Some Imperatorial Salutations

I. CAESARS HEIR could not expect ever to surpass the triple pomp of 29 B.C., and he did not bother to celebrate a triumph again, even for his much advertised subjugation of Spain, when he took the field for the last time. Caesar Augustus knew other ways of remaining supreme in military prestige or moving towards a monopoly. Restraint offered an argument and pretext for curbing the pretensions of others. Proconsuls were permitted triumphs in the first years of the new dispensation when normal government ostensibly returned. But none after 19 B.c. Though proconsuls may still take salutations and acquire the title of "iniperator," the source and nature of their authority is deemed inferior to that of Caesar Augustus. The relation finds expression in a document of A.D. 6 that records a war in Africa terminated by a proconsul: auspiciis imp. Caesaris Aug....... ductu Cossi Lentuli.1 Doctrine had developed-and it could always be interpreted for the benefit of ruler and dynasty. The Princeps acquired (in 19 B.C.) the semblance or equivalent of a consul's authority, since he was then empowered to bear in Rome the twelve fasces of his imperium over provinces and armies.2 In the meantime a novel type of imperium emerged. In the year 23 Augustus' mandate over his provincia was severed from the tenure of the consulship. That was not in itself an innovation: it declares the ruler heir and successor to the holders of extraordinaria imperia in the last epoch of the Republic. He might now have adopted the title pro consule. It was not good enough for Caesar Augustus. The crisis of that year produced another phenomenon. M. Agrippa was associated in the provincial imperium of Caesar. Nowhere explicit in the literary sources, it is deduced from various facts.3 Invested with the imperium of a proconsul, which was manifest through the twelvefasces (as against five for Caesar's legatus pro praetore), Agrippa was qualified to take an imperatorial salutation-and hence perhaps be awarded a triumph. Two episodes are recorded by Cassius Dio.4 First, in 19 the Senate, on injunction from Augustus, voted a triumph for the war in