Words for Board: Genius, Praetorian Guard, Rhine-Danube.

Augustus was the richest man in the world. He owned Egypt cuz he said he conquered it and so it was his, not the Roman State's. From then on, whoever was Emperor owned Egypt and got to keep the tax money for themselves. Egypt raised their culture up again and was back to being the greatest wheat grower in the world. Augustus had great power.

He reorganized the Roman Senate. He made regular membership qualifications. You had to be a Roman and have held certain governmental jobs and be rich. But it you were of the poor type, you still had a chance. You had to be good enough at your government job to come to Augustus' attention and he would give you the money to get in the Senate. That should have produced a high quality Senate but it didn't. Somehow, being in the Senate corrupted you no matter how good you were before you got in.

There was now an official middle class, and you could belong to it by holding certain jobs and having an amount of money. Augustus could raise you up in it with a good job. What Augustus had done is unblock the lower class. On talent, initiative and good luck you can rise in the class structure instead of plotting to overthrow it. The Assemblies of the Tribes and Centuries rubber stamped all of Augustus' policies. He had the power.

Now you get to hear about the Roman religion. In the old days, it was simple. They believed in nature spirits with no particular personalities. They said charms and prayers to get the good powers on their side and to repel the bad powers. They had ancestor worship too. When you die, your soul survives in another world. But your ancestor's souls could hang around the house and kind of look after your family. They made death masks of people when they died and hung them on the mantle to remind you your ancestor as watching. That may have been why the Roman soldiers were so good cuz they had been taught not to dishonor their ancestors. It's similar to what Japanese believe -- to not dishonor their ancestors. Romans were happy with their religion until they ran into the Greeks. The Greeks were better at everything else so the Romans were embarrassed. They swiped the Greek culture. To get the religion, Romans searched around for the nearest Roman nature spirit god that was similar to the Greek god and attached the Roman name to the Greek god. That way, they got the stories that went with the Greek gods, too. But the new religion didn't take very well. Romans just weren't very religious.

There was a new religion idea springing up. Some people wanted to worship Augustus as a god. There was a legend in the East that god was going to send somebody to straighten things out in the world. The East had been in chaos for a long time and needed straightening out. The East people thought that Augustus was it cuz he brought peace and therefore prosperity instead of war for the first time in a long time. It was a neat idea to have people worship you as a god cuz they wouldn't dare revolt against their god. But, on the other hand, some Romans would assassinate you cuz they don't believe in man/gods. Is there some compromise??? You bet, cuz Augustus could compromise anything. Romans believed everyone had something that survived their after their death called their Genius. It was similar to our concept of a soul. The Romans even knew what their genius looked like., It looked just like them!! It was their divine double. Plus a Genius lives forever and is similar to a god in that respect. If your Genius went to heaven it probably had a job and is helping run things (similar to saints). You could tell if somebody's genius was up with the big time. Everyone knew Julius Caesar's genius was in heaven and he was deified (made a god/type.) Augustus told the people in the East they couldn't worship him cuz he was a man. But they could worship his genius!! They wanted to make statues of it and asked him what it looked like?? It looked just like him!! The people in the West knew that they wouldn't worship the man and if the people in the East wanted to worship somebody's genius, it was ok with them.

Augustus made some military reforms. He has under his command a first class professional army. They were organized. But the army had been used to threaten the state by generals who wanted to take over. That problem doesn't exist cuz Augustus is the emperor and the leading general at the same time. The trick is to get the army to be loyal to the state not the leading generals. To do that, Augustus didn't pay them much and had them work on building projects in their spare (peace) time. There's nothing worse than a bored army. To be in the army, you had to sign on for 20 years, and be a Roman citizen. There were 25 legions in the army. When you get out of the army after 20 years, you get a mustering-out bonus you can take in either land or money. It was enough to retire on. You could either farm or start a business. It was their pension plan. That made them loyal to the pension promised by the state instead of following after generals. It neutralized the army. The Senate could have done that at any time–they just didn't. There were also 25 legions of auxiliary troops made up of non-citizens. They had to sign on for 25 years but they got to have Roman citizenship for them and their family after they got out. That's neat in a world where Romans run everything. It built patriotism in the country and built citizenship, too.

Augustus did make a bad military reform. He formed the Praetorian Guard. It was made up of 9000 men -- 6000 in Rome and 3000 in other cities. They were the emperor's personal bodyguards and police. To get into the Guard you had to know somebody important. It would have been ok but they only had to serve for 16 years and got twice the pay. That made them an elite group and the regular army hated them. Stockmyer predicts they will threaten emperors' lives in later years.

Rome didn't have a navy. They controlled the sea by controlling the harbors. They did have a river patrol up on the northern border. Rome ran into 2 rivers on the North -- the Rhine and the Danube. They ran East/West through Europe. There were German barbarians to the North. On the Roman side of the border, there weren't any big towns for a long time. Towns attract barbarian attacks. So Rome didn't build up there. There was forest and pasture land. The army build little forts up there. There was a river patrol that only patrolled where the river was navigable. At first barbarians could cross the border. They could do it anywhere cuz it wasn't patrolled that much. But the Romans knew they were coming and they would trap them up between 2 forts and surround them. The river patrol would back them up so nobody escaped. It wasn't so hard to invade the territory. The trick was getting out alive!! Pretty soon, the Barbarians figured it was not in their best health interests to try to invade Rome.

Augustus tried some tax reforms, too. He didn't completely destroy the old system (which he should have done). Instead, he appointed a new officer called a Procurator, who was in charge of tax collection. That meant there are 2 big officials in the provinces at the same time -- the Procurator and the governor. Their jobs overlapped and they ended up spying on each other so the system was more honest. But some provinces were so small they had no governor -- just the Procurator and they got scalped just like the old system.

Augustus wanted a shorter border to protect up North. The border was over 2400 miles long. Rome only had 600,000 troops to defend all of its borders in the world. Why didn't people revolt? Rome was better than anything they'd had. Before the Romans, they'd had princes who kept fighting. Rome brought peace and prosperity and so the people cooperated with them. If somebody was starting revolts, they got ratted on. Augustus wanted to move the border up to the Elbe river which ran north and south in Europe. That would have meant pushing out all the Barbarians on the West side of the river. That's a lot of barbarians. Augustus sent up his best troops and couldn't do it. They got beaten by the Germans. One of the sets of troops had panicked and deserted. You can't do that in a professional army. The Romans rounded up and killed every 10th one as an example.

Augustus is getting on in years. Who should succeed him?? He expected one of his sons, but he outlived them all. He had a daughter but there was no tradition for queens in Rome. That's the trouble with a one-man government -- who will succeed? If the succession doesn't go smoothly there could be civil war between 2 generals trying to get power. Augustus had a stepson named Tiberius and he forced him to marry his daughter Julia to ensure some bloodline for the succession. But it turns out Julia was weird in a kinky, awful way. Tiberius couldn't stand her and left. Augustus found out how awful Julia was (dads are always the last to know) and expelled her. Tiberius came back and became emperor in 14 AD. (One of the best things Augustus did was live long enough to get the calender running the right way. We are now in the ADs.)

Augustus had a classy state funeral. All big leaders were cremated. As the flames were roaring up from the funeral pyre, witnesses swore they saw Augustus' genius fly out of the pyre in the form of an eagle. Some of the cynics said it had been staged as special effects. There are always non-believers. He was deified by the Senate. (For sure, his genius is heaven-bound.)