Augustus' moral decrees were mainly preconditions for the emergence of four important conditions, namely, the strengthening of social power since the middle and late period of the city-state, the disintegration of city-state society and the destruction of public order, changes in the content and nature of laws, and the diversified development of social morality.
The strengthening of political power in Rome
There are different definitions of the nature of the city-state in classical, anthropological and historical studies, and in recent years, the young British scholar Belant has put forward the controversial view that the city-state is a stateless society. In this regard, Aristotle in the Greek world in the 4th century BC also believed that the state is the natural state of human society that does not need to be explained.
From this, we can at least draw a simple conclusion: the early city-state society did not have public power strong enough to interfere in the internal affairs of its members' families, and that the political situation was largely an appendage of society, far from being the later social administrator.
As Gulange puts it, the city-state is a kind of union (a union of these communities). Thus, for many centuries before, the city-state had to respect the religious beliefs of families, tribes, and tribes, and it had no right to interfere with the internal affairs of these small groups. It cannot meddle in the affairs of the family, it cannot judge the affairs of the family, and the right and duty to judge the wife, sons, and protectors belong to the father, which is why the individual rights established in the era of the family's independence and self-sufficiency can remain unchanged in the city-state until the late period.
Because of this, the constraints on morality in the city-state era came mainly from social customs and people's interrelationships, not from laws. However, the situation changed at the end of the Republic. Long before Augustus issued moral decrees, dictators such as Qinna, Sulla, and Caesar regulated economic, social, moral, and family affairs in different forms (mainly in the form of legislation), relying on the increasing public power of the Roman authorities since the end of the Republic.
In the early days of the Roman city-state, religion used to control the political situation and society of the city-state as the highest form of social organization, and the power of officials at all levels was closely related to religion, such as high-ranking officials who could divinate and be able to preside over major sacrificial ceremonies; Unwritten law was distinctly religious when interpreted by the aristocracy and high-ranking officials; Foreign affairs such as war are also often profoundly influenced by religion.
In contrast, in the late city-state, there was a social regulation of folk sacrifices and religious worship such as the Dionysian Sacrifice. In the reign of Augustus, we can clearly see that the revival of the Roman religion required more dependence on the support of the Roman political situation, mixed with certain political wishes.
For example, the ritual of cleansing and the religious feast of the city-state were held in accordance with the wishes of the Fuhrer (Augustus himself was the supreme priest, and the religious office was his first and last important official position), which Gulange believed was "still regarded by the Romans as a religious ceremony, which in the eyes of the administrators was a good way of administering".
That is to say, the society of the Roman city-state for a long time achieved autonomy through the coordination of family relations and religious restraint, and could not require social supervision. So what caused the political power of the city-state to expand?
The ancient Roman writer Eutrobius mentioned in the "Outline of the History of the Roman State" that after the establishment of military tribunes during the Carmenes period, the Roman state apparatus expanded due to war; The Florentine scholar Machiavelli argued in his On Livy that it was the plebeians in the city-state that contributed to the development and institutional integrity of the Roman state.
In Roman Imperialism, Tenny Frank argues that it was the plebeians who promoted the military expansion of the Roman state in order to share land and equal rights; In The Ancient City-State, Gulangje argues that the inhabitants other than the full holders of the rights of the city-state contributed to the disintegration of the city-state.
From the views of these scholars and the arguments in favor of them, we can conclude that the expansion of Roman political power was the result of the general pursuit of social equality by the Roman people, especially those who could not enjoy and fully enjoyed the rights granted by the city-state. Because in the previous city-state organization only a few true citizens enjoyed these rights, only a smaller number of "patriarchs" and senators and aristocrats enjoyed the social authority that influenced the entire city-state.
In the development of the Roman city-state, society had the greatest potential to give everyone broad and equal rights. So thanks to the expansion of social power, people think that they can get more equal rights. Similarly, some people of aristocratic origin in the city-state were not satisfied with the slow accumulation of social authority and the constraints of checks and balances under the republic, and expected to obtain faster, more direct, and effective social power.
All this contributed to the growing power of the political situation, which enabled Augustus to complete the political situation of moral decrees in the imperial era to regulate social behavior. On the surface, the law regulates morality, but in the Roman Empire, where the judiciary and legislation were not independent, it was the political situation that regulated society.
The loss of the ability of Roman society to regulate
Corresponding to the expansion of political power was the disintegration of traditional city-state society and the destruction of public order. Albert Einstein said, "Our theories determine what we can see." The class struggle theory of Mahara historiography can be solved
To explain the causes of the disintegration of traditional Roman society, Max Weber's theory of social class can analyze the manifestations and characteristics of social disintegration. As Lenin put it in his application of Ma Yuan's theory, "The state is the product and expression of irreconcilable class contradictions."
The so-called upper oligarchy, the high-ranking officials of the Roman Republic, were monopolized by more than two dozen noble families, who controlled the real power of the Roman state. Several of the autocrats in the three civil wars reflected the union of noble families, such as Augustus, who ruled as the head of the state, and the union of Julia and Claudius, on which Caesar's dictatorship depended.
From the time of the conquest of Sicily and the adoption of the provincial rule model of the Syracuse king Hilo, Rome's major aristocratic families became keen to obtain local and central power from the constraints of the city-state society. This kind of power from politics is so convenient, fast, effective, and unconstrained by tradition, that it does not need to coexist for a long time, repeatedly play and brew enough ethical colors like social authority, and it is not necessary to show noble virtue and achieve considerable results in public affairs to obtain it.
