User:Biz/Prinzipat und Dominat: Gedanken zur Periodisierung d. rom. Kaiserzeit

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The terms Principate and Dominant are used in modern scholarship to periodize the Roman Imperial era. They refer to two different, contrasting forms of Roman imperial rule: In the Principate, the emperor is seen as the princeps, the foremost among the senators (ordo senatorius) and therefore the highest-ranking within the politically influential class; he legitimizes his extraordinary position of power through the law - here meaning the public legal order of the Republic - and is thus, despite possessing numerous legal titles that place him above all other legal holders, still within and under the legal system. In the Dominant, however, the emperor is the Lord (dominus), no longer a colleague and peer of the aristocrats, and stands above the law; his will is the law: quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem (Dig. 1,4,1 pr.). The two periods formed by these terms each roughly encompass half of the Imperial era. The Principate extends from Augustus to the reign of Diocletian (284), while the Dominant spans from Diocletian to the end of the Roman Empire. These terms organize the Imperial era based on constitutional law, specifically: the structure of imperial power. The following discussions aim to question the validity of this periodization. They do not oppose any form of periodization of the Imperial era, not even the division set by these terms in the year 284 (although its validity is weakened by the rejection of the periodization approach), but rather the attempt to structure the Imperial era through constitutional law. The mutual reference of the terms Principate and Dominant is already found in the sources of the early Imperial era. Particularly in Tacitus and Pliny the Younger. The principality, often associated with liberty, is contrasted with dominatio (tyranny). In these statements, the mutual reference between each of the two terms is constitutive; each term only gains color and value from its counterpart.

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The researcher who brought the sharp division of imperial history into Principate and Dominat to canonical validity was Theodor Mommsen. Based on his scientific-theoretical assumptions, he only included the legally relevant elements of the Roman state order in his Roman constitutional law and therefore dealt with the Republic and only the period of Roman imperial rule for which he believed law played a role in the imperial power until the end of the 3rd century. In the first three centuries of the imperial era, the emperor is essentially an official who derives his legal power from the Senate, the highest layer formed within the senatorial aristocracy. Imperial power here is legal power, with law being the constitutive element of the emperorship. The late antique imperial rule is sharply distinguished from this. In it, the emperor is no longer princeps but dominus and is also referred to as such titularly - in address and on official documents. The law no longer binds him; he is above the law and is the source of all law. The emperorship now appears exceptionally elevated; the emperor is, among other things, separated from the people by a rigid court ceremonial, which, according to Mommsen and the scholars following him, is said to have been adopted from the Persian imperial court. Furthermore, he derives his power from the sacred consecration of his person, and even sees himself as God (deus et dominus). "The terminological transition from princeps to dominus," says Mommsen in his Roman constitutional law, "allows the inner development of the monarchy from office to lordship to be measured and traced with the greatest precision." In the outline of his constitutional law, he explains that the monarch has "unconditional and unrestricted lordship over the persons and property of all subjects."

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sit, and refers to this prerogative as the form of government", the dominus as the "state owner". Not according to the Principate, but according to the oriental Persian shah, the external appearance of the monarch is now aligned, and the official identification of rulership and divine power begins now. The majority of researchers after Mommsen have adhered to his principle of classification. Thus, to name just a few, the best connoisseur of the Roman Imperial period after him, Michael Rostovtzeff, who in his great work on society and economy in the Roman Empire stereotypically speaks of the oriental despotism" in the late antiquity, compared to which the older Imperial period is referred to as a "constitutional monarchy"; in the later Imperial period, according to him, the emperorship is an expression of a coercive institution" and means "organized violence", and in it, "the interests of the people... are sacrificed to the alleged interests of the state." In contrast, the early Imperial period appears in the golden light of political freedom, democracy, self-government, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, etc. Others, including much younger historians, such as B. Niese, E. Hohl, W. Enßlin, H. Bengtson, and G. Dulckeit, to name just a few, continue this line. The sharp division of periods based on constitutional history is much more pronounced.

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in German literature, where the legal-historical tradition has a stronger emphasis than abroad. If foreign authors set the dividing line exactly as Mommsen and the German scholars following him do, they do not primarily justify it with the changed structure of imperial power and also hardly use the terms Principate and Dominate. They rather speak of the High Empire and Low Empire, of the Later Roman Empire, etc., as is also the case in the German-speaking world with the term Late Antiquity for the later imperial period. The use of the constitutional terms Principate and Dominate for periodizing the imperial era can be rejected in various ways: first, by positively demonstrating that the form of Roman imperial rule does show development, but it continues continuously to the extent that no decisive break is noticeable and the imperial rule in this development also does not reach a fundamentally different form, secondly, by proving from the negative side that the terms princeps and dominus are unsuitable for characterizing the imperial rule of the early and late imperial periods, and finally, by explaining that the use of these terms as epochal terms can be derived from the history of science and political history of the 19th century. The following arguments from all three thought approaches will be used, but the argumentation will primarily adhere to the first of the mentioned possibilities. This will be done in a way that, based on three prominent manifestations of Roman imperial rule, which must be considered as constitutive elements of this form of rule, it will be shown how little the terms Principate and Dominate can contribute to characterizing an earlier and later imperial rule, and how much the imperial rule is rather determined by factors. will, which do not have any constitutional references in the strict sense and that also. beyond the assumed break in the 3rd century and that means: for the entire imperial period. These three factors concern the relationship of the emperor to the aristocracy, his relationship to the army, and to the sacred sphere. First, the relationship between the emperor and the aristocracy. The Roman imperial rule emerged from the noble struggles of the declining Republic: From the ruling class of the Republic, individual nobles emerged, who, supported by larger army units that formed their personal military followers, fought among themselves for political influence. Out of the struggle of the powerful, Octavian eventually emerged as the victor. But with the fact that he had defeated all rivals, a new form of the Roman state had not yet been created; because in the old, aristocratic order based on the equality of peers that Octavian had destroyed, there was no room for the dimensions of his political power.

