THE PRINCIPATE

Augustus learned from the mistakes of the past. There was to be no open break with the past, and no open grab for personal power. Augustus gradually acquired monarchical powers, and was in effect monarch, but was careful to do this so far as possible within the Republican constitution.

In form, the new government was a partnership between Augustus and the Senate, but as time went on it was increasingly Augustus and his suc­cessors who were the dominant partners. The Senate and the assemblies continued to exist, magistrates continued to be elected, but always subject to the ultimate authority of the emperor. The Senate retained its prestige perhaps longer than the other institutions, but all of these became in the end mouthpieces of the emperor.

During this period, Roman territorial expansion continued and the Empire reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (reigned ad 98—117). It was during the Principate that the province of Britannia was created, following an invasion in ad 43 under the fourth emperor, Claudius (reigned ad 41—54). This province came to cover everything in Great Britain south of Hadrian’s Wall, in the north of what is now England. Attempts to conquer what is now Scotland were abortive. Only the area south of the Antonine Wall (stretching between the Forth and the Clyde) ever formed part of the Empire, and that only for about twenty years in the second century ad.