Abstract

At the Seventh Congress of German Historians held at Heidelberg in April, 1903, Prof. Eduard Meyer delivered an address on the subject of Augustus, in which he expressed his view that the restitution of the republic was a genuine act of renunciation. ‘Augustus desired to dwell among his fellow-citizens not as a ruler but as a citizen, of course as the first among them all, as the princeps, like Camillus and the Scipios of old.’ If with Mommsen you described the dual control of Caesar and Senate as a Dyarchy you ought not to forget that’ of the two the Senate in theory held complete predominance,1 the Emperor was ‘its executive, or as Tiberius expressed it, its servant, the Senate was the master .’