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and a different form of government than the one in which Rome became the ruler of the world could not be imagined by anyone, and no one, not even Octavian, ever speculated about it at that time. Octavian was not a revolutionary, as is often said; because he had no idea of where and what he should revolutionize. He had been thrust into the aristocratic struggles of the time by his adoptive father Caesar and, after his victory over his rivals, initially only represented personified naked power³. The Roman aristocrats he had disempowered referred to Octavian's rule as regnum, dominatio, or tyrannis, expressing that it was the negation of state organization, and this could not have been otherwise against the background of the old republican order.

Octavian, who received the epithet Augustus in 27 BC, sought to overcome military despotism in a state act on January 13 and 16, 27 BC, by formalizing his rule, which we now call the Empire. The specific form that Augustus chose almost inevitably arose from two interdependent conditions. Augustus needed the help of the recently disempowered aristocrats or those who had taken their place (senatorial aristocracy) to administer the vast empire; only they had administrative experience and the necessary authority for administrative affairs. However, if he wanted to bring them closer to him, he had to restore the old order, and therefore the new order could only be the old one. The old, i.e., republican order had largely been clothed in the form of (public) law. It had been created by the aristocratic society of the Republic, which had governed Rome and the world for centuries, continually adapted to the expanding state, and guarded by it, and therefore it referred to it, mainly because it had the The business of the government regulated, practically on this society. The public legal order consisted of institutions and legal principles that primarily regulated the political rules within the ruling families, determined the forms of decision-making, and specified the manner in which these decisions were enforced. Augustus now positioned himself within this framework by integrating his extraordinary power into the traditional legal order. He received a series of offices, powers of office, and partial powers of offices, as well as a large number of special rights through which he could act like a republican official, including the ability to command the army personally loyal to him by law. From the perspective of the legal order, he was just an official executing the will of the (aristocratic) society. Therefore, Theodor Mommsen, who described the Roman state order as a pure legal order in his 'Roman Constitutional Law', consequently classified the emperor under the magistrates.

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It is now self-evident that the large and ever-growing bundle of imperial legal authority had to burst the magisterial framework and paralyze any decisions of other magistrates or the Senate, both because of the unusually extensive possibilities of the legal instruments granted to the Emperor, which left little room for initiative for other holders of legal authority, and because behind the Emperor's decisions there was always his military power, which he possessed independently of legal command solely based on the personal loyalty of the soldiers. The discrepancy between the outward appearance of the Emperor acting as a magistrate and the actual power relations has led many contemporaries as well as modern researchers to see the act of legal clothing of imperial power as merely an empty form or a clever move by Augustus to deceive his contemporaries. For instance, Cassius Dio, the significant historiographer from the Severan period, believed that he had to separate a formal appearance of the emperorship represented by law and good intentions of the Emperor from a real one; even Tacitus, who wrote about individual emperors arising from tensions within the aristocracy, is often inclined to see the legal clothing of the emperorship as a mere disguise of the true power relations focused on the exercise of naked force. Such assessments are occasionally found in more recent literature. However, they are not correct and do not do justice to the idea of the Principate; because they assume that the Augustan order, which referred to the Republic, wanted to disguise the monarchy or, more generally, that it sought to conceal power (including power over aristocratic society). However, this was certainly not its intention. It is indeed absurd to assume that Augustus envisioned the business of governing as a constant concealment of what everyone saw and knew, and that the senators saw their duty in always pretending to act as if, based on the old republican state law, they could do what everyone knew was impossible to do in the face of the actual power relations. Not only did everyone see the monarchy as such, but it was also widely accepted. Only once, after the assassination of the emperor.

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Gaius (41 AD), a few enthusiasts thought of the restoration of the Republic; but the dream lasted only a few hours. The clothing of imperial power in legal form had a completely different meaning than to conceal that one no longer lived in the Republic. Before the law, all persons were equal; there were indeed persons who had stronger legal authority, and the Emperor possessed the strongest legal power of all, but there were no persons of higher quality. Despite all his legal power, the Emperor remained a senator. Among the senators, he had the greatest authority, which means the greatest social prestige (this refers to the famous sentence of the res gestae c. 34, he did not have more legal power than his colleagues, but he surpassed them all in authority); he was "princeps civium," but he did not cease to be a citizen (senator): He and his house, although in possession of almost unlimited legal power and equally strong social prestige, were not excluded from the senatorial rank, and in this way, a form of rule had not been created in which a ruler sui generis stood above all others. Under the pressure of actual power relations, the complex bundle of imperial legal power quickly coalesced into a compact imperial legal power, in which the function of the individual parts was hardly visible, and law and power had almost become identical, interchangeable concepts. But this did not mean the end of the Empire as a legal order. It was crucial that the Emperors always presented themselves to the aristocracy as rulers who made their political decisions within the given legal framework; thereby, they demonstrated that as rulers, they did not stand on a level above all people (aristocrats). However, they exercised their rule not as a burden, but as princeps from within the society to which they still felt connected. Therefore, the term Principate for this form of rule. The concept of law also brought problems for the emperor. By binding his power to the concept of law, he was always called upon to act and behave below the threshold of what he was capable of doing based on his actual power. Although the position of a monarch was effectively granted to him, he could not present himself as a monarch within the concept of the Principate, that is, in relation to the aristocracy. Avoiding this was not always easy even for a well-meaning emperor, as other population groups, which will be discussed further below, showed him a naive and varied form of reverence that naturally granted the emperor the quality of a ruler. It was difficult and sometimes almost impossible for the emperor to distinguish between the various manifestations of the imperial office. This could lead to tensions, even if the emperor had not provoked them. It required a lot.

