>>>>In the aftermath of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, when the Senate was deliberating whether or
not to execute the conspirators, Julius Caesar gave a speech that warned his colleagues about
the risks of political innovation, of breaking with constitutional tradition. He warned that
someday there would come a politician who wasn't a Cicero and who would aim at a more
royal kind of power. And that man was Julius Caesar himself, that's the irony of Caesar's
speech in the histories of Sallust. Julius Caesar would represent the figure who brought
the Roman Republic to an end and inaugurated what we can call the Imperial period of Rome,
and so in this lesson we begin to turn from the Republican period of Rome the period when
Rome was a res publica ruled without a king since 509 BC with its mixed constitution with
its magistrates forming a royal element, with its Senate forming an aristocratic and its
assemblies forming a popular or democratic element in the constitution. This system,
this balanced constitution had been unbalanced since the age of Tiberius Gracchus. There
had always been tension within the Roman political and social order, but from the age of Tiberius
Gracchus begin a series of civil wars that turned into social conflicts over the distribution
of wealth and property between the senatorial classes who wished to control the ship of
state, through the Senate and their enormous wealth, and through the common people who
inhabited the great cities like Rome, who staffed the Imperial armies, and who were
often desperately at the mercy of the wealthy landowning classes. And these tensions would
continue to manifest themselves in a series of civil wars that with recur again and again
reaching their climax in the lifetime of Julius Caesar, who defeated the forces under the
command of the general Pompey, Pompey the Great, once the greatest military figure in
Rome until he himself was overshadowed by the rise of his rival-- Julius Caesar. Julius
Caesar was a great populist leader. In fact, he comes out of the tradition of Tiberius
Gracchus even although less radically, that of Catiline. Julius Caesar represented the
interests of the common man in Roman society. Julius Caesar represented the victory of the
popular element over the oligarchic faction of the Senate. Although Caesar himself was
of illustrious ancestry, he more than any political figure in his time had the support
of the common person and represented the triumph of the common interests in the Roman state.
And so when we imagine the end of the Republic and the rise of the monarchies although it
would not be a monarchy in name, but only in fact, imagine this as the triumph of the
common person over the senatorial factions over the oligarchy of the Senate. For that
is how Julius Caesar rose to power. Julius Caesar had himself declared perpetual dictator.
In fact in the Roman constitutional system, dictator is an emergency office that can be
used in desperate times of conflict. A six-month term of office, so there's precedent for a
dictator but Caesar has himself declared perpetual dictator. Again it's one of these kinds of
constitutional innovations that we see in the last century of the Roman Republic. Caesar
had himself declared perpetual dictator but again, just as Tiberius Gracchus had been
assassinated in a senatorial coup by a band of senators who believed that he was aspiring
after royal power, so too rumor began to spread through Rome that Julius Caesar was intent
on claiming himself King. And on March 15 in the year 44 BC he too was assassinated,
stabbed to death by a band of senatorial conspirators. But the death of Caesar did not see the rebirth
of the Republic. It did not see even a return to dominance of the Senate. Instead, after
the death of Caesar, there was another round of civil wars that were won very quickly by
the supporters of Caesar: his adopted son Octavius and his lieutenant Marc Anthony,
who would come to dominate the Roman state. Marc Anthony would assassinate our friend
Cicero for opposing his tyranny, but never again would the Senate truly dominate Roman
politics. Ultimately, Marc Antony and Octavian would struggle amongst themselves for control
of the Roman state, and in 31 Octavian would defeat Anthony at a climactic naval battle
at Actium and would become the sole ruler of the Roman world. Octavian would eventually
have himself declared Augustus. He would take on the name Augustus, which means the holy
one, the revered one, the sacred one. He would take a title, Imperator, which meant general,
a man with absolute military command. He would accrue other titles: Princeps, the prince,
the first citizen, but he would never take the title of rex-- king. Nevertheless Augustus
established a monarchy in effect. He left the Senate and the assemblies in existence,
but in reality these were no more than what has been called a constitutional façade.
And in fact Augustus, the Roman Emperor, was the true seat of Roman power, and for the
next five centuries what we called the Imperial period Rome would be ruled by a monarch. Not
a king but an Emperor, and so this period of Roman history is called the Imperial period.
It's one of the great periods of Roman history even though Rome was longer a Republic, she
was an extraordinary state. An Empire seated in Rome, seated in Italy, but that would control
the entire Mediterranean world. One of the history's great empires lasting for centuries.
It was a period of extraordinary prosperity and it was a period of law. We call this period
the Classical period of Roman law. The famous Roman Law system, which has influenced across
the millennia nearly all other Western legal systems flourishes as never before, because
the Roman emperors rule according to the rule of law. They are careful, punctilious, in
their observance of the rule of law. They placed tremendous authority in the figure
of the jurist. That is the figure of legal professionals who can interpret the law, and
help the monarchs, help the emperors themselves create and shape Roman law. So the age of
monarchy these popular monarchies that emerge out of the late Republic, are also the greatest
age of Roman law. They're an age of the rule of law and an age of individual freedom. There's
a passage in classical Roman law that says: "Freedom, libertas is the natural power of
a man to do as he pleases." Think about that definition in terms of some conversations
that we've had throughout this course. That is a classic liberal definition of freedom.
Libertas is a man's power of living as he pleases and that's the ideal of the rule of
law under the Roman emperors. They believe that they protect the freedom of ordinary
people across this empire by enforcing the law that protects their liberty, their right
to do as they please. Think back to the conversations we have going back to the Greeks to Isaiah
Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty." One, a positive kind of liberty--power of the citizen
to govern himself. The other a negative liberty, the absence of coercion, the ability to do
as you please and this is the model of freedom that is embodied in Roman law and that flourishes
in the Roman Empire under the rule of the great emperors who rule this Mediterranean
empire.