Ancient & Modern | 19 January 2008

‘Change’ is the latest buzzword of contemporary politics.

Change is, of course, quite meaningless until one knows what (precisely) is being changed and to (precisely) what; and, for a government in power for ten years, it leaves hanging in the air the objection, ‘If you want to keep on changing things, it rather suggests that you have kept on getting things wrong.’

The Romans had a terror of change. ‘Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque’, /intoned the epic poet Ennius — ‘Rome’s foundations are its tried and tested values and its men’ — and even when the going was at its roughest, Romans went out of their way to deny that change had happened at all. The most stunning example of this is the moment when, to Romans’ utter horror, the Republic collapsed in bloodshed and Augustus emerged as sole ruler.

But the idea of kingship was anathema to Romans; indeed, it was hatred of the Etruscan kings that had led them to found the Republic some five hundred years earlier. Had they regressed to where they started? Not a bit of it. Augustus — sole ruler? What an absurd idea, he proclaimed. Far from ushering in a new order, he said, his victory in 31 BC over the forces of evil in the shape of Antony and Cleopatra announced not the demise but the restoration of the Republic. To prove it, in 27 BC he handed his (purely temporary, of course) powers and territories back to the Senate, and put in place the usual machinery of Republican government, election of officials, senators, consuls and so on. Admittedly, he was given permanent consular power, but when Augustus came to summarise his position he said ‘I excelled everyone in influence (‘auctoritas’), but had no more power (‘potestas’) than others of my colleagues in their various positions.