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Feeling for it, the government, which demanded the preservation of imperial authority, always had to be brought into harmony with the requirements that flowed from the concept of principate. It was true that it mattered little, and over time even less, that the emperor pedantically followed the principles of public law, and it was certainly clear to the senators that public law could no longer provide the framework for political decisions in which they were involved, but rather that they had to passively accept this legal order as a pure grant from the emperor. However, it was necessary for the emperor to at least show goodwill towards the legal order if the reconciliation between the aristocratic society and the emperor was to be maintained. It is understandable that this did not always go well. Some emperors did not understand that they could not use their power as they pleased. This even led to serious tensions and crises that resulted in the executions of senators and temporarily called into question the compromise between the emperor and the aristocracy; as a result, some senators withdrew from political life. The emperor as a tyrant became a fixed image, and it was a very short path for a ruler to sink from being a good emperor in the eyes of the senatorial aristocracy to becoming a tyrant, with many unjust judgments about individual emperors being passed down through the sources written by the senators up to our time. It should be remembered in particular that the prevailing negative image of Tiberius and Domitian, and even Emperor Gaius has not been insignificantly recorded in literature.

What does the concept of principate mean for the imperial rule, and is it suitable for characterizing a period of Roman imperial history? The principate represents a period of Roman imperial history that... One form of rule, which addresses the dominant layer of the empire and wants to be recognized by it. Through this form, it had become possible that

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this layer accepted the new ruler and under him managed the government affairs of the empire. The idea of the Principate is therefore initially a real force, namely the force that made the empire possible in the first place; because in the compromise between the emperor and the aristocracy, the monarchy (as Principate) was established. The confrontation with the aristocracy was elemental, it was even the ruler's first task, both because the influence of this layer had to be limited to a tolerable level for the ruler, and also because their authority and experience had to be preserved and utilized for the administration of the empire. Therefore, while the significance of the Principate concept for the early phase of Roman imperial rule is undisputed, the question arises as to how long this held true, or whether the confrontation of the emperor with the dominant social classes soon manifested in a different way and was driven by entirely different problems than the form of legal rule. It is to be noted, however, that starting from Augustus, but more emphatically from the Flavian period, the emperors began to build a new leadership layer, which the emperor appointed to administrative positions from the circle of those loyal to him through military service. This layer was the equestrian order, a group of individuals dependent on the emperor, freely available to him in terms of composition and use. It was explicitly intended as a counterweight to the senatorial aristocracy, and it increasingly became the bearer of imperial administration, even though senators still held most general and governor positions: Within the competencies of the governors, equestrians increasingly operated without them. With the expansion of this equestrian... The imperial administration simultaneously gained a clearer aspect of the emperorship, which had already been present since Augustus, but could now be realized through more intensive administration and the growing bureaucratic apparatus. This included the concern for the general social security of the residents of the empire, the preservation of peace through the protection and expansion of the legal system, and tax justice. These are now the major themes of the time, which the residents of the empire were also clearly aware of and enthusiastically praised. The emperor's role as the protector and liberator of the world, before whom all residents of the empire now have equal status, thus eliminating the distinction between Romans and peregrines, is now clearly highlighted. If it is correct that the emperor's partner among the upper classes increasingly became the knightly class, for whom the principate idea had little or no significance

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The viewpoint of the Roman senator, not that of the historian, should be taken. After in the turmoil of the 3rd century even the order of knights had lost weight, indeed the idea of social status had been pushed back, the gradually forming new upper class never again resorted to the idea of clothing the emperorship in a legal order and determining its relationship to the emperor from within. The new aristocracy of the 4th and 5th centuries was a complex society that, while recognizing many ranks, was no longer shaped and recognizable as before by clear formal social barriers. In it, representatives of a military-based bureaucracy were as present as large landowners. Their relationship to the emperor was primarily characterized by military obedience and securing their personal material needs. Thus, the concept of principate was no longer alive at this time. But when considering the justification of the principate concept as a basis for periodization, it is not only to be examined whether this idea was essential and, if so, how long it was, but also whether there were not other foundations of Roman emperorship to which the emperors referred and from which they acted and decided. Seen from the origin of the emperorship, the army, alongside the senatorial aristocracy, was a fundamental component of its existence. What role did the army play for the emperorship? Did it mean so little that, even if only in the early imperial period, the concept of principate suffices to characterize the emperorship and an era? The emperor gained and maintained his political power through the loyalty of the army. The social bond between the supreme commander/emperor and the soldiers was called the Roman clientela. The clientela relationship was Established through mutual obligations: The Emperor takes care of the soldiers' welfare during and especially after their service, supporting them in all aspects of life; in return, the soldiers secure the political position of their patron, who leaves the business of politics to ensure their material well-being. Starting from the army, the Emperor extended the clientele to both the Roman and non-Roman civilian population. This meant that the patronal care concept derived from the clientele became effective for all inhabitants of the empire, transforming the Roman political-military dominance over the world into a government led by the Emperor's patronal care for all inhabitants of the empire. However, the army remained the core of the imperial clientele due to its political significance. The army was and remained the social group closest to the Emperor. The Emperor also took care, among other things, of the career of the middle and lower officer corps. The relationship between patron and client was therefore close and vibrant here. The clientele, especially the army clientele, not only secured the individual Emperor's personal power but also brought an institutional element to the imperial office. Because the clients were not only loyal to the Emperor, but also in the interest.

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Their security of supply according to ancient tradition also extended to his entire family, from which they expected the successor to the imperial throne. The idea of heredity of patronage prevalent in the clientela generated a dynastic thinking that naturally aligned with the interests of the emperors. Illustrative is the scene following the assassination of Emperor Gaius, when the Praetorian Guard, the soldiers closest to the emperor in terms of humanity and proximity, dragged Gaius's next of kin, his uncle Claudius, from a corner of the palace and proclaimed him emperor. As it seemed at the time, Claudius was far from promising as a capable ruler - he stuttered, had a walking disability, and immersed himself in scholarly historical studies. Already at the beginning of the imperial rule, it is evident how the dynastic idea overshadowed the question of the ruler's ability.

