Thread by @MalvagioMarco

"Roman Emperor" seems as high a title as you can imagine in western history.
But even during the empire, for a long time there was no such thing as a roman emperor.
Or so the emperor would claim.
👑A THREAD ABOUT THE ROMAN ABSOLUTELY-NOT-EMPEROR.👑

Popular immagination: the roman emperor is a guy dressed in gold and purple on some throne that might or not be of human bones, ordering more christians fed to the lions and possibly strumming his lira while burning the city.

But if you asked Augustus, the very first emperor, what his job was, he'd mumble something about "first senator", "high priest", "tribune of the people", "really, I was just passing here", "look, there a squirrel!"

He WAS called "imperator" (from which "emperor"), but at the time it was "just" the title for a victorious commander. Definitely cool, but nowhere as high as "emperor" sounds to us.
So a time traveller willing asking about his job would have to say "king".

Time traveler: "but wait aren't you the king?"
Augustus: "king? A KING? WHERE IS HE? WE'LL FIND HIM AND EXECUTE HIM IN THE NAME OF THE REPUBLIC!"
TT: "The... republic? Aren't we in the..."
Augustus: "in the glorious roman republic! I love republics!"

Mind you, this was entirely propaganda. Augustus, and every emperor after him, was an autocrat backed by the army.
But officially, the republic was still 100% there!
He just happened to hold *a lot* of offices!
He even made a scene of being "forced" to accept them.

(there's some especially weird anecdote about him stripping off his toga and begging NOT to receive some further title. I interpret that as "Augustus playing the twink card")

In modern US terms (we're all depressingly familiar with US politics), it's like a guy saying "hey I'm a great supporter of democracy! I just happen to be president for life, VP for life, speaker of House and Senate, Supreme Court, and Surgeon General just to be sure."

That didn't mean emperors accepted any real limitation on his personal power. But it wasn't just a random hypocrisy either.
See, the Roman's fondative myth they were super-proud about was kicking the kings out of Rome.
Calling yourself "king" was absolute political taboo.

When Augustus won the civil war and became sole ruler of the empire, he had a problem: how to do everything Caesar did, but avoid the final stabbing?
Since the guy was slimy as fuck, his strategy was to (emphatically) pretend he wasn't ruling.

Senators weren't fooled, of course, and realized the guy who commanded all the armies, handed out offices and gave everyone orders wasn't the janitor, no matter how much he insisted.
But they could keep face: they were formally respected, and hey, the republic was there.

Augustus was clever and charismatic, consolidating personal power and making the Republic an empty shell, but always kept the legal fiction.
Some of his successors were, err, less suble.
That became an enduring source of tension between emperors and senate.

"Augustus" itself was a title made up by, well, Augustus (whose personal name was Julius Caesar, and is called "Octavian" by historians to avoid confusion with that other JC).
It became the main title for emperors, but its meaning was conveniently vague!

So for a long time there was no clear legal description of what the emperor did or *was*.
Still, emperors had so much power they could do what he wished - and some of Augustus' successors liked to make the point.

You might know of Caligula naming his horse a consul (didn't happen, but maybe he suggested it), Domitianus gifting senators *their own gravestones* as souvenirs (quite possibly happened, I love him), or Nero burning the city while singing (didn't happen).

Beside the specific urban legends, those were all stories about the same thing: emperors asserting their power over the senate.
Since most historical sources are from senators, if you know an emperor as "a monster", it mostly means he didn't play well with the senate.

It took 90 years of awkward unofficial dictatorship for an emperor to say "can we cut the crap, please?" and pass a law which basically said he could do whatever he wished - recognizing that was Augustus and the others had always been doing anyway.

(senators, by then, were probably relieved - none of them had actually *seen* the republic when it was a republic, and no matter how strong their anti-autoritharian political culture, after so much time it couldn't be taken very seriously)

Still, the most effective roman emperors tried to cooperate with the senate, and in general stressed that they were just regular people (don't mind the town-sized villas).
That helped them get the cooperation of the elite, but had some drawbacks.

One such drawback: after the empire had a series of crises in late 2nd centuries, the generals started thinking, "wait, the emperor is a regular guy with an army? know who else is a regular guy with an army? me! What a coincidence!"

100 years of military coups followed, which devastated the empire, and the western part never fully recovered.
Till Diocletian said "KNOW WHAT? YOU HAD IT WRONG, THE EMPEROR ABSOLUTELY ISN'T A REGULAR GUY, OK?". He was the first emperor to die of old age in 100 years or so.

Another drawback of the not-officially-monarchy: some of the empire's subjects REALLY weren't into republican rule.
In the East, they liked their rulers strong.
And egyptian religion *required* a pharaoh, no matter if a foreigner, to keep the cosmic order.

Egyptians: "You're the guy in charge now? Perfect, you're the pharaoh!"
Augustus: "See, now... you could think of me more like... in a sense..."
Egytians: "ALL HAIL THE PHARAOH! RULER OF ALL MEN! EQUAL TO THE GODS!"
Augustus: "Ok whatever just please please keep your voice low!"

And so the same guy who insisted he was no king and pretended to accept any title with reluctance, jusr so happened to be PHARAOH, too.
Pictured: the humble guarantor of the Republic, Caesar Augustus.

given the huge prestige of the roman emperors, their titles - created to sound unimpressive - became extremely prestigious later.
Emperor, prince, zar, kaiser - they all come from there, trying to draw prestige from the roman emperors.

Bonus: the senators were well aware of how a sham the Republic was.
Reportedly, Emperor Claudius grew frustrated with how supine the the Senate was, and exorted them to to debate and vote, instead of just rubber-stamping his orders.

A senator answered: "great, but will you vote first? Because otherwise, we might accidentally vote wrong."

Enjoyed this? I have more!

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