Some of the Roman nobles who wanted to gain power also hoped to profit from it, from nobles who must have social authority but not necessarily political power to magnates who must have political power but not necessarily social authority. Some aristocratic individuals and their families who gained special power at a special time gained control of the Roman state within a certain period of time, such as the Scipio family, which grew up in the two Punic Wars, and they began the oligarchization of the ruling class of the Republic.
Of the 200 consuls elected by Rome between 234 and 133 BC, 159 were from 26 nouveau riche families. Among them, representatives of the House of Cornelius served as consuls 23 times, Emilius 11 times, Fabius 9 times, Fulvius 10 times, and Claudius 9 times. During this period, 26 nouveau riche families actually monopolized Roman politics.
The monopoly of political power has caused these elites to use their privileges in industry and commerce to obtain wealth, resulting in rampant corruption and corruption. In the increasingly fierce social struggles and armed conflicts at the end of the Roman Republic, social customs and norms became less and less restrictive for the upper rulers.
If the military leaders in the struggle between Sulla and Malleus were more or less concerned with morality and law, then by the time the civil war between Caesar and Pompey broke out, only law and no morality were concerned, and by the time Octavian and Antony broke out again, their scruples about morality and law were rare.
The so-called lower class populism refers to the increasing burden on small landowners since the direct destruction of the Hannibal War and the pressure of widespread military conscription. The yeomanry, which constituted the cells of Roman society, became increasingly difficult and eventually went bankrupt and had to leave the land.
Some of them wandered to the city of Rome to become proletarians, while some ventured to the provinces and border areas to survive. As Roman domination expanded, competition in grain production in the provinces hindered the revitalization of Italian agriculture. With the emergence of new farms, the Italian farming system was changed, and the intensive cultivation of the manor system brought about the prosperity of olive, grape and other cultivation.
This requires operators to increase capital input and labor use of land, and the formation of a class of large property owners and slave owners has promoted this development process, making the small producer class further desperate and even more unable to bear the burden on its own. Widespread poverty among small producers. The yeomanry class gradually tended to shrink, the gap between the rich and the poor widened in society, and social contradictions became increasingly acute.
The social crisis led to a political crisis, which soon led to the rise of populism. When bankrupt peasants try to take provincial risks, become idle-blowing urban proletarians, and the assailants who have become the state and the elites cannot really solve the problem of survival, some of them try to change the status quo in radical ways. Coupled with the instigation of ambitious charismatic leaders (from the commoner upper class or the nobility), Roman innovation became possible.
Cicero once said that after the reform of the Gracchus brothers, the people of Rome and the senate were divided, and in fact this division of social classes gradually appeared before this, only to become more uncontrollable after the failure of the Gracchus reforms. In the original Roman city-state society, the senate, a semi-political committee, could rely on its own authority to create and disseminate ideology (including traditional morality), play a social reconciliation function, and repair the antagonism and contradiction of various ethnic groups and classes.
The senators and aristocrats, as the most recognized leaders in production and lifestyle in the Roman city-state society and the successful creators of social material wealth, were also the producers, disseminators and moral models of the mainstream ideology of society, and naturally formed an elder-like authority over ordinary people in Rome in a long-term coexistence.
As a result of social division, the senators and aristocrats were increasingly unrecognized by an increasingly diverse and radical society in terms of material wealth creation and ideological output, and their social authority was weakened, gradually losing the trust of the Roman people.
The disintegration of Roman city-state society was the root cause of the disruption of public order, but the direct cause came from the many large-scale civil wars in the last years of the Republic and the continuous street riots, violent clashes, and murders. Similar to the description of "the thief of virtue" in the Analects, some people use the extreme and populist emotions of the people to provoke violent acts that undermine social order and trample on social morality.
It was precisely the military dictators and populist demagogues who wanted to cooperate in seizing state power that provoked these conflicts that destroyed public order in Roman society, and then the union of the two. Examples include Marius and Saturninus (and then Surpicius), Caesar and Claudius, Pompey and Tribune Myro.
Among them, Claudius relied on the recruitment of slaves as swordsmen and guards, illegally organized rogue armies in his own service, and they arbitrarily violated all rules and public order, and set off street violence that made most people despair of society. At the same time, on the one hand, he connived at the blatant trampling on morality of rogue proletarians, and on the other hand, he prevented interference from the Senate and accusations of immoral behavior by the Ombudsman.
What is even more frightening is the efforts of these demagogues to make it impossible for any interference by the power of the authorities and social authorities to maintain the stability of public order. Even under the management of generals who were often victorious on the battlefield such as Pompey and Malleu, the Roman republican political situation and society could not do anything, and could only sacrifice the killer weapon of the army.
It has to be admitted that as the crisis deepens, people's desire is increasingly inclined to a coercive force to maintain social stability and peace. Augustus is a classic example of a charismatic leader, and he himself succeeded in combining military dictatorship and popular leadership, supported by both the nobility and the people. However, the most serious act of disrupting social order during the civil war was the civil liquidation of the latter three heads, of which Augustus himself was the most determined executor, which almost completely destroyed social morality itself and its foundation.