However, it must not be forgotten that the army clientela, which from the outset gave the imperial rule the outlines of a permanent institution, also endangered this institutional feature. Due to its size and the vast distances in the empire, the army was not a body that would always produce a unified will. If a dynasty ended, and no heir was available, various individuals could potentially be presented as successors. Lack of communication between army groups, local and corps spirit of individual army units, or special circumstances such as external threats and economic crises that could further disrupt the succession process, could lead to multiple claimants to the throne who would fight against each other, prolonging the succession chaos. In such situations, the dynastic idea was effectively suspended, and it often took time for a new emperor to establish his household again. The bond between the emperor and the army permeates the entire imperial period, from Augustus to the 6th century, and therefore the resulting dynastic idea has always prevailed even after long periods of unrest and anarchy.

Of no less importance is the third component of Roman imperialism: the sacral elevation of the imperial person. The impetus for the connection of the emperor with religious ideas came less from official Roman sources than from the subjects in the provinces, primarily from the Greeks and Orientals in the East, who had been accustomed for centuries to surrounding the ruler not only with sacred but explicitly divine consecration. Since neither the client nor the structure of imperial power as legal authority could nourish such ideas, indeed they even stood in stark contradiction to them, and also the ancient Roman religion provided no basis for the sacral. 


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The reverence of people, Augustus and his successors were hesitant to accept such honors. But the desire of the ruled to see divine powers at work in the world ruler was unstoppable, and eventually the rulers also recognized the stabilizing element of such an attitude. Therefore, they initially allowed the worship of their person in conjunction with other gods, accepted expressions of religious reverence towards their person, and allowed altars on which sacrifices were made for them. Gradually, under the careful guidance of the emperors, a general imperial cult and even something like an emperor cult emerged. The balancing of the political imbalance between Romans and non-Romans soon led the Romans to follow the provincials in the divine worship of the emperor. And although the emperors were initially more reserved towards them, so as not to conflict with the other ideas about the emperorship that prevailed among the Romans, they did not reject corresponding attempts. Already Augustus promoted and formalized these beginnings through the divine worship of the murdered Caesar, by establishing the consecration, i.e. the deification of the deceased predecessor, as a fixed and lasting form. The idea of the sacred imperial rule gained weight over time. It seemed to satisfy the people, as it made the emperorship as rule most understandable to them, and it was taken up by the emperors themselves as an element of stabilization not only of their own person or dynasty, but also of the emperorship as an institution, as already Augustus himself and other emperors after him attest through their approach to the problem. The sacred became an essential foundation of the emperorship. However, this needs to be relativized. Because the sacred aura of the emperor largely lacked genuine religious feeling. The holiness of the emperor contained few concrete statements that could have bound the religious feelings of the people. At times, an emperor might establish a connection by referring to a familiar god who was close to him, but this precisely illustrates the problem: The content determination of the sacred aura surrounding the imperial person could only be derived from other gods, and these gods were, crucially, numerous and interchangeable: Every resident of the empire could think whatever they wanted regarding the holiness of the emperor. This was very tolerant and, above all, suitable for capturing the religiosity of all people in the empire, but it denatured the sacred into a mere form. The lack of religious content in the imperial divinity led Kurt Latte to speak of the imperial cult as a religion of loyalty. Latte's concept correctly encapsulates the fact of religious non-bindingness. People saw the imperial cult more as a form of honoring the powerful ruler, with whom ideas of the world ruler, who was.

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those groups senators, knights, soldiers, Romans, non-Romans (Peregrine), religious communities - and possibly various others, and even though he did not appear to each group as a completely different entity, for this or that group one or more of the mentioned elements of the imperial power were more important than others. The soldiers saw him primarily as their patron, who provided for their livelihood; the mass of the civilian population hoped for extraordinary help from him within the same patronal care concept; he was also their helper and guarantor of world order. For the majority of knights, he was the supreme chief of the imperial administration, providing them with elevated social prestige. For the senators, he may still have been the guarantee that the once so significant class continued to occupy the highest offices and thus retained political weight. And all, including the higher classes, increasingly saw the emperor as a sacred person or accepted this aspect of the imperial power. But in a very special way, the non-Roman (Peregrine) inhabitants of the provinces, the provincials, contributed to the consolidation of the monarchical structure, which was not questioned by any reflection on the legality of imperial power; the provincials, for whom the tradition of the Roman Republic was not binding, could acknowledge the emperor's care, his sacred consecration, and the immense power of the world ruler as expressions of a self-evident autocracy. From the emperor's perspective, his ideas of imperial power corresponded to those of these groups, without always completely aligning with them in each case. His ideas were particularly determined in the early stages of the imperial power and in times of great internal unrest, to assert himself and his family against the politically significant groups - Senate aristocracy, soldiers. to legitimize. They were also mainly driven by what was considered the emperor's decisive sphere of activity at the time, so the specific form is essential whether the confrontation with the aristocracy, the establishment of the imperial administration, and the resulting maintenance of peace and care for the imperial subjects, whether the security of the empire at the borders or other issues were at the forefront. Within this context of interests, the concept of the Roman imperial rule as a legal order (Principate) was particularly significant in the early phase of the imperial rule; especially during the time of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, this idea carried great weight. Because the concept of the imperial rule as a Principate allowed the holder of military power to reach a compromise in dealing with the Senate aristocracy, in which military power could establish itself as a monarchy. However, the concept of the Principate does not characterize the first three centuries of the imperial era. The fact that the term has gained such importance is not only due to the research situation mentioned above but also because our sources from those three centuries were mostly written by members of the Senate aristocracy to which the Principate refers, and they naturally exaggerated the phenomenon.

