History Memes

First, thanks for the excellent write-up.

Always happy to contribute a little entertainment! Gods know the trivia trapped in my head isn't worth much else XD

Second, wow, it’s honestly impressive ancient Romans could come up with a system this fucked up.

Oh, yeah, the whole thing is a tangled mess. Like, Rome's extremely organic development from a city-state to an Empire without a grand plan or overarching ideology or coherent ruling class gave it some very unique advantages, but also meant that the whole thing was also a fucking mess. Just an absolute rat's nest of 'temporary' solutions and conflicting ideas. Especially as a very militarized state to begin with, they had a hammer and they saw so many problems as nails.

One thing I don’t get: De facto the office of the Emperor was obviously a thing, but de jure what was the Emperor? Like what, if anything, was the legal cover for (if I understand this right) a military dictator running the show in what is ostensibly a republic?

Essentially, the Emperor held mostly traditional powers (some in novel offices, but new offices were not inherently unconstitutional) that were wholly in line with the traditional laws of the republic.

The issue that made the Emperor so powerful is that these powers were all invested in different offices, which were supposed to be held by different men - while the Emperor simply held all of them. It would be like, if you'll forgive the Americentrism, someone was elected President in the US, but then also claimed the top positions in Congress and the Supreme Court. Even if those powers were not technically autocratic, the fact that they're all invested in one person means that they have such immense political power that they are effectively an autocrat.

Most notably, the Emperor held the traditional powers of a Censor (removing and adding Senators - I imagine you can see how THAT power alone is massive), People's Tribune (giving them the power to veto and introduce legislation to the Senate), High Priest (which gave them a lot of power to start or stop the Senate on procedural issues, since the Romans were very superstitious), and Proconsular Imperium (meaning, essentially, command of the armies, also a massive power, and often causing the Emperor to be referred to as 'Imperator' - 'Commander', where the English word 'Emperor' comes from).

In addition, the first Emperor, Augustus, used the chaos of the Civil War to seize a great deal of valuable property, which was then owned by him, personally. From that point on, the Emperor's heir (whether chosen by the previous Emperor or by coup or civil war) came into possession of this vast estate, which was used, as private property at the Emperor's sole behest, to fund the Roman Empire purely as the Emperor wished it - ie the Emperor controlled probably a good fourth of the budget of the entire Empire without any outside input. This is in part because taxes were generally low, but any way you slice it, that's a huge amount of influence. Control by dangling the purse strings...

So basically, the Emperor wasn't legally unassailable, but was in a position of such immense influence that going against the Emperor meant he had a hundred different ways to make your life miserable, so he was practically in total, autocratic control of the state.

And not only that, but since that amount of power meant that few people were willing to call him out on actual oversteps of his legal authority, the Emperor could also illegally make your life miserable - or end - though this had political consequences, and Emperors who overused this would often end up fighting conspiracies from the Senate who preferred a dead Emperor to living in constant fear of their lives.

Hurting people by the rules, however unfair those rules are, is one thing - it's predictable, people have some idea of what and why it's going to happen. Hurting people by arbitrary fiat makes people nervous, and desperate.

In line with the 'same person, different offices' thing that shows how seriously, and bizarrely, the Romans took the letter of the law but not necessarily the spirit, there's an Romano-Egyptian official of the 2nd century AD who has an interesting situation that survived. He had to take over the office of his temporarily absent superior, and in doing so was required to write requests to himself (addressed as the holder of the superior office), and then approve those same requests from himself (addressed as the holder of the subordinate office) in order for his actions, in both offices, to be lawful. Very Kafkaesque.

So emperor wasn't exactly a title at first. It just kind of evolved over time. I'm going off of memory from college lectures here.

I think it took about 300 years after Cesar for the term emperor to be applied. There was Imperator but that was a title given by the soldiers and lost after they had a triumph.

IIRC the main original legal power was they could order the death of anybody in the empire. Like in the meme lots of other unofficial powers arise because of the implications.

Hey guy who can legally have me killed. We are planning on passing this law. I would love to hear if you have any objections. Because of the implications.