Empire's political collapse, the Emperor Diocletian replaced the one-headed Principate with the tetrarchy (circa 300 AD), in which the remaining pretense of the old Republican forms was largely done away with (he no longer used the style Princeps), as well as the territorial unity of the empire. The Dominate developed more and more, especially in the Byzantine empire, along the lines of an oriental absolute monarchy, where the subjects, and even diplomatic allies, could be termed servus or doulos 'servant/slave' to express the exalted position of the Emperor as second only to God, and on earth to none- except when reality took over, e.g. a victorious Persian ruler Chosroes was addressed with much more respect.
Sources and references
- Pauly-Wissowa (in German)
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