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In the preceding, it was shown that the formal and political position of the Roman Emperor at the beginning of the Imperial period differs little from that of the developed and late Empire. But if we reject the constitutional hiatus established here, we not only ask about the actual position of the Emperor and its possible development, but also whether the concept of Dominat reflects the different constitutional position of the late antique Emperor assumed by the representatives of that hiatus, who is supposed to stand as an absolute ruler, as an autocrat, in contrast to the constitutionally bound Princeps of the early period.

In the Latin-speaking world, the dominus is referred to as the master of the household by the household members and others dependent on him (clients, slaves); the word has no pejorative meaning here, but expresses the legal and moral superiority of the pater familias over the other family members. Furthermore, it can be used early on for the great ruler. This political meaning of the word then undergoes a significant restriction in the aristocratic struggles of the late Republic, focusing on the individual ruler emerging from the aristocratic society, self-contained and pushing the existing order aside; in this process, the word dominus/dominatio emphasizes the meaning of 'master over slaves,' and dominatio and servitus (dominari-servire, etc.) appear as synonymous terms. This usage, which is primarily significant for the republican aristocratic society, is then transferred by the early imperial aristocratic society, especially by the Senate aristocracy, to the tension between the Emperor and this aristocracy, reproducing the old tension between the republican aristocracy and the individual emerging powerful figure from it. The first emperors, especially Augustus and Tiberius, who want to keep alive the consensus produced in 27 BC with the Senate regarding the position of the aristocracy under the changed political circumstances, explicitly reject the address "domine". However, the old familiar use of the word continues, which has been advancing into the political sphere without any negative connotation since the mid-1st century AD. Corresponding to the use of the word "dominus" in the familiar context, the term seems to have been initially used in the Emperor's relationship with his officials and courtiers. We encounter this address especially in Martial, Statius, in Pliny the Younger's correspondence with Emperor Trajan, whom he serves as a special envoy of the Emperor.

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(and of the Senate) in Bithynia, and in the correspondence of Fronto with the Emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. In the Greek-speaking area, we find the correlates (κύριος later especially also κύριε; ) already in the middle of the 1st century mainly in the papyri of Egypt (generally since Nero, occasionally even earlier), but also in inscriptions of other provinces, and since the time of Hadrian, dominus is used as an unreflected, already titular address also on official honorary inscriptions and documents, in a Latin inscription for Hadrian from Egyptian Thebes already in the later usual form dominus noster commonly used 14. Since the middle of the 2nd century, dominus is a neutral word for ruler and is used synonymously with princeps and imperator. Only where the awareness of the tension between the Emperor and the senatorial aristocracy of the early imperial period is still alive, as in the Panegyricus of the younger Pliny on Trajan or in the biographies of Suetonius, the word is used in a pejorative sense; also the writers of the late imperial period, who explicitly refer to this relationship and thus attribute the political conditions of the early imperial period in an anachronistic manner to those of the late period (scriptores historiae Augustae; Aurelius Victor), know the old meaning of the word¹5. But outside of this relationship system, which in principle becomes narrower and loses significance, the neutral meaning of the word is so self-evident that sometimes the same writer uses the word dominus, which he in the corresponding context, like Pliny for example in a eulogy of the Emperor in the Senate, as a critical word.

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understands, in a different context, namely in correspondence with the emperor, used as a matter of course as a titular address. The increasing weight of the neutral use of the word dominus can also be seen in the political sphere, as later writers must use the word dominus or dominatio with corresponding epithets (civilis, tyrannicus) to describe the bad or good emperor. The bad emperor is finally not referred to as dominus at all outside of that tendentious literature referring consciously to the early imperial period; instead, tyrannus takes its place, a term that has always been used but is now almost completely replaced by Seneca, Dio Chrysostomus, and Cassius Dio. In the late period, the usurper, that is, the emperor who is considered illegitimate by the other, appears as tyrannus. The contrast between good and bad (illegitimate) emperor has lost any specific reference to a constitutional situation: Moral categories have replaced the discussion of the emperor's position within the aristocratic society, which had played a decisive role between the emperors and the senatorial aristocracy at the beginning of the empire, and in their general lack of commitment poorly conceal that this is about the enforcement of political power, not formal constitutional principles.

The equation of the concept of dominatus with a period of Roman imperial rule was certainly also influenced by the fact that after the anarchy of the 3rd century, the emperors sought ways to stabilize the imperial rule, which had become a plaything of the soldiers, and believed to have found a way in the idea that rule itself had a form and dignity, to shield the person of the emperor from the arbitrary grasp of the people: The for male Design and exaggeration of the imperial dignity was meant to make the ruler inviolable. To mention just a few essential elements of the transformation, the imperial regalia and symbols of power (insignia) were stereotyped; court ceremonial gained importance; the imperial portrait was idealized and the statue of the emperor was stretched to oversized proportions; the emperor's residence gradually expanded into a vast, difficult to penetrate and comprehend palace, where the visitor had to pass through many corridors and guards before being allowed to view the emperor in a rigid visitor ceremony. To secure and organize the institutionalized emperorship in this way, a spatially and personnel-rich court with a complex court bureaucracy eventually developed. The sacred elevation of the emperor formalized within this framework. Thus, we now find on portraits the nimbus indicating divine epiphany above the emperor's head; the emperor is also bound in more solid forms to individual deities, and everything surrounding him is given an aura of sanctity.

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surrounds, the property of the Sacred (sacrum palatium, sacrum consistorium, sacrae litterae, etc.). All of this seems suitable to define the late Empire as a particular form of rule that sets itself apart from the preceding period. Those who wish to consider the Dominate as a distinct period of the Imperial era also emphasize these conditions. However, it should be noted that the formal structuring of the Empire and its elevation did not begin at the end of the 3rd century, but all the elements listed above were already present in the early stages of the Imperial era and continued to develop without a truly decisive break towards their late antique form. This is demonstrable for all forms; for wide areas of court ceremonial, in particular, Andreas Alföldi has shown the individual stages of development. Therefore, it cannot be said that something was introduced here, that is, that the Empire was consciously redesigned and placed on new foundations in an act of reform. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the anarchic situation of the 3rd century, with its fundamental need to secure the Emperor against the military, accelerated the development and also brought it to a certain conclusion. However, this situation-based reinforcement of long-standing tendencies is not sufficient to characterize the late Empire as the Dominate. In modern literature, the independent character of the late Empire is sometimes emphasized by the assertion that the late antique Emperor is freed from the laws (legibus solutus) and stands above the laws. In a difficult to follow leap of thought, in which the Emperor is transformed from a passive object of the legal system (privileged) into the subject of this order (source of law), the exemption from the laws is seen as a precursor. or seen as an expression of domination over the law; the legum solutio appears as the classic formulation of absolutism" (Lübtow a.O. 460). It is not about the emperor being all-powerful and able to do everything (qui omnia potest; ei omnia licere or similar expressions); such general formulations to express the central power position of the emperor can be found in all periods of Roman imperial rule and are seen as more or less unreflective statements about the magnitude of power, depending on the specific form of the imperial office. Here, the emperor's relationship to the law is used as a criterion to distinguish early from late imperial rule: Since Diocletian, the emperor is supposed to fundamentally

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otherwise in relation to the law, namely as the declared master of this behavior. The phrase princeps legibus solutus (Ulpian Dig. 1,3,31) initially refers to the emperor's exemption from specific provisions of the laws, for example, from individual provisions of matrimonial law; the quoted sentence of Ulpian originates from the commentary ad legem Iuliam et Papiam. In this sense, the formulation of the so-called appointment law for Vespasian (lex de imperio Vespasiani) is also to be interpreted: utique quibus legibus plebeive scitis scriptum fuit, ne divus Aug- (ustus)... tenerentur, iis legibus plebisque scitis imp(erator) Caesar Verspasianus solutus sit. The sentence clearly aims to dispense with individual provisions of the laws. Likewise, Cassius Dio 53,28,2 (concerning the year 24 B.C., referring to Augustus but conceived in the spirit of the Severan era) should be classified here: ronę autóv (sc. Augustus) τῆς τῶν νόμων ἀνάγκης απήλλαξαν (sc. the senators), ἵν', ὥσπερ εἴρηταί μοι 23, καὶ αὐτοτελῆς ὄντως καὶ αὐτοκράτωρ καὶ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν νόμων πάντα τε ὅσα βούλοιτο ποιοίη και πάνθ' ὅσα ἀβουλοίη μὴ πράττη: for the formulation indeed understands dispensation as an expression of rulership, but does not depart from the idea of privileging over the individual law; the privilege appears here merely as a kind of general clause. The highlighting of the emperor as an authority above the law is certainly not intended. To ward off too general an interpretation of legum solutio, even individual emperors emphasize in connection with it their fundamental subordination to the law: Divi quoque Severus et Antoninus saepissime rescripserunt: licet enim', inquiunt, legibus soluti sumus, attamen legibus vivimus. That the concept of legum solutio has changed since then cannot be supported by ancient sources. The idea of privileging individual provisions of the laws, which is present in all The imperial power that was maintained until the time of Justinian is, as a consequence of the view held by some researchers that the legum solutio had evolved into the control of the law since at least the 3rd century (see above), sometimes associated with the idea of the late antique emperor as the source of all law. However, this is unjust, and we do not find this connection in any ancient author. In fact, the emperor's dispensation of individual provisions of the laws and the development of imperial will as the all-encompassing source of law have completely different roots. In one case, provisions of the law, such as those concerning marriage, which are unbearable for the emperor because they hinder his royal freedom of action, are to be eliminated.

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In the other case, it is about a transfer of legislative power to the new ruler that is not programmatically controlled, but gradually enforced by the changed power relations. This latter development, which culminates in the statement of Ulpian, "quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem" (Dig. 1,4,1 pr.), cannot be invoked as a special feature of late antique imperial rule, independent of the idea of an allegedly expanded legum solutio. Characteristically, a number of researchers have tried to mitigate the monumental force of Ulpian's statement for the Severan period by referring to later interpolations, thus simultaneously presenting the statement as the classic expression of late antique thinking. However, the statement is arbitrarily taken out of its context and does not at all say what is claimed of it here. It does not aim to portray the emperor as an unrestricted, absolute ruler, but rather to establish him, as the subsequent sentences show, as the decisive source of private and criminal law within the legal doctrine of sources. And it is evident that the intention here is not to emphasize the absoluteness of imperial power, but precisely its limitation, as the legitimacy of the emperor as a law-creating source from the people's law, which has transferred legal authority to him.

The representatives of the doctrine of dominion as a special form of Roman imperial rule, with the passages just cited indicating the sole legislative authority of the emperor, on the other hand, are less likely to demonstrate the unfettered power of the late antique emperor, but rather to present more appropriately the overall context of the passages - that the late antique emperor (in contrast to the emperor of earlier times) is the exclusive source of the entire legal order, it must be emphasized, however, that the emperor is only acting here as a conse-

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When the new power structures entered the gap left by the gradually dying republican legal sources, namely the People's Law (lex publica) and the Praetor (edictum). And as the new legal source, he did not represent a power that, as advocated by the proponents of that doctrine, arbitrarily disposed of the law, but he wanted, like the judicial praetor and the People's Law, to improve and expand the existing legal order under the idea of justice. And this circumstance, that the emperor did not feel free in his law-making activity, but felt obligated to norms above him - be it the law itself, be it ideal values, is not only recognizable in the early imperial period, but is also explicitly emphasized by emperors of the late period: The emperor is bound by the laws (leges) and his authority depends on that of the law (auctoritas iuris) (as Theodosius II and Valentinian III in 429 AD), and insofar as the Emperor Justinian felt himself as the animated law (vóμoç Euyuzoç, lex animata), this legal power was only intended as an instrument of mediation between God, who used the monarchy as a vessel of his will, and humans. Finally, it must be pointed out in response to Ulpian's statement and the other testimonies about the omnipotent legislation of the emperor, when they are cited as evidence for the particular form of late antique imperial rule, that the law-making omnipotence of the emperor certainly did not begin only at the end of the 3rd century, but it was already fully developed in the 2nd century and in the 1st century the development towards an unrestricted legal power of the emperor had progressed significantly: The legislative activity of the popular assembly practically ceased already under the first emperors. and the Senate, which took its place, had only created laws in a limited area (especially inheritance law, personal law, law of obligations); since the middle of the 2nd century, its legislative authority, which was never fully recognized as such, has already passed de facto to imperial law, as instead.

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As a rule, only the imperial proposal (oratio principis) is cited as the basis of the legal principle in accordance with the Senate resolution. The praetorian legal development had already come to an end around 130, when Salvius Julianus, on behalf of Emperor Hadrian, definitively established the jurisdictional edict of the Praetor (edictum perpetuum) and published it in a final redaction. The law-making activity of the Praetor had thus already waned by the end of the 1st century, almost died out at the beginning of the 2nd century, and therefore, the Emperor, 150 years before Diocletian, with whom the Dominate is supposed to begin, became in fact the sole legal source, a concept of lex that was denied only out of respect for the people's law and also because of the terminology of legal sources doctrine established in the legal schools since the Republic. However, the practical sense of the Roman jurist had already found the obvious solution in the 2nd century to attribute quasi-legal force (legis vicem) to the law-making power of the Emperor. The factual authority of the Emperor over the law is therefore not a characteristic of the late antique ruler. However, as the preceding explanations showed, it is also not a formal principle of Roman imperial rule in general. Apart from the informal declarations of imperial omnipotence that appear everywhere without specific reference to imperial legislative power, the relationship between imperial power and law was not solely explained by imperial omnipotence for the Emperors and their jurists. The legitimation of imperial power from popular law is not just a mere legitimist construction used by jurists to appease their conscience, but rather declares the special status of the legal order compared to the. The imperial power: Although the emperor is ultimately the sole source of law and no matter how much he intervenes in the existing order, the legal system is constituted, corrected, and expanded according to the ideas of all those involved with it, not by imperial arbitrariness, but by intellectual premises that stand before and above all discretionary royal power; the legal concepts and ideas, the underlying views of social and moral nature, and all that has supported the development of Roman law for centuries, are not readily available to imperial power. Therefore, it seems absurd to make the relationship between the emperor and the law a formal principle of the imperial office that characterizes it in a special way or even sets apart individual periods of the imperial era from each other. In the context of the relationship between the emperor and the law, one final objection must be raised. If the emperor's absolute power over the law is supposed to distinguish the late ancient empire from the early empire called principate, the late empire seems to be presented here at first glance as a form of rule free from any public law (constitutional law).

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To be. Because the term Principate explicitly refers to the public-law binding of the Emperor, not to his relationship to private and criminal law, which is not contained in it at all. If one wants to maintain the contrast between Principate and Dominate as a contrast of imperial form of government, when legal relationships are compared as a characteristic of one or the other form of government, one should at least initially think of relations of public law to which the term Principate reflects. However, the legum solutio and all passages that portray the Emperor as an omnipotent legal power do not refer to such relations. Therefore, the relationship of the Emperor to the law is not suitable, from this perspective, to justify the Dominate as a particular form of government distinct from early imperialism. IV. In summary. It is not possible to want to distinguish late antiquity from early imperialism based on the concept of dominus/dominatus, the development of the imperial office into an extremely formalized institution, and the Emperor's evolution into the all-encompassing source of law

(Section III). More important than these considerations, which focus more on the formal side of the imperial office, are the objections raised earlier (II), according to which no fundamental change in the conception of rule can be demonstrated regarding the character and scope of duties, especially regarding the Emperor's relationship to the various population groups. Structurally, Roman imperialism appears more as a unity. And the term dominatus, as used by modern research, is indeed a critical term that originates from the early imperial period and exclusively refers to the Emperor's relationship with the senatorial aristocracy. For the officials (including the senato The term dominus did not contain a value judgment in either the older or later period of the imperial era for the estates and the residents of the empire, but rather expressed the emperor's undisputed ruling position and was used as a title for rulers. If some authors of the late 4th century, such as Aurelius Victor and the author of the Alexander Vita in the scriptores historiae Augustae, nevertheless understand dominus as a term of value, in the sense of tyrannus, they are following the tradition of the senatorial aristocracy and are anachronistic since this class and its ideas about the imperial rule no longer carry political weight in the 4th century. This brief outline of the Roman imperial rule is not intended to present all its individual or even essential characteristics, but rather to highlight the questionable use of terms such as Principate and Dominate, derived from constitutional history, for the periodization of the imperial era. The Roman imperial rule cannot be divided in this way; as explained, it is more of a unity, but then again differentiated.

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However, it appears in various forms, all of which have their rank but vary in strength at different times. Individual emperors consciously work on the particular design of the imperial office, as in the 3rd and 4th centuries in the efforts to emphasize the sacred dignity of the emperor and institutionalize the imperial majesty. The particular form of the imperial office usually arises from a complex network of relationships between the emperor and the various groups of the imperial population (senators, officials, soldiers, etc.). For example, in the very early period, the principle of law (the emperor is a magistrate elected by the Senate) can coexist or even conflict with the dynastic principle in the question of succession, and often the imperial office is reduced to military power under pressure from circumstances. However, although there are many possibilities for forms here, they cannot be chronologically arranged as distinct stages of the imperial office. Thus, not only are the terms Principate and Dominate unsuitable for periodization; no structural element of Roman imperial rule can be used for these purposes, and therefore, the Roman imperial period cannot be periodized from the perspective of constitutional law, at least as far as it concerns the emperor. It is not only that the terms Principate and Dominate are unsuitable for periodization, they also create additional misunderstandings by attributing something to individual periods that is not actually present in them, such as freedom for the early imperial period and oppression for the later period. And above all, they have especially through their association with periodization. Valuations that appear ideological have given the character of a rigid rupture to the end of the 3rd century, which fills in the connecting elements, assuming from the outset that they are not present at all. Those who adhere to this rupture should bear in mind that from the perspective of social and economic history, the period between the end of the 2nd and the 4th century is a unified period that was torn apart to the detriment of the cause. It is also significant that the rupture, accepted as a solid fact, tempts one to believe that it is exempt from any justification for the break. In fact, some works assume the rupture as a fixed fact without any reflection and distort their subject matter through the inappropriate premise. Thus, in works on urban development, urban history from Augustus to the end of the 3rd century is considered a unity, limited by the period of urban autonomy (Hellenistic period) and the period of complete dissolution of urban self-government (city as a pure administrative unit in late antiquity). The demarcation from late antiquity here is an unexamined, unjustified assumption; for in reality, the late antique city is neither a pure administrative unit nor is there a break in the development of the city precisely at the end of the 3rd century. The historian must structure, but the principles of structure should be transparent and well-founded, and they should not create too deep divides, as. `

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They are only auxiliary constructions for coping with material and time periods. Much more than the Diocletianic period, the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Antonine or Severan periods, and then again the Constantine era would offer points for a division. But wherever cuts are made, the terms Principate and Dominate should be avoided. Terms can be helpful; they confuse more than they help. It is astonishing that the terms Principate and Dominate have been able to hold on as epochal terms for so long. This could have been influenced by the significance of legal historical research in Germany and the weight of Theodor Mommsen within this research, that the 3rd century represents a strong turning point for literary history: Especially the half-century after the end of the Severan dynasty is very poor in sources, and what we have in the 4th century in terms of evidence is less familiar in terms of genres and language to those who focus their interests on the late Republic and the early Imperial period. The historian, in addition to the familiar genres, also deals mainly with church writers, legal compilations, and compendium literature, while inscriptions, which were of great importance in the 1st and 2nd centuries, are becoming increasingly rare. The difficulties are perceived by many as a barrier, and therefore the time after Diocletian is considered a special area for which specialists are responsible. However, the persistent adherence to the 284 AD watershed is mainly due to the fact that many scholars consciously or unconsciously view later imperial history from the 'Classical Periods' of Roman history, in which the most widely read authors in schools also lived; the aforementioned shift in. The situation of our sources in the 3rd century gains a special weight from here, so that it appears not only as a change in form, but also as a change in content: Because many historians adopt ideas from the literature of the late Republic and the early Imperial period, such as the freedom of the state order, which is the subject of special interest of the past and this century, as an absolute value judgment: Starting from the late Republic, they assume these ideas, such as political freedom, then transition to the early Imperial period, and mark the time when they can no longer be assumed, moving away from it. The fact that even in the Republic, political freedom, to stick with this example, applied mainly to the aristocracy, and that in the Imperial period it only meant something in the first generations and of course only for the senatorial aristocracy, and that it was also something completely different in content, having little in common with the freedom of the Republic, has suppressed this political preconception rooted in the liberal bourgeoisie of the 19th century. Under the influence of a state of consciousness in the 19th century (and into the 20th century) that, faced with the political organizational form then in place, namely the monarchy, did not recognize the fundamental character of this organizational form, namely the rule of the one, but rather the democratic nature.

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"which sought to emphasize their bond and limitation (constitution: the right as a legitimizing principle above all other values: demand for the civic sense of the monarch; defense against the spirit of subjection), the later Roman imperial era is and has been devalued apriori with the terminology of the declining Republic and the (possibly still misunderstood, see above) early imperial era. Faced with these assumptions, the historian can almost feel justified in not dealing with the late imperial era, and even the last shreds of a historian from the 1st century or even from the Severan period are unearthed, but Ammianus Marcellinus remains unread, because in this view, Emperor Constantius was a tyrant, while Antoninus Pius was a good emperor, and only Julian matters among the late antique emperors, about whom everyone raves and praises in a way that exceeds all bounds, because in the best of what was known about him, he was an emperor similar to the so-called humanitarian emperors, and to the delight of the liberals of the 19th century, he had also, for a long time, given the clergy a dressing down for the last time. In this late period, everything is indeed dark. People live in forced collectives (it is questionable to what extent and how it was before); the farmer is tied to the land (it is questionable whether the situation in the agricultural sector was more pleasant in earlier centuries, whether there were no dependencies before); there is no more religious tolerance, etc. According to this, the late antique imperial rule is "a monarchical form of government following an oriental-Hellenistic pattern," as stated in the widely read manual on Roman legal history by Duickeit/Schwarz (19664, 188), but also with similar expressions in numerous other books." It is said to appear as something un-Roman, and thus in the pre-understanding of what is Roman, the Late Antiquity is not only distinguished from the Principate, but almost already separated from the entire Greco-Roman Antiquity. The autocracy" or absolute monarchy", as the late Empire is called in countless places in the latest literature, lacked according to these scholars the halo of freedom that distinguished the earlier times. It appears as a period with which the Romans really have little more to do, and thus the citizens of the 19th and 20th centuries who were enthusiastic about antiquity have thrown the late Roman emperors and with them their entire era onto the dust heap of history, where they have also sent the Napoleons and other despots